Tenting on the Plains Part 4

The wife of an officer, to keep these horrors from dropping on her bed as they ran over the ceiling, had a sheet fastened at the four corners and let down from the rough rafters to catch all invaders, and thus insured herself undisturbed sleep.

Officers all watch and guard the women who share their hardships. Even the young, unmarried men--the bachelor officers, as they are called--patterning after their elders, soon fall into a sort of fatherly fashion of looking out for the comfort and safety of the women they are with, whether old or young, pretty or ugly. It often happens that a comrade, going on a scout, gives his wife into their charge. I think of a hundred kindly deeds shown to all of us on the frontier; and I have known of acts so delicate that I can hardly refer to them with sufficient tact, and wish I might write with a tuft of thistle-down. In the instance of some very young women--with hearts so pure and souls so spotless they could not for one moment imagine there lived on earth people depraved enough to question all acts, no matter how harmless in themselves--I have known a little word of caution to be spoken regarding some exuberance of conduct that arose from the excess of a thoughtless, joyous heart. The husband who returned to his wife could thank the friend who had watched over his interests no more deeply than the wife who owed her escape from criticism to his timely word. And sometimes, when we went into the States, or were at a post with strange officers, it would not occur to us, gay and thoughtless as we were, that we must consider that we were not among those with whom we had "summered and wintered;" and the freedom and absolute naturalness of manner that arose from our long and intimate relationship in isolated posts, ought perhaps to give way to more formal conduct. If the women said to the men, "Now we are among strangers, do you not think they would misunderstand our dancing or driving or walking together just as fearlessly as at home?"

That was sufficient. The men said, "Sure enough! It never occurred to me. By Jove! I wish we were back where a fellow need not be hampered by having every act questioned;" and then no one sought harder or more carefully so to act that we might satisfy the exactions of that censorious group of elderly women who sat in hotel parlors, looking on and remarking, "We did not do so when we were girls," or even some old frump in a garrison we visited, who, having squeezed dry her orange of life, was determined that others should get no good out of theirs if she could insert one drop of gall.

Occasionally the young officers, perhaps too timid to venture on a personal suggestion, sent us word by roundabout ways that they did not want us to continue to cultivate someone of whom we knew nothing save that he was agreeable. How my husband thanked them! He walked the floor with his hands behind him, moved so that his voice was unsteady, and said his say about what he owed to men who would not let a woman they valued be even a.s.sociated with anyone who might reflect on them. He was a home-lover, and not being with those who daily congregated at the sutler's store, the real "gossip-mill" of a garrison, he heard but little of what was going on. A man is supposed to be the custodian of his own household in civil life; but it must be remembered that in our life a husband had often to leave a young and inexperienced bride to the care of his comrades while he went off for months of field duty. The grateful tears rise now in my eyes at the recollection of men who guarded us from the very semblance of evil as if we had been their sisters.

CHAPTER VI.

A TEXAS NORTHER.

WE had not been long in our camp at Hempstead, before the wives of two of the staff arrived by way of Galveston. Their tents were put on a line with or near ours, and arbors built over them. One of these women, Mrs.

Greene, had been one of my dearest girlhood friends, and every pleasure of my happy life was enhanced by the presence of this lovely woman. We all went out, after the heat of the day, on long rides about the country. Our father Custer was a fine rider, and not only sat his horse well, but it was almost impossible to unseat him. He grew more wary and watchful of his tormenting sons every day. If they halted, apparently only to say a casual word or so to their paternal, that keen old man spurred his horse to one side with the agility of a circus-rider, just in time to avoid the flying heels of the horse of his offspring in front of him, which had been taught to fling his hoofs up when touched just back of the saddle. If both boys came together and rode one on each side of him, he looked uneasily from one to the other, suspicious of this sudden exhibition of friendship; and well he might, for while one fixed his attention by some question that provoked an answer, usually about politics, the other gave a quick rap on the back of the horse, and the next thing, the father was grasping the pommel to keep from being flung forward of the animal as he threw up his heels and plunged his head down, making the angle of an incline plane. Even when, after a concerted plan, one rode up and pulled the cape of the elder man's overcoat over his head and held it there a moment, while the other gave the horse a cut, he sat like a centaur, and no surprise unseated him or loosened his grip on the reins. They knew his horsemanship well, as he had ridden after the hounds in Maryland and Virginia in his younger days, and had taught them to sit a horse bareback, when their little fat legs were too short to describe a curve on the animal's side. Of course I was always begging to have them spare father, but it was needless championship. He enjoyed their pranks with all his fun-loving soul.

It was very hard to get postage, and he was unwary enough one day--on account of the color being the same as the issue of that year--to buy a dollar's worth of his eldest scion, only to find them old ones, such as were used before the war. Whether he considered the joke worth a dollar, I could not decipher, for he was silent; but soon afterward he showed me an envelope marked in the writing of his son Armstrong, "Conscience-money," containing the $1 unlawfully obtained.

We were invited one night to go to a c.o.o.n-hunt, conducted in the real old Southern style. The officers wanted us to see some hunting, but were obliged to leave us behind hitherto when they crossed the Brazos River on deer-hunts, and were the guests of the planters in the chase, that began before dawn and lasted all day. We had thickets, underbrush and ditches to encounter, before the dogs treed the c.o.o.n; then a little darkey, brought along for the climbing, went up into the branches and dislodged the game, which fell among our and the neighbors' dogs. No voice excited them more wildly than the "Whoop-la!" of our old father, and when we came home at 2 A. M., carrying a c.o.o.n and a possum, he was as fresh as the youngest of us.

The citizens surrounding us were so relieved to find that our troops left them unmolested, they frankly contrasted the disciplined conduct with the lawlessness to which they had been witness in States where the Confederate army was stationed. But they scarcely realized that an army in time of peace is much more restricted. They could hardly say enough about the order that was carried out, preventing the negroes from joining the column as it marched into Texas. There was no way of taking care of them, and the General directed that none should follow, so they went back, contented to work where they would be fed and clothed.

One reason that our life seemed to me the very perfection of all that is ever attained on earth was, that the rumors of trouble with Mexico had ceased. The demands of our Government had been complied with; but it was thought best to keep the troops in the field the rest of the year, though there was to be no war.

Our first experience with a Texas norther surprised and startled us. It came on in the night, preceded by the usual heavy, suffocating air which renders breathing an effort. After this prelude, the wild blast of wind swept down on us with a fury indescribable. We heard the roar as it approached over the stretch of prairie between us and the sea. Our tent, though it was guyed by ropes stretched from the ridge-pole to a strong post driven far into the ground, both in front and at the rear, shook, rattled, and flapped as if with the rage of some human creature. It was twisted and wrenched from side to side; the arbor overhead seemed to toss to and fro, and the wagon rocked in a crazy effort to spill us out.

Though the ropes stretched and cracked like cordage at sea, and the canvas flapped like loosened sails, we did not go down. Indeed, rocked in this improvised "cradle of the deep," it was hard to tell whether one was at sea or on land. I begged to get up and dress for the final collapse that I was sure was coming, but my husband quieted me and calmed my fears, believing that the approaching rain would still the wind, as it eventually did. Next morning a scene of havoc was visible.

Our neighbors crept out of their tents, and we women, in a little whispered aside, exchanged our opinions upon the climate of the "Sunny South."

They also had pa.s.sed a night of terror, but fortunately their tents did not go down. Mrs. Lyon had just come from the North, and expected to join her husband; meanwhile she was our guest, and the General and I had endeavored to give her as cordial a welcome as we could, feeling that all must be so strange to her after the security and seclusion of her girlhood's home. The night preceding the norther we took her to her tent near ours, and helped her arrange for the night, a.s.suring her that we were so near that we could hear her voice, if she was in the least afraid. We, being novices in the experience of that climate and its gales, had no idea the wind would rise to such concert pitch that no voice could be distinguished. She said that when we fastened her in from the outside world with two straps, she felt very uncertain about her courage holding out. We kept on a.s.suring her not to be afraid, but on bidding her good-night and saying again not to be in the least disturbed, that the sentinel walked his beat in front of her tent all night, she dared not own up that this a.s.surance did not tend to soothe her anxious fears, for she thought she would be more afraid of the guard than of anything else. And as I think of it, such a good-night from us was rather unsatisfactory. My husband, soldier-like, put the utmost faith in the guard, and I, though only so short a time before mortally afraid of the stern, unswerving warrior myself, had soon forgotten that there were many timid women in the world who knew nothing of sleeping without locks or bolts, and thought, perhaps, that at the slightest ignorance or dereliction of duty the sentinel would fire on an offender, whether man or woman. Added to this fear of the sentinel, the storm took what remnant of nerve she had left; and though she laughed next morning about her initiation into the service of the Government, there were subsequent confessions to the horror of that unending night. In talking with Major and Mrs. Lyon nowadays, when it is my privilege to see them, there seemed to be no memories but pleasant ones of our Texas life. They might well cherish two reminiscences as somewhat disturbing, for Mrs.

Lyon's reception by the hurricane, and the Major's baptism of gore when he killed his first deer, were not scenes that would bear frequent repet.i.tion and only leave pleasant memories.

The staff-officers had caused a long shade to be built, instead of shorter ones, which would have stood the storms better. Under this all of their tents were pitched in two rows facing each other; and protected by this arbor, they daily took the siesta which is almost compulsory there in the heat of the noontide. Now the shade was lifted off one side and tilted over, and some of the tents were also flat. Among them was that of our father Custer. He had extricated himself with difficulty from under the canvas, and described his sensations so quaintly that his woes were greeted with roars of laughter from us all. After narrating the downfall of his "rag house," he dryly remarked that it would seem, owing to the climate and other causes, he was not going to have much uninterrupted sleep, and, looking slyly at the staff, he added that his neighborhood was not the quietest he had ever known.

The letters home at that time, in spite of their description of trivial events, and the exuberant underlined expressions of girlish pleasure over nothings, my father enjoyed and preserved. I find that our idle Sundays were almost blanks in life, as we had no service and the hunting and riding were suspended. I marked the day by writing home, and a few extracts will perhaps present a clearer idea of the life there than anything that could be written now:

"Every Sunday I wake up with the thought of home, and wish that we might be there and go to church with you. I can imagine how pleasant home is now. Among other luxuries, I see with my 'mind's eye,' a large plate of your nice apples on the dining-room table. I miss apples here; none grow in this country; and a man living near here told our Henry that he hadn't seen one for five years. Father Custer bought me some small, withered-looking ones for fifty cents apiece. It seems so strange that in this State, where many planters live who are rich enough to build a church individually, there is such a scarcity of churches. Why, at the North, the first knowledge one has of the proximity of a village is by seeing a spire, and a church is almost the first building put up when a town is laid out. Here in this country it is the last to be thought of.

Cotton is indeed king. The cake you sent to me by Nettie Greene, dear mother, was a perfect G.o.dsend. Oh, anything you make does taste so good!"

"Our orderly has perfected a trade for a beautiful little horse for me, so that when Custis Lee's corns trouble him, I am not obliged to take the choice of staying at home or riding one of Armstrong's prancers. The new horse has cunning tricks, getting down on his knees to let me get on and off, if I tell him to do so. He is very affectionate, and he racks a mile inside of three minutes. We talk 'horse' a great deal here, dear father, and my letters may be like our talk; but any man who has kept in his stable, for months at a time, a famous race-horse worth $9,000, as you have kept Don Juan,[B] ought not to object to a little account of other people's animals. We had an offer of $500 for Custis Lee at Alexandria."

"I sometimes have uninvited guests in my tent. Friday, Nettie saw something on the tray that Eliza was carrying. It had a long tail, and proved to be a stinging scorpion. The citizens pooh-pooh at our fear of scorpions, and insist that they are not so very dangerous; but I was glad to have that particular one killed by Armstrong planting his gun on it. I feel much pleased, and Armstrong is quite proud, that I made myself a riding-habit. You know I lost the waist of mine in the forest.

It took me weeks to finish it, being my first attempt. I ripped an old waist, and copied it by drawing lines with a pencil, pinning and basting; but it fits very well. I remember how you both wanted me to learn when I was at home, and I almost wished I had, when I found it took me such ages to do what ought to have been short work."

"Our letters take twenty days in coming, and longer if there are storms in the Gulf. The papers are stale enough, but Armstrong goes through them all. I feel so rich, and am luxuriating in four splint-bottom chairs that we hired an old darkey to make for us. I want to sit in all four at once, it seems so good to get anything in which to rest that has a back."

"Our dogs give us such pleasure, though it took me some time to get used to the din they set up when Armstrong practiced on the horn. They call it 'giving tongue' here, but I call that too mild a word. Their whole bodies seem hollow, they bring forth such wild cries and cavernous howls. We call them Byron, Brandy, Jupiter, Rattler, Sultan, and Tyler."

"Something awful is constantly occurring among the citizens. It is a lawless country. A relative of one of our old army officers, a prominent planter living near here, was shot dead in Houston by a man bearing an old grudge against him. It is a common occurrence to shoot down men here for any offense whatever. Armstrong never goes anywhere except for hunting, and as we have plenty of books and our evening rides, we enjoy life thoroughly. Nettie fell from her horse, and we were frightened for a time, but she was only lamed. Though she weighs 165 pounds, Autie[C]

picked her up as if she were a baby, and carried her into their tent."

"Besides visiting at the house of the collector of the port, where there is a houseful of young girls, we have been hospitably treated by some people to whom Armstrong was able to be of use. One day, a gentle well-bred Southern woman came into our tent to see Armstrong, and asked his protection for her boy, telling him that for some childish carelessness the neighboring colored people had threatened his life.

Armstrong believed her, and melted. He afterward inquired elsewhere into the matter, and was convinced that the boy had not intentionally erred.

The child himself was proof, by his frank manner and his straightforward story, of his innocence."

"I suppose we were the first Yankees these people had ever known, and doubtless nothing but grat.i.tude induced them even to speak with us; yet they conquered prejudice, and asked us to dinner. They had been so well dressed when they called--and were accounted rich, I believe, by the neighbors--that I could scarcely believe we had reached the right house when we halted. It was like the cabins of the 'poor white trash' in the forest, only larger. I thought we had mistaken the negro quarters for the master's. Two large rooms, with extensions at the rear, were divided by an open s.p.a.ce roofed over, under which the table was spread. The house was of rough logs, and unpainted. Unless the Texans built with home materials, their houses cost as much as palaces abroad, for the dressed lumber had to be hauled from the seacoast."

"The inside of this queer home was in marked contrast with the exterior.

The furniture was modern and handsome, and the piano, on which the accomplished mother, as well as her little son, gave us music, was from one of our best Northern manufactories. The china, gla.s.s and linen on the dinner-table were still another surprise."

"They never broached politics, gave us an excellent dinner, and got on Armstrong's blind side forever by giving him a valuable full-blooded pointer, called Ginnie, short for Virginia. With four game chickens, a Virginia cured ham (as that was their former State), and two turkeys, we were sent on our way rejoicing."

"Our Henry has gone home, and we miss him, for he is fidelity itself. He expects to move his entire family of negroes from Virginia to Monroe, because he says, father, you are the finest man he ever _did_ see.

Prepare, then, for the dark cloud that is moving toward you, and you may have the privilege of contributing to their support for a time, if he follows Eliza's plan of billeting the orphan upon us."

"We have a new cook called Uncle Charley, who has heretofore been a preacher, but now condescends to get up good dinners for us. We had eleven to dine to-day, and borrowed dishes of our Southern neighbors. We had a soup made out of an immense turtle that Armstrong killed in the stream yesterday. Then followed turkeys, boiled ham--and roast beef, of course, for Armstrong thinks no dinner quite perfect without his beef.

We are living well, and on so little. Armstrong's pay as a major-general will soon cease, and we are trying now to get accustomed to living on less."

"I listen to the citizens talking over the prospects of this State, and I think it promises wonders. There are chances for money-making all the time thrown in Armstrong's way; but he seems to think that while he is on duty he had better not enter into business schemes."

"Armstrong has such good success in hunting and fishing that he sends to the other officers' messes turtle, deer, duck, quail, squirrels, doves and prairie chickens. The possums are accepted with many a sc.r.a.pe and flourish by the 'nigs.' I forgot to tell you that our nine dogs sleep round our wagon at night, quarreling, growling, snoring, but I sleep too soundly to be kept awake by them."

The very ants in Texas, though not poisonous, were provided with such sharp nippers that they made me jump from my chair with a bound, if, after going out of sight in the neck or sleeves of my dress, they attempted to cut their way out. They clipped one's flesh with sharp little cuts that were not pleasant, especially when there remained a doubt as to whether it might be a scorpion. We had to guard our linen carefully, for they cut it up with ugly little slits that were hard to mend. Besides, we had to be careful, as we were so cut off that we could not well replace our few clothes, and it costs a ruinous sum to send North, or even to New Orleans, for anything. I found this out when the General paid an express bill on a gown from New York--ordered before we left the East--far larger than the cost of the material and the dressmaker's bill together. The ants besieged the cook-tent and set Uncle Charley and Eliza to growling; but an old settler told them to surround the place with tan-bark, and they were thus freed. It was all I could do to keep the General from digging down into the ant-mounds, as he was anxious to see into their mechanism. The colored people and citizens told us what fighters they were, and what injuries they inflicted on people who molested them. We watched them curiously day by day, and wanted to see if the residents had told us stories about their stripping the trees of foliage just to guy us. (It has long been the favorite pastime of old residents to impose all sorts of improbable tales on the new-comer.) Whether this occurrence happens often or not I cannot say, but it certainly took place once while we were there. One morning my husband ran into the tent and asked me to hurry up with my dressing; he had something strange to show me, and helped me scramble into my clothes.

The carriage-road in front of our tents cut rather deep ruts, over which the ants found a difficult pa.s.sage, so they had laid a causeway of bits of cut leaves, over which they journeyed between a tree and their ant-hills, not far from our tents on the other side of the road. They were still traveling back and forth, each bearing a bit of leaf bigger than itself; and a half-grown tree near us, which had been full of foliage the day before, was entirely bare.

For some reason unexplainable, malarial fever broke out among our staff.

It was, I suppose, the acclimation to which we were being subjected. My father Custer was ill, and came forth from the siege whitened out, while the officers disappeared to mourn over the number of their bones for a few days, and then crept out of the tents as soon as they could move. My husband all this time had never even changed color. His powers of endurance amazed me. He seemed to have set his strong will against yielding to climatic influences; but after two days of this fighting he gave in and tossed himself on our borrowed lounge, a vanquished man. He was very sick. Break-bone fever had waited to do its worst with its last victim. Everything looked very gloomy to me. We had not even a wide bed, on which it is a little comfort if a fever-tossed patient can fling himself from side to side. We had no ice, no fruit, indeed nothing but quinine. The supplies of that drug to the hospital department of Texas must be sent by the barrel, it seemed to me, from the manner in which it was consumed.

Our devoted surgeon came, of his own accord, over and over again, and was untiring in his patience in coming when I sent for him in-between-times, to please me in my anxiety. My husband was so racked and tormented by pain, and burnt up with fiery heat, that he hardly made the feeblest fight about the medicine, after having attained the satisfaction of my tasting it, to be sure that I knew how bitter it was.

As the fever abated every hour, I resorted to new modes of bribery and corruption to get him to swallow the huge pill. My stepmother's cake had come in the very best time, for I extracted the raisins and hid the quinine in them, as my father had done when giving me medicine as a child. It seemed to me an interminable time before the disease began to yield to the remedies. In reality, it was not long, as the General was unaccustomed to medicine, and its effect was more quickly realized on that account. Even when my husband began to crawl about again, the doctor continued the medicine, and I as nurse remorselessly carried out his directions, though I had by no means a tractable patient, as with returning health came restored combative powers. My husband noticed the rapid disappearance of the pills from the table when he lay and watched the hated things with relief, as he discovered that he was being aided in the consumption by some unknown friend. One morning we found the plate on which the doctor had placed thirty the night before, empty. Of course I accused the General of being the cause of the strange disappearance, and prepared to send for more, inexorable in my temporary reign over a weak man. He attempted a mild kicking celebration and clapping accompaniment over the departure of his hated medicine, as much as his rather unsteady feet and arms would allow, but stoutly denied having done away with the offending pills. The next night we kept watch over the fresh supply, and soon after dark the ants began their migrations up the loose tent-wall on the table-cover that fell against the canvas, and while one grasped the flour-mixed pill with his long nippers, the partner pushed, steered and helped roll the plunder down the side of the tent on to the ground.

The triumph of the citizens was complete. Their tales were outdone by our actual experience. After that there was no story they told us which we did not take in immediately without question.

The hunting included alligators also. In the stream below us there were occasional deep pools, darkened by the overhanging trees. As we women walked on the banks, we kept a respectful distance from the places where the bend in the creek widened into a pond, with still water near the high banks. In one of these dark pools lived an ancient alligator, well known to the neighbors, on which they had been unsuccessfully firing for years. The darkeys kept aloof from his fastness, and even Eliza, whose Monday-morning soul longed for the running water of the stream, for she had struggled with muddy water so long, trembled at the tales of this monster. She reminds me now "what a lovely place to wash that Gros wash-house was, down by the creek. But it was near the old alligator's pool, and I know I hurried up my wash awfully, for I was afraid he might come up; for you know, Miss Libbie, it was reckoned that they was mighty fond of children and colored people."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MEASURING AN ALLIGATOR.]

One of the young officers was determined to get this veteran, and day after day went up and down the creek, coming home at night to meet the jeers of the others, who did not believe that alligator-hunting in a hot country paid. One night he stopped at our tent, radiant and jubilant. He had shot the old disturber of the peace, the intimidator of the neighborhood, and was going for help to haul him up to the tents. He was a monster, and it cost the men tough pulling to get him up the bank, and then to drag him down near our tent. There he was left for us women to see. We walked around and around him, very brave, and quite relieved to think that we were rid of so dangerous a neighbor, with a real old Jonah-and-the-whale mouth. The General congratulated the young officer heartily, and wished it had been his successful shot that had ended him.

Part of the jaw had been shot away, evidently years ago, as it was then calloused over. It was distended to its utmost capacity, and propped open with a stick. Nettie brought out a broom from her tent, with which to get a rough estimate of his length, as we knew well that if we did not give some idea of his size in our letters home, they would think the climate, which enervates so quickly, had produced a total collapse in our power to tell the truth. The broom did not begin to answer, so we pieced out the measure with something else, in order to arrive at some kind of accuracy. Then we thought we would like to see how the beast looked with his mouth closed, and the officers, patient in humoring our whims, pulled out the props. There was a sudden commotion. The next thing visible was three sets of flying petticoats making for the tent, as the alligator, revived by the sudden let-down of his upper jaw, sprawled out his feet and began to walk over the gra.s.s. The crack of the rifle a moment after brought the heads of three cowards from their tents, but after that no woman hovered over even his dead hide. The General was convulsed over our retreat. The drying skin of his majesty, the lord of the pool, flung and flapped in the wind, suspended to the pole of the officers' arbor for weeks, and it was well tanned by the air long before they ceased to make sly allusions to women's curiosity.