THE FIRST FIGHT OF THE SEVENTH CAVALRY.
THE first fight of the Seventh Cavalry was at Fort Wallace. In June,
1867, a band of three hundred Cheyennes, under Roman Nose, attacked the
stage-station near that fort, and ran off the stock. Elated with this
success, they proceeded to Fort Wallace, that poor little group of log
huts and mud cabins having apparently no power of resistance. Only the
simplest devices could be resorted to for defense. The commissary stores
and ammunition were partly protected by a low wall of gunny-sacks filled
with sand. There were no logs near enough, and no time if there had
been, to build a stockade. But our splendid cavalry charged out as
boldly as if they were leaving behind them reserve troops and a battery
of artillery. They were met by a counter-charge, the Indians, with
lances poised and arrows on the string, coming on swiftly in
overwhelming numbers. It was a hand-to-hand fight. Roman Nose was about
to throw his javelin at one of our men, when the cavalryman, with his
left hand, gave a sabre-thrust equal to the best that many good fencers
can execute with their sword-arm. With his Spencer rifle he wounded the
chief, and saw him fall forward on his horse.
The post had been so short of men that a dozen negro soldiers, who had
come with their wagon from an outpost for supplies, were placed near the
garrison on picket duty. While the fight was going on, the two officers
in command found themselves near each other on the skirmish-line, and
observed a wagon with four mules tearing out to the line of battle. It
was filled with negroes, standing up, all firing in the direction of the
Indians. The driver lashed the mules with his black-snake, and roared at
them as they ran. When the skirmish-line was reached the colored men
leaped out and began firing again. No one had ordered them to leave
their picket-station, but they were determined that no soldiering should
be carried on in which their valor was not proved. The officers saw with
surprise that one of the number ran off by himself into the most
dangerous place, and one of them remarked, "There's a gone nigger, for a
certainty!" They saw him fall, throw up his hands, kick his feet in the
air, and then collapse--dead to all appearances. After the fight was
over, and the Indians had withdrawn to the bluffs, the soldiers were
called together and ordered back to the post. At that moment a negro,
gun in hand, walked up from where the one supposed to be slain had last
been seen. It was the dead restored to life. When asked by the officer,
"What in thunder do you mean, running off at such a distance into the
face of danger, and throwing up your feet and hands as if shot?" he
replied, "Oh, Lord, Massa, I just did dat to fool 'em. I fot deyed try
to get my scalp, thinkin' I war dead, and den I'd jest get one of 'em."
The following official report, sent in from some colored men stationed
at Wilson's Creek, who were attacked, and successfully drove off the
Indians, will give further proof of their good service, while at the
same time it reveals a little of other sides of the negro, when he first
began to serve Uncle Sam:
"All the boys done bully, but Corporal Johnson--he flinked. The way he
flinked was, to wait till the boys had drove the Injuns two miles, and
then he hollered, 'Gin it to 'em!' and the boys don't think that a man
that would flink that way ought to have corporal's straps."
In order to give this effort at military composition its full effect, it
would be necessary to add the official report of a cut-and-dried
soldier. No matter how trifling the duty, the stilted language,
bristling with technical pomposity, in which every military move is
reported, makes me, a non-combatant, question if the white man is not
about as absurd in his way as the darkey was in his.
[Illustration: NEGROES FORM THEIR OWN PICKET-LINE.]
Poor Fort Wallace! In another attack on the post, where several of our
men were killed, there chanced to be some engineers stopping at the
garrison, _en route_ to New Mexico, where a Government survey was to be
undertaken. One of them, carrying a small camera, photographed a
sergeant lying on the battle-ground after the enemy had retreated. The
body was gashed and pierced by twenty-three arrows. Everything combined
to keep that little garrison in a state of siege, and a gloomy pall hung
over the beleaguered spot.
As the stage-stations were one after another attacked, burned, the men
murdered and the stock driven off for a distance of three hundred miles,
the difficulty of sending mail became almost insurmountable. Denver lay
out there at the foot of the mountains, as isolated as if it had been a
lone island in the Pacific Ocean. Whenever a coach went out with the
mail, a second one was filled with soldiers and led the advance. The
Seventh Cavalry endeavored to fortify some of the deserted
stage-stations; but the only means of defense consisted in burrowing
underground. After the holes were dug, barely large enough for four men
standing, and a barrel of water and a week's provision, it was covered
over with logs and turf, leaving an aperture for firing. Where the men
had warning, they could "stand off" many Indians, and save the horses in
another dug-out adjacent.
After a journey along the infested route, where one of our officers was
detailed to post a corporal and four men at the stations when the stage
company endeavored to reinstate themselves, he decided to go on into
Denver for a few days. The detention then was threatening to be
prolonged, and at the stage company's headquarters the greatest
opposition was encountered before our officer could induce them to send
out a coach. Fortunately, as it afterward proved, three soldiers who had
orders to return to their troop, accompanied him. The stage company
opposed every move, and warned him that he left at his own risk. But
there was no other alternative, as he was due and needed at Fort
Wallace. At one of the stage-stations nearest Denver a woman still
endeavored to brave it out; but her nerve deserted her at last, and she
implored our officer to take her as far as he went on her way into the
States. Her husband, trying to protect the company's interests, elected
to remain, but begged that his wife might be taken away from the deadly
peril of their surroundings. Our officer frankly said there was very
little chance that the stage would ever reach Fort Wallace. She replied
that she had been frightened half to death all summer, and was sure to
be murdered if she remained, and might as well die in the stage, as
there was no chance for her at the station.
Every revolution of the wheels brought them into greater danger. The
three soldiers on the top of the stage kept a lookout on every side,
while the officer inside sat with rifle in hand, looking from the door
on either side the trail. Even with all this vigilance, the attack, when
it came, was a surprise. The Indians had hidden in a wash-out near the
road. Their first shot fatally wounded one of the soldiers, who,
dropping his gun, fell over the coach railing, and with dying energy,
half swung himself into the door of the stage, gasping out a message to
his mother. Our officer replied that he would listen to the parting
words later, helped the man to get upon the seat, and, without a
preliminary, pushed the woman down into the deep body of the coach,
bidding her, as she valued the small hope of life, not to let herself be
seen. As has been said before, those familiar with Indian warfare know
well with what redoubled ferocity the savage fights, if he finds that a
white woman is likely to fall into his hands. It is well known, also,
that the squaws are ignored if the chiefs have a white woman in their
power, and it brings a more fearful agony to her lot, for when the
warriors are absent from the village, the squaws, wild with jealousy,
heap cruelty and exhausting labor upon the helpless victim. All this the
frontier woman knew, as we all did, and it needed no second command to
keep her imperiled head on the floor of the coach.
The instant the dying soldier had dropped his gun, the driver--ah, what
cool heads those stage-drivers had!--seized the weapon, thrusting his
lines between his agile and muscular knees, inciting his mules, and
every shot had a deadly aim. The soldiers fired one volley, and then
leaped to the ground as the officer sprang from the stage door, and
following beside the vehicle, continued to fire as they walked. The
first two shots from the roof of the coach had killed two Indians hidden
in the hole made by the wash-out. By that means our men got what they
term the "morale" on them, and though they pursued, it was at a greater
distance than it would have been had not two of their number fallen at
the beginning of the attack.
[Illustration: AN ATTACK ON A STAGE-COACH.]
This running fire continued for five miles, when, fortunately for the
little band, one of the stage stations, where a few men had been posted
on our officer's trip out, was reached at last. Here a halt was made, as
the Indians congregated on a bluff where they could watch safely. The
coach was a wreck. The large lamps on either side of the driver's seat
were shattered completely, and there were six bullet-holes between the
roof and the wooden body of the coach. When the door of the stage was
opened, and the crouching woman lifted her face from the floor and was
helped out, she was so unmoved, so calm, the officer and soldiers were
astonished at her nerve. She looked about, and said, "But I don't see
any Indians yet." The officer told her that if she would take the
trouble to look over on the bluff, she would find them on dress parade.
Then she told him about her experience in the stage. The dying soldier
had breathed his last soon after he fell into the coach, and all the
five miles his dead body kept slipping from the seat on to the prostrate
woman. In vain she pushed it one side; the violence with which the
vehicle rocked from side to side, as the driver urged his animals to
their utmost speed, made it impossible for her to protect herself from
contact with the heavy corpse, that rolled about with the plunging of
the coach. All this, repeated without agitation, with no word of fear
for the remaining portion of the journey, which, happily, was safely
finished, drew from our officer, almost dumb with amazement at the
fortitude displayed, a speech that would rarely be set down by the
novelist who imagines conversations, but which is just what is likely to
be said in real life--"By Jove! you deserve a chromo!"
One troop of the Seventh Cavalry was left to garrison Fort Wallace,
while the remainder of the regiment was scouting. The post was then
about as dreary as any spot on earth. There were no trees; only the arid
plain surrounded it, and the sirocco winds drove the sands of that
desolate desert into the dug-outs that served for the habitation of
officers and men. The supplies were of the worst description. It was
impossible to get vegetables of any kind, and there was, therefore, no
preventing the soldier's scourge, scurvy, which the heat aggravated,
inflaming the already burning flesh. Even the medical supplies were
limited. None of the posts at that time were provided with decent
food--that is, none beyond the railroad. I remember how much troubled my
husband was over this subject, when I joined him at Fort Hays. The
bacon issued to the soldiers was not only rancid, but was supplied by
dishonest contractors, who slipped in any foreign substance they could,
to make the weight come up to the required amount; and thus the soldiers
were cheated out of the quantity due them, as well as imposed upon in
the quality of their rations. It was the privilege of the enlisted men
to make their complaints to the commanding officer, and some of them
sent to ask the General to come to the company street and allow them to
prove to him what frauds were being practiced. I went with him, and saw
a flat stone, the size of the slices of bacon as they were packed
together, sandwiched between the layers. My husband was justly incensed,
but could promise no immediate redress. The route of travel was so
dangerous that it was necessary to detail a larger number of men to
guard any train of supplies that attempted to reach those distant posts.
The soldiers felt, and justly too, that it was an outrage that
preparations for the arrival of so large a number of troops had not been
perfected in the spring, before the whole country was in a state of
siege. The supplies provided for the consumption of those troops
operating in the field or stationed at the posts had been sent out
during the war. It was then 1867, and they had lain in the poor,
ill-protected adobe or dug-out storehouse all the intervening time--more
than two years. At Forts Wallace and Hays there were no storehouses, and
the flour and bacon were only protected by tarpaulins. Both became
rancid and moldy, and were at the mercy of the rats and mice. A larger
quantity of supplies was forwarded to that portion of the country the
last year of the war than was needed for the volunteer troops sent out
there, and consequently our Seventh Cavalry, scouting day and night all
through that eventful summer, were compelled to subsist on the food
already on hand. It was the most mistaken economy to persist in issuing
such rations, when it is so well known that a well-filled stomach is a
strong background for a courageous heart. The desertions were unceasing.
The nearer the troops approached the mountains, the more the men took
themselves off to the mines.
In April of that year no deaths had occurred at Fort Wallace, but by
November there were sixty mounds outside the garrison, covering the
brave hearts of soldiers who had either succumbed to illness or been
shot by Indians. It was a fearful mortality for a garrison of fewer than
two hundred souls. If the soldiers, hungry for fresh meat, went out to
shoot buffalo, the half of them mounted guard to protect those who
literally took their lives in their hands to provide a few meals of
wholesome food for themselves and their comrades. At one company post on
the South Platte, a troop of our Seventh Cavalry was stationed. In the
mining excitement that ran so high in 1866 and 1867, the captain woke
one morning to find that his first sergeant and forty out of sixty men
that composed the garrison, had decamped, with horses and equipments,
for the mines. This left the handful of men in imminent peril from
Indian assaults. The wily foe lies hidden for days outside the garrison,
protected by a heap of stones or a sage-bush, and informs himself, as no
other spy on earth ever can, just how many souls the little group of
tents or the quarters represent. In this dire strait a dauntless
sergeant, Andrews, offered to go in search of the missing men. He had
established his reputation as a marksman in the regiment, and soldiers
used to say that "such shooting as Andrews did, got the bulge on
everybody." He was seemingly fearless. The captain consented to his
departure, but demurred to his going alone. The sergeant believed he
could only succeed if he went into the mining-camp unaccompanied, and so
the officer permitted him to go. He arrested and brought away nine,
traveling two hundred miles with them to Fort Wallace. There was no
guard-house at the post, and the commanding officer had to exercise his
ingenuity to secure these deserters. A large hole was dug in the middle
of the parade-ground and covered with logs and earth, leaving a square
aperture in the centre. The ladder by which they descended was removed
by the guard when all were in, and the Bastile could hardly be more
secure than this ingenious prison.
Two separate attacks were made by three hundred Dog-soldiers (Cheyennes)
to capture Fort Wallace that summer. During the first fight, the
prisoners in their pit heard the firing, and knew that all the troops
were outside the post engaged with the Indians. Knowing their
helplessness, their torture of mind can be imagined. If the enemy
succeeded in entering the garrison, their fate was sealed. The attacks
were so sudden that there was no opportunity to release these men. The
officers knew well enough, that, facing a common foe, they might count
on unquestionable unity of action from the deserters. Some clemency was
to be expected from a military court that would eventually try them, but
all the world knows the savage cry is "No quarter!" In an attack on a
post, there is only a wild stampede at the sound of the "General" from
the trumpet. There is a rush for weapons, and every one dashes outside
the garrison to the skirmish-line. In such a race, every soldier elects
to be his own captain till the field is reached. I have seen the troops
pour out of a garrison, at an unexpected attack, in an incredibly short
time. No one stands upon the order of his going, or cares whose gun or
whose horse he seizes on the way. Once the skirmish-line is formed, the
soldierly qualities assert themselves, and complete order is resumed. It
is only necessary to be in the midst of such excitement, to realize how
readily prisoners out of sight would be forgotten.
After the fight was over, and the Indians were driven off, the poor
fellows sent to ask if they could speak with the commanding officer, and
when he came to their prison for the interview, they said, "For God's
sake, do anything in future with us that you see fit--condemn us to any
kind of punishment, put balls and chains on all of us--but whatever you
do, in case of another attack, let us out of this hole and give us a
gun!" I have known a generous-minded commanding officer to release every
prisoner in the guard-house and set aside their sentences forever, after
they have shown their courage and presence of mind in defending a post
from Indians, or other perils, such as fire and storms.
The brave sergeant who had filled the pit with his captures, asked to
follow a deserter who had escaped to a settlement on the Saline River.
He found the man, arrested him, and brought him away unaided. When they
reached the railway at Ellsworth, the man made a plea of hunger, and the
sergeant took him to an eating-house. While standing at the counter, he
took the cover from a red-pepper box and furtively watching his chance,
threw the contents into the sergeant's eyes, completely blinding him.
The sergeant was then accounted second only to Wild Bill as a shot, and
not a whit less cool. Though groaning with agony, he lost none of his
self-possession. Listening for the footfall as the deserter started for
the door, he fired in the direction, and the man fell dead.
Our regiment was now passing through its worst days. Constant scouting
over the sun-baked, cactus-bedded Plains, by men who were as yet
unacclimated, and learning by the severest lessons to inure themselves
to hardships, made terrible havoc in the ranks. The horses, also fresh
to this sort of service, grew gaunt, and dragged their miserably fed
bodies over the blistering trail. Here and there along the line a
trooper walked beside his beast, wetting, when he could, the flesh that
was raw from the chafing of the saddle, especially when the rider is a
novice in horsemanship.
Insubordination among the men was the certain consequence of the
half-starved, discouraged state they were in. One good fight would have
put heart into them to some extent, for the hopelessness of following
such a will-o'-the-wisp as the Indians were that year, made them think
their scouting did no good and might as well be discontinued. Some of
the officers were poor disciplinarians, either from inexperience or
because they lacked the gift of control over others, which seems left
out of certain temperaments. Alas! some had no control over themselves;
and no one could expect obedience in such a case. In its early days the
Seventh Cavalry was not the temperate regiment it afterward became. Some
of the soldiers in the ranks had been officers during the war, and they
were learning the lesson, that hard summer, of receiving orders instead
of issuing them. There were a good many men who had served in the
Confederate army, and had not a ray of patriotism in enlisting; it was
merely a question of subsistence to them in their beggared condition.
There were troopers who had entered the service from a romantic love of
adventure, with little idea of what stuff a man must be made if he is
hourly in peril, or, what taxes the nerves still more, continually
called upon to endure privation.
The mines were evidently the great object that induced the soldier to
enlist that year. The Eastern papers had wild accounts of the enormous
yield in the Rocky Mountains, and free transportation by Government
could be gained by enlisting. At that time, when the railroad was
incomplete, and travel almost given up on account of danger to the
stages; when the telegraph, which now reaches the destination of the
rogue with its warning far in advance of him, had not even been
projected over the Plains--it was the easiest sort of escape for a man,
for when once he reached the mines he was lost for years, and perhaps
died undiscovered.
Recruits of the kind sent to us would, even under favorable
circumstances, be difficult material from which to evolve soldierly men;
and considering their terrible hardships, it was no wonder the regiment
was nearly decimated. In enlisting, the recruit rarely realizes the
trial that awaits him of surrendering his independence. We hear and know
so much in this country of freedom that even a tramp appreciates it. If
a man is reasonably subordinate, it is still very hard to become
accustomed to the infinitesimal observances that I have so often been
told are "absolutely necessary to good order and military discipline."
To a looker-on like me, it seemed very much like reducing men to
machines. The men made so much trouble on the campaign--and we knew of
it by the many letters that came into garrison in one mail, as well as
by personal observation, when in the regiment--that I did not find much
sympathy in my heart for them. In one night, while I was at Fort Hays,
forty men deserted, and in so bold and deliberate a manner, taking
arms, ammunition, horses, and quantities of food, that the officers were
roused to action, for it looked as if not enough men would be left to
protect the fort. A conspiracy was formed among the men, by which a
third of the whole command planned to desert at one time. Had not their
plotting been discovered, there would not have been a safe hour for
those who remained, as the Indians lay in wait constantly. My husband,
in writing of that wholesale desertion in the early months of the
regiment's history, makes some excuse for them, even under circumstances
that would seem to have put all tribulation and patience out of mind.
After weary marches, the regiment found itself nearing Fort Wallace with
a sense of relief, feeling that they might halt and recruit in that
miserable but comparatively safe post. They were met by the news of the
ravages of the cholera. No time could be worse for the soldiers to
encounter it. The long, trying campaign, even extending into the
Department of the Platte, had fatigued and disheartened the command.
Exhaustion and semi-starvation made the men an easy prey. The climate,
though so hot in summer, had heretofore been in their favor, as the air
was pure, and, in ordinary weather, bracing. But with cholera, even the
high altitude was no protection. No one could account for the appearance
of the pestilence; never before or since had it been known in so
elevated a part of our country. There were those who attributed the
scourge to the upturning of the earth in the building of the Kansas
Pacific Railroad; but the engineers had not even been able to prospect
as far as Wallace on account of the Indians. An infantry regiment, on
its march to New Mexico, halted at Fort Wallace, and even in their brief
stay the men were stricken down, and with inefficient nurses, no
comforts, not even wholesome food, it was a wonder that there was enough
of the regiment left for an organization. The wife of one of the
officers, staying temporarily in a dug-out, fell a victim, and died in
the wretched underground habitation in which an Eastern farmer would
refuse to shelter his stock.
It was a hard fate for our Seventh Cavalry men. Their camp, outside the
garrison, had no protection from the remorseless sun, and the poor
fellows rolled on the hot earth in their small tents, without a cup of
cold water or a morsel of decent food. The surgeons fought day and night
to stay the spread of the disease, but everything was against them. The
exhausted soldiers, disheartened by long, hard, unsuccessful marching,
had little desire to live when once seized by the awful disease.
With the celerity with which evil news travels, much of what I have
written came back to us. Though the mails were so uncertain, and travel
was almost discontinued, still the story of the illness and desperate
condition of our regiment reached us, and many a garbled and exaggerated
tale came with the true ones. Day after day I sat on the gallery of the
quarters in which we were temporarily established, watching for the
first sign of the cavalryman who brought our mail. Doubtless he thought
himself a winged Mercury. In reality, no snail ever crept so slowly.
When he began his walk toward me, measuring his regulation steps with
military precision, a world of fretful impatience possessed me. I wished
with all my soul I was, for the moment, any one but the wife of his
commanding officer, that I might pick up my skirts and fly over the
grass, and snatch the parcel from his hand. When he finally reached the
gallery, and swung himself into position to salute, my heart thumped
like the infantry drum. Day after day came the same pompous, maddening
words: "I have the honor to report there are no letters for Mrs.
Major-General George Armstrong Custer." Not caring at last whether the
man saw the flush of disappointment, the choking breath, and the rising
tears, I fled in the midst of his slow announcement, to plunge my
wretched head into my pillow, hoping the sound of the sobs would not
reach Eliza, who was generally hovering near to propose something that
would comfort me in my disappointment.
She knew work was my panacea, and made an injured mouth over the rent in
her apron, which, in her desires to keep me occupied, she was not above
tearing on purpose. With complaining tones she said, "Miss Libbie, ain't
you goin' to do no sewin' for me at all? 'Pears like every darkey in
garrison has mo' clo'es than I has"--forgetting in her zeal the
abbreviation of her words, about which her "ole miss" had warned her.
Sewing, reading, painting, any occupation that had beguiled the hours,
lost its power as those letterless days came and went. I was even afraid
to show my face at the door when the mail-man was due, for I began to
despair about hearing at all. After days of such gloom, my leaden heart
one morning quickened its beats at an unusual sound--the clank of a
sabre on our gallery and with it the quick, springing steps of feet
unlike the quiet infantry around us. The door, behind which I paced
uneasily, opened, and with a flood of sunshine that poured in, came a
vision far brighter than even the brilliant Kansas sun. There before me,
blithe and buoyant, stood my husband! In an instant, every moment of the
preceding months was obliterated. What had I to ask more? What did earth
hold for us greater than what we then had? The General, as usual when
happy and excited, talked so rapidly that the words jumbled themselves
into hopeless tangles, but my ears were keen enough to extract from the
medley the fact that I was to return at once with him.
Eliza, half crying, scolding as she did when overjoyed, vibrated between
kitchen and parlor, and finally fell to cooking, as a safety-valve for
her overcharged spirits. The General ordered everything she had in the
house, determined, for once in that summer of deprivations, to have, as
the soldiers term it, one "good, square meal."
After a time, when my reason was again enthroned, I began to ask what
good fortune had brought him to me. It seems that my husband, after
reaching Fort Wallace, was overwhelmed with the discouragements that met
him. His men dying about him, without his being able to afford them
relief, was something impossible for him to face without a struggle for
their assistance. A greater danger than all was yet to be encountered,
if the right measures were not taken immediately. Even the wretched food
was better than starvation, and so much of that had been destroyed, with
the hope of the arrival of better, that there was not enough left to
ration the men, and unless more came they would starve, as they were out
then two hundred miles from the railroad. If a scout was sent, his
progress was so slow, hiding all day and traveling only by night, it
would take so long that there might be men dying from hunger as well as
cholera, before he could return with aid. And, besides this scarcity of
food, the medical supplies were insufficient. The General, prompt always
in action, suddenly determined to relieve the beleaguered place by going
himself for medicines and rations. He took a hundred men to guard the
wagons that would bring relief to the suffering, and in fifty-five hours
they were at Fort Hays, one hundred and fifty miles distant. It was a
terrible journey. He afterward made a march of eighty miles in seventeen
hours, without the horses showing themselves fagged; and during the war
he had marched a portion of his Division of cavalry, accompanied by
horse artillery, ninety miles in twenty-four hours.
My husband, finding I had been sent away from Fort Hays, and believing
me to be at Fort Harker, a victim of cholera, determined to push on
there at night, leaving the train for supplies to travel the distance
next day. Colonel Custer and Colonel Cook accompanied him. They found
the garrison in the deepest misery, the cholera raging at its worst, the
gloom and hopelessness appalling. My husband left the two officers to
load the wagons, and fortunately, as the railroad had reached Fort
Harker, the medical and commissary supplies were abundant. It took but a
few hours to reach Fort Riley.
He knew from former experience that I would require but a short time to
get ready--indeed, my letters were full of assurances that I lived from
hour to hour with the one hope that I might join him, and these letters
had met him at Forts Hays and Harker. He knew well that nothing we
might encounter could equal the desolation and suspense of the days
that I was enduring at Fort Riley.
My little valise was filled long before it was necessary for us to take
the return train that evening. With the joy, the relief, the gratitude,
of knowing that God had spared my husband through an Indian campaign,
and averted from him the cholera; and now that I was to be given
reprieve from days of anxiety, and nights of hideous dreams of what
might befall him, and that I would be taken back to camp--could more be
crowded into one day? Was there room for a thought, save one of devout
thankfulness, and such happiness as I find no words to describe?
There was in that summer of 1867 one long, perfect day. It was mine,
and--blessed be our memory, which preserves to us the joys as well as
the sadness of life!--it is still mine, for time and for eternity.
END.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Varied hyphenation was retained
such as bedclothes and bed-clothes, and drawback and draw-back.
Page 32, "jouneying" changed to "journeying" (Louisville, and the
journeying)
Page 57, "oceasion" changed to "occasion" (On one occasion we went)
Page 83, "n" changed to "a" (we put ourselves in a)
Page 137, "anxionsly" changed to "anxiously" (had been anxiously
expected)
Page 146, "Afrer" changed to "After" (After many enjoyable parties)
Page 216, "fnture" changed to "future" (to the future; I was wholly)
Page 220, "beautitul" changed to "beautiful" (of those beautiful St.
Louis)
Page 242, "Michican" changed to "Michigan" (Coming from Michigan)
Page 354, "ungarded" changed to "unguarded" (that an unguarded traveler)
Page 381, "neverthelesss" changed to "nevertheless" (an awful thought
nevertheless)
Page 390, "ly-on" changed to "lying on" (sergeant lying on the
battle-ground)
End of Project Gutenberg's Tenting on the Plains, by Elizabeth B. Custer