WESTWARD HO!--FIGHTING DISSIPATION IN THE SEVENTH CAVALRY--GENERAL
CUSTER'S TEMPTATIONS.
THE junketing and frolic at St. Louis came to an end in a few days, and
our faces were again turned westward to a life about as different from
the glitter and show of a gay city in a holiday week as can be imagined.
Leavenworth was our first halt, and its well-built streets and excellent
stores surprised us. It had long been the outfitting place for our
officers. The soldiers drew supplies from the military post, and the
officers furnished themselves with camp equipage from the city. Here
also they bought condemned ambulances, and put them in order for
traveling-carriages for their families. I remember getting a faint
glimmer of the climate we were about to endure, by seeing a wagon
floored, and its sides lined with canvas, which was stuffed to keep out
the cold, while a little sheet-iron stove was firmly fixed at one end,
with a bit of miniature pipe protruding through the roof. The journey
from Fort Leavenworth to Santa Fé, New Mexico, then took six weeks.
Everything was transported in the great army wagons called
prairie-schooners. These were well named, as the two ends of the wagon
inclined upward, like the bow and stern of a fore-and-after. It is hard
to realize how strangely a long train of supplies for one of the distant
posts looked, as it wound slowly over the plains. The blue wagon-beds,
with white canvas covers rising up ever so high, disclosed, in the small
circle where they were drawn together at the back, all kinds of material
for the clothing and feeding of the army in the distant Territories. The
number of mules to a wagon varies; sometimes there are four, and again
six. The driver rides the near-wheel mule. He holds in his hand a broad
piece of leather, an inch and a half in width, which divides over the
shoulders of the lead or pilot mule, and fastens to the bit on either
side of his mouth. The leaders are widely separated. A small hickory
stick, about five feet long, called the jockey-stick, not unlike a
rake-handle, is stretched between a pilot and his mate. This has a
little chain at either end, and is attached by a snap or hook to the bit
of the other leader.
When the driver gives one pull on the heavy strap, the pilot mule veers
to the left, and pulls his mate. Two quick, sudden jerks mean to the
right, and he responds, and pushes his companion accordingly; and in
this simple manner the ponderous vehicle and all the six animals are
guided. . . . The most spirited mules are selected from the train for
leaders. They cannot be reached by the whip, and the driver must rely
upon the emphasis he puts into his voice to incite them to effort. They
know their names, and I have seen them respond to a call, even when not
accompanied by the expletives that seem to be composed especially for
this branch of charioteering. The driver of our mules naturally
suppressed his invectives in my presence. The most profane soldier holds
his tongue in a vise when he is in the presence of a woman, but he is
sorely put to it to find a substitute for the only language he considers
a mule will heed. I have seen our driver shake his head and move his
jaws in an ominous manner, when the provoking leaders took a skittish
leap on one side of the trail, or turned round and faced him with a
protest against further progress. They were sometimes so afraid of
buffalo, and always of Indians, they became rebellious to such a degree
he was at his wits' end to get any further go out of them. It was in
vain he called out, "You Bet, there!" "What are you about, Sal?" He
plainly showed and said that he found "such 'ere tongue-lashing wouldn't
work worth a rap with them vicious creeturs."
The driver, if he is not a stolid Mexican, takes much pride in his
mules. By some unknown means, poor as he is, he possesses himself of
fox or small coyote tails, which he fastens to their bridle, and the
vagaries in the clipping of the poor beasts' tails, would set the
fashion to a Paris hair-dresser. They are shaved a certain distance, and
then a tuft is left, making a bushy ring. This is done twice, if Bet or
Sal is vouchsafed an appendage long enough to admit of it; while the
tuft on the end, though of little use to intimidate flies, is a marvel
of mule-dudism. The coats of the beasts, so valued sometimes, shine like
the fine hair of a good horse. Alas! not when, in the final stages of a
long march, the jaded, half-starved beasts dragged themselves over the
trail. Driver and lead mules even, lose ambition under the scorching
sun, and with the insufficient food and long water famines.
The old reliability of a mule-team is the off-wheeler. It is his
leathery sides that can be most readily reached by the whip called a
"black-snake," and when the descent is made into a stream with muddy
bed, the cut is given to this faithful beast, and on his powerful
muscles depends the wrench that jerks the old schooner out of a slough.
The nigh or saddle mule does his part in such an emergency, but he soon
reasons that, because he carries the driver, not much more is expected
of him.
[Illustration: CONESTOGA WAGON, OR PRAIRIE-SCHOONER.]
The General and I took great interest in the names given to the animals
that pulled our traveling-wagon or hauled the supplies. As we rode by,
the voice of the driver bringing out the name he had chosen, and
sometimes affectionately, made us sure that the woman for whom the beast
was christened was the sweetheart of the apparently prosaic teamster. I
was avowedly romantic, and the General was equally so, though, after the
fashion of men, he did not proclaim it. Our place at the head of the
column was sometimes vacant, either because we were delayed for our
luncheon, or because my husband remained behind to help the
quartermaster or the head teamster get the train over a stream. It was
then that we had the advantage of hearing the names conferred on the
mules. They took in a wide range of female nomenclature, and we found it
great fun to watch the family life of one human being and his six
beasts. My husband had the utmost respect for a mule's sense. When I
looked upon them as dull, half-alive animals, he bade me watch how
deceitful were appearances, as they showed such cunning, and evinced the
wisdom of a quick-witted thoroughbred, when apparently they were
unobserving, sleepy brutes. It was the General who made me notice the
skill and rapidity with which a group of six mules would straighten out
what seemed to be a hopeless tangle of chains and harness, into which
they had kicked themselves when there was a disturbance among them. One
crack of the whip from the driver who had tethered them after a march,
accompanied by a plain statement of his opinion of such "fools," would
send the whole collection wide apart, and it was but a twinkling before
they extricated themselves from what I thought a hopeless mess. No
chains or straps were broken, and a meek, subdued look pervading the
group left not a trace of the active heels that a moment before had
filled the air. "There," the General used to say, "don't ever flatter
yourself again that a mule hasn't sense. He's got more wisdom than half
the horses in the line." It took a good while to convince me, as a more
logy-looking animal can hardly be found than the army mule, which never
in his existence is expected to go off from a walk, or to vary his life,
from the day he is first harnessed until he drops by the way, old or
exhausted.
At the time we were first on the Plains, many of the teamsters were
Mexicans, short, swarthy, dull, and hardly a grade above the animal. The
only ambition of these creatures seemed to be to vie with one another as
to who could snap the huge "black-snake" the loudest. They learned to
whisk the thong at the end around the ears of a shirking off leader, and
crack the lash with such an explosive sound that I never got over
jumping in my whole Plains life. I am sorry to say my high-strung horse
usually responded with a spring that sent me into thin air anywhere
between his ears and his tail, with a good deal of uncertainty as to
where I should alight. I suspect it was an innocent little amusement of
the drivers, when occasionally we remained behind at nooning, and had
to ride swiftly by the long train to reach the head of the column.
The prairie-schooner disappeared with the advancing railroad; but I am
glad to see that General Meigs has perpetuated its memory, by causing
this old means of transportation to be made one of the designs in the
beautiful frieze carved around the outside of the Pension Office at
Washington. Ungainly and cumbersome as these wagons were, they merit
some such monument, as part of the history of the early days of frontier
life in our country. We were in the West several years before the
railroad was completed to Denver, and the overland trains became an
every-day sight to us. Citizens used oxen a great deal for
transportation, and there is no picture that represents the weariness
and laggard progress of life like an ox-train bound for Santa Fé or
Denver. The prairie-schooner might set out freshly painted, or perhaps
washed in a creek, but it soon became gray with layer upon layer of
alkali dust. The oxen--well, nothing save a snail can move more slowly,
and the exhaustion of these beasts, after weeks of uninterrupted travel,
was pitiful. Imagine, also, the unending vigil when the trains were
insecurely guarded; for in those days there was an immense unprotected
frontier, and seemingly only a handful of cavalry. The regiments looked
well on the roster, but there were in reality but few men. A regiment
should number twelve hundred enlisted men; but at no time, unless during
the war, does the recruiting officer attempt to fill it to the maximum;
seventy men to a company is a large number. The desertions during the
first years of the reorganization of the army after the war thinned the
ranks constantly. Recruits could not be sent out fast enough to fill up
the companies. The consequence was, that all those many hundred miles of
trail where the Government undertook to protect citizens who carried
supplies to settlements and the mines, as well as its own trains of
material for building new posts, and commissary and quartermaster's
stores for troops, were terribly exposed and very poorly protected.
"The Indians were, unfortunately, located on the great highway of
Western travel; and commerce, not less than emigration, demanded their
removal." There are many conflicting opinions as to the course pursued
to clear the way; but I only wish to speak now of the impression the
trains made upon me, as we constantly saw the long, dusty,
exhausted-looking column wending its serpentine way over the sun-baked
earth. A group of cavalry, with their drooping horses, rode in front and
at the rear. The wagon-master was usually the very quintessence of
valor, It is true he formed such a habit of shooting that he grew
indiscriminate, and should any of the lawless desperadoes whom he hired
as teamsters or trainmen ruffle his blood, kept up to boiling-heat by
suspense, physical exposure, and exasperating employees, he knew no way
of settling troubles except the effectual quietus that a bullet secures.
I well remember my husband and Tom, who dearly loved to raise my
indignation, and create signs of horror and detestation at their tales,
walking me down to the Government train to see a wagon-master who had
shot five men. He had emigrated from the spot where he bade fair to
establish a private cemetery with his victims. No one needed a reason
for his sudden appearance after the number of his slain was known. And
yet no questions were put as to his past. He made a capital
wagon-master; he was obedient to his superiors, faithful, and on time
every morning, and the prestige of his past record answered so well with
the citizen employees, that his pistol remained unused in the holster.
It seemed to be expected that the train-master would be a villain.
Whatever was their record as to the manner of arranging private
disputes, a braver class of men never followed a trail, and some of them
were far superior to their chance lot. Their tender care of women who
crossed in these slow-moving ox-trains, to join their husbands, ought to
be commemorated. I have somewhere read one of their remarks when a girl,
going to her mother, had been secreted in a private wagon and there was
no knowledge of her presence until the Indians were discovered to be
near. "Tain't no time to be teamin' women folks over the trail with sech
a fearsom sperit for Injuns as I be." He, like some of the bravest men I
have known, spoke of himself as timid, while he knew no fear. It
certainly unnerved the most valiant man when Indians were lurking near,
to realize the fate that hung over women entrusted to their care. In a
later portion of my story occurs an instance of an officer hiding the
woman whose husband had asked him to take her into the States, even
before firing a shot at the adversary, as he knew with what redoubled
ferocity the savage would fight, at sight of the white face of a woman.
It makes the heart beat, even to look at a picture of the old mode of
traversing the highway of Western travel. The sight of the pictured
train, seemingly so peacefully lumbering on its sleepy way, the scarcely
revolving wheels, creaking out a protest against even that effort,
recalls the agony, the suspense, the horror with which every inch of
that long route has been made. The heaps of stones by the wayside, or
the buffalo bones, collected to mark the spot where some man fell from
an Indian arrow, are now disappearing. The hurricanes beating upon the
hastily prepared memorials have scattered the bleached bones of the
bison, and rolled into the tufted grass the few stones with which the
train-men, at risk of their own lives, have delayed long enough to mark
their comrade's grave.
The faded photographs or the old prints of those overland trains speak
to me but one story. Instantly I recall the hourly vigilance, the
restless eyes scanning the horizon, the breathless suspense, when the
pioneers or soldiers knew from unmistakable signs that the Indian was
lying in wait. In what contrast to the dull, logy, scarcely moving oxen
were these keen-eyed heroes, with every nerve strained, every sense on
the alert. And how they were maddened by the fate that consigned them,
at such moments, to the mercy of "dull, driven cattle." When I have seen
officers and soldiers lay their hands lovingly on the neck of their
favorite horse, and perhaps, when no one was near to scoff at
sentiment, say to me, "He saved my life," I knew well what a man felt
when his horse took fire at knowledge of danger to his rider and sped on
the wings of the wind, till he was lost to his pursuers, a tiny black
speck on the horizon. The pathos of a soldier's parting with his horse
moved us to quick sympathy. It often happens that a trooper retains the
same animal through his entire enlistment, and it comes to be his most
intimate friend. There is nothing he will not do to provide him with
food; if the forage runs low or the grazing is insufficient, stealing
for his horse is reckoned a virtue among soldiers. Imagine, then, the
anxiety, the real suffering, with which a soldier watches his faithful
beast growing weaker day by day, from exhaustion or partial starvation.
He walks beside him to spare his strength, and finally, when it is no
longer possible to keep up with the column, and the soldier knows how
fatal the least delay may be in an Indian country, it is more pitiful
than almost any sight I recall, the sadness of his departure from the
skeleton, whose eyes follow his master in wondering affection, as he
walks away with the saddle and accoutrements. It is the most merciful
farewell if a bullet is lodged in the brain of the famished or exhausted
beast, but some one else than his sorrowing master has to do the trying
deed.
This is not the last act in the harrowing scene. The soldier overtakes
the column, loaded down with his saddle, if the train is too far away to
deposit it in the company wagon. Then begins a tirade of annoying
comments to this man, still grieving over the parting with his best
friend. No one can conceive what sarcasm and wit can proceed from a
column of cavalry. Many of the men are Irish, and their reputation for
humor is world-wide. "Hullo, there! joined the doe-boys, eh?" "How do
you like hoofing it?" are tame specimens of the remarks from these
tormenting tongues; such a fusillade of sneers is followed not long
after by perhaps the one most gibing of all flinging himself off from
his horse, and giving his mount to the one he has done his best to stir
into wrath. A cavalryman hates, beyond any telling, enforced
pedestrianism, and "Share and share alike" is a motto that our Western
soldiers keep in use.
If the wagons held merchandise only, by which the pioneer hoped to grow
rich, the risk and suspense attending these endless marches were not
worth commemorating; but the bulk of the freight was the actual
necessities of life. Conceive, if you can, how these brave men felt
themselves chained, as they drove or guarded the food for those living
far in advance. There were not enough to admit of a charge on the enemy,
and the defensive is an exasperating position for a soldier or
frontiersman. He longs to advance on the foe; but no such privilege was
allowed them, for in these toilsome journeys they had often to use
precautions to hide themselves. If Indians were discovered to be roaming
near, the camp was established, trains corralled, animals secured inside
a temporary stockade; the fires for coffee were forbidden, for smoke
rises like a funnel, and hangs out an instant signal in that clear air.
Even the consoling pipe was smoked under a sage-bush or in a hollow, if
there happened to be a depression of the ground. Few words were spoken,
the loud oaths sank into low mutterings, and the bray of a hungry mule,
the clank of wagon-chains, or the stamping of cattle on the baked earth,
sounded like thunder in the ears of the anxious, expectant men.
Fortunately, our journey in these trains was not at once forced upon us
at Leavenworth. The Kansas Pacific Railroad, projected to Denver, was
built within ten miles of Fort Riley, and it was to be the future duty
of the Seventh Cavalry to guard the engineers in building the remainder
of the road out to the Rocky Mountains. It did not take us long to
purchase an outfit in the shops, for, as usual, our finances were low,
and consequently our wants were curtailed. We had the sense to listen to
a hint from some practical officer who had been far beyond railroads,
and buy a cook-stove the first thing, and this proved to be the most
important of our possessions when we reached our post, so far from the
land of shops. Not many hours after we left Leavenworth, the
settlements became farther and farther apart, and we began to realize
that we were actual pioneers. Kansas City was then but a small town,
seemingly with a hopeless future, as the bluffs rose so steeply from the
river, and even when the summit was reached, the ups and downs of the
streets were discouraging. It seemed, then, as if it would never be
worth while to use it as a site for a town; there would be a lifetime of
grading. It is very easy to become a city forefather in such a town, for
in the twenty-one years since then, it has grown into a city of over
132,000 inhabitants--but they are still grading. The lots which we could
have had almost for the asking, sell now for $1,000 a front foot.
Topeka, the capital, showed no evidence of its importance, except the
little circle of stars that surrounded it on our atlas. There were but
three towns beyond Fort Riley then, and those were built, if I may so
express it, of canvas and dug-outs.
Our railroad journey came to an end about ten miles from Fort Riley. The
laborers were laying track from that point. It had been a sort of gala
day, for General Sherman, on one of his tours of inspection of the
frontier posts, had been asked by railroad officials to drive the final
spike of the division of the road then finished. We found a wagon
waiting for our luggage, and an ambulance to carry us the rest of the
journey. These vehicles are not uncomfortable when the long seats on
either side are so arranged that they make a bed for the ill or wounded
by spreading them out, but as traveling conveyances I could not call
them a success. The seats are narrow, with no back to speak of, and
covered with carriage-cloth, which can keep you occupied, if the country
is rough, in regaining the slippery surface for any number of miles at a
stretch. Fort Riley came in sight when we were pretty well tired out. It
was my first view of a frontier post. I had either been afraid to
confess my ignorance, or so assured there was but one variety of fort,
and the subject needed no investigation, that Fort Riley came upon me as
a great surprise. I supposed, of course, it would be exactly like
Fortress Monroe, with stone walls, turrets for the sentinels, and a
deep moat. As I had heard more and more about Indians since reaching
Kansas, a vision of the enclosure where we would eventually live was a
great comfort to me. I could scarcely believe that the buildings, a
story and a half high, placed around a parade-ground, were all there was
of Fort Riley. The sutler's store, the quartermaster and commissary
storehouses, and the stables for the cavalry horses, were outside the
square, near the post, and that was all. No trees, and hardly any signs
of vegetation except the buffalo-grass that curled its sweet blades
close to the ground, as if to protect the nourishment it held from the
blazing sun. The post was beautifully situated on a wide plateau, at the
junction of the Republican and Smoky Hill rivers. The Plains, as they
waved away on all sides of us, like the surface of a vast ocean, had the
charm of great novelty, and the absence of trees was at first forgotten
in the fascination of seeing such an immense stretch of country, with
the soft undulations of green turf rolling on, seemingly, to the setting
sun. The eye was relieved by the fringe of cottonwood that bordered the
rivers below us.
Though we came afterward to know, on toilsome marches under the
sweltering sun, when that orb was sometimes not even hidden for one
moment in the day by a grateful cloud, but the sky was spread over as a
vast canopy of dazzling blue, that enthusiasm would not outlast such
trials, still, a rarely exultant feeling takes possession of one in the
gallops over the Plains, when in early spring they are a trackless sea
of soft verdure. And the enthusiasm returns when the campaign for the
summer is over, and riding is taken up for pleasure. My husband was full
of delight over the exquisite haze that covered the land with a faint
purple light, and exclaimed, "Now I begin to realize what all that
transparent veil of faint color means in Bierstadt's paintings of the
Rocky Mountains and the West." But we had little time to take in
atmospheric effects, as evening was coming on and we were yet to be
housed, while servants, horses, dogs and all of us were hungry after our
long drive. The General halted the wagon outside the post, and left us
to go and report to the commanding officer.
At that time I knew nothing of the hospitality of a frontier post, and I
begged to remain in the wagon until our quarters were assigned us in the
garrison. Up to this time we had all been in splendid spirits; the
novelty, the lovely day and exhilarating air, and all the possibilities
of a future with a house of our own, or, rather, one lent to us by Uncle
Sam, seemed to fill up a delightful cup to the brim. We sat outside the
post so long--at least it seemed so to us--and grew hungrier and
thirstier, that there were evident signs of mutiny. The truth is,
whenever the General was with us, with his determination of thinking
that nothing could exceed his surroundings, it was almost impossible to
look upon anything except in the light that he did. He gave color to
everything, with his hopeful views. Eliza sat on the seat with the
driver, and both muttered occasional hungry words, but our Diana and I
had the worst of it. We had bumped over the country, sometimes violently
jammed against the framework of the canvas cover, and most of the time
sliding off from the slippery cushions upon the insulted dogs--for of
course the General had begged a place for two of them. He had kept them
in order all the way from the termination of the railroad; but now that
he was absent, Turk and Byron renewed hostilities, and in the narrow
space they scrambled and snarled and sprang at each other. When the
General came back he found the little hands of our curly-headed girl
clenched over the collar of Byron at one end of the ambulance, while
Turk sat on my lap, swelling with rage because my fingers were twisted
in the chain that held him, as I sat at the door shaking with terror. It
was quick work to jerk the burly brute out of the door, and end our
troubles for the time; but the General, after quieting our panic, threw
us into a new one by saying we must make up our minds to be the guests
of the commanding officer. Tired, travel-stained, and unaccustomed to
what afterward became comparatively easy, we were driven to one of the
quarters and made our entrance among strangers. I then realized, for
the first time, that we had reached a spot where the comforts of life
could not be had for love or money.
It is a strange sensation to arrive at a place where money is of little
use in providing shelter, and here we were beyond even the commonest
railroad hotel. Mrs. Gibbs, who received us, was put to a severe test
that night. Already a room in her small house had been prepared for
General Sherman, who had arrived earlier in the day, and now there were
five of us bearing down upon her. I told her how I had begged to be
allowed to go into quarters, even though there were no preparations, not
even a fireplace where Eliza could have cooked us food enough over the
coals to stay hunger; but she assured me that, having been on the Plains
before the war, she was quite accustomed to a state of affairs where
there was nothing to do but quarter yourself upon strangers; and then
gave up her own room to our use. From that night--which was a real trial
to me, because I felt so keenly the trouble we caused them all--dates
the beginning of a friendship that has lasted through the darkest as
well as the brightest hours of my life. I used to try to remember
afterward, when for nine years we received and entertained strangers who
had nowhere else to go, the example of undisturbed hospitality shown me
by my first friend on the frontier.
The next day my husband assumed command of the garrison, and our few
effects were moved into a large double house built for the commanding
officer. There were parlors on one side, whose huge folding doors were
flung open, and made our few articles of furniture look lonely and
meagre. We had but six wooden chairs to begin with, and when, a few
miles more of the railroad being completed, a party of one hundred and
fifty excursionists arrived, I seated six of them--yes, seven, for one
was tired enough to sit on a trunk--and then concluded I would own up
that in the larger rooms of the house, into which they looked
significantly, there were no more chairs concealed. I had done my best,
and tried to make up for not seating or feeding them, by very busy
talking. Meanwhile there were incessant inquiries for the General. It
seems that he had begun that little trick of hiding from strangers, even
then. He had seen the advancing column of tourists, and fled. One of the
servants finally unearthed him, and after they had gone and he found
that I had been so troubled to think I could do nothing for the
citizens, and so worried because he was _non est_, he did not leave me
in such strait again until I had learned to adapt myself to the customs
of the country where the maxim that "every man's house is his castle" is
a fallacy.
The officers who had garrisoned the post began to move out as our own
Seventh Cavalry officers reported for duty. The colonel of the regiment
arrived, and ranked us out of our quarters, in this instance much to our
relief, as the barrack of a building would never fill up from the slow
rate at which our belongings increased. This army regulation, to which I
have elsewhere referred, was then new to me. The manner in which the
Government sees fit to arrange quarters is still amusing to me, but I
suppose no better plan has ever been thought out. In the beginning of a
well-built post, there is but little choice. It is the aim to make the
houses, except that of the commanding officer, exactly alike. From time
to time new quarters are built. The original plan is not followed;
possibly a few improvements are added to the newer houses. Ah! then the
disturbance ensues! Fort Vancouver, in Washington Territory, is one of
the old posts, quite interesting from the heterogeneous collection of
quarters added through fifty years. I was spending a day or two, in
1875, with my husband's niece, whose husband was some distance down on
the list, and consequently occupied a low log building, that dated back
no one knows how far. Even in that little cabin they were insecure, for
in reply to my question, "Surely you are permanently fixed, and won't be
moved," they pathetically answered: "Not by any means! We live from hour
to hour in uncertainty, and there are worse quarters than these, which
we walk by daily with dread, as ---- ranks us, and he is going to be
married, so out we go!"
Assigning quarters according to rank goes on smoothly for a time, but
occasionally an officer reports for duty who ranks everyone. Not long
ago this happened at a distant post, and the whole line went down like a
row of bricks, as eight officers' families were ousted by his arrival,
the lowest in rank having to move out one of the non-commissioned
officers who had lived in a little cabin with two rooms. If possible, in
choosing a time to visit our frontier posts, let this climax of affairs
be avoided. Where there is little to vary life the monotony is apt to be
deeply stirred by private rages, which would blow away in smoke if there
was anything else to think of. It is rather harrowing to know that some
one has an eye on the home you have furnished with your own means. I
could hardly blame a man I knew, who, in an outburst of wrath concerning
an officer who had at last uprooted him, secretly rejoiced that a small
room that had been the object of envy, having been built at the
impoverished post of refuse lumber from the stables, was unendurable on
a warm day; and the new possessor was left to find it out when he had
settled himself in the coveted house.
[Illustration: THE OFFICER'S DRESS--A NEW-COMER FOR A CALL.]
After our quarters were chosen by the Colonel, we took another house, of
moderate size, bought a few pieces of furniture of an officer leaving
the post, and began to live our first homelike life. The arrival of the
new officers was for a time our only excitement. Most of them had been
in the volunteer service, and knew nothing of the regular army. There
was no one to play practical jokes on the first comers; but they had
made some ridiculous errors in dress and deportment, when reporting at
first, and they longed to take out their mortification at these harmless
mistakes, by laying pitfalls for the verdant ones who were constantly
arriving. The discipline of the regular army, and the punctilious
observance compelling the wearing of the uniform, was something totally
new to men who had known little of parades in their fighting days in the
tented field. If it was possible to intimidate a new officer by tales of
the strictness of the commanding officer regarding the personal
appearance of his regiment, they did so. One by one, those who had
preceded the last comer called in to pay their compliments; but by
previous agreement they one and all dwelt upon the necessity of his
making a careful toilet before he approached the august presence of the
Lieutenant-colonel. Then one or two offered carelessly to help him get
himself up for the occasion. Our brother Tom had arrived by this time,
but there was nothing to be made out of him, for he had served a few
months with a regular regiment before being transferred to ours. He was
therefore sent one day to prepare me for the call of an officer who had
been assisted into his new uniform by the mischievous knot of men who
had been longest with us. If I had known to what test I was to be put to
keep my face straight, or had dreamed what a gullible creature had come
into their roguish hands, I would not have consented to receive him. But
it was one of the imperative roles that each officer, after reporting
for duty, must pay a formal visit to the commanding officer and his
family. I went into the parlor to find a large, and at that time
awkward, man, in full uniform, which was undeniably a tight fit for his
rather portly figure. He wore cavalry boots, the first singularity I
noticed, for they had such expanse of top I could not help seeing them.
They are of course out of order with a dress coat. The red sash, which
was then _en règle_ for all officers, was spread from up under his arms
to as far below the waist line as its elastic silk could be stretched.
The sword-belt, with sabre attached, surrounded this; and, folded over
the wide red front, were his large hands, encased in white cotton
gloves. He never moved them; nor did he move an eyelash, so far as I
could discover, though it seems he was full of internal tremors, for the
officers had told him on no account to remove his regulation hat. At
this he demurred, and told them I would surely think he was no
gentleman; but they assured him I placed military etiquette far above
any ordinary rule for manners in the presence of ladies, while the truth
was I was rather indifferent as to military rules of dress. As this poor
man sat there, I could think of nothing but a child who is so
carefully dressed in new furbelows that it sits as if it were carved out
of wood, for fear of disarranging the finished toilet. Diana made an
almost instant excuse to leave the room. The General's mustache
quivered, and he moved restlessly around, even coming again to shake
hands with the automaton and bid him welcome to the regiment; but
finally he dashed out of the door to enjoy the outburst of mirth that he
could no longer control. I was thus left to meet the situation as best I
could, but was not as fortunate as the General, who had a friendly
mustache to curtain the quiver in his mouth. The poor victim apparently
recalled to himself the martial attitude of Washington crossing the
Delaware, or Napoleon at Waterloo, and did not alter the first position
he had assumed. In trying to prevent him from seeing my confusion, I
redoubled my efforts to entertain him, and succeeded only too well, for
when he slowly moved out of the door I found myself tired out, and full
of wrath toward my returning family. I never could remember that these
little spurts of rage were the primest fun for my people. The poor
officer who had been so guyed did not gratify his tormentors by getting
angry, but fell to planning new mischief for the next arrival. He lost
no time in begging my pardon for the hat, and though I never saw much of
him afterward, he left only pleasant impressions on my mind of a
kind-hearted man, and one of those rare beings who knew how to take a
joke.
We derived great pleasure from our horses and dogs during the autumn. A
very pretty sorrel horse was selected for Diana, but we had little
opportunity to have her for a companion. The young officers engaged her
a week in advance, and about all we saw of her riding was an avalanche
of flying curls as she galloped off beside some dashing cavalier. I
remember once, when she was engaged otherwise, and my horse temporarily
disabled, I took hers, and my husband kept begging me to guide the
animal better, for it was nettling his fiery beast by insisting upon too
close proximity. It finally dawned upon us that the little horse was a
constitutional snuggler, and we gave up trying to teach him new tricks.
But how the General shouted, and bent himself forward and back in his
saddle, after the horse had almost crushed his leg and nothing would
keep him at a distance. He could hardly wait to get back to garrison,
and when we did, he walked into the midst of a collection of the beaux
and told the whole story of how dreadfully demoralized a cavalry horse
in good and regular standing could become, in the hands of a belle. The
girl blushed, and the officers joined in the laughter, and yet every one
of them had doubtless been busy in teaching that little telltale animal
this new development of character.
It was delightful ground to ride over about Fort Riley. Ah! what happy
days they were, for at that time I had not the slightest realization of
what Indian warfare was, and consequently no dread. We knew that the
country they infested was many miles away, and we could ride in any
direction we chose. The dogs would be aroused from the deepest sleep at
the very sight of our riding costumes, and by the time we were well into
them and whip in hand, they leaped and sprang about the room, tore out
on the gallery, and tumbled over one another and the furniture in racing
back, and such a din of barking and joyful whining as they set up--the
noisier the better for my husband. He snapped his whip to incite them,
and bounded around crying out, "Whoop'em up! whoop'em up!" adding to the
mêlée by a toot on the dog-horn he had brought from the Texas
deer-hunts. All this excited the horses, and when I was tossed into the
saddle amidst this turmoil, with the dogs leaping around the horses'
heads, I hardly knew whether I was myself or the venturesome young woman
who spends her life in taking airy flights through paper-covered circles
in a sawdust ring. It took some years for me to accustom myself to the
wild din and hubbub of our starting for a ride or a hunt. As I have said
before, I had lived quietly at home, and my decorous, suppressed father
and mother never even spoke above a certain tone. The General's father,
on the contrary, had rallied his sons with a hallo and resounding
shouts from their childhood. So the hullabaloo of all our merry
startings was a thing of my husband's early days, and added zest to
every sport he undertook.
Coming from Michigan, where there is a liberal dispensation of swamp and
quagmire, having been taught by dear experience that Virginia had
quicksands and sloughs into which one could disappear with great
rapidity, and finally, having experienced Texas with its bayous, baked
with a deceiving crust of mud, and its rivers with quicksand beds, very
naturally I guided my horse around any lands that had even a depression.
Indeed, he spoke volumes with his sensitive ears, as the turf darkened
in hollows, and was ready enough to be guided by the rein on his
satin-like neck, to the safer ground. It was a long time before I
realized that all the Plains were safe. We chose no path, and stopped at
no suspicion of a slough. Without a check on the rein, we flew over
divide after divide, and it is beyond my pen to describe the wild sense
of freedom that takes possession of one in the first buoyant knowledge
that no impediment, seemingly, lies between you and the setting sun.
After one has ridden over conventional highways, the beaten path marked
out by fences, hedges, bridges, etc., it is simply an impossibility to
describe how the blood bounds in the veins at the freedom of an
illimitable sea. No spongy, uncertain ground checks the course over the
Plains; it is seldom even damp, and the air is so exhilarating one feels
as if he had never breathed a full breath before. Almost the first words
General Sherman said to me out there were, "Child, you'll find the air
of the Plains is like champagne," and so it surely was. Oh, the joy of
taking in air without a taint of the city, or even the country, as we
know it in farm life! As we rode on, speaking enthusiastically of the
fragrance and purity of the atmosphere, our horses neighed and whinnied
to each other, and snuffed the air, as if approving all that was said of
that "land of the free." My husband could hardly breathe, from the very
ecstasy of realizing that nothing trammeled him. He scarcely left the
garrison behind him, where he was bound by chains of form and
ceremony--the inevitable lot of an officer, where all his acts are under
surveillance, where he is obliged to know that every hour in the day he
is setting an example--before he became the wildest and most frolicsome
of light-hearted boys. His horse and he were one, not only as he sat in
the saddle, a part of the animal, swayed by every motion of the active,
graceful beast, but such unison of spirit took possession of each, it
was hard to believe that a human heart did not beat under the broad,
splendid chest of the high-strung animal.
It were well if human hearts responded to our fondness, and came
instantly to be _en rapport_ with us, as did those dear animals when
they flew with us out to freedom and frolic, over the divides that
screened us from the conventional proprieties. My husband's horse had
almost human ways of talking with him, as he leaned far out of the
saddle and laid his face on the gallant animal's head, and there was a
gleam in the eye, a proud little toss of the head, speaking back a whole
world of affection. The General could ride hanging quite out of sight
from the opposite side, one foot caught in the stirrup, his hand on the
mane; and it made no difference to his beloved friend, he took any mode
that his master chose to cling to him as a matter of course, and
curveted and pranced in the loftiest, proudest way. His manner said as
plainly as speech, "See what we two can do!" I rarely knew him to have a
horse that did not soon become so pervaded with his spirit that they
appeared to be absolutely one in feeling. I was obliged, usually, to
submit to some bantering slur on my splendid Custis Lee. Perhaps a dash
at first would carry the General and the dogs somewhat in advance. My
side had a trick of aching if we started off on a gallop, and I was
obliged to keep a tight rein on Custis Lee at first, as he champed at
the bit, tossed his impatient head, and showed every sign of ignominious
shame. The General, as usual, called out, "Come on, old lady! Hurry up
that old plug of yours; I have one orderly; don't want another"--this
because the soldier in attendance is instructed to ride at a certain
distance in the rear. After a spurt of tremendous speed, back flew the
master to beg me to excuse him; he was ready now to ride slowly till
"that side of mine came round to time," which it quickly did, and then I
revenged the insult on my swift Lee, and the maligner at last called
out, "That's not so bad a nag, after all."
The horses bounded from the springy turf as if they really hated the
necessity of touching the sod at all. They were very well matched in
speed, and as on we flew were "neck by neck, stride by stride, never
changing our place." Breathless at last, horses, dogs and ourselves made
a halt. The orderly with his slow troop horse was a speck in the
distance. Of course I had gone to pieces little by little, between the
mad speed and rushing through the wind of the Plains. Those were
ignominious days for women--thank fortune they are over! Custom made it
necessary to disfigure ourselves with the awkward waterfall, and, no
matter how luxuriant the hair, it seemed a necessity to still pile up
more. With many a wrathful opinion regarding the fashion, the General
took the hairpins, net and switch, and thrust them into the breast of
his coat, as he said, "to clear the decks for action for another race."
It was enough that he offered to carry these barbarities of civilization
for me, without my bantering him about his ridiculousness if some
accidental opening of his coat in the presence of the officers, who were
then strangers, revealed what he scoffingly called "dead women's hair."
A fresh repinning, an ignoring of hairpins this time, re-girthing of
saddles, some proud patting of the horses' quiving flanks, passing of
the hand over the full veins of their necks, praise of the beautiful
distended, blood-red nostrils, and on we started for another race. If
spur or whip had been used in speeding our horses, it would have spoiled
the sport for me, as the effort and strain looks so cruelly like work;
but the animals were as impatient for a run as we were to start them. It
must be a rare moment of pleasure to all horse-lovers, to watch an
animal flying over the ground, without an incentive save the love of
motion born in the beast. When we came to certain smooth stretches on
the road, where we were accustomed to give the horses the rein, they
grew excited and impatient, and teased for the run if we chanced to be
earnestly talking and forgot to take it. How fortunate is one who can
ride a mythological Pegasus as well as a veritable horse! There is
nothing left for the less gifted but to use others' words for our own
enthusiasm:
"Now we're off, like the winds, to the plains whence they came;
And the rapture of motion is thrilling my frame!
On, on, speeds my courser, scarce printing the sod,
Scarce crushing a daisy to mark where we trod;
On, on, like a deer when the hounds' early bay
Awakes the wild echoes, away and away!
Still faster, still farther, he leaps at my cheer,
Till the rush of the startled air whirs in my ear!"
Buchanan Read not only made General Sheridan's splendid black horse
immortal, but his grateful owner kept that faithful beast, when it was
disabled, in a paddock at Leavenworth, and then, when age and old wounds
ended his life, he perpetuated his memory by having the taxidermist set
him up in the Military Museum at Governor's Island, that the boys of
this day, to whom the war is only history, may remember what a splendid
part a horse took in those days, when soldiers were not the only heroes.
I thank a poet for having written thus for us to whom the horse is
almost human:
"I tell thee, stranger, that unto me
The plunge of a fiery steed
Is a noble thought--to the brave and free
It is music, and breath, and majesty--
'Tis the life of a noble deed;
And the heart and the mind are in spirit allied
In the charm of a morning's glorious ride."
[Illustration: A SUSPENDED EQUESTRIENNE.]
There was a long, smooth stretch of land beyond Fort Riley, where we
used to speed our horses, and it even now seems one of the fair spots
of earth, it is so marked by happy hours. In reality it was a level
plain without a tree, and the dried buffalo-grass had then scarcely a
tinge of green. This neutral-tinted, monotonous surface continued for
many unvarying miles. We could do as we chose after we had passed out of
sight of the garrison, and our orderly, if he happened to have a decent
horse that could overtake us, kept drawing the muscles of his face into
a soldierly expression, trying not to be so undignified as to laugh at
the gamesomeness, the frolic, of his commanding officer. What a relief
for the poor fellow, in his uneventful life, to get a look at these
pranks! I can see him now, trying to keep his head away and look
unconscious, but his eyes turned in their sockets in spite of him and
caught it all. Those eyes were wild with terror one day, when our horses
were going full tilt, and the General with one powerful arm, lifted me
out of my saddle and held me poised in the air for a moment. Our horses
were so evenly matched in speed they were neck and neck, keeping close
to each other, seemingly regardless of anything except the delight at
the speed with which they left the country behind them. In the brief
moment that I found myself suspended between heaven and earth, I
thought, with lightning rapidity, that I must cling to my bridle and
keep control of my flying horse, and trust to good fortune whether I
alighted on his ear or his tail. The moment I was thus held aloft was an
hour in uncertainty, but nothing happened, and it taught me to prepare
for sudden raids of the commanding officer after that. I read of this
feat in some novel, but was incredulous until it was successfully
practiced on me. The Custer men were given to what their Maryland father
called "toting" us around. I've seen them pick up their mother and carry
her over the house as if she weighed fifty instead of one hundred and
fifty pounds. There was no chance for dignified anger with them. No
matter how indignant I might be, or how loftily I might answer back, or
try one of those eloquent silences to which we women sometimes resort in
moments of wrath, I was snatched up by either my husband or Tom, and
had a chance to commune with the ceiling in my airy flight up and down
stairs and through the rooms.
One of our rides marked a day with me, for it was the occasion of a very
successful exchange of horses. My husband used laughingly to refer to
the transaction as unfortunate for him; but as it was at his suggestion,
I clung with pertinacity to the bargain. My horse, Custis Lee, being a
pacer, my husband felt in the fascination of that smooth, swift gait I
might be so wedded to it I could never endure anything else; so he
suggested, while we were far out on our evening ride, that we change
saddles and try each other's horse. I objected, for though I could ride
a spirited horse when I had come to know him, I dreaded the early stages
of acquaintance. Besides, Phil was a high-strung colt, and it was a
venturesome experiment to try him with a long riding-skirt, loaded with
shot, knocking about his legs. At that time the safe fashion of short
habits was not in vogue, and the high winds of Kansas left no
alternative to loading our skirts. We kept opening the hem and inserting
the little shot-bags as long as we lived there. Fortunately for me, I
was persuaded into trying the colt. As soon as he broke into a long
swinging trot, I was so enchanted and so hilarious with the motion, that
I mentally resolved never to yield the honor temporarily conferred upon
me. It was the beginning of an eternal vigilance for my husband. The
animal was so high-strung, so quick, notwithstanding he was so large,
that he sprang from one side of the road to the other on all fours,
without the slightest warning. After I had checked him and recovered my
breath, we looked about for a cause for this fright, and found only the
dark earth where slight moisture had remained from a shower. In order to
get the smoothest trotting out of him, I rode with a snaffle, and I
never knew the General's eyes to be off him for more than an instant.
The officers protested, and implored my husband to change back and give
me the pacer. But his pride was up, and he enjoyed seeing the animal
quivering with delight at doing his best under a light weight, and he
had genuine love for the brute that, though so hard to manage in his
hands, responded to my lightest touch or to my voice.
As time advanced and our regiment gained better and better horseflesh,
it was a favorite scheme to pit Phil against new-comers. We all started
out, a gay cavalcade of noisy, happy people, and the stranger was given
the post of honor next to the wife of the commanding officer. Of course
he thought nothing of this, as he had been at the right of the hostess
at dinner. The other officers saw him take his place as if it were the
most natural thing in the world, but in reality it was a deep-laid plot.
Phil started off with so little effort that our visitor thought nothing
of keeping pace for a while, and then he began to use his spurs. As my
colt took longer and longer strides, there was triumph in the faces of
the officers, and a gleam of delight in the General's eye. Then came the
perplexity in my guest's face at a trotter outdoing the most splendid
specimen of a loping horse, as he thought. A little glance from my
husband, which incited me to give a sign and a low word or two that only
Phil and I understood, and off we flew, leaving the mystified man urging
his nag in vain. It was not quite my idea of hospitality so to introduce
a new-comer to our horses' speed; but then he was not a transient guest,
and the sooner he knew all our "tricks and our manners" the better,
while it was beyond my power of self-denial to miss seeing the proud
triumph in my husband's eyes as he rode up and patted the colt and
received the little return of affection from the knowing beast. Phil
went on improving in gait and swiftness as he grew in years, and I once
had the courage, afterward, to speed him on the Government race-track at
Fort Leavenworth, though to this day I cannot understand how I got up to
concert pitch; and I could never be induced to try such an experiment
again. I suppose I often made as good time, trotting beside my husband's
horse, but to go alone was something I was never permitted to do on a
roadway. The General and brother Tom connived to get this bit of
temporary courage out of me by an offhand conversation, as we rode
toward the track, regarding what Phil might be made to do under the
best circumstances, which I knew meant the snaffle-rein, a light weight,
and my hand, which the General had trained to be steady. I tried to beg
off and suggest either one of them for the trial; but the curb which
they were obliged to use, as Phil was no easy brute to manage with them,
made him break his gait, and a hundred and seventy pounds on his back
was another obstacle to speed. It ended in my being teased into the
experiment, and though I called out, after the first half-mile, that I
could not breathe any longer, the air rushed into my lungs so rapidly,
they implored and urged by gesture and enthusiastic praise, until I made
the mile they had believed Phil equal to in three minutes.
I wish I could describe what delight my husband took in his horse life,
what hours of recreation and untiring pleasure he got out of our
companionship with Jack Rucker, Phil and Custis Lee. On that day we
three and our orderly were alone on the track, and such a merry, noisy,
care-forgetting three as we were! the General, with his stop-watch in
hand, cheering me, urging the horse wildly, clapping his hands, and
hallooing with joy as the animal responded to his expectation. Phil's
coming up to their boasts and anticipations was just a little episode in
our life that went to prove what a rare faculty he had of getting much
out of little, and of how persistently the boy in him cropped out as
soon as an opportunity came to throw care aside. It is one of the
results of a life of deprivation, that pleasures, when they come, are
rarities, and the enjoyment is intensified. In our life they lasted so
short a time that we had no chance to learn the meaning of satiety.
One of the hardest trials, in our first winter with the regiment, was
that arising from the constantly developing tendency to hard drinking.
Some who came to us had held up for a time, but they were not restricted
in the volunteer service, as a man who fought well was forgiven much
else that came in the rare intervals of peace. In the new state of
affairs, as went the first few months of the regiment, so would it go
for all time. There was a regiment stationed in New Mexico at that
time, the record of which was shameful. We heard of its career by every
overland train that came into our post, and from officers who went out
on duty. General Sherman said that, with such a set of drunkards, the
regiment, officers and all, should be mustered out of the service.
Anything, then, rather than let our Seventh follow such a course. But I
must not leave the regiment at that point in its history. Eventually it
came out all right, ably officered and well soldiered, but it was the
terror of the country in 1867. While General Custer steadily fought
against drunkenness, he was not remorseless or unjust. I could cite one
instance after another, to prove with what patience he strove to reclaim
some who were, I fear, hopeless when they joined us. His own greatest
battles were not fought in the tented field; his most glorious combats
were those waged in daily, hourly fights on a more hotly contested field
than was ever known in common warfare. The truest heroism is not that
which goes out supported by strong battalions and reserve artillery. It
is when a warrior for the right enters into the conflict alone, and
dares to exercise his will in defiance of some established custom in
which lies a lurking, deadly peril or sin. I have known my husband to
almost stand alone in his opinion regarding temperance, in a garrison
containing enough people to make a good-sized village. He was thoroughly
unostentatious about his convictions, and rarely said much; but he stood
to his fixed purpose, purely from horror of the results of drinking. I
would not imply that in garrison General Custer was the only man
invariably temperate. There were some on pledge; some temperate because
they paid such a physical penalty by actual illness that they could not
drink; some restrained because their best-loved comrade, weak in his own
might, "swore off" on consideration that the stronger one of the two
backed him up; some (God bless them!) refused because the woman they
loved grieved, and was afraid of even one friendly glass. What I mean
is, that the general custom, against which there is little opposition in
any life, is, either to indulge in the social glass, or look leniently
upon the habit. Without preaching or parading his own strength in having
overcome the habit, General Custer stood among the officers and men as
firm an advocate of temperance as any evangelist whose life is devoted
to the cause.
I scarcely think I would have realized the constantly recurring
temptations of my husband's life, had I not been beside him when he
fought these oft-repeated battles. The pleasure he had in convivial
life, the manner in which men and women urged him to join them in
enjoyment of the sparkling wine, was enough to have swept every
resolution to the winds. Sometimes the keen blade of sarcasm, though set
with jewels of wit and apparent badinage, added a cut that my ears, so
quickened to my husband's hard position, heard and grieved over. But he
laughed off the carefully concealed thrust. When we were at home in our
own room, if I asked him, blazing anew with wrath at such a stab, how he
kept his temper, he replied, "Why notice it? Don't I know what I've been
through to gain my victory? That fellow, you must remember, has fought
and lost, and knows in his soul he'll go to the dogs if he doesn't hold
up, and, Libbie, he can't do it, and I am sorry for him." Our brother
Tom was less patient, less forbearing, for in one of his times of
pledge, when the noble fellow had given his word not to taste a drop for
a certain season if a man he loved, and about whom he was anxious, would
do the same, he was sneered at by a brother officer, with gibes at his
supposed or attempted superiority. Tom leaped across the table in the
tent where they sat at dinner, and shook up his assailant in a very
emphatic way. I laugh in remembrance of his choler, and am proud of it
now. I, as "gentlewoman," descended from a line of decorous gentlemen
and ladies, ought to be horrified at one man's seizing another by the
collar and pouncing upon him, regardless of the Marquis of Queensbury
rules. But I know that circumstances alter cases, and in our life an
occasional good shaking was better than the slow justice of a tedious
court-martial.
The General would not smile, but there was a noticeable twisting of his
mustache, and he took himself out of the way to conceal his feelings,
when I pointed my discerning finger at him and said, "You're laughing,
your own self, and you think Tom was right, even if you don't say a
word, and look so dreadfully commandery-officery at both of us!" The
General did not keep himself aloof, and sometimes, in convivial scenes,
when he joined in the increasing hilarity, was so infused with the
growing artificial joviality, and grew jollier and jollier, that he was
accused himself of being the wildest drinker of them all. But some one
was sure to speak up and say, as the morning approached, "I have sat
beside Custer the night through, and if he's intoxicated it's over
water, for he has not tasted a drop of wine--more loss to him, I say."
Only a short time before the final battle, he dined in New York, at a
house where General McDowell was also a guest. When no one else could
hear, he told me, with a warning not to talk of it, that he had some one
to keep him company, and described the bowl of ice that stood in the
midst of the untouched semicircle of glasses before General McDowell,
and how the ice seemed just as satisfactory as any of the rare
beverages. We listened once to John B. Gough, and the General's
enthusiasm over his earnestness and his eloquence was enhanced by the
well-known fact of his failures, and the plucky manner in which he
started anew. Everybody cries over Jefferson's _Rip Van Winkle_, even if
they have never encountered drunkenness, and my husband wept like a
child because of his intense sympathy for the weakness of the poor
tempted soul, harrowed as he was by a Xantippe.
If women in civil life were taken among men, as army women are, in all
sorts of festivities, they would get a better idea of what strength of
purpose it requires to carry out a principle. At some army posts the
women go to the sutler's store with their husbands, for billiards or
amusements. There is a separate room for the soldiers, so we see nothing
of those poor fellows who never can stay sober. The sutler's is not only
the store, but it is the club-house for the garrison, and I have known
posts where the officers were so guarded about their drinking, that
women could go among them and join in any amusement without being liable
to the distress that the sight of an intoxicated man invariably gives to
a sensitive woman. If I saw drunken soldiers reeling off after pay-day,
it was the greatest possible relief to me to know, that out of hundreds
only a few were married, as but a certain number of the laundresses were
allowed to a company. So no woman's heart was going to be wrung by
unsteady steps approaching her door, and the sight of the vacant eyes of
a weak husband. It took away half the sting and shock, to know that a
soldier's spree was not one that recoiled on an innocent woman.
As I look back upon our life, I do not believe there ever was any path
so difficult as those men on the frontier trod. Their failures, their
fights, their vacillations, all were before us, and it was an anxious
life to be watching who won and who lost in those moral warfares. You
could not separate yourself from the interests of one another. It was a
network of friendships that became more and more interwoven by common
hardships, deprivations, dangers, by isolation and the daily sharing of
joys and troubles. I am thankful for the certainty that there is some
one who scores all our fights and all our victories; for on His records
will be written the story of the thorny path over which an officer
walked if he reached the goal.
Women shielded in homes, supported by example, unconscious of any
temptation save the mildest, will realize with me what it was to watch
the quivering mouth of a man who voluntarily admitted that until he was
fifty he knew he was in hourly peril of being a drunkard. The tears
blind me as I go back in retrospection and think over the men that
warred against themselves.
In one respect, there never was such a life as ours; it was eminently
one of partings. How natural, then, that the last act before separation
be one of hospitable generosity! How little we had to offer! It was
often almost an impossibility to get up a good dinner. Then we had so
many coming to us from a distance, that our welcome could not be
followed up by any entertainment worthy of the name. Besides, there were
promotions to celebrate, an occasional son and heir to toast, birthdays
occurring so often, and nothing in the world that answered for an
expression of hospitality and good feeling but an old straw demijohn
behind the door. It was surprising what pertinacious lives the demijohns
of the garrison had. The driver of the wagon containing the few
appointments of an officer's outfit, was just as careful of the familiar
friend as one could wish servants to be with the lares and penates of an
æsthetic household. If he was rewarded with a drink from the sacred
demijohn, after having safely preserved it over muddy roads, where the
mules jerked the prairie-schooner out of ruts, and where, except for a
protecting hand, the contents would have saturated the wagon, he was
thankful. But such was his reverence for what he considered the most
valuable possession of the whole wagon, virtue alone would have been
sufficient reward. When in the regimental movings the crockery (the very
heaviest that is made) was smashed, the furniture broken, carpets,
curtains, clothes and bedding mildewed and torn, the old demijohn
neither broke, spilled nor suffered any injury by exposure to the
elements. It was, in the opinion of our lovers of good whiskey, a
"survival of the fittest."
It never came to be an old story with me, that in this constant,
familiar association with drinking, the General and those of his
comrades who abstained could continue to exercise a marvelous
self-control. I could not help constantly speaking to my husband of what
he went through; and it seemed to me that no liberty could be too great
to extend to men who, always keeping their heads, were clear as to what
they were about. The domestic lariat of a cavalryman might well be drawn
in, if the women waiting at home were uncertain whether the brains of
their liege lords would be muddled when absent from their influence.