Martha Summerhayes

“ Good health again was mine, the travelling was ideal, there were no discomforts, and I experienced no terrors in this part of Arizona.
Each morning, when the tent was struck, and I sat on the camp-stool by the little heap of ashes, which was all that remained of what had been so pleasant a home for an afternoon and a night, a little lonesome feeling crept over me, at the thought of leaving the place. So strong is the instinct and love of home in some people, that the little tendrils shoot out in a day and weave themselves around a spot which has given them shelter. ”

“ The adjutant of the battalion read the burial service, and the trumpeters stepped to the edge of the graves and sounded "Taps," which echoed sad and melancholy far over those parched and arid lands. My eyes filled with tears, for one of the soldiers was from our own company, and had been kind to me.
Jack said: "You mustn't cry, Mattie; it's a soldier's life, and when a man enlists he must take his chances." ”

“ Soldiers have a knack of making a tent attractive.
"Madame, the Lieutenant's compliments, and your tent is ready."
I then alighted and found my little home awaiting me. The tent-flaps tied open, the mattresses laid, the blankets turned back, the camp-table with candle-stick upon it, and a couple of camp-chairs at the door of the tent. Surely it is good to be in the army I then thought; and after a supper consisting of soldiers' hot biscuit, antelope steak broiled over the coals, and a large cup of black coffee, I went to rest, listening to the soughing of the pines. ”

“ Now Fort Niobrara was a large post. There were ten companies, cavalry and infantry, General August V. Kautz, the Colonel of the Eighth Infantry, in command.
And here, amidst the sand-hills of Nebraska, we first began to really know our Colonel. A man of strong convictions and abiding honesty, a soldier who knew his profession thoroughly, having not only achieved distinction in the Civil War, but having served when little more than a boy, in the Mexican War of 1846. Genial in his manners, brave and kind, he was beloved by all. ”

“ They cannot know the drear monotony of the barracks life on the frontier in times of peace. I have lived close by it, and I know it well. A ceaseless round of drill and work and lessons, and work and lessons and drill—no recreation, no excitement, no change.
Far away from family and all home companionship, a man longs for some pleasant place to go, after the day's work is done. Perhaps these women think (if, in their blind enthusiasm, they think at all) that a young soldier or an old soldier needs no recreation. ”

“ Was there ever anything so incongruous as a hat and veil in Ehrenberg! For a long time I had not seen a woman in a hat; the Mexicans all wore a linen towel over their heads.
But her beauty was startling, and, after all, I thought, a woman so handsome must try to live up to her reputation. Now for some weeks Jack had been investigating the sulphur well, which was beneath the old pump in our corral. He had had a long wooden bath-tub built, and I watched it with a lazy interest, and observed his glee as he found a longshoreman or roustabout who could caulk it. ”

“ Then the various drill calls, and recalls, and sick-call and the beautiful stable-call for the cavalry, when the horses are groomed and watered, the thrilling fire-call and the startling assembly, or call-to-arms, when every soldier jumps for his rifle and every officer buckles on his sword, and a woman's heart stands still. ”

“ The soldiers did not look half so picturesque, climbing into the cars, as they did when loading onto a barge; and when the train went across the bridge, and we looked down upon the swirling red waters of the Great Colorado from the windows of a luxurious Pullman, I sighed; and, with the strange contradictoriness of the human mind, I felt sorry that the old days had come to an end. For, somehow, the hardships and deprivations which we have endured, lose their bitterness when they have become only a memory. ”

“ He was now about to reach the age of retirement; and as the day approached, that day when a man has reached the limit of his usefulness (in the opinion of an ever-wise Government) , that day which sounds the knell of active service, that day so dreaded and yet so longed for, that day when an army officer is sixty-four years old and Uncle Sam lays him upon the shelf, as that day approached, the city of San Antonio, in fact the entire State of Texas poured forth to bid him Godspeed; for if ever an army man was beloved, it was General Stanley by the State of Texas. ”

“ The officers and soldiers were in their campaign clothes; the latter had their blanket-rolls and haversacks slung over their shoulders, and their tin cups, which hung from the haversacks, rattled and jingled as they marched down in even columns of four, over the wet and grassy slopes of the parade ground, where so short a time before all had been glitter and sunshine.
I realized then perhaps for the first time what the uniform really stood for; that every man who wore it, was going out to fight—that they held their lives as nothing. ”

“ The old post is long since abandoned, but the Four Peaks still stand, wrapped in their black shadows by night, and their purple colors by day, waiting for the passing of the Apache and the coming of the white man, who shall dig his canals in those arid plains, and build his cities upon the ruins of the ancient Aztec dwellings.
The Sixth Cavalry, as well as the Eighth Infantry, has seen many vicissitudes since those days. Some of our gallant Captains and Lieutenants have won their stars, others have been slain in battle. ”

“ One is always imagining things about people who live in such extraordinary places. At all events, whatever Messrs. Hunt and Dudley were doing down there, their ranch was clean and attractive, which was more than could be said of the place where we stopped the next night, a place called Tyson's Wells. We slept in our tent that night, for of all places on the earth a poorly kept ranch in Arizona is the most melancholy and uninviting. It reeks of everything unclean, morally and physically. ”

“ We had a merry supper: cold ham, chicken, and fresh biscuit, a plenty of good Cocomonga wine, sweet milk, which to be sure turned to curds as it stood on the table, some sort of preserves from a tin, and good coffee. I gave them the best to be had in the desert—and at all events it was a change from the Chinaman's salt beef and peach pies, and they saw fresh table linen and shining silver, and accepted our simple hospitality in the spirit in which we gave it. ”

“ A mother of grown-up daughters was not often met with in the army.
And Lieutenant-Colonel Wilkins, a gentleman in the truest sense of the word—a man of rather quiet tastes, never happier than when he had leisure for indulging his musical taste in strumming all sorts of Spanish fandangos on the guitar, or his somewhat marked talent with the pencil and brush.
The heat of the staterooms compelled us all to sleep on deck, so our mattresses were brought up by the soldiers at night, and spread about. ”

“ But this energetic and indomitable man mended the pump, with Fisher's help, and led the water into the house, laid a floor, set up the tub in the little square room, and behold, our sulphur bath!
After much persuasion, I tried the bath. The water flowed thick and inky black into the tub; of course the odor was beyond description, and the effect upon me was not such that I was ever willing to try it again. Jack beamed. "How do you like it, Martha?" said he. "Isn't it fine? Why people travel hundreds of miles to get a bath like that!" ”

“ Kemble, the illustrator, joined our ranks—and on a warm summer morning the little old Tug Hamilton was gay with the artists and their families, the players and writers of plays, and soon you could see the little garrison hastening to the beach and the swimmers running down the long pier, down the run-way and off head first into the clear waters of the Sound. What a company was that! The younger and the older ones all together, children and their fathers and mothers, all happy, all well, all so gay, and we of the frontier so enamored of civilization and what it brought us! ”

“ What was our chagrin, the next morning, to learn that we must go back to the "Newbern," to carry some freight from up-river. There was nothing to do but stay on board and tow that dreary barge, filled with hot, red, baked-looking ore, out to the ship, unload, and go back up the slue. Jack's diary records: "Aug. 23rd. Heat awful. Pringle died to-day." He was the third soldier to succumb. It seemed to me their fate was a hard one. To die, down in that wretched place, to be rolled in a blanket and buried on those desert shores, with nothing but a heap of stones to mark their graves. ”

“ I learned to know and to thoroughly respect the enlisted man of the American army.
And now into the varied kaleidoscope of my army life stepped the Indian Agent. And of all unkempt, unshorn, disagreeable-looking personages who had ever stepped foot into our quarters, this was the worst.
"Heaven save us from a Government which appoints such men as that to watch over and deal with Indians," cried I, as he left the house. "Is it possible that his position here demands social recognition?" I added.
"Hush!" said the second lieutenant of K company. ”

“ In Nantucket, no one thought much about the army. The uniform of the regulars was never seen there. The profession of arms was scarcely known or heard of. Few people manifested any interest in the life of the Far West. I had, while there, felt out of touch with my oldest friends. Only my darling old uncle, a brave old whaling captain, had said: "Mattie, I am much interested in all you have written us about Arizona; come right down below and show me on the dining-room map just where you went." ”

“ I have never seen anything like that wonderful color, which spread itself over sky, river and desert. For an hour, one could have believed oneself in a magician's realm.
At about this time, the sad-eyed Patrocina found it expedient to withdraw into the green valleys of Lower California, to recuperate for a few months. With the impish Jesusita in her arms, she bade me a mournful good-bye. Worthless as she was from the standpoint of civilized morals, I was attached to her and felt sorry to part with her. ”

“ Indeed, at every stage of the road we had seen evidences of hard travel, exhausted cattle, anxious teamsters, hunger and thirst, despair, starvation, and death.
However, Stoneman's Lake remains a joy in the memory, and far and away the most beautiful spot I ever saw in Arizona. But unless the approaches to it are made easier, tourists will never gaze upon it.
In the distance we saw the "divide," over which we must pass in order to reach Camp Verde, which was to be our first stopping place, and we looked joyfully towards the next day's march, which we expected would bring us there. ”

“ I had never seen an army post in America. I had always lived in places which needed no garrison, and the army, except in Germany, was an unknown quantity to me.
Fort Russell was a large post, and the garrison consisted of many companies of cavalry and infantry. It was all new and strange to me.
Soon after luncheon, Jack said to Major Wilhelm, "Well, now, I must go and look for quarters: what's the prospect?"
"You will have to turn some one out," said the Major, as they left the house together. ”

“ He had been a great traveller in his early life, but now had built himself some sort of a house in one of the desolate mountains which rose out of these vast plains of Arizona, hoisted his sun-flag on the top, there to pass the rest of his days. People out there said he was a sun-worshipper. I do not know. "But when I am tired of life and people," I thought, "this will not be the place I shall choose."
Arriving at Tucson, after a hot and tiresome night in the stage, we went to an old hostelry. Tucson looked attractive. Ancient civilization is always interesting to me. ”

“ A personal feeling, an affection, such as I had never heard of in a republic, caused me to stop and wonder if an empire were not the best, after all. And one day, when the Emperor, passing through Hanover en route, drove down the Georgen-strasse in an open barouche and raised his hat as he glanced at the sidewalk where I happened to be standing, my heart seemed to stop beating, and I was overcome by a most wonderful feeling—a feeling that in a man would have meant chivalry and loyalty unto death. ”

“ There is nothing like experience to teach a young woman how to travel alone.
In San Francisco I learned that I could now go as far as Los Angeles by rail, thence by steamer to San Diego, and so on by stage to Fort Yuma, where my husband was to meet me with an ambulance and a wagon. ”

“ But I fear that a life spent mostly in a large city had cast fetters around her imagination, and that the life at Fort Whipple afterwards savored too much of civilization to loosen the bonds of her soul. I saw her many times again, but she never recovered from her amazement at Charley's lack of apparel, and she never forgot the sulphur bath. ”

“ Scarce three months after that some of the same band of Indians fired into the garrison and fled to the mountains. I remarked to Jack, that I thought we were very imprudent to go to see that dance, and he said he supposed we were. But I had never regarded life in such a light way as he seemed to.
Women usually like to talk over their trials and their wonderful adventures, and that is why I am writing this, I suppose. Men simply will not talk about such things.
The cavalry beauty seemed to look at this frontier life philosophically—what she really thought about it, I never knew. ”