"There's something in the parting hourThat chills the warmest heart;But kindred, comrade, lover, friend,Are fated all to part.But this I've seen, and many a pangHas pressed it on my mind—The one that goes is happierThan he who stays behind."
Perhaps after I had said this, and another similar verse, over and over again, in a sing-song, droning voice, the regular breathing at my side told me that the poor, tired heart had found temporary forgetfulness; but when we came to the sad reality of our lonely life next day, every object in our quarters reminded us what it is to "stay behind." There are no lonely women who will not realize how the very chairs, or anything in common use, take to themselves voices and call out reminders of what has been and what now is. Fill up the time as we might, there came each day, at twilight, an hour that should be left out of every solitary life. It is meant only for the happy, who need make no subterfuges to fill up hours that are already precious.
FOOTNOTE:[G]From "Hans Breitmann's Ballads," by permission of Messrs. T. B. Peterson & Brothers, publishers.
[G]From "Hans Breitmann's Ballads," by permission of Messrs. T. B. Peterson & Brothers, publishers.
[G]From "Hans Breitmann's Ballads," by permission of Messrs. T. B. Peterson & Brothers, publishers.
A PRAIRIE FIRE.
Itwas a great change for us from the bustle and excitement of the cavalry, as they prepared for the expedition, to the dull routine of an infantry garrison that replaced the dashing troopers. It was intensely quiet, and we missed the clatter of the horses' hoofs, the click of the curry-comb, which had come from the stables at the morning and evening grooming of the animals, the voices of the officers drilling the recruits, the constant passing and repassing of mounted men in front of our quarters; above all, the enlivening trumpet-calls ringing out all day, and we rebelled at the drum and bugle that seemed so tame in contrast. There were no more long rides for me, for Custis Lee was taken out at my request, as I feared no one would give him proper care at the post. Even the little chapel where the officers' voices had added their music to the chants, was now nearly deserted. The chaplain was an interesting man, and the General and most of the garrison had attended the services during the winter. Only three women were left to respond, and, as we had all been reared in other churches, we quaked a good deal, for fear our responses would not come in the right place. They did not lack in earnestness, for when had we lonely creatures such cause to send up petitions as at that time, when those for whom we prayed were advancing into an enemy's country day by day! Never had the beautiful Litany, that asks deliverance for all in trouble, sorrow, perplexity, temptation, borne such significance to us as then. No one can dream, until it is brought home to him, how space doubles, trebles, quadruples, when it is impossible to see the little wire that,fragile as it seems, chains one to the absent. It is difficult to realize, now that our country is cobwebbed with telegraph lines, what a despairing feeling it was, in those days, to get far beyond the blessed nineteenth-century mode of communication. He who crosses the ocean knows a few days of such uncertainty, but over the pathless sea of Western prairie it was chaos, after the sound of the last horse's hoof was lost in the distance.
We had not been long alone when a great danger threatened us. The level plateau about our post, and the valley along the river near us, were covered with dry prairie grass, which grows thickly and is matted down into close clumps. It was discovered one day, that a narrow thread of fire was creeping on in our direction, scorching these tufts into shrivelled brown patches that were ominously smoking when first seen. As I begin to write of what followed, I find it difficult; for even those living in Western States and Territories regard descriptions of prairie-fires as exaggerated, and are apt to look upon their own as the extreme to which they ever attain. I have seen the mild type, and know that a horseman rides through such quiet conflagrations in safety. The trains on some of our Western roads pass harmless through belts of country when the flames are about them; there is no impending peril, because the winds are moderate. When a tiny flame is discovered in Kansas, or other States, where the wind blows a hurricane so much of the time, there is not a moment to lose. Although we saw what was hardly more than a suspicion of smoke, and the slender, sinuous, red tongue along the ground, we women had read enough of the fires in Kansas to know that the small blaze meant that our lives were in jeopardy. Most of us were then unacquainted with those precautions which the experienced Plainsman takes, and, indeed, we had no ranchmen near us to set us the example of caution which the frontiersman so soon learns. We should have had furrows ploughed around the entire post in double lines, a certain distance apart, to check the approach of fire. There was no time to fight the foe with alike weapon, by burning over a portion of the grass between the advancing blaze and our post. The smoke rose higher and higher beyond us, and curling, creeping fire began to ascend into waves of flame with alarming rapidity, and in an incredibly short time we were overshadowed with a dark pall of smoke.
The Plains were then new to us. It is impossible to appreciate their vastness at first. The very idea was hard to realize, that from where we lived we looked on an uninterrupted horizon. We felt that it must be the spot where some one first said, "The sky fits close down all around." It fills the soul with wonder and awe to look upon the vastness of that sea of land for the first time. As the sky became lurid, and the blaze swept on toward us, surging to and fro in waving lines as it approached nearer and nearer, it seemed that the end of the world, when all shall be rolled together as a scroll, had really come. The whole earth appeared to be on fire. The sky was a sombre canopy above us, on which flashes of brilliant light suddenly appeared as the flames rose, fanned by a fresh gust of wind. There were no screams nor cries, simply silent terror and shiverings of horror, as we women huddled together to watch the remorseless fiend advancing with what appeared to be inevitable annihilation of the only shelter we had. Every woman's thoughts turned to her natural protector, now far away, and longed with unutterable longing for one who, at the approach of danger, stood like a bulwark of courage and defense. The river was half a mile away, and our feet could not fly fast enough to reach the water before the enemy would be upon us. There was no such a thing as a fire-engine. The Government then had not even provided the storehouses and quarters with the Babcock Extinguisher. We were absolutely powerless, and could only fix our fascinated gaze upon the approaching foe.
In the midst of this appalling scene, we were startled anew by a roar and shout from the soldiers' barracks. Some one had, at last, presence of mind to marshal the men into line, and, assuming the commanding tone that ensures action andobedience in emergencies, gave imperative orders. Every one—citizen employees, soldiers and officers—seized gunny sacks, blankets, poles, anything available that came in their way, and raced wildly beyond the post into the midst of the blazing grass. Forming a cordon, they beat and lashed the flames with the blankets, so twisted as to deal powerful blows. It was a frenzied fight. The soldiers yelled, swore and leaped frantically upon beds of blazing grass, condensing a lifetime of riotous energy into these perilous moments. We women were not breathless and trembling over fears for ourselves alone: our hearts were filled with terror for the brave men who were working for our deliverance. They were men to whom we had never spoken, nor were we likely ever to speak to them, so separated are the soldiers in barracks from an officer's household. Sometimes we saw their eyes following us respectfully, as we rode about the garrison, seeming to have in them an air of possession, as if saying, "That's our captain's or our colonel's wife." Now, they were showing their loyalty, for there are always a few of a regiment left behind to care for the company property, or to take charge of the gardens for the soldiers. These men, and all the other brave fellows with them, imperiled their lives in order that the officers who had gone out for Indian warfare, might come home and find "all's well." Let soldiers know that a little knot of women are looking to them as their saviors, and you will see what nerves of iron they have, what inexhaustible strength they can exhibit.
No sooner had the flames been stamped out of one portion of the plain, than the whole body of men were obliged to rush off in another direction and begin the thrashing and tramping anew. It seemed to us that there was no such thing as conquering anything so insidious. But the wind, that had been the cause of our danger, saved us at last. That very wind which we had reviled all winter for its doleful howlings around our quarters and down the chimneys; that selfsame wind that had infuriated us by blowing our hats off when we went out to walk, or impeded our steps by twistingour skirts into hopeless folds about our ankles—was now to be our savior. Suddenly veering, as is its fashion in Kansas, it swept the long tongues of flame over the bluffs beyond us, where the lonely coyote and its mate were driven into their lair. By this vagary of the element, that is never anywhere more variable than in Kansas, our quarters, our few possessions, and no doubt our lives, were saved. With faces begrimed and blistered, their clothes black with soot and smoke, their hands burnt and numb from violent effort, the soldiers and citizen employees dragged their exhausted bodies back to garrison, and dropped down anywhere to rest.
The tinge of green that had begun to appear was now gone, and the charred, smoke-stained earth spread as far as we could see, making more desolate the arid, treeless country upon which we looked. It was indeed a blackened and dismal desert that encircled us, and we knew that we were deprived of the delight of the tender green of early spring, which carpets the Plains for a brief time before the sun parches and turns to russet and brown the turf of our Western prairies.
As we sat on the gallery, grieving over this ruin of spring, Mrs. Gibbs gathered her two boys closer to her, as she shuddered over another experience with prairie fire, where her children were in peril. The little fellows, in charge of a soldier, were left temporarily on the bank of a creek. Imagine the horror of a mother who finds, as she did, the grass on fire and a broad strip of flame separating her from her children! Before the little ones could follow their first instinct, and thereby encounter certain death by attempting to run through the fire to their mother, the devoted soldier, who had left them but a moment, realizing that they would instantly seek their mother, ran like an antelope to where the fire-band narrowed, leaped the flame, seized the little men, and plunged with mad strides to the bank of the creek, where, God be praised! nature provides a refuge from the relentless foe of our Western plains.
In our Western prairie fires the flame is often a mile long,perhaps not rising over a foot high, but, sweeping from six to ten miles an hour, it requires the greatest exertion of the ranchmen, with all kinds of improvised flails, to beat out the fire. The final resort of a frontiersman, if the flames are too much for him to overcome, is to take refuge with his family, cattle, horses, etc., in the garden, where the growing vegetables make an effectual protection. Alas, when he finds it safe to venture from the green oasis, the crops are not only gone, but the roots are burned, and the ground valueless from the parching of the terrible heat. When a prairie fire is raging at ten miles an hour, the hurricane lifts the tufts of loosened bunch grass, which in occasional clumps is longer than the rest, carrying it far beyond the main fire, and thus starting a new flame. No matter how weary the pioneer may be after a day's march, he neglects no precautions that can secure him from fire. He twists into wisp the longest of the bunch grass, trailing it around the camp; the fire thus started is whipped out by the teamsters, after it has burned over a sufficient area for safety. They follow the torch of the leader with branches of the green willow or twigs of cottonwood bound together.
Man with whip and horsesWHIPPING HORSES TO KEEP THEM FROM FREEZING.
The first letters, sent back from the expedition by scouts, made red-letter days for us. The official envelope, stained with rain and mud, bursting open with the many pages crowded in, sometimes even tied with a string by some messenger through whose hands the parcel passed, told stories of the vicissitudes of the missive in the difficult journey to our post. These letters gave accounts of the march to Fort Larned, where a great camp was established, to await the arrival of the chiefs with whom the council was to be held. While the runners were absent on their messages to the tribes, some effort was made to protect the troops against the still sharp winds of early spring. The halt and partly permanent camp was most fortunate; for had the troops been on the march, a terrible snow-storm that ensued would have wrought havoc, for the cold became so intense, and the snow so blinding, it was only through great precautions that loss of life was prevented.The animals were given an extra ration of oats, while the guards were obliged to take whips and strike at the horses on the picket-line, to keep them in motion and prevent them from freezing. The snow was eight inches deep, a remarkable fall for Kansas at that time of the year. As we read over these accounts, which all the letters contained, though mine touched lightly on the subject, owing to my husband's fixed determination to write of the bright side, we felt that we had hardly a right to our fires and comfortable quarters. There were officers on the expedition who could not keep warm. A number were then enduring their first exposure to the elements, and I remember that several, who afterward became stalwart, healthy men, were then partial invalids, owing to sedentary life in the States, delicate lungs or climatic influences.
In my husband's letters there was a laughable description of his lending his dog to keep a friend warm. The officer came into his tent after dark, declaring that no amount of bedding had any effect in keeping out the cold, and he had come to borrow a dog, to see if he could have one night's uninterrupted rest. Our old hound was offered, because he could cover such a surface, for he was a big brute, and when he once located himself he rarely moved until morning. My husband forgot, in giving Rover his recommendation, to mention a habit he had of sleeping audibly, besides a little fashion of twitching his legs and thumping his cumbrous tail, in dreams that were evidently of the chase, or of battles he was living over, in which "Turk," the bull-dog, was being vanquished. He was taken into the neighbor's tent, and induced to settle for the night, after the General's coaxing and pretense of going to sleep beside him. Later, when he went back to see how Rover worked as a portable furnace, he found the officer sound asleep on his back, emitting such nasal notes as only a stout man is equal to, while Rover lay sprawled over the broad chest of his host, where he had crept after he was asleep, snoring with an occasional interlude of a long-drawn snort, introduced in a manner peculiar to foxhounds.The next morning my husband was not in the least surprised, after what he had seen the night before, to receive a call from the officer, who presented a request to exchange dogs. He said that when he made the proposal, he did not expect to have a bedfellow that would climb up over his lungs and crush all the breath out of his body. Instead of showing proper sympathy, the General threw himself on his pallet and roared with laughter.
All these camp incidents brightened up the long letters, and kept me from realizing, as I read, what were the realities of that march, undertaken so early in the season. But as the day advanced, and the garrison exchanged the news contained in all the letters that had arrived from the expedition, I could not deceive myself into the belief that the way of our regiment had thus far been easy.
With all my endeavors to divide the day methodically, and enforce certain duties upon myself, knowing well that it was my only refuge from settled melancholy, I found time a laggard. It is true, my clothes were in a deplorable state, for while our own officers were with us they looked to us to fill up their leisure hours. The General, always devoted to his books, could read in the midst of our noisy circle; but I was never permitted much opportunity, and managed to keep up with the times by my husband's account of the important news, and by the agreeable method of listening to the discussions of the men upon topics of the hour. If, while our circle was intact, I tried to sew, a ride, a walk or a game of parlor croquet was proposed, to prevent my even mending our clothing. Now that we were alone, it was necessary to make the needle fly. Eliza was set up with a supply of blue-checked gowns and aprons, while my own dresses were reconstructed, the riding-habit was fortified with patches, and any amount of stout linen thread disappeared in strengthening the seams; for between the hard riding and the gales of wind we encountered, the destruction of a habit was rapid.
Diana, with the elastic heart of a coquette, had not only sped the parting, but welcomed the coming guest; for hardlyhad the sound of the trumpet died away, before a new officer began to frequent our parlor. It was then the fashion for men to wear a tiny neck-bow, called a butterfly tie. They were made on a pasteboard foundation, with a bit of elastic cord to fasten them to the shirt-stud. I knew of no pasteboard nearer than Leavenworth; but in the curly head there were devices to meet the exigency. I found Diana with her lap full of photographs, cutting up the portraits of the departed beaux, to make ties for the next. Whether the new suitor ever discovered that he was wearing at his neck the face of a predecessor, I do not know; but this I do remember, that the jagged, frayed appearance that the girl's dresses presented when turned inside out, betrayed where the silk was procured to make the neckties. She had clipped out bits of material where the skirt was turned in, and when we attempted to remodel ourselves and cut down the voluminous breadths of that time into tightly gored princesse gowns, we were put to it to make good the deficiencies, and "piece out" the silk that had been sacrificed to her flirtations.
Succeeding letters from my husband gave an account of his first experience with the perfidy of the Indians. The council had been held, and it was hoped that effectual steps were taken to establish peace. But, as is afterward related, the chiefs gave them the slip and deserted the village. Even in the midst of hurried preparations to follow the renegades, my husband stopped, in order that his departure might not make me depressed, to give an account of a joke that they all had on one of their number, who dared to eat soup out of an Indian kettle still simmering over the deserted fire. The General pressed the retreating Indians so closely, the very night of their departure, that they were obliged to divide into smaller detachments, and even the experienced Plainsmen could no longer trace a trail.
Meanwhile, as our officers were experiencing all sorts of new phases in life on their first march over the Plains, our vicissitudes were increasing at what seemed to be the peaceful Fort Riley. I had seen with dismay that the cavalry werereplaced by negro infantry, and found that they were to garrison the post for the summer. I had never seen negroes as soldiers, and these raw recruits had come from plantations, where I had known enough of their life, while in Texas and Louisiana, to realize what an irresponsible, child's existence it was. Entirely dependent on some one's care, and without a sense of obligation of any kind, they were exempt from the necessity of thinking about the future. Their time had been spent in following the directions of the overseer in the corn-field or cotton brake by day, and beguiling the night with a coon-hunt or the banjo. The early days of their soldiering were a reign of terror to us women, in our lonely, unprotected homes. It was very soon discovered that the officer who commanded them was for the first time accustoming himself to colored troops, and did not know how to keep in check the boisterous, undisciplined creatures. He was a courteous, quiet man, of scholarly tastes, and evidently entertained the belief that moral suasion would eventually effect any purpose. The negroes, doubtless discovering what they could do under so mild a commander, grew each day more lawless. They used the parade-ground, which our officers had consecrated to the most formal of ceremonies, like dress-parades and guard-mount, for a playground; turning hand-springs all over the sprouting grass, and vaulting in leap-frog over the bent back of a comrade. If it were possible for people in the States to realize how sacred the parade-ground of a Western post is, how hurriedly a venturesome cow or loose horse is marshaled off, how pompously every one performs the military duties permitted on this little square; how even the color-sergeant, who marches at measured gait to take down and furl the garrison flag, when the evening gun announces that the sun has been, by the royal mandate of military law, permitted to set—they would then understand with what perturbation we women witnessed the desecration of what had been looked upon as hallowed earth. The sacrilege of these monkey acrobats turning somersaults over the ground, their elongated heels vibrating in the air, while they stood upontheir heads in front of our windows, made us very indignant. When one patted "juba," and a group danced, we seemed transformed into a disconnected minstrel show. There was not a trace of the well-conducted post of a short time before.
All this frivolity was but the prelude to serious trouble. The joy with which the negroes came into possession of a gun for the first time in their lives would have been ludicrous had it not been extremely dangerous. They are eminently a race given over to display. This was exhibited in their attempts to make themselves marksmen in a single day. One morning we were startled by a shot coming from the barracks. It was followed by a rush of men out of the doors, running wildly to and fro, yelling with alarm. We knew that some disaster had occurred, and it proved to be the instant death of a too confiding negro, who had allowed himself to be cast for the part of William Tell's son. His accidental murderer was a man that had held a gun in his hand that week for the first time.
They had no sort of idea how to care for their health. The ration of a soldier is so large that a man who can eat it all in a day is renowned as a glutton. I think but few instances ever occur where the entire ration is consumed by one man. It is not expected, and, fortunately, with all the economy of the Government, the supply has never been cut down; but the surplus is sold and a company fund established. By this means, the meagre fare is increased by buying vegetables, if it happen to be a land where they can be obtained. The negroes, for the first time in possession of all the coffee, pork, sugar, and hardtack they wanted, ate inordinately. There was no one to compel them to cleanliness. If a soldier in a white regiment is very untidy the men become indignant, and as the voluminous regulations provide directions only for the scrubbing of the quarters and not of the men, they sometimes take the affair into their own hands, and, finding from their captain that they will not be interfered with, the untidy one is taken on a compulsory journey to the creek and "ducked" until the soldiers consider himendurable. The negroes at that time had no idea of encountering the chill of cold water on their tropical skins, and suffered the consequences very soon. Pestilence broke out among them. Smallpox, black measles and other contagious diseases raged, while the soldier's enemy, scurvy, took possession. We were within a stone's-throw of the barracks. Of course the illest among them were quarantined in hospital-tents outside the garrison; but to look over to the infested barracks and realize what lurked behind the walls, was, to say the least, uncomfortable for those of us who were near enough to breathe almost the same air.
Added to this, we felt that, with so much indiscriminate firing, a shot might at any time enter our windows. One evening a few women were walking outside the garrison. Our limits were not so circumscribed, at that time, as they were in almost all the places where I was stationed afterward. A sentinel always walked a beat in front of a small arsenal outside of the post, and, overcome with the grandeur of carrying a gun and wearing a uniform, he sought to impress his soldierly qualities on anyone approaching by a stentorian "Who comes thar?" It was entirely unnecessary, as it was light enough to see the fluttering skirts of women, for the winds kept our drapery in constant motion. Almost instantly after his challenge, the flash of his gun and the whizz of a bullet past us made us aware that our lives were spared only because of his inaccurate aim. Of course that ended our evening walks, and it was a great deprivation, as the monotony of a garrison becomes almost unbearable.
There was one person who profited by the presence of the negro troops. Our Eliza was such a belle, that she would have elevated them into too exalted a sphere to wait on us, had she not been accustomed to constant adulation from the officers' body-servants from the time, as she expressed it, when she "entered the service." Still, it was a distraction, of which she availed herself in our new post, to receive new beaux, tire of them, quarrel and discard them for fresh victims. They waited on her assiduously, and I suspect theydined daily in our kitchen, as long as their brief season of favor lasted. They even sought to curry favor with Eliza by gifts to me—snaring quail, imprisoning them in cages made of cracker-boxes, or bring dandelion greens or wild-flowers as they appeared in the dells. For all these gifts I was duly grateful, but I was very much afraid of a negro soldier, nevertheless.
At last our perplexities and frights reached a climax. One night we heard the measured tramp of feet over the gravel in the road in front of our quarters, and they halted almost opposite our windows, where we could hear the voices. No loud "Halt, who comes there!" rang out on the air, for the sentinel was enjoined to silence. Being frightened, I called to Eliza. To Diana and to me she was worth a corporal's guard, and could not be equaled as a defender, solacer and general manager of our dangerous situations—indeed, of all our affairs. Eliza ran up-stairs in response to my cry, and we watched with terror what went on. It soon was discovered to be a mutiny. The men growled and swore, and we could see by their threatening movements that they were in a state of exasperation. They demanded the commanding officer, and as he did not appear, they clenched their fists, and looked at the house as if they would tear it down, or at least break in the doors. It seemed a desperate situation to us, for the quarters were double, and our gallery had no division from the neighbors. If doors and windows were to be demolished, there would be little hope for ours. I knew of no way by which we could ask help, as most of the soldiers were colored, and we felt sure that the plan, whatever it was, must include them all.
At last Eliza realized how terrified I was, and gave up the absorbing watch she was keeping, for her whole soul was in the wrongs, real or fancied, of her race. Too often had she comforted me in my fears to forget me now, and an explanation was given of this alarming outbreak.
The men had for some time been demanding the entire ration, and were especially clamorous for all the sugar thatwas issued. Very naturally, the captain had withheld the supernumerary supplies, in order to make company savings for the purpose of buying vegetables. A mutiny over sugar may seem a small affair, but it assumes threatening proportions when a mob of menacing, furious men tramp up and down in front of one's house, and there is no safe place of refuge, nor any one to whom appeal can be made. Eliza kept up a continuous comforting and reassuring, but when I reminded her that our door had no locks, or, rather, no keys, for it was not the custom to lock army quarters, she said, "La, Miss Libbie, they won't tech you; you dun wrote too many letters for 'em, and they'se got too many good vittels in your kitchen ever to 'sturb you." Strong excitement is held to be the means of bringing out the truth, and here were the facts revealed that they had been bountifully fed at our expense. I had forgotten how much ink I had used in trying to put down their very words in love-letters, or family epistles to the Southern plantation. The infuriated men had to quiet down, for no response came from the commanding officer. They found out, I suppose from the investigations of one acting as spy, and going to the rear of the quarters, that he had disappeared. To our intense relief, they straggled off until their growling and muttering were lost in the barracks, where they fortunately went to bed. No steps were taken to punish them, and at any imaginary wrong, they might feel, from the success of this first attempt at insurrection, that it was safe to repeat the experiment. We women had little expectation but that the summer would be one of carousal and open rebellion against military rule. The commanding officer, though very retiring, was so courteous and kindly to all the women left in the garrison, that it was difficult to be angry with him for his failure to control the troops. Indeed, his was a hard position to fill, with a lot of undisciplined, ignorant, ungoverned creatures, who had never been curbed, except by the punishment of plantation life.
Meanwhile my letters, on which I wrote every day, even if there was no opportunity to send them, made mention of ourfrights and uncertainties. Each mail carried out letters from the women to the expedition, narrating their fears. We had not the slightest idea that there was a remedy. I looked upon the summer as the price I was to pay for the privilege of being so far on the frontier, so much nearer the expedition than the families of officers who had gone East. With all my tremors and misgivings, I had no idea of retreating to safe surroundings, as I should then lose my hope of eventually going out to the regiment. It took a long time for our letters to reach the expedition, and a correspondingly long time for replies; but the descriptions of the night of mutiny brought the officers together in council, and the best disciplinarian of our regiment was immediately despatched to our relief. I knew but little of General Gibbs at that time; my husband had served with him during the war, and valued his soldierly ability and sincere friendship. He had been terribly wounded in the Indian wars before the Civil War, and was really unfit for hard service, but too soldierly to be willing to remain at the rear. In a week after his arrival at our post, there was a marked difference in the state of affairs. Out of the seemingly hopeless material, General Gibbs made soldiers who were used as guards over Government property through the worst of the Indian country, and whose courage was put to the test by frequent attacks, where they had to defend themselves as well as the supplies. The opinion of soldier and citizen alike underwent a change, regarding negroes as soldiers, on certain duty to which they were fitted. A ranchman, after praising their fighting, before the season was ended said, "And plague on my cats if they don't like it."
We soon found that we had reached a country where the weather could show more remarkable and sudden phases in a given time than any portion of the United States. The cultivation of the ground, planting of trees, and such causes, have materially modified some of the extraordinary exhibitions that we witnessed when Kansas was supposed to be the great American desert. With all the surprises that the elements furnished, there was one that we would gladly havebeen spared. One quiet day I heard a great rumbling in the direction of the plateau where we had ridden so much, as if many prairie-schooners, heavily laden, were being spirited away by the stampede of mules. Next, our house began to rock, the bell to ring, and the pictures to vibrate on the wall. The mystery was solved when we ran to the gallery, and found the garrison rushing out of barracks and quarters; Women and children ran to the parade-ground, all hatless, some half-dressed. Everybody stared at every one else, turned pale, and gasped with fright. It was an earthquake, sufficiently serious to shake our stone quarters and overturn the lighter articles, while farther down the gully the great stove at the sutler's store was tumbled over and the side of the building broken in by the shock. There was a deep fissure in the side of the bank, and the waters of the Big Blue were so agitated that the bed of the river twelve feet deep was plainly visible.
The usual session of the "Did-you-evers" took place, and resolutions were drawn up—not committed to paper, however—giving the opinion of women on Kansas as a place of residence. We had gone through prairie-fire, pestilence, mutiny, a river freshet, and finally, an earthquake: enough exciting events to have been scattered through a lifetime were crowded into a few weeks. Yet in these conclaves, when we sought sympathy and courage from one another, there was never a suggestion of returning to a well-regulated climate.
SACRIFICES AND SELF-DENIAL OF PIONEER DUTY—CAPTAIN ROBBINS AND COLONEL COOK ATTACKED, AND FIGHT FOR THREE HOURS.
Itis 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, deepthroats, 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! Atany 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 ofanything, 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 parchedthroat 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 thanevery 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 suchblessings 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, lookinguncomplainingly 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 scamperedat 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 withrelatives 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 ofa 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.