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