Inside the enclosure lay an enormous rattlesnake, coiled.
It was the first one I had ever seen except in a cage, and I was fascinated by the horror of the round, grayish-looking heap, so near the color of the sand on which it lay.

Some soldiers came and killed it.
But I noticed that Bowen took extra pains that night, to spread buffalo robes under our mattresses, and to place around them a hair lariat.
"Snakes won't cross over that," he said, with a grin.
Bowen was a character.

Originally from some farm in Vermont, he had served some years with the Eighth Infantry, and for a long time in the same company under Major Worth, and had cooked for the bachelors' mess.
He was very tall, and had a good-natured face, but he did not have much opinion of what is known as etiquette, either military or civil; he seemed to consider himself a sort of protector to the officers of Company K, and now, as well, to the woman who had joined the company.
He took us all under his wing, as it were, and although he had to be sharply reprimanded sometimes, in a kind of language which he seemed to expect, he was allowed more latitude than most soldiers.
This was my first night under canvas in the army.

I did not like those desert places, and they grew to have a horror for me.
At four o'clock in the morning the cook's call sounded, the mules were fed, and the crunching and the braying were something to awaken the heaviest sleepers.

Bowen called us.