OUT OF THE WILDERNESS.
AS we came out of the forest, the country improved somewhat. The
farm-houses began to show a little look of comfort, and it occurred to
us that we might now vary the monotony of our fare by marketing. My
husband and I sometimes rode on in advance of the command, and
approached the houses with our best manners, soliciting the privilege of
buying butter and eggs. The farmer's wife was taking her first look at
Yankees, but she found that we neither wore horns nor were
cloven-footed, and she even so far unbent as to apologize for not having
butter, adding, what seemed then so flimsy an excuse, that "I don't make
more than enough butter for our own use, as we are only milking seven
cows now." We had yet to learn that what makes a respectable dairy at
home was nothing in a country where the cows give a cupful of milk and
all run to horns. It was a great relief to get out of the wilderness,
but though our hardships were great, I do not want them to appear to
outnumber the pleasures. The absence of creature comforts is easily
itemized. We are either too warm or too cold, we sleep uncomfortably, we
have poor food, we are wet by storms, we are made ill by exposure.
Happiness cannot be itemized so readily; it is hard to define what goes
to round and complete a perfect day. We remember hours of pleasure as
bathed in a mist that blends all shades into a roseate hue; but it is
impossible to take one tint from colors so perfectly mingled, and define
how it adds to the perfect whole.
The days now seemed to grow shorter and brighter. In place of the
monotonous pines, we had magnolia, mulberry, pecan, persimmon and
live-oak, as well as many of our own Northern trees, that grew along the
streams. The cactus, often four feet high, was covered with rich red
blossoms, and made spots of gorgeous color in the prairie grass. I had
not then seen the enormous cacti of old Mexico, and four feet of that
plant seemed immense, as at home we labored to get one to grow six
inches. The wild-flowers were charming in color, variety and luxuriance.
The air, even then beginning to taste of the sea, blew softly about us.
Stillman no longer blackened his soul with prophecies about the streams
on which we nightly pitched our tents. The water did flow in them, and
though they were then low, so that the thousands of horses were
scattered far up and down when watering-time came, the green scum of
sluggish pools was a thing of the past.
A few days before we reached what was to be a permanent camp, a
staff-officer rode out to meet us, and brought some mail. It was a
strange sensation to feel ourselves restored by these letters to the
outside world. General Custer received a great surprise. He was
brevetted major, lieutenant-colonel and brigadier-general in the regular
army. The officers went off one side to read their sweethearts' letters;
and some of our number renewed their youth, sacrificed in that dreadful
forest to fever, when they read the good news of the coming of their
wives by sea. At Hempstead we halted, and the General made a permanent
camp, in order to recruit men and horses after their exhausting march.
Here General Sheridan and some of his staff came, by way of Galveston,
and brought with them our father Custer, whom the General had sent for
to pay us a visit. General Sheridan expressed great pleasure at the
appearance of the men and horses, and heard with relief and satisfaction
of the orderly manner in which they had marched through the enemy's
country, of how few horses had perished from the heat, and how seldom
sunstroke had occurred. He commended the General--as he knew how to do
so splendidly--and placed him in command of all the cavalry in the
State. Our own Division then numbered four thousand men.
I was again mortified to have to be compelled to lie down for a day or
two, as so many weeks in the saddle had brought me to the first
discovery of a spinal column. It was nothing but sheer fatigue, for I
was perfectly well, and could laugh and talk with the rest, though not
quite equal to the effort of sitting upright, especially as we had
nothing but camp-stools, on which it is impossible to rest.
Indisposition, or even actual illness, has less terrors in army life
than in the States. We were not condemned to a gloomy upper chamber in a
house, and shut in alone with a nurse whom we had never before seen. In
our old life, ailing people lay on a lounge in the midst of all the
garrison, who were coming and going a dozen times a day, asking, "How
does it go now?" and if you had studied up anything that they could do
for you? I principally recall being laid up by fatigue, because of the
impetuous assault that my vehement father Custer made on his son for
allowing me to share the discomforts; and when I defended my husband by
explaining how I had insisted upon coming, he only replied, "Can't help
it if you did. Armstrong, you had no right to put her through such a
jaunt." It was amusing to see the old man's horror when our staff told
him what we had been through. It would have appeared that I was his own
daughter, and the General a son-in-law, by the manner in which he
renewed his attack on the innocent man. Several years afterward it cost
Lieutenant James Calhoun long pleading, and a probationary state of two
years, before the old man would consent to his taking his daughter
Margaret into the army. He shook his gray head determinedly, and said,
"Oh, no; you don't get me to say she shall go through what Libbie has."
But the old gentleman was soon too busy with his own affairs, defending
himself against not only the ingenious attacks of his two incorrigible
boys, but the staff, some of whom had known him in Monroe. His eyes
twinkled, and his face wrinkled itself into comical smiles, as he came
every morning with fresh tales of what a "night of it he had put in." He
had a collection of mild vituperations for the boys, gathered from
Maryland, Ohio and Michigan, where he had lived, which, extensive as the
list was, did not, in my mind, half meet the situation.
The stream on which we had encamped was wide and deep, and had a
current. Our tents were on the bank, which gently sloped to the water.
We had one open at both ends, over which was built a shade of pine
boughs, which was extended in front far enough for a porch. Some lumber
from a pontoon bridge was made into the unusual luxury of a floor. My
husband still indulged my desire to have the traveling-wagon at the
rear, so that I might take up a safe position at night, when sleep
interrupted my vigils over the insects and reptiles that were about us
constantly. The cook-tent, with another shade over it, was near us,
where Eliza flourished a skillet as usual. The staff were at some
distance down the bank, while the Division was stretched along the
stream, having, at last, plenty of water. Beyond us, fifty miles of
prairie stretched out to the sea. We encamped on an unused part of the
plantation of the oldest resident of Texas, who came forth with a
welcome and offers of hospitality, which we declined, as our camp was
comfortable. His wife sent me over a few things to make our tent
habitable, as I suppose her husband told her that our furniture
consisted of a bucket and two camp-stools. There's no denying that I
sank down into one of the chairs, which had a back, with a sense of
enjoyment of what seemed to me the greatest luxury I had ever known. The
milk, vegetables, roast of mutton, jelly, and other things which she
also sent, were not enough to tempt me out of the delightful hollow,
from which I thought I never could emerge again. But military despots
pick up their families and carry them out to their dinner, if they
refuse to walk. The new neighbors offered us a room with them, but the
General never left his men, and it is superfluous to say that I thought
our clean, new hospital tent, as large again as a wall-tent, and much
higher, was palatial after the trials of the pine forests.
The old neighbor continued his kindness, which was returned by sending
him game after the General's hunt, and protecting his estate. He had
owned 130 slaves, with forty in his house. He gave us dogs and sent us
vegetables, and spent many hours under our shade. He had lived under
eight governments in his Texas experience, and, possibly, the habit of
"speeding the parting and welcoming the coming guest" had something to
do with his hospitality. I did not realize how Texas had been tossed
about in a game of battle-door and shuttle-cock till he told me of his
life under Mexican rule, the Confederacy, and the United States.
I find mention, in an old letter to my parents, of a great luxury that
here appeared, and quote the words of the exuberant and much-underlined
girl missive: "I rejoice to tell you that I am the happy possessor of a
mattress. It is made of the moss which festoons the branches of all the
trees at the South. The moss is prepared by boiling it, then burying it
in the ground for a long time, till only the small thread inside is
left, and this looks like horse-hair. An old darkey furnished the moss
for three dollars, and the whole thing only cost seven dollars--very
cheap for this country. We are living finely now; we get plenty of eggs,
butter, lard and chickens. Eliza cooks better than ever, by a few logs,
with camp-kettles and stew-pans. She has been washing this past week,
and drying her things on a line tied to the tent-poles and on bushes,
and ironing on the ground, with her ironing-sheet held down by a stone
on each corner. To-day we are dressed in white. She invites us to mark
Sunday by the luxury of wearing white. Her 'ole miss used to.' We are
regulated by the doings of that 'ole miss,' and I am glad that among the
characteristics of my venerable predecessor, which we are expected to
follow, wearing white gowns is included."
Eliza, sitting here beside me to-day, has just reminded me of that week,
as it was marked in her memory by a catastrophe. Eliza's misfortunes
were usually within the confines of domestic routine. I quote her words:
"It was on the Gros Creek, Miss Libbie, that I had out that big wash,
and all your lace-trimmed things, and all the Ginnel's white linen
pants and coats. I didn't know nothin' 'bout the high winds then, but I
ain't like to forget 'em ever again. The first thing I I knew, the line
was jest lifted up, and the clothes jest spread in every direction, and
I jest stood still and looked at 'em, and I says, 'Is _this_ Texas? How
long am I to contend with this?' [With hands uplifted and a camp-meeting
roll in her eyes.] But I had to go to work and pick 'em all up. Some
fell in the sand, and some on the grass. I gathered 'em all, with the
sun boiling down hot enough to cook an egg. While I was a-pickin' 'em
up, the Ginnel was a-standin' in the tent entrance, wipin' down his
moustache, like he did when he didn't want us to see him laughin'. Well,
Miss Libbie, I was _that_ mad when he hollered out to me, 'Well, Eliza,
you've got a spread-eagle thar.' Oh, I was so mad and hot, but he jest
bust right out laughin'. But there wasn't anything to do but rinse and
hang 'em up again."
We had been in camp but a short time when the daughter of the newly
appointed collector of the port came from their plantation near to see
us. She invited me to make my home with them while we remained, but I
was quite sure there was nothing on earth equal to our camp. The girl's
father had been a Union man during the war, and was hopelessly invalided
by a long political imprisonment. I remember nothing bitter, or even
gloomy, about that hospitable, delightful family. The young girl's visit
was the precursor of many more, and our young officers were in clover.
There were three young women in the family, and they came to our camp
and rode and drove with us, while we made our first acquaintance with
Southern home life. The house was always full of guests. The large
dining-table was not long enough, however, unless placed diagonally
across the dining-room, and it was sometimes laid three times before all
had dined. The upper part of the house was divided by a hall running the
length of the house. On one side the women and their guests--usually a
lot of rollicking girls--were quartered, while the men visitors had
rooms opposite; and then I first saw the manner in which a Southern
gallant comes as a suitor or a friend. He rode up to the house with his
servant on another horse, carrying a portmanteau. They came to stay
several weeks. I wondered that there was ever an uncongenial marriage in
the South, when a man had such a chance to see his sweetheart. This was
one of the usages of the country that our Northern men adopted when they
could get leave to be absent from camp, and delightful visits we all
had.
It seemed a great privilege to be again with women, after the long
season in which I had only Eliza to represent the sex. But I lost my
presence of mind when I went into a room for the first time and caught a
glimpse of myself in a mirror. The only glass I had brought from the
East was broken early in the march, and I had made my toilet by feeling.
The shock of the apparition comes back to me afresh, and the memory is
emphasized by my fastidious mother's horror when she saw me afterward. I
had nothing but a narrow-brimmed hat with which to contend against a
Texas sun. My face was almost parboiled and swollen with sunburn, while
my hair was faded and rough. Of course, when I caught the first glimpse
of myself in the glass I instantly hurried to the General and Tom, and
cried out indignantly, "Why didn't you tell me how horridly I
looked?"--the inconsistent woman in me forgetting that it would not have
made my ugliness any easier to endure. My husband hung his head in
assumed humility when he returned me to my mother, six months later, my
complexion seemingly hopelessly thickened and darkened; for, though
happily it improved after living in a house, it never again looked as it
did before the Texas life. My indignant mother looked as if her
son-in-law was guilty of an unpardonable crime. I told her, rather
flippantly, that it had been offered up on the altar of my country, and
she ought to be glad to have so patriotic a family; but she withered the
General with a look that spoke volumes. He took the first opportunity to
whisper condescendingly that, though my mother was ready to disown me,
and quite prepared to annihilate him, he would endeavor not to cast me
off, if I was black, and would try to like me, "notwithstanding all."
The planters about the country began to seek out the General, and invite
him to go hunting; and, as there was but little to do while the command
was recruiting from the march, he took his father and the staff and went
to the different plantations where the meet was planned. The start was
made long before day, and breakfast was served at the house where the
hunters assembled, dinner being enjoyed at the same hospitable board on
the return at night. Each planter brought his hounds, and I remember the
General's delight at his first sight of the different packs--thirty-seven
dogs in all--and his enthusiasm at finding that every dog responded to
his master's horn. He thereupon purchased a horn, and practiced in camp
until he nearly split his cheeks in twain, not to mention the spasms
into which we were driven; for his five hounds, presents from the
farmers, ranged themselves in an admiring and sympathetic semicircle,
accompanying all his practicing by tuning their voices until they
reached the same key. I had no idea it was such a difficult thing to
learn to sound notes on a horn. When we begged off sometimes from the
impromptu serenades of the hunter and his dogs, the answer was, "I am
obliged to practice, for if anyone thinks it is an easy thing to blow on
a horn, just let him try it." Of course Tom caught the fever, and came
in one day with the polished horn of a Texas steer ready for action. The
two were impervious to ridicule. No detailed description of their red,
distended cheeks, bulging eyes, bent and laborious forms, as they
struggled, suspended the operation. The early stages of this horn music
gave little idea of the gay picture of these debonair and spirited
athletes, as they afterward appeared. When their musical education was
completed, they were wont to leap into the saddle, lift the horn in
unconscious grace to their lips, curbing their excited and rearing
horses with the free hand, and dash away amidst the frantic leaping,
barking and joyous demonstration of their dogs.
At the first hunt, when one of our number killed a deer, the farmers
made known to our officers, on the sly, the old established custom of
the chase. While Captain Lyon stood over his game, volubly narrating, in
excited tones, how the shot had been sent and where it had entered, a
signal, which he was too absorbed to notice, was given, and the crowd
rushed upon him and so plastered him with blood from the deer that
scarcely an inch of his hair, hands and face was spared, while his
garments were red from neck to toes. After this baptism of gore, they
dragged him to our tent on their return, to exhibit him, and it was well
that he was one of the finest-hearted fellows in the world, for day and
night these pestering fellows kept up the joke. Notwithstanding he had
been subjected to the custom of the country, which demands that the
blood of the first deer killed in the chase shall anoint the hunter, he
had glory enough through his success to enable him to submit to the
penalty.
Tom also shot a deer that day, but his glory was dimmed by a misfortune,
of which he seemed fated never to hear the last. The custom was to place
one or two men at stated intervals in different parts of the country
where the deer were pretty sure to run, and Tom was on stand watching
through the woods in the direction from which the sound of the dogs
came. As the deer bounded toward him, he was so excited that when he
fired, the shot went harmlessly by the buck and landed in one of the
General's dogs, killing the poor hound instantly. Though this was a loss
keenly felt, there was no resisting the chance to guy the hunter. Even
after Tom had come to be one of the best shots in the Seventh Cavalry,
and when the General never went hunting without him, if he could help
it, he continued to say, "Oh, Tom's a good shot, a sure aim--he's sure
to hit something!" Tom was very apt, also, to find newspaper clippings
laid around, with apparent carelessness by his brother, where he would
see them. For example, like this one, which I have kept among some old
letters, as a reminder of those merry days: "An editor went hunting the
other day, for the first time in twenty-two years, and he was lucky
enough to bring down an old farmer by a shot in the leg. The distance
was sixty-six yards."
We had long and delightful rides over the level country. Sometimes my
husband and I, riding quietly along at twilight, for the days were still
too warm for much exercise at noon-time, came upon as many as three
coveys of quail scurrying to the underbrush. In a short walk from camp
he could bag a dozen birds, and we had plenty of duck in the creek near
us. The bird dog was a perpetual pleasure. She was the dearest,
chummiest sort of house-dog, and when we took her out she still visited
with us perpetually, running to us every now and again to utter a little
whine, or to have us witness her tail, which, in her excitement in
rushing through the underbrush, cacti and weeds, was usually scratched,
torn and bleeding. The country was so dry that we could roam at will,
regardless of roads. Our horses were accustomed to fording streams,
pushing their way through thickets and brambles, and becoming so
interested in making a route through them that my habit sometimes caught
in the briars, and my hat was lifted off by the low-hanging moss and
branches; and if I was not very watchful, the horse would go through a
passage between two trees just wide enough for himself, and rub me off,
unless I scrambled to the pommel. The greater the obstacles my husband
encountered, even in his sports, the more pleasure it was to him. His
own horses were so trained that he shot from their backs without their
moving. Mine would also stand fire, and at the report of a gun, behaved
much better than his mistress.
Eliza, instead of finding the General wearing his white linen to
celebrate Sunday, according to her observances, was apt to get it on
week-days after office-hours, far too often to suit her. On the Sabbath,
she was immensely puffed up to see him emerge from the tent, speckless
and spotless, because she said to me, "Whilst the rest of the officers
is only too glad to get a white shirt, the Ginnel walks out among 'em
all, in linen from top to toe." She has been sitting beside me, talking
over a day at that time: "Do you mind, Miss Libbie, that while we was
down in Texas the Ginnel was startin' off on a deer-hunt, I jest went up
to him and tole him, 'Now, Ginnel, you go take off them there white
pants.' He said so quiet, sassy, cool, roguish-like, 'The deer always
like something white'--telling me that jest 'cause he wanted to keep 'em
on. Well, he went, all the same, and when he came back, I says, 'I don't
think the deer saw you in those pants.' He was covered with grass-stains
and mud, and a young fawn swinging across the saddle. But them pants was
mud and blood, and green and yellow blotches, from hem to bindin'. But
he jest laughed at me because I was a-scoldin', and brought the deer out
to me, and I skinned it the fust time I ever did, and cooked it next
day, and we had a nice dinner."
At that time Eliza was a famous belle. Our colored coachman, Henry, was
a permanent fixture at the foot of her throne, while the darkeys on the
neighboring plantations came nightly to worship. She bore her honors
becomingly, as well as the fact that she was the proud possessor of a
showy outfit, including silk dresses. The soldiers to whom Eliza had
been kind in Virginia had given her clothes that they had found in the
caches where the farmers endeavored to hide their valuables during the
war. Eliza had made one of these very receptacles for her "ole miss"
before she left the plantation, and while her conscience allowed her to
take the silken finery of some other woman whom she did not know, she
kept the secret of the hiding-place of her own people's valuables until
after the war, when the General sent her home in charge of one of his
sergeants to pay a visit. Even the old mistress did not know the spot
that Eliza had chosen, which had been for years a secret, and she
describes the joy at sight of her, and her going to the place in the
field and digging up the property "with right smart of money, too, Miss
Libbie--enough, with that the Ginnel gave me to take home, to keep 'em
till the crops could be harvested."
This finery of Eliza's drove a woman servant at the next place to plan
a miserable revenge, which came near sending us all into another world.
We were taking our breakfast one morning, with the table spread under
the awning in front of our tent. The air, not yet heated by the sun,
came over the prairie from the sea. The little green swift and the
chameleon, which the General had found in the arbor roof and tamed as
pets, looked down upon as reposeful and pretty a scene as one could
wish, when we suddenly discovered a blaze in the cook-tent, where we had
now a stove--but Eliza shall tell the story; "When I fust saw the fire,
Miss Libbie, I was a-waitin' on you at breakfast. Then the first thought
was the Ginnel's powder-can, and I jest dropped everythin' and ran and
found the blaze was a-runnin' up the canvas of my tent, nearly reachin'
the powder. The can had two handles, and I ketched it up and ran
outside. When I first got in the tent, it had burnt clar up to the
ridge-pole on one side. Some things in my trunk was scorched mightily,
and one side of it was pretty well burnt. The fire was started right
behind my trunk, not very near the cook-stove. The Ginnel said to me how
cool and deliberate I was, and he told me right away that if my things
had been destroyed, I would have everythin' replaced, for he was bound I
wasn't going to lose nothin'."
My husband, in this emergency, was as cool as he always was. He followed
Eliza as she ran for the powder-can, and saved the tent and its contents
from destruction, and, without doubt, saved our lives. The noble part
that I bore in the moment of peril was to take a safe position in our
tent, wring my hands and cry. If there was no one else to rush forward
in moments of danger, courage came unexpectedly, but I do not recall
much brave volunteering on my part.
Eliza put such a broad interpretation upon the General's oft-repeated
instruction not to let any needy person go away from our tent or
quarters hungry, that occasionally we had to protest. She describes to
me now his telling her she was carrying her benevolence rather too far,
and her replying, "Yes, Ginnel, I do take in some one _once_ and a
_while_, _off_ and _on_." "Yes," he replied to me, "more on than off, I
should say." "One chile I had to hide in the weeds a week, Miss Libbie.
The Ginnel used to come out to the cook-tent and stand there kinder
careless like, and he would spy a little path running out into the
weeds. Well, he used to carry me high and dry about them little roads
leading off to folks he said I was a-feedin.' I would say, when I saw
him lookin' at the little path in the weeds, 'Well, what is it, Ginnel?'
He would look at me so keen-like out of his eyes, and say, 'That's what
_I_ say.' Then he'd say he was goin' to get a couple of bloodhounds, and
run 'em through the bushes to find out just how many I was a-feedin'.
Then, Miss Libbie, we never did come to a brush or a thicket but that he
would look around at me so kinder sly like, and tell me that would be a
fust-rate ranch for me. Then I would say, 'Well, it's a good thing I do
have somebody sometimes, 'cause my cook-tent is allus stuck way off by
itself, and it's lonesome, and sometimes I'm so scart.' But, you know,
Miss Libbie," she added, afraid I might think she reflected on one whose
memory she reveres, "my tent was obliged to be a good bit off, 'cause
the smell of the cookin' took away the Ginnel's appetite; he was so
uncertain like in his eatin', you remember."
[Illustration]
In Texas, two wretched little ragamuffins--one, of the poor white trash,
and another a negro--were kept skulking about the cook-tent, making
long, circuitous détours to the creek for water, for fear we would see
them, as they said "Miss Lize tole us you'd make a scatter if you knew
'no 'count' chillern was a-bein' fed at the cook-tent." They slipped
into the underbrush at our approach, and lay low in the grass at the
rear of the tent if they heard our voices. The General at first thought
that, after Eliza had thoroughly stuffed them and made them fetch and
carry for her, they would disappear, and so chose to ignore their
presence, pretending he had not seen them. But at last they appeared to
be a permanent addition, and we concluded that the best plan would be to
acknowledge their presence and make the best of the infliction; so we
named one Texas, and the other Jeff. Eliza beamed, and told the
orphans, who capered out boldly in sight for the first time, and ran
after Miss "Lize" to do her bidding. Both of them, from being starved,
wretched, and dull, grew quite "peart" under her care. The first
evidence of gratitude I had was the creeping into the tent of the little
saffron-colored white boy, with downcast eyes, mumbling that "Miss Lize
said that I could pick the scorpions out of your shoes." I asked, in
wonder--one spark of generosity blazing up before its final
obliteration--"And how, in the name of mercy, do you get on with the
things yourself?" He lifted up a diminutive heel, and proudly showed me
a scar. The boy had probably never had on a pair of shoes, consequently
this part of his pedal extremity was absolutely so callous, so evidently
obdurate to any object less penetrating than a sharpened spike driven in
with a hammer, I found myself wondering how a scorpion's little spear
could have effected an entrance through the seemingly impervious outer
cuticle. Finally, I concluded that at a more tender age that "too solid
flesh" may have been susceptible to an "honorable wound." It turned out
that this cowed and apparently lifeless little midget was perfectly
indifferent to scorpions. By this time I no longer pretended to courage
of any sort; I had found one in my trunk, and if, after that, I was
compelled to go to it, I flung up the lid, ran to the other side of the
tent, and "shoo-shooed" with that eminently senseless feminine call
which is used alike for cows, geese, or any of these acknowledged foes.
Doubtless a bear would be greeted with the same word, until the supposed
occupants had run off. Night and morning my husband shook and beat my
clothes while he helped me to dress. The officers daily came in with
stories of the trick, so common to the venomous reptiles, of hiding
between the sheets, and the General then even shook the bedding in our
eyrie room in the wagon. Of all this he was relieved by the boy that
Eliza called "poor little picked sparrow," who was appointed as my maid.
Night and morning the yellow dot ran his hands into shoes, stockings,
night-gown, and dress-sleeves, in all the places where the scorpions
love to lurk; and I bravely and generously gathered myself into the
armchair while the search went on.
Eliza has been reminding me of our daily terror of the creeping,
venomous enemy of those hot lands. She says, "One day, Miss Libbie, I
got a bite, and I squalled out to the Ginnel, 'Somethin's bit me!' The
Ginnel, he said, 'Bit you! bit you whar?' I says, 'On my arm;' and, Miss
Libbie, it was pizen, for my arm it just swelled enormous and got all up
in lumps. Then it pained me so the Ginnel stopped a-laughin' and sent
for the doctor, and he giv' me a drink of whiskey. Then what do you
think! when I got better, didn't he go and say I was playin' off on him,
just to get a big drink of whiskey? But I 'clar' to you, Miss Libbie, I
was bad off that night. The centipede had crept into my bedclothes, and
got a good chance at me, I can tell you."
Our surgeon was a naturalist, and studied up the vipers and venomous
insects of that almost tropical land. He showed me a captured scorpion
one day, and, to make me more vigilant, infuriated the loathsome
creature till it flung its javelin of a tail over on its back and stung
itself to death.
Legends of what had happened to army women who had disregarded the
injunctions for safety were handed down from elder to subaltern, and a
plebe fell heir to these stories as much as to the tactics imparted by
his superiors, or the campaigning lore. I hardly know when I first heard
of the unfortunate woman who lingered too far behind the cavalcade, in
riding for pleasure or marching, and was captured by the Indians, but
for ten years her story was related to me by officers of all ages and
all branches of the service as a warning. In Texas, the lady who had
been frightfully stung by a centipede pointed every moral. The sting was
inflicted before the war, and in the far back days of "angel sleeves,"
which fell away from the arm to the shoulder. Though this misfortune
dated back from such a distant period, the young officers, in citing her
as a warning to us to be careful, described the red marks all the way up
the arm, with as much fidelity as if they had seen them. No one would
have dreamed that the story had filtered through so many channels. But
surely one needed little warning of the centipede. Once seen, it made as
red stains on the memory as on the beautiful historic arm that was used
to frighten us. The Arabs call it the mother of forty-four, alluding to
the legs; and the swift manner in which it propels itself over the
ground, aided by eight or nine times as many feet as are allotted to
ordinary reptiles, makes one habitually place himself in a position for
a quick jump or flight while campaigning in Texas. We had to be watchful
all the time we were in the South. Even in winter, when wood was brought
in and laid down beside the fireplace, the scorpions, torpid with cold
at first, crawled out of knots and crevices, and made a scattering till
they were captured. One of my friends was stationed at a post where the
quarters were old and of adobe, and had been used during the war for
stables by the Confederates. It was of no use to try to exterminate
these reptiles; they run so swiftly it takes a deft hand and a sure
stroke to finish them up. Our officers grew expert in devising means to
protect themselves, and, in this instance, a box of moist mud, with a
shingle all ready, was kept in the quarters. When a tarantula showed
himself, he was plastered on the wall. It is impossible to describe how
loathsome that great spider is. The round body and long, far-reaching
legs are covered with hairs, each particular hair visible; and the
satanic eyes bulge out as they come on in your direction, making a
feature of every nightmare for a long time after they are first seen.
The wife of an officer, to keep these horrors from dropping on her bed
as they ran over the ceiling, had a sheet fastened at the four corners
and let down from the rough rafters to catch all invaders, and thus
insured herself undisturbed sleep.
Officers all watch and guard the women who share their hardships. Even
the young, unmarried men--the bachelor officers, as they are
called--patterning after their elders, soon fall into a sort of fatherly
fashion of looking out for the comfort and safety of the women they are
with, whether old or young, pretty or ugly. It often happens that a
comrade, going on a scout, gives his wife into their charge. I think of
a hundred kindly deeds shown to all of us on the frontier; and I have
known of acts so delicate that I can hardly refer to them with
sufficient tact, and wish I might write with a tuft of thistle-down. In
the instance of some very young women--with hearts so pure and souls so
spotless they could not for one moment imagine there lived on earth
people depraved enough to question all acts, no matter how harmless in
themselves--I have known a little word of caution to be spoken regarding
some exuberance of conduct that arose from the excess of a thoughtless,
joyous heart. The husband who returned to his wife could thank the
friend who had watched over his interests no more deeply than the wife
who owed her escape from criticism to his timely word. And sometimes,
when we went into the States, or were at a post with strange officers,
it would not occur to us, gay and thoughtless as we were, that we must
consider that we were not among those with whom we had "summered and
wintered;" and the freedom and absolute naturalness of manner that arose
from our long and intimate relationship in isolated posts, ought perhaps
to give way to more formal conduct. If the women said to the men, "Now
we are among strangers, do you not think they would misunderstand our
dancing or driving or walking together just as fearlessly as at home?"
That was sufficient. The men said, "Sure enough! It never occurred to
me. By Jove! I wish we were back where a fellow need not be hampered by
having every act questioned;" and then no one sought harder or more
carefully so to act that we might satisfy the exactions of that
censorious group of elderly women who sat in hotel parlors, looking on
and remarking, "We did not do so when we were girls," or even some old
frump in a garrison we visited, who, having squeezed dry her orange of
life, was determined that others should get no good out of theirs if she
could insert one drop of gall.
Occasionally the young officers, perhaps too timid to venture on a
personal suggestion, sent us word by roundabout ways that they did not
want us to continue to cultivate someone of whom we knew nothing save
that he was agreeable. How my husband thanked them! He walked the floor
with his hands behind him, moved so that his voice was unsteady, and
said his say about what he owed to men who would not let a woman they
valued be even associated with anyone who might reflect on them. He was
a home-lover, and not being with those who daily congregated at the
sutler's store, the real "gossip-mill" of a garrison, he heard but
little of what was going on. A man is supposed to be the custodian of
his own household in civil life; but it must be remembered that in our
life a husband had often to leave a young and inexperienced bride to the
care of his comrades while he went off for months of field duty. The
grateful tears rise now in my eyes at the recollection of men who
guarded us from the very semblance of evil as if we had been their
sisters.