SACRIFICES AND SELF-DENIAL OF PIONEER DUTY--CAPTAIN ROBBINS AND COLONEL
COOK ATTACKED, AND FIGHT FOR THREE HOURS.
IT is a source of regret, as these pages grow daily under my hand, that
I have not the power to place before the country the sacrifices and
noble courage endured by the officers and soldiers of our army in their
pioneer work. I can only portray, in the simplest manner, what I saw
them endure unmurmuringly, as I was permitted to follow in the marches
and campaigns of our regiment. I find that it is impossible to make the
life clear to citizens, even when they ask me to describe personally
something of frontier days, unless they may have been over the Plains in
their journeys to and from the Pacific coast. Even then, they look from
the windows of the Pullman car on to the desert, white with alkali, over
which the heat rises in waves, and upon earth that struggles to give
even life to the hardy cactus or sage-brush. Then I find their attention
is called to our army, and I sometimes hear a sympathetic tone in their
voices as they say, "Ah! Mrs. Custer, when I rode over that
God-forgotten land, I began to see what none of us at the East ever
realize--the terrible life that our army leads on the Plains." And only
lately, while I was in the West, a citizen described to me seeing a
company of cavalry, that had made a terrific march, come in to the
railroad at some point in Arizona. He told me of their blistered faces,
their bloodshot, inflamed eyes--the result of the constant cloud of
alkali dust through which they marched--the exhaustion in every limb, so
noticeable in men of splendid vigor, with their broad chests, deep
throats, and muscular build, because it told what a fearful strain it
must have been to have reduced such stalwart athletes to weakness. What
effect it would have to introduce a body of such indomitable men in the
midst of an Eastern city, tired, travel-stained, but invincible!
After all, if we who try to be their champions should succeed in making
this transfer by some act of necromancy, the men would be silent about
their sufferings. Among the few officers who have written of Plains
life, there is scarcely a mention of hardships endured. As I read over
my husband's magazine articles for the first time in many years, I find
scarcely a reference to the scorching sun, the stinging cold, the bleak
winds. His narrative reads like the story of men who marched always in
sunshine, coming across clear streams of running water and shady woods
in which to encamp. I have been there; through and through the breezy,
buoyant tale I see the background--a treeless, arid plain, brackish,
muddy water, sandy, sterile soil. The faces of our gallant men come up
to me in retrospection, blistered and swollen, the eyes streaming with
moisture from the inflaming dust, the parched lips cracked with fever of
unquenched thirst, the hands, even, puffed and fiery with the sun-rays,
day after day.
It seems heartless to smile in the midst of this vision, recalled to me
of what I myself have seen, but I hear some civilian say, as they have
often asked me equally inconsistent questions, "Well, why didn't they
wear gloves?" Where all the possessions of a man are carried on the
saddle, and the food and forage on pack-mules, it would be impossible to
take along gloves to last from early spring till the stinging cold of
late autumn. Thirst is an unconquerable foe. It is one of those enemies
that may be vanquished on one field and come up, supported by legions of
fresh desires, the very next day. I know nothing but the ever-present
selfishness of our natures that requires such persistent fighting. Just
fancy, for a moment, the joy of reaching a river or a stream on the
Plains! How easy the march seemed beside its banks! At any moment one
could descend, fill the canteen, and rejoin the column. It is true the
quality of the water was not of the best, but there comes a time, out
there, when quantity triumphs. It seems so good to have enough of
_anything_, for the stinted supplies of all sorts make life seem always
meagre in a country with no natural resources. But woe be to the man who
puts his faith in a Western stream! They used to take themselves
suddenly out of sight, down somewhere into the bowels of the earth, and
leave the bed dry as dust, winding its tortuous way for miles,
aggravating us by the constant reminder of where water ought to be, but
where it unfortunately was not. This sudden disappearance of water is
supposed to be due to the depression of the rocky beds of the streams. A
deep sand absorbs the moisture from the surface, and draws down into its
depths all the stream. When the bed again rises nearer the surface, the
stream comes to sight once more. Whoever, after the water disappeared,
found that he must drink or die, was obliged to stop and dig away at the
dry bed of the river until he found moisture. It was a desperate man
that attempted it; one whose throat had become voiceless, whose mouth
and lips ached with the swelling veins of overheated blood; for, if one
delayed behind the column for ever so short a time, he was reminded of
his insecurity by a flash from a pile of stones or a bunch of sage-bush
on the summit of a low divide. The wily foe that lurks in the rear of a
marching column has no equal in vigilance.
And then, what a generous being a soldier is! How often I have seen them
pass the precious nectar--it seemed so then, in spite of its being warm
and alkaline; and I speak from experience, for they have given me a
chance also--flavored with poor whiskey sometimes, as that old tin
receptacle which Government furnishes holds coffee, whiskey or water,
whichever is attainable. I fear that, had I scratched and dug slowly
into the soil with the point of a sabre, and scooped up a minimum of
water, my eye on the bluff near, watching and in fear of an Indian, I
should have remembered my own parched throat and let the whole American
army go thirsty. But I am thankful to say the soldier is made of
different stuff. It is enough to weld strongest bonds of friendship,
like those in our army, when it is share and share alike; and I am
reminded of a stanza of soldier poetry:
"There are bonds of all sorts in this world of ours,
Fetters of friendship and ties of flowers,
And true-lover's knots, I ween;
The boy and the girl are bound by a kiss,
But there's never a bond of old friends like this--
We have drunk from the same canteen."
I have, among our Plains photographs, a picture of one of the Western
rivers, with no sort of tree or green thing growing on its banks. It is
the dreariest picture I ever saw, and as it appears among the old
photographs of merry groups taken in camp or on porches covered with our
garrison family, it gives me a shudder even now. Among the photographs
of the bright side of our life, this is the skeleton at the feast which
comes up so persistently.
Since all rivers and streams in the States are fringed with trees, it is
difficult to describe how strange some of our Western water-ways
appeared without so much as a border of shrubs or reeds. In looking over
the country, as we ascended to a divide higher than the rest, the stream
lay before us, winding on in the curving lines of our own Eastern
rivers, but for miles and miles not a vestige of green bordered the
banks. It seemed to me for all the world like an eye without an eyelash.
It was strange, unnatural, weird. The white alkali was the only border,
and that spread on into the scorched brown grass, too short to protect
the traveler from the glare that was heightened by the sun in a
cloudless sky. A tree was often a landmark, and was mentioned on the
insufficient maps of the country, such as "Thousand-mile Tree," a name
telling its own story; or, "Lone Tree," known as the only one within
eighty miles, as was the one in Dakota, where so many Indians buried
their dead.
What made those thirsty marches a thousand times worse was the alluring,
aggravating mirage. This constantly deceived even old campaigners, and
produced the most harrowing sort of illusions. Such a will-o'-the-wisp,
too! for, as we believed ourselves approaching the blessed water,
imagined the air was fresher, looked eagerly and expectantly for the
brown, shriveled grass to grow green, off floated the deluding water
farther and farther away.
As I try to write something of the sacrifices of the soldier, who will
not speak of himself, and for whom so few have spoken, there comes to me
another class of heroes, for whom my husband had such genuine
admiration, and in whose behalf he gave up his life--our Western
pioneer. A desperate sort of impatience overcomes me when I realize how
incapable I am of paying them proper tribute. And yet how fast they are
passing away, with no historians! and hordes of settlers are sweeping
into the western States and Territories, quite unmindful of the soldiers
and frontiersmen, who fought, step by step, to make room for the coming
of the over-crowded population of the East. My otherwise charming
journeys West now are sometimes marred by the desire I feel for calling
the attention of the travelers, who are borne by steam swiftly over the
Plains, to the places where so short a time since men toilsomely
traveled in pursuit of homes. I want to ask those who journey for
pleasure or for a new home, if they realize what men those were who took
their lives in their hands and prepared the way.[H] Their privations are
forgotten, or carelessly ignored, by those who now go in and possess
the land. The graphic pens of Bret Harte and others, who have written of
the frontier, arrest the attention of the Eastern man, and save from
oblivion some of the noble characters of those early days. Still, these
poets naturally seized for portraiture the picturesque, romantic
characters who were miners or scouts--the isolated instances of
desperate men who had gone West from love of adventure, or because of
some tragic history in the States, that drove them to seek forgetfulness
in a wild, unfettered existence beyond the pale of civilization.
Who chronicles the patient, plodding, silent pioneer, who, having been
crowded out of his home by too many laborers in a limited field, or,
because he could no longer wring subsistence from a soil too long tilled
by sire and grandsire; or possibly a returned volunteer from our war,
who, finding all places he once filled closed up, was compelled to take
the grant of land that the Government gives its soldiers, and begin life
all over again, for the sake of wife and children! There is little in
these lives to arrest the poetical fancy of those writers who put into
rhyme (which is the most lasting of all history) the lives otherwise
lost to the world.
How often General Custer rode up to these weary, plodding yeomen, as
they turned aside their wagons to allow the column of cavalry to pass!
He was interested in every detail of their lives, admired their
indomitable pluck, and helped them, if he could, in their difficult
journeys. Sometimes, after a summer of hardships and every sort of
discouragement, we met the same people returning East, and the General
could not help being amused at the grim kind of humor that led these men
to write the history of their season in one word on the battered cover
of the wagon--"Busted."
We were in Kansas during all the grasshopper scourge, when our
Government had to issue rations to the starving farmers deprived of
every source of sustenance. What a marvel that men had the courage to
hold out at all, in those exasperating times, when the crops were no
sooner up than every vestige of green would be stripped from the
fields! Then, too, the struggle for water was great. The artesian wells
that now cover the Western States were too expensive to undertake with
the early settlers. The windmills that now whirl their gay wheels at
every zephyr of the Plains, and water vast numbers of cattle on the
farms, were then unthought of. . . . A would-be settler in Colorado, in
those times of deprivation and struggle, wrote his history on a board
and set it up on the trail, as a warning to others coming after him:
"Toughed it out here two years. Result: Stock on hand, five towheads and
seven yaller dogs. Two hundred and fifty feet down to water. Fifty miles
to wood and grass. Hell all around. God bless our home."
It would be too painful to attempt to enumerate the ravages made by the
Indians on the pioneer; and God alone knows how they faced life at all,
working their claims with a musket beside them in the field, and the
sickening dread of returning to a desolated cabin ever present in their
heavy hearts. There are those I occasionally meet, who went through
innumerable hardships, and overcame almost insurmountable obstacles, and
who attained to distinction in that land of the setting sun; but I find
they only remember the jovial side of their early days. Not long since I
had the privilege of talking with the Governor of one of our
Territories. He was having an interview with some Mexican Senators by
means of an interpreter, and after his business was finished, he turned
to our party to talk with enthusiasm of his Territory. No youth could be
more sanguine than he over the prospects, the climate, the natural
advantages of the new country in which he had just cast his lines. All
his reminiscences of his early days in other Territories were most
interesting to me. General Custer was such an enthusiast over our
glorious West, that I early learned to look upon much that I would not
otherwise have regarded with interest, with his buoyant feeling. . . .
I must qualify this statement, and explain that I could not always see
such glowing colors as did he, while we suffered from climate, and were
sighing for such blessings as trees and water; but we were both heart
and soul with every immigrant we came across, and I think many a
half-discouraged pioneer went on his way, after encountering my husband
on the westward trail, a braver and more hopeful man.
How well I remember the long wait we made on one of the staircases of
the Capitol at Washington, above which hung then the great picture by
Leutze, "Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way." We little thought
then, hardly more than girl and boy as we were, that our lives would
drift over the country which the admirable picture represents. The
General hung round it with delight, and noted many points that he wanted
me to enjoy with him. The picture made a great impression on us. How
much deeper the impression, though, had we known that we were to live
out the very scenes depicted!
Coming back to the Governor: I cannot take time to write his well-told
story. The portion of the interesting hour that made the greatest
impression on me was his saying that the happiest days of his life were
those when, for fifteen hundred miles, he walked beside the wagon
containing his wife and babies, and drove the team from their old home
in Wisconsin to a then unsettled portion of Ohio. The honors that had
come to him as senator, governor, statesman, faded beside the joys of
his first venture from home into the wilderness. I saw him, in
imagination, as I have often seen the pioneer, looking back to the
opening made in the front of the wagon by the drawing over of the canvas
cover to the puckered circle, in which were framed the woman and babies
for whom he could do and dare. I fall to wondering if there is any
affection like that which is enhanced or born of these sacrifices in
each other's behalf. I wonder if there can be anything that would so
spur a man to do heroic deeds as the feeling that he walked in front of
three dependent beings, and braved Indians, starvation, floods,
prairie-fire, and all those perils that beset a Western trail; and to
see the bright, fond eyes of a mother, and the rosy cheeks of the little
ones, looking uncomplainingly out upon the desert before them--why,
what could nerve a man's arm like that? Love grows with every sacrifice,
and I believe that many a youthful passion, that might have become
colorless with time, has been deepened into lasting affection on those
lonely tramps over the prairies.
It has also been my good fortune lately to recall our Western life with
an ex-governor of another Territory, a friend of my husband's in those
Kansas days. What can I say in admiration of the pluck of those Western
men? Even in the midst of his luxuriant New York life, he loves better
to dwell on the early days of his checkered career, when at seven years
of age he was taken by his parents to the land of the then great
unknown. He had made a fortune in California, for he was a Forty-niner,
and returned East to enjoy it. But as he lost his all soon afterward,
there was nothing left for him to do but to start out again. His wife
could have remained in comfort and security with her friends, but she
preferred to share the danger and discomforts of her husband's life.
Their first trip over the old trail to Denver (our stamping-ground
afterward) was a journey from Missouri, the outfitting place at the
termination of the last railway going West, taking sixty-four days to
accomplish. The wife, brave as she was, fell ill, and lay on the hard
wagon-bed the whole distance. The invincible father took entire care of
her and of his children, cooking for the party of eleven on the whole
route, and did guard duty a portion of every night. The Indians were
hovering in front and in rear. Two of the party were too old to walk and
carry a musket, so that on the five men devolved the guarding of their
little train. Nine times afterward he and his wife crossed that long
stretch of country before the railroad was completed, always in peril,
and never knowing from hour to hour when a band of hostiles would sweep
down upon them. He taught his children the use of fire-arms as soon as
they were large enough to hold a pistol. His daughter learned, as well
as his sons, to be an accurate marksman, and shot from the pony's back
when he scampered at full speed over the prairies. For years and years,
all his family were obliged to be constantly vigilant. They lived out a
long portion of their lives on the alert for a foe that they knew well
how to dread.
But the humorous comes in, even in the midst of such tragic days! How I
enjoyed and appreciated the feelings of the Governor's wife, whom I had
known as a girl, when she rebelled at his exercising his heretofore
valuable accomplishment as cook, after he became Governor. How like a
woman, and how dear such whimsicalities are, sandwiched in among the
many admirable qualities with which such strong characters as hers are
endowed! It seems that on some journey over the Plains they entertained
a party of guests the entire distance. The cook was a failure, and as
the route of travel out there is not lined with intelligence-offices,
the only thing left to do for the new-made Governor, rather than see his
wife so taxed, was to doff his coat and recall the culinary gifts
acquired in pioneer life. The madame thought her husband, now a
Governor, might keep in secrecy his gifts at getting up a dinner. But he
persisted, saying that it was still a question whether he would make a
good Governor, and as he was pretty certain he was a good cook, he
thought it as well to impress that one gift, of which he was sure, upon
his constituents.
The next letter from the expedition brought me such good news, that I
counted all the frights of the past few weeks as nothing, compared with
the opportunity that being in Fort Riley gave me of joining my husband.
He wrote that the cavalry had been detached from the main body of the
command, and ordered to scout the stage-route from Fort Hays to Fort
McPherson, then the most invested with savages. A camp was to be
established temporarily, and scouting parties sent out from Fort Hays.
To my joy, my husband said in his letter that I might embrace any safe
opportunity to join him there. General Sherman proved to be the direct
answer to my prayers, for he arrived soon after I had begun to look
confidently for a chance to leave for Fort Hays.
With the grave question of the summer campaign in his mind, it probably
did not occur to him that he was acting as the envoy extraordinary of
Divine Providence to a very anxious, lonely woman. While he talked with
me occasionally of the country, about which he was an enthusiast--and,
oh, how his predictions of its prosperity have come true already!--I
made out to reply coherently, but I kept up a very vehement,
enthusiastic set of inner thoughts and grateful ejaculations, blessing
him for every breath he drew, blessing and thanking Providence that he
had given the commander-in-chief of our forces a heart so fresh and warm
he could feel for others, and a soul so loyal and affectionate for his
own wife and family that he knew what it was to endure suspense and
separation. He had with him some delightful girls, whom we enjoyed very
much. I cannot remember whether, in my anxiety to go to my husband, my
conversation led up to the subject--doubtless it did, for I was then at
that youthful stage of existence when the mouth speaketh out of the
fullness of the heart--but I do remember that the heart in me nearly
leaped out of my body when he invited me to go in his car to Fort
Harker, for the railroad had been completed to that next post.
Diana crowded what of her apparel she could into her trunk, and I had a
valise, but the largest part of our luggage was a roll of bedding, which
I remember blushing over as it was handed into the special coach, for
there was no baggage-car. It looked very strange to see such an ungainly
bundle as part of the belongings of two young women, and though I was
perfectly willing to sleep on the ground in camp, as I had done in
Virginia and Texas, I did not wish to court hardships when I knew a way
to avoid them. Though we went over a most interesting country, General
Sherman did not seem to care much for the outside world. He sat in the
midst of us, and entered into all our fun; told stories to match ours,
joined in our songs, and was the Grand Mogul of our circle. One of the
young girls was so captivating, even in her disloyalty, that it amused
us all immensely. When we sang war-songs, she looked silently out of
the window. If we talked of the danger we might encounter with Indians,
General Sherman said, slyly, he would make her departure from earth as
easy as possible, for he would honor her with a military funeral. She
knew that she must, in such a case, be wrapped in the Stars and Stripes,
and he did not neglect to tell her that honor awaited her if she died,
but she vehemently refused the honor. All this, which would have been
trying from a grown person, was nothing but amusement to us from a chit
of a girl, who doubtless took her coloring, as the chameleon-like
creatures of that age do, from her latest Confederate sweetheart.
In retrospection, I like to think of the tact and tolerance of General
Sherman, in those days of furious feeling on both sides, and the quiet
manner in which he heard the Southern people decry the Yankees. He knew
of their impoverished and desolated homes, and realized, living among
them as he did in St. Louis, what sacrifices they had made; more than
all, his sympathetic soul saw into the darkened lives of mothers, wives
and sisters who had given, with their idea of patriotism, their loved
ones to their country. The truth is, he was back again among those
people of whom he had been so fond, and no turbulent expressions of
hatred and revenge could unsettle the underlying affection. Besides, he
has always been a far-seeing man. Who keeps in front in our country's
progress as does this war hero? Is he not a statesman as well as a
soldier? And never have the interests of our land been narrowed down to
any prescribed post where he may have been stationed, or his life been
belittled by any temporary isolation or division from the rest of
mankind. Every public scheme for our advancement as a nation meets his
enthusiastic welcome. This spirit enabled him to see, at the close of
the war, that, after the violence of wrath should have subsided, the
South would find themselves more prosperous, and capable, in the new
order of affairs, of immense strides in progress of all kinds.
I remember a Southern woman, who came to stay with relatives in our
garrison, telling me of her first encounter with General Sherman after
the war. He had been a valued friend for many years; but it was too much
when, on his return to St. Louis, he came, as a matter of course, to see
his old friends. Smarting with the wrongs of her beloved South, she
would not even send a message by the maid; she ran to the head of the
stairs, and in an excited tone, asked if he for one moment expected she
would speak, so much as speak, to a Yankee? The General went on his
peaceful way, as unharmed by this peppery assault as a foe who is out of
reach of our short-range Government carbines, and I can recall with what
cordiality she came to greet him later in the year or two that followed.
No one could maintain wrath long against such imperturbable good-nature
as General Sherman exhibited. He remembered a maxim that we all are apt
to forget, "Put yourself in his place."
Along the line of the railroad were the deserted towns, and we even saw
a whole village moving on flat cars. The portable houses of one story
and the canvas rolls of tents, which would soon be set up to form a
street of saloons, were piled up as high as was safe, and made the
strangest sort of freight train. The spots from which they had been
removed were absolutely the dreariest of sights. A few poles, broken
kegs, short chimneys made in rude masonry of small round stones, heaps
of tin cans everywhere, broken bottles strewing the ground, while great
square holes yawned empty where, a short time before, a canvas roof
covered a room stored with clumsy shelves laden with liquor. Here and
there a smoke-stained barrel protruded from the ground. They were the
chimneys of some former dug-outs. I cannot describe how startled I was
when I first came near one of these improvised chimneys, and saw smoke
pouring out, without any other evidence that I was walking over the home
of a frontier citizen. The roof of a flat dug-out is level with the
earth, and as no grass consents to grow in these temporary villages,
there is nothing to distinguish the upturned soil that has been used as
a covering for the beams of the roof of a dwelling from any of the rest
of the immediate vicinity. A portion of this moving village had already
reached the end in the railroad, and named itself Ellsworth, with
streets called by various high-sounding appellations, but marked only by
stakes in the ground.
At Fort Harker we found a forlorn little post--a few log houses bare of
every comfort, and no trees to cast a shade on the low roofs. The best
of the quarters, belonging to the bachelor commanding officer, were
offered to General Sherman and his party. We five women had one of the
only two rooms. It seems like an abuse of hospitality, even after all
these years, to say that the floor of uneven boards was almost ready for
agricultural purposes, as the wind had sifted the prairie sand in
between the roughly laid logs, and even the most careful housewife would
have found herself outwitted if she had tried to keep a tidy floor. I
only remember it because I was so amused to see the dainty women
stepping around the little space left in the room between the cots, to
find a place to kneel and say their prayers. I had given up, and gone to
bed, as often before I had been compelled to tell my thanks to the
Heavenly Father on my pillow, for already in the marches I had
encountered serious obstacles to kneeling. The perplexed but devout
women finally gave up attempting a devotional attitude, turned their
faces to the rough wall, and held their rosaries in their fingers, while
they sent up orisons for protection and guidance. They were reverential
in their petitions; but I could not help imagining how strange it must
seem to these luxuriously raised girls, to find themselves in a country
where not even a little prayer could be said as one would wish. It must
have been for exigencies of our life that Montgomery wrote the
comforting definition that "Prayer is the soul's sincere desire," "The
upward lifting of an eye," etc., and so set the heart at rest about how
and where the supplication of the soul could be offered.
[Illustration: A MATCH BUFFALO HUNT.]
At Fort Harker we bade good-by to our delightful party, the frolic and
light-heartedness departed, and the serious side of existence appeared.
I had but little realization that every foot of our coming march of
eighty miles was dangerous. We had an ambulance lent us, and accompanied
a party that had an escort. There were stage-stations every ten or
fifteen miles, consisting of rude log or stone huts, huddled together
for safety in case of attack. The stables for the relays of horses were
furnished with strong doors of rough-hewn timber, and the windows closed
with shutters of similar pattern. The stablemen and relays of drivers
lived in no better quarters than the horses. They were, of course,
intrepid men, and there was no stint in arming them with good rifles and
abundance of ammunition. They were prepared for attack, and could have
defended themselves behind the strong doors--indeed, sustained a siege,
for the supplies were kept inside their quarters--had not the Indians
used prepared arrows that could be shot into the hay and thus set the
stables on fire. These Plainsmen all had "dug-outs" as places of retreat
in case of fire. They were very near the stables, and connected by an
underground passage. They were about four feet deep. The roof was of
timbers strong enough to hold four or five feet of earth, and in these
retreats a dozen men could defend themselves, by firing from loopholes
that were left under the roof-beams. Some of the stage-stations had no
regular buildings. We came upon them without being prepared by any signs
of human life, for the dug-outs were excavated from the sloping banks of
the creeks. A few holes in the side-hill, as openings for man and beast,
some short chimneys on the level ground, were all the evidence of the
dreary, Columbarium homes. Here these men lived, facing death every hour
rather than earn a living in the monotonous pursuit of some trade or
commonplace business in the States. And at that time there were always
desperadoes who would pursue any calling that kept them beyond the reach
of the law.
This dreary eighty miles over a monotonous country, varied only by the
undulations that rolled away to Big Creek, was over at last, and Fort
Hays was finally visible--another small post of log huts like Fort
Harker, treeless and desolate, but the stream beyond was lined with
white canvas, which meant the tents of the Seventh Cavalry.
[Illustration: GATHERING AND COUNTING THE TONGUES.]
Again it seemed to me the end of all the troubles that would ever enter
into my life had come, when I was lifted out of the ambulance into my
husband's tent. What a blessing it is that there is a halcyon time in
sanguine youth, when each difficulty vanquished seems absolutely the
last that will ever come, and when one trouble ends, the stone is rolled
against its sepulchre with the conviction that nothing will ever open
wide the door again. We had much to talk about in camp. The first
campaign of a regiment is always important to them, and in this case,
also, the council, the Indian village, and its final destruction, were
really significant events. A match hunt they had carried out was a
subject of interest, and each side took one ear in turn, to explain why
they won, or the reasons they lost. Mr. Theodore Davis, the artist whom
the Harpers sent out for the summer, was drawing sketches in our tent,
while we advised or commented. It seemed well, from the discussions that
followed, that rules for the hunt had been drawn up in advance. It was
quite a ranking affair, when two full majors conducted the sides. As
only one day was given to each side, the one remaining in camp watched
vigilantly that the party going out held to the rule, and refrained from
starting till sunrise, while the same jealous eyes noticed that sunset
saw all of them in camp again. One of the rules was, that no shots
should be counted that were fired when the man was dismounted. This
alone was a hard task, as at that time the splendid racing of the horse
at breakneck speed, with his bridle free on his neck, and both hands
busy with the gun, was not an accomplished feat. The horses were all
novices at buffalo-hunting, also, and the game was thin at that
season--so thin that a bison got over a great deal of territory in a
short time. I remember the General's telling me what an art it was, even
after the game was shot, to learn to cut out the tongue. It was
wonderful that there was such success with so much to encounter. The
winning party kept their twelve tongues very securely hidden until the
second day, when the losers produced the eleven they had supposed would
not be outdone. My husband was greatly amused at one of our officers,
who hovered about the camp-fires of the opposite party and craftily put
questions to ascertain what was the result of the first day.
[Illustration: SUPPER GIVEN BY THE VANQUISHED TO THE VICTORS OF THE
MATCH BUFFALO HUNT.]
All this was told us with great glee. Diana's interests were centred in
the success of that party with whom her best beloved, for the time,
hunted. The officers regretted our absence at their great "feed," as
they termed it, and it must, indeed, have been a great treat to have for
once, in that starving summer, something palatable. Two wall-tents were
put together so that the table, made of rough boards, stretching through
both, was large enough for all. Victors and vanquished toasted each
other in champagne, and though the scene was the plainest order of
banquet, lighted by tallow candles set in rude brackets sawed out of
cracker-box boards and fastened to the tent-poles, and the only draping
a few cavalry guidons, the evening brightened up many a dreary day that
followed. Gallant Captain Louis McLane Hamilton, who afterward fell in
the battle of the Washita, was the hero of the hour, and bore his honors
with his usual modesty. Four out of twelve buffaloes was a record that
might have set a less boastful tongue wagging over the confidences of
the evening camp-fire. I do not think he would have permitted Mr. Davis
to put his picture in the illustration if he could have helped it. He
was gifted with his pencil also; he drew caricatures admirably, and
after a harmless laugh had gone the rounds, he managed, with the utmost
adroitness, to get possession of the picture and destroy it, thus taking
away the sting of ridicule, which constant sight of the caricature might
produce. How I came into possession of one little drawing is still a
mystery, but it is very clever. Among our officers was one who had
crossed the Plains as a citizen a year or two previous, and his habit of
revealing mines of frontier lore obtained on this one trip was somewhat
tiresome to our still inexperienced officers. At last, after all had
tried chasing antelope, and been more and more impressed in their
failures with the fleetness of that winged animal, Captain Hamilton made
a sketch representing the boaster as shooting antelope with the
shot-gun. The speck on the horizon was all that was seen of the game,
but the booted and spurred man kneeling on the prairie was admirable. It
silenced one of the stories, certainly, and we often wished the pencil
could protect us further from subsequent statements airily made on the
strength of the one stage-journey.
I had arrived in the rainy season, and such an emptying of the heavens
was a further development of what Kansas could do. But nothing damped my
ardor; no amount of soakings could make me think that camping-ground was
not an Elysian field. The General had made our tent as comfortable as
possible with his few belongings, and the officers had sent in to him,
for me, any comfort that they might have chanced to bring along on the
march. I was, it seemed, to be especially honored with a display of what
the elements could do at night when it was too dark to grope about and
protect our tent. The wind blew a tornado, and the flashes of lightning
illumined the tent and revealed the pole swaying ominously back and
forth. A fly is an outer strip of canvas which is stretched over the
tent to prevent the rain from penetrating, as well as to protect us in
the daytime from the sun. This flapped and rattled and swung loose at
one end, beating on the canvas roof like a trip-hammer, for it was
loaded with moisture; and the wet ropes attached to it, and used to guy
it down, were now loose, and lashed our rag house in an angry,
vindictive manner. My husband, accustomed to the pyrotechnic display of
the elements, slept soundly through the early part of the storm. But
lightning "murders sleep" with me, and, consequently, he was awakened by
a conjugal joggle, and on asking, "What is it?" was informed, "It
lightens!" Often as this statement was made to him in his sudden
awakenings, I do not remember his ever meeting it with any but a
teasing, laughing reply, like: "Ah! indeed; I am pleased to be informed
of so important a fact. This news is quite unexpected," and so on, or
"When, may I inquire, did you learn this?" On this occasion, however,
there was no attempt to quiet me or delay precautions. Feeling sure that
we were in for it for the night, he unfastened the straps that secured
the tent in front, and crept out to hammer down the tent-pins and tether
the ropes. But it was of no earthly use. After fruitless efforts of his
own, he called the guard from their tents, and they went energetically
to work with the light of our lantern. Ropes wrenched themselves away
from the tent-pins, straps broke, whole corners of the tent were torn
out, even while the men were hanging with all their might to the upright
poles to try and keep the ridge-pole steady, and clinging to the ropes
to keep them from loosening entirely and sailing off in the air with the
canvas.
In the midst of this fracas, with the shouts of the soldiers calling to
one another in the inky darkness, the crash of thunder and the howling
of the tempest, the wife of a brave soldier was hiding her head under
the blankets, and not one sound emerged from this temporary retreat. The
great joy of getting out to camp at last was too fresh to extract one
word, one whimper of fear from under the bedding. The sunniest day at
Fort Riley could not be exchanged, could not even be mentioned in the
same breath, with that tornado of wind and rain.
The stalwart arms of the soldiers failed at last. Their brawny chests
were of no more use, thrust against the tent-poles, than so many
needles. Over went the canvas in a heap, the General and his men hanging
on to the ridge-pole to clear it from the camp bed and save any
accident.
The voices of officers in an adjoining tent called out to come over to
them. One, half dressed, groped his way to us and said there was yet
room for more in his place, and, besides, he had a floor. It was a
Sibley, which, having no corners with which those Kansas breezes can
toy, is much more secure. I was rolled in the blankets and carried
through the blinding rain to our hospitable neighbors'. The end of a
tallow dip gave me a glimpse only of many silent forms rolled in
blankets and radiating from the centre like the spokes of a wagon wheel.
The officer owning this tent had taken the precaution, while at
Leavenworth, to have a floor made in sections, so that it could be
easily stowed away in the bottom of a prairie-schooner in marching.
My husband laid me down, and we were soon two more spokes in the human
wheel, and asleep in a trice. Next morning I wakened to find myself
alone, with a tin basin of water and a towel for my toilet beside me. My
husband had to dress me in his underclothing, for everything I had was
soaked. My shoes were hopeless, so I was dropped into a pair of cavalry
boots, and in this unpicturesque costume, which I covered as best I
could with my wet dress, I was carried through the mud to the
dining-tent, and enthroned _à la_ Turk, on a board which the cook
produced from some hiding-place, where he had kept it for kindlings.
There were not a few repetitions of this stormy reception in the years
that followed, for Kansas continued its weather vagaries with unceasing
persistency, but this, being my first, is as fresh in my mind as if it
occurred but yesterday.
The tent might go down nightly for all I cared then. Every thought of
separation departed, and I gave myself up to the happiest hours,
clamping about the tent in those old troop boots, indifferent whether my
shoes _ever_ dried. The hours flew too fast, though, for very soon
preparations began for a scout, which my husband was to command. It took
a great deal of comforting to reconcile me to remaining behind. The
General, as usual, had to beg me to remember how blessed we were to have
been permitted to rejoin each other so early in the summer. He told me,
over and over again, that there was nothing, he felt, that I would not
encounter to come to him, and that if he was detained, he would send for
me. Eliza and a faithful soldier were to be left to care for us. The
cavalry departed, and again the days lengthened out longer and longer,
until each one seemed forty-eight hours from sun to sun. We could
scarcely take a short walk in safety. The Indians were all about us, and
daily the sentinels were driven in, or attempts were made to stampede
the horses and mules grazing about the post. The few officers remaining,
in whose care we were placed, came or sent every day to our tents, which
were up the creek a short distance, to inquire what they could do for
our comfort. Mrs. Gibbs, with her boys, had joined her husband, and we
were their neighbors.
It seemed, sometimes, as if we _must_ get outside of our prescribed
limits, the rolling bluffs beyond, tinged with green and beginning to
have prairie flowers, looked so tempting. One evening we beguiled an
officer, who was sitting under our tent fly, which was stretched in
front for a shade, to take us for a little walk. Like many another man
in the temporary possession of wheedling women, he went with us a
little, and "just a little farther." Diana would have driven all thought
of everything else save herself out of the gravest head. At last our
escort saw the dark coming on so fast he insisted upon going home, and
we reluctantly turned. As we came toward the post, the shadows were
deepening in the twilight, and the figures of the sentinels were not
visible. A flash, followed by a sound past our ears, that old
campaigners describe as never to be forgotten when first heard, was the
warning that we three were taken for Indians and fired upon by the
sentinel. Another flash, but we stood rooted to the spot, stunned by
surprise. The whizz and zip of the bullet seemed to be only a few inches
from my ear. Still we were dazed, and had not the officer gained his
senses our fate would have been then and there decided. The recruit,
probably himself terrified, kept on sending those deadly little
missives, with the terrible sound cutting the air around us. Our escort
shouted, but it was too far for his voice to carry. Then he told us to
run for our lives to a slight depression in the ground, and throw
ourselves on our faces. I was coward enough to burrow mine in the
prairie-grass, and for once in my life was devoutly grateful for being
slender. Still, as I lay there quaking with terror, my body seemed to
rise above the earth in such a monstrous heap that the dullest marksman,
if he tried, might easily perforate me with bullets. What ages it seemed
while we waited in this prostrate position, commanded by our escort not
to move! The rain of bullets at last ceased, and blessed quiet came, but
not peace of mind. The officer told us he would creep on his hands and
knees through the hollow portions of the plain about the post, approach
by the creek side, and inform the sentinels along the line, and as soon
as they all knew who we were he would return for us. With smothered
voices issuing from the grass where our faces were still crushed as low
as we could get them, we implored to be allowed to creep on with him. We
prayed him not to leave us out in the darkness alone. We begged him to
tell us how he could ever find us again, if once he left us on ground
that had no distinctive features by which he could trace his way back.
But he was adamant: we must remain; and the ring of authority in his
tone, besides the culprit feeling we had for having endangered his life,
kept us still at last. As we lay there, our hearts' thumping seemed to
lift us up in air and imperil anew our wretched existence. The pretty,
rounded contour of the girl, which she had naturally taken such delight
in, was now a source of agony to her, and she moaned out, "Oh! how high
I seem to be above you! Oh, Libbie, do you think I lie as flat to the
ground as you do?" and so on, with all the foolish talk of frightened
women.
When at last our deliverer came, my relief at such an escape was almost
forgotten in the mortification I felt at having made so much trouble;
and I thought, with chagrin, how quickly the General's gratitude to find
we had escaped the bullets would be followed by temporary suspension of
faith regarding my following out his instructions not to run risks of
danger and wander away from the post. I wrote him an abject account of
our hazardous performance. I renewed every promise. I asked to be
trusted again, and from that time there were no more walks outside the
beat of the sentinel.
An intense disappointment awaited me at this time, and took away the one
hope that had kept up my spirits. I was watching, from day to day, an
opportunity to go to my husband at Fort McPherson, for he had said I
could come if any chance offered. I was so lonely and anxious, I would
gladly have gone with the scout who took despatches and mail, though he
had to travel at night and lie in the ravines all day to elude the sharp
eyes of the Indians. I remember watching Wild Bill, as he reported at
the commanding officer's tent to get despatches for my husband, and
wishing with all my heart that I could go with him. I know this must
seem strange to people in the States, whose ideas of scouts are made up
from stories of shooting affrays, gambling, lynching and outlawry. I
should have felt myself safe to go any distance with those men whom my
husband employed as bearers of despatches. I have never known women
treated with such reverence as those whom they honored. They were
touched to see us out there, for they measured well every danger of that
country; and the class that followed the moving railroad towns were
their only idea of women, except as they caught glimpses of us in camp
or on the march. In those border-towns, as we were sometimes compelled
to walk a short distance from the depot to our ambulance, the rough
characters in whom people had ceased to look for good were transformed
in their very attitude as we approached. Of course, they all knew and
sincerely admired the General, and, removing their hats, they stepped
off the walk and cast such looks at me as if I had been little lower
than the angels. When these men so looked at me, my husband was as proud
as if a President had manifested pleasure at sight of his wife, and
amused himself immensely because I said to him, after we were well by,
that the outlaws had seemed to think me possessed of every good
attribute, while to myself my faults and deficiencies appeared to rise
mountains high. I felt that if there was a Christian grace that my
mother had not striven to implant in me, I would cultivate it now, and
try to live up to the frontier citizen's impression of us as women.
I think the General would have put me in the care of any scout that
served him, just as readily as to place me in the keeping of the best
officer we had. There was not a trust he reposed in them that they did
not fulfill. Oh, how hard it was for me to see them at that time, when
starting with despatches to my husband, swing themselves into the saddle
and disappear over the divide! I feel certain, with such an end in view
as I had, and with the good health that the toughening of our campaigns
had given me, I could have ridden all night and slept on the
horse-blanket in the ravines daytimes, for a great distance. Had I been
given the opportunity to join my husband by putting myself in their
charge, there would not have been one moment's hesitation on my part. I
knew well that when "off duty" the scout is often in affrays where
lynching and outlawry are every-day events of the Western towns; but
that had no effect upon these men's sense of honor when an officer had
reposed a trust in them. Wild Bill, California Joe, Buffalo Bill,
Comstock, Charlie Reynolds, and a group of intrepid men besides, who
from time to time served under my husband, would have defended any of us
women put in their charge with their lives.
I remember with distinctness what genuine admiration and gratitude
filled my heart as these intrepid men rode up to my husband's tent to
receive orders and despatches. From my woman's standpoint, it required
far more and a vastly higher order of courage to undertake their
journeys than to charge in battle. With women, every duty or task seems
easier when shared by others. The most cowardly of us might be so
impressionable, so sympathetic, in a great cause that we saw others
preparing to defend, that it would become our own; and it is not
improbable that enthusiasm might take even a timid woman into battle,
excited and incited by the daring of others, the bray of drums, the
clash of arms, the call of the trumpet. But I doubt if there are many
who could go off on a scout of hundreds of miles, and face death alone.
It still seems to me supreme courage. Imagine, then, my gratitude, my
genuine admiration, when my husband sent scouts with letters to us, and
we saw them in returning swing lightly into the saddle and gallop off,
apparently unconcerned, freighted with our messages of affection.
Something better than such a journey awaited me, it seemed, when two of
our Seventh Cavalry officers, Captain Samuel Robbins and Colonel William
W. Cook, appeared in camp at the head of a detachment of cavalry and a
small train of wagons for supplies. The General had told them to bring
me back, and an ambulance was with the wagons, in which I was to ride.
It did not take me long to put our roll of bedding and my valise in
order; and to say anything about the heart in me leaping for joy is even
a tame expression to describe the delight that ran through every vein in
my body. To ascend such heights of joy means a corresponding capability
of descent into a region of suffering, about which I do not, even now,
like to think, for the memory of my disappointment has not departed
after all these years. The commanding officer of the department was at
the post temporarily, and forbade my going. There is a hateful clause in
the Army Regulations which gives him control of all camp-followers as
well as troops. I ran the whole gamut of insubordination, mutiny, and
revolt, as I threw myself alone on the little camp-bed of our tent. This
stormy, rebellious season, fought out by myself, ended, of course, as
everything must that gives itself into military jurisdiction, as I was
left behind in spite of myself; but I might have been enlisted as a
soldier for five years, and not have been more helpless. I put my
fingers into my ears, not to hear the call "Boots and Saddles!" as the
troops mounted and rode away. I only felt one relief; the officers would
tell the General that nothing but the all-powerful command forbidding
them to take me had prevented my doing what he knew I would do if it was
in my power. I had time also to use my husband as a safety-valve, and
pour out my vials of wrath against the officer detaining me, in a long
letter filling pages with regret that I was prevented going to him.
The Indians were then at their worst. They roamed up and down the route
of travel, burning the stations, running off stock, and attacking the
stages. General Hancock had given up all aggressive measures. The plan
was, to defend the route taken for supplies, and protect the stage
company's property so far as possible. The railroad building was almost
entirely abandoned. As our officers and their detachment were for a time
allowed to proceed quietly on their march to McPherson, they rather
flattered themselves they would see nothing of the enemy. Still, every
eye watched the long ravines that intersect the Plains and form such
fastnesses for the wily foe. There is so little to prepare you for these
cuts in the smooth surface of the plain, that an unguarded traveler
comes almost upon a deep fissure in the earth, before dreaming that the
lay of the land was not all the seeming level that stretches on to
sunset. These ravines have small clumps of sturdy trees, kept alive in
the drought of that arid climate by the slight moisture from what is
often a buried stream at the base. The Indians know them by heart, and
not only lie in wait in them, but escape by these gullies, that often
run on, growing deeper and deeper till the bed of a river is reached.
In one of these ravines, six hundred savages in full war-dress were in
ambush, awaiting the train of supplies, and sprang out from their
hiding-place with horrible yells as our detachment of less than fifty
men approached. Neither officer lost his head at a sight that was then
new to him. Their courage was inborn. They directed the troops to form a
circle about the wagons, and in this way the little band of valiant men
defended themselves against attack after attack. Not a soldier flinched,
nor did a teamster lose control of his mules, though the effort to
stampede them was incessant. This running fight lasted for three hours,
when suddenly the Indians withdrew. They, with their experienced eyes,
first saw the reinforcements coming to the relief of our brave fellows,
and gave up the attack.
The first time I saw Colonel Cook after this affair, he said: "The
moment I found the Indians were on us, and we were in for a fight, I
thought of you, and said to myself, 'If she were in the ambulance,
before giving an order I would ride up and shoot her.'" "Would you have
given me no chance for life," I replied, "in case the battle had gone in
your favor?" "Not one," he said. "I should have been unnerved by the
thought of the fate that awaited you, and I have promised the General
not to take any chances, but to kill you before anything worse could
happen." Already, in these early days of the regiment's history, the
accounts of Indian atrocities perpetrated on the women of the frontier
ranches, had curdled the blood of our men, and over the camp-fire at
night, when these stories were discussed, my husband had said to the
officers that he should take every opportunity to have me with him, but
there was but one course he wished pursued; if I was put in charge of
any one in the regiment, he asked them to kill me if Indians should
attack the camp or the escort on the march. I have referred in general
terms to this understanding, but it was on this occasion that the
seriousness with which the General's request was considered by his
brother officers first came home to me.
FOOTNOTE:
[H] My father went to Michigan early in 1800, and his long journey was
made by stage, canal-boat and schooner. He was not only a great while in
making the trip, but subject to privations, illness and fatigue, even
when using the only means of travel in those early days. The man who
went over the old California trail fared far worse. His life was in
peril from Indians all the distance, besides his having to endure
innumerable hardships. Those who pioneer in a Pullman car little know
what the unbeaten track held for the first comers.