Second Lieut. R. S. BARRETT to First California Volunteer Cavalry, June 17, 1862

Capt. N. J. PISHON, First California Volunteer Cavalry, Commanding Fort Stanford, Ariz. Ter.:

CAPTAIN: The colonel commanding directs me to write to you as follows: Owing to the fact that great numbers of wagons have been shrunk and rendered almost useless as means of transportation on account of the great heat to which they have been exposed in crossing the desert, the supplies of subsistence stores come in slowly. Every point is being strained to the utmost to accumulate subsistence stores at this point to last the entire command for sixty days, in order that we may be enabled to move toward the Rio Grande by the 1st of July. In order to accomplish this end great economy must be used in everything relating to the stores now on hand. Therefore the colonel directs that for the present you issue to your command only half rations of sugar and coffee, and that you issue one pound of flour to the ration, and one and one-half pounds of beef, and that you send to these headquarters a list of all subsistence stores on hand, with the number of days your command will be supplied after the ration has been reduced as above. Colonel Eyre leaves Tucson in two days from this date with 109 inen to make a forced reconnaissance toward the Rio Grande. He takes noth ing but a little pemmican, some flour, and nothing but the clothes the men stand in. He will doubtless not return this way, but go on direetly to the river, so that the First Cavalry may have no opportunity of retrieving the losses they have already sustained at the hands of the enemy. The colonel commanding starts for Fort Barrett to-morrow, to be gone eight or ten days, and he does not wish the Apache chiefs to come to Tucson until he returns. You will be notified at once of his return to this place.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,