“There were three of us,” said Tete Rouge, “me and Bill Stevens and John Hopkins.  We thought we would just go out with the army, and when we had conquered the country, we would get discharged and take our pay, you know, and go down to Mexico.  They say there is plenty of fun going on there.  Then we could go back to New Orleans by way of Vera Cruz.”

But Tete Rouge, like many a stouter volunteer, had reckoned without his host.  Fighting Mexicans was a less amusing occupation than he had supposed, and his pleasure trip was disagreeably interrupted by brain fever, which attacked him when about halfway to Bent’s Fort.  He jolted along through the rest of the journey in a baggage wagon.  When they came to the fort he was taken out and left there, together with the rest of the sick.  Bent’s Fort does not supply the best accommodations for an invalid.  Tete Rouge’s sick chamber was a little mud room, where he and a companion attacked by the same disease were laid together, with nothing but a buffalo robe between them and the ground.  The assistant surgeon’s deputy visited them once a day and brought them each a huge dose of calomel, the only medicine, according to his surviving victim, which he was acquainted with.

Tete Rouge woke one morning, and turning to his companion, saw his eyes fixed upon the beams above with the glassy stare of a dead man.  At this the unfortunate volunteer lost his senses outright.  In spite of the doctor, however, he eventually recovered; though between the brain fever and the calomel, his mind, originally none of the strongest, was so much shaken that it had not quite recovered its balance when we came to the fort.  In spite of the poor fellow’s tragic story, there was something so ludicrous in his appearance, and the whimsical contrast between his military dress and his most unmilitary demeanor, that we could not help smiling at them.  We asked him if he had a gun.  He said they had taken it from him during his illness, and he had not seen it since; “but perhaps,” he observed, looking at me with a beseeching air, “you will lend me one of your big pistols if we should meet with any Indians.”  I next inquired if he had a horse; he declared he had a magnificent one, and at Shaw’s request a Mexican led him in for inspection.  He exhibited the outline of a good horse, but his eyes were sunk in the sockets, and every one of his ribs could be counted.  There were certain marks too about his shoulders, which could be accounted for by the circumstance, that during Tete Rouge’s illness, his companions had seized upon the insulted charger, and harnessed him to a cannon along with the draft horses.  To Tete Rouge’s astonishment we recommended him by all means to exchange the horse, if he could, for a mule.  Fortunately the people at the fort were so anxious to get rid of him that they were willing to make some sacrifice to effect the object, and he succeeded in getting a tolerable mule in exchange for the broken-down steed.