IMPROVEMENTS AT THE POST, AND GARDENING.
The general began, as soon as the snow was off the ground, to improve
the post. Young cotton-wood trees--the only variety that would grow
in that soil--were transplanted from the river bank. They are so full
of sap that I have seen the leaves come out on the logs that had been
cut some time and were in use as the framework of our camp-huts. This
vitality, even when the roots were dying, deceived us into building
hopes that all the trees we planted would live. We soon found by
experience, however, that it was not safe to regard a few new leaves
as a sure augury of the long life of these trees. It would have been
difficult to estimate how many barrels of water were poured around
their roots during the summer. A few of them survived, even during the
dry season, and we watched them with great interest.
One day my husband called me to the door, with a warning finger to come
softly. He whispered to me to observe a bird perched on a branch, and
trying to get under the shade of two or three tiny leaflets that were
struggling to live. Such a harbinger of hope made us full of bright
anticipations of the day when our trees would cast a broad shadow.
No one who has not experienced it can dream what it is to live so many
years in a glare as we did. Many of the officers were almost blind
from time to time, owing to the reflection of the sand over which they
marched, and with which they were surrounded in camp and garrison. I
once asked a friend who had crossed the plains several times, what she
would prefer above everything else on the march. When she replied,
“a tree,” I agreed with her that nothing else could have been such a
blessing.
My husband felt that any amount of care spent on the poor little
saplings would be labor well bestowed. If we were ordered away, he knew
that others coming after us, stationed in that dreary waste, would
derive the benefit. Several years afterwards I was assured that some
one was reaping his sowing, for a large leaf was enclosed to me in an
envelope, and a word added to explain that it was from the tree in
front of our quarters.
On the opposite side of the Missouri River, except for the scattered
underbrush along the banks, there was a stretch of country for eighty
miles eastward without a tree, and with hardly a bush. The only one I
knew of, on our side of the river, I could not help calling a genuine
ancestral tree. It was a burying-place for the Indians. We counted
seventeen of them that were lashed to boards and laid across the main
branches, and there securely fastened, so that a tornado could not
dislodge them. Much as we longed to enjoy what had become by its rarity
a novelty, the sitting under the shade of green trees, and hearing the
sound of the wind through the foliage, not one of us could be induced
to tarry under those sepulchral boughs.
The struggles to make the grass grow on the sandy parade-ground were
unceasing. Not only would it have been an improvement to the post, in
its general appearance, but it would certainly have added materially
to our comfort. How we longed to escape from the clouds of dust that
the unceasing wind took up in straight whirling eddies and then wafted
in great sheets of murky yellow into our doors and windows, making
our eyes smart and throats raw and parched, as alkali sand can do so
effectually.
The general sent East for grass-seed, which, with oats, were sown over
and over again. Our referee on all agricultural questions assured us
that the oats sprouted so soon, the oncoming blades of grass would be
protected. He was so enthusiastically in earnest that he seemed to be
studying the soil at all hours of the day to detect a verdant tinge.
One moonlight night we were attracted to the gallery by seeing
him stalking slowly back and forth, waving his arms in apparent
gesticulation of speech as he traversed the length of the
parade-ground. Some said, in explanation, that the moon was at that
stage when reason totters on her throne most readily; another declared
that, having become tired of the career of a Mars, he had resumed his
old rôle as a statesman, and was practising, addressing his imaginary
constituents. All were wrong. The faithful promoter of the general
good was sowing oats again, doubtless hoping that the witchery of the
moonlight would be a potent spell to induce their growth. Even after
such indefatigable efforts, the soil refused to encourage the sprouting
of more than occasional patches of pallid green.
A portion of ground near the river was assigned the companies for their
gardens, and there were enough soldiers looking forward to the result
who counted it no hardship to plant, dig, and weed. All this tilling
of the soil inspired our energies, and a corner of our own yard was
prepared. A high fence was put up so that the stag-hounds, which make
such incredible leaps, could not scale the enclosure. The household
even gathered about the general to see him drop the seed, so full of
interest were we all. Long before it was time to look for sprouting, we
made daily pilgrimages to the corner and peered through the fence.
The general, Colonel Tom, and I watered, weeded, and watched the little
bit of earth; the cook and house-maid took our places and resumed our
work when we ceased. Never was a patch of _terra firma_ so guarded and
cared for! At last Mary became impatient, and even turned the tiny
sprouts upside down, putting the plants back after examining the roots.
Her watch was more vigilant than ours, and she actually surprised the
general one morning by putting beside him a glass of radishes. It was
really a sensation in our lives to have raised them ourselves, and we
could not help recalling the pitiful statement of a dear friend, who
also belonged to a mounted regiment, that she had planted gardens for
twelve successive springs, but had never been stationed long enough in
one place to reap the benefit of a single attempt. Of course, being
naturally so sanguine as a family, we began in imagination almost
to taste the oncoming beets, turnips, etc. We reckoned too hastily,
however, for a perfect army of grasshoppers appeared one day. They came
in swarms, and when we looked up at the sun we seemed to be gazing
through clouded air. Absorbed in this curious sight we forgot our
precious garden; but Colonel Tom remembered, and insisted upon trying
an experiment recommended in print by a Minnesota farmer. Seizing some
tins from the kitchen, and followed by the servants and their mistress,
all armed in the same manner, we adopted the advice of the newspaper
paragraph, and beat the metal with perfectly deafening noise around the
small enclosure. Had grasshoppers been sensitive to sound, it would
have ended in our triumph. As it was, they went on peacefully and
stubbornly, eating every twig in our sight. Having finished everything,
they soared away, carrying on their departing wings our dreams of
radishes and young beets! The company gardens were demolished in the
same manner, and every one returned for another year to the tiresome
diet of canned vegetables.
I remember the look of amazement that came into the face of a luxurious
citizen when I told him that we gave a dinner at once if we had the
good-fortune to get anything rare. “And, pray, what did you call a
rarity?” he responded. I was obliged to own that over a plebeian
cabbage we have had a real feast. Once in a great while one was
reluctantly sold us in Bismarck for a dollar and a half.
We used condensed milk, and as for eggs, they were the greatest of
luxuries. In the autumn we brought from St. Paul several cases, but
five hundred miles of jostling made great havoc with them.
The receipt-books were exasperating. They invariably called for cream
and fresh eggs, and made the cook furious. It seemed to me that some
officer’s servant on the frontier must have given the receipt for
waffles, for it bears the indefinite tone of the darky: “Eggs just as
you haz ’em, honey; a sprinklin’ of flour as you can hold in your hand;
milk! well, ‘cordin’ to what you has.”
The crystallized eggs, put up in cans and being airtight, kept a long
time, and were of more use to us than any invention of the day. In
drying the egg, the yolks and whites were mixed together, and nothing
could be made of this preparation when the two parts were required to
be used separately. It made very good batter-cakes, however, and at
first it seemed that we could never get enough.
In the spring, when it was no longer safe to hunt, we had to return
to beef, as we had no other kind of meat. My husband never seemed to
tire of it, however, and suggested to one of our friends who had the
hackneyed motto in his dining-room, that she change it to “Give us this
day our daily beef.”
Once only, in all those years of frontier life, I had strawberries.
They were brought to me as a present from St. Paul. The day they
came there were, as usual, a number of our friends on the piazza. I
carefully counted noses first, and hastily went in before any one else
should come, to divide the small supply into infinitesimal portions.
I sent the tray out by the maid, and was delayed a moment before
following her. My husband stepped inside, his face as pleased as a
child over the surprise, but at the same time his eyes hastily scanning
the buttery shelves for more berries. When I found that in that brief
delay another officer had come upon the porch, and that the general
had given him his dish, I was greatly disappointed. In vain my husband
assured me, in response to my unanswerable appeal, asking him why he
had not kept them himself, that it was hardly his idea of hospitality.
I was only conscious of the fact that having been denied them all these
years, he had, after all, lost his only strawberry feast.
This doubtless seems like a very trifling circumstance to chronicle,
and much less to have grieved over, but there are those who, having
ventured “eight miles from a lemon,” have gained some faint idea what
temporary deprivations are.
When such a life goes on year after year, and one forgets even the
taste of fruit and fresh vegetables, it becomes an event when they _do_
appear.