Elizabeth Bacon Custer

“ No expedition goes out with shout and song, if loving, weeping women are left behind. Those who have not assumed the voluntary fetters that bind us for weal or for woe, and render it impossible to escape suffering while those we love suffer, or rejoicing while those to whom we are united are jubilant, felt too keenly for their comrades when they watched them tear themselves from clinging arms inside the threshold of their homes, even to keep up the stream of idle chaffing that only such occasions can stop. There was silence as the column left the garrison. ”

“ My husband never moved from his hiding-place, but chuckled and shook over the sight, novel to us, till Eliza found us out and forgave the "peeking."
The clothes worn looked as if the property-room of a third-rate theatre had been rifled—faded finery, fag ends of old lace, tumbled flowers that had done duty at many a "white folks'" ball, on the pretty costume of the missus, old feathers set up in the wool, where what was left of the plume bobbed and quavered, as the head of the owner moved to the time of the music, or nodded and swayed back and forth while conversation was kept up. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If it were possible for people in the States to realize how sacred the parade-ground of a Western post is, how hurriedly a venturesome cow or loose horse is marshaled off, how pompously every one performs the military duties permitted on this little square; how even the color-sergeant, who marches at measured gait to take down and furl the garrison flag, when the evening gun announces that the sun has been, by the royal mandate of military law, permitted to set—they would then understand with what perturbation we women witnessed the desecration of what had been looked upon as hallowed earth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Something better than such a journey awaited me, it seemed, when two of our Seventh Cavalry officers, Captain Samuel Robbins and Colonel William W. Cook, appeared in camp at the head of a detachment of cavalry and a small train of wagons for supplies. The General had told them to bring me back, and an ambulance was with the wagons, in which I was to ride. It did not take me long to put our roll of bedding and my valise in order; and to say anything about the heart in me leaping for joy is even a tame expression to describe the delight that ran through every vein in my body. ”

“ Since I seek to make my story of others, I take the privilege of speaking of a class of heroes that I now seldom hear mentioned, and over whom, in instances of my husband's personal friends, we have grieved together. It is to those who, like his young staff-officer, bear unhealed and painful wounds to their life's end that I wish to beg our people to give thought. We felt it rather a blessing, in one way, when a man was visibly maimed; for if a leg or an arm is gone, the empty sleeve or the halting gait keeps his country from forgetting that he has braved everything to protect her. ”

“ One night I found that hay had been substituted, and felt myself rich in luxury. I remembered gladly that hay was so clean, so free from all natural history, and closed my eyes in gratitude. And then it smelt so good, so much better than the damp, vegetable odor of the moss. A smudge at the end of the wagon was rising about me to drive away mosquitoes, and though the smoke scalds the eyes in this heroic remedy, I still comforted myself with the fresh odor of the hay, and quietly thought that life in a manger was not the worst fate that could come to one. ”

“ No wonder our officers went to the Khedive for service! no wonder this promise of active duty was an inviting prospect for my husband! It took a long time for civilians, even, to tone themselves down to the jog-trot of peace.
Everything looked, at that time, as if there was success awaiting any soldier who was resolute enough to lead troops against one they considered an invader. Nothing nerves a soldier's arm like the wrong felt at the presence of foreigners on their own ground, and the prospect of destruction of their homes. ”

“ One hour we are so suffocated with the heavy, oppressive air, we sit in the deep window-sills and pant for breath. Along comes a roaring sound through the tree-tops, and there's a scatter, I can tell you. We bang down the windows, and shout for Texas to hunt the wood-pile, jump into warm clothes, and before we are fairly prepared, the hurricane is upon us. We really don't mind it a bit, as it doesn't last long (once it lasted three days) , besides, it is so good to be in something that isn't going to blow down, as we momentarily expected in a tent. ”

“ One weather-beaten slip of a girl had to do all their banqueting, cannonading, bonfiring, brass-banding, and general hallelujahs all the way to Texas, and—yes, even after we got there; for the Southern women, true to their idea of patriotism, turned their pretty faces away from our handsome fellows, and resisted, for a long time, even the mildest flirtation.
The drawing-room car was then unthought of in the minds of those who plan new luxuries as our race demand more ease and elegance. There was a ladies' car, to which no men unaccompanied by women were admitted. ”

“ It was a curious trip, that journey up the Red River. We saw the dull brownish-red water from the clay bed and banks mingling with the clearer current of the Mississippi long before we entered the mouth of the Red River. We had a delightful journey; but I don't know why, except that youth, health and buoyant spirits rise superior to everything. The river was ugliness itself. The tree trunks, far up, were gray and slimy with the late freshet, the hanging moss adding a dismal feature to the scene. The waters still covered the low, muddy banks strewn with fallen trees and underbrush. ”

“ The waves of torture that swept over the young hero's face, the alarm and pity of the girl, the instant biting of the lip and quick smile of the man, dreading more to grieve the pretty creature by him than to endure the physical agony—oh, how proud the General was of him, and I think he felt badly that a soldier cannot yield to impulse, and enfold his comrade in his arms, as is our woman's sweet privilege with one another. ”

“ I know how pleased my husband was, though, how proud and glad to know that a splendid, brave soldier had given his talents, his courage—and oh, what courage for a man of the world to come out in youth on the side of one mighty Captain!—and taken up the life of poverty, self-denial, and something else that the General also felt a deprivation, the roving life that deprives a Methodist minister of the blessings of a permanent home. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We women were not breathless and trembling over fears for ourselves alone: our hearts were filled with terror for the brave men who were working for our deliverance. They were men to whom we had never spoken, nor were we likely ever to speak to them, so separated are the soldiers in barracks from an officer's household. Sometimes we saw their eyes following us respectfully, as we rode about the garrison, seeming to have in them an air of possession, as if saying, "That's our captain's or our colonel's wife." ”

“ The wind blew a tornado, and the flashes of lightning illumined the tent and revealed the pole swaying ominously back and forth. A fly is an outer strip of canvas which is stretched over the tent to prevent the rain from penetrating, as well as to protect us in the daytime from the sun. This flapped and rattled and swung loose at one end, beating on the canvas roof like a trip-hammer, for it was loaded with moisture; and the wet ropes attached to it, and used to guy it down, were now loose, and lashed our rag house in an angry, vindictive manner. ”

“ Before the little ones could follow their first instinct, and thereby encounter certain death by attempting to run through the fire to their mother, the devoted soldier, who had left them but a moment, realizing that they would instantly seek their mother, ran like an antelope to where the fire-band narrowed, leaped the flame, seized the little men, and plunged with mad strides to the bank of the creek, where, God be praised! nature provides a refuge from the relentless foe of our Western plains. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I remember with distinctness what genuine admiration and gratitude filled my heart as these intrepid men rode up to my husband's tent to receive orders and despatches. From my woman's standpoint, it required far more and a vastly higher order of courage to undertake their journeys than to charge in battle. With women, every duty or task seems easier when shared by others. The most cowardly of us might be so impressionable, so sympathetic, in a great cause that we saw others preparing to defend, that it would become our own ”

“ While I wept and shivered, and endured double agony, knowing into what peril my husband had by that time struggled, I felt warm, soft arms about me, and our faithful Eliza was crooning over me, begging me to be comforted, that she was there holding me. Awakened at the end of the cabin, where she slept on a sofa, she thought of nothing but making her way through the demolished furniture, to take me in her protecting arms. Every one who knows the negro character is aware what their terrors are at sea. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As our officers and their detachment were for a time allowed to proceed quietly on their march to McPherson, they rather flattered themselves they would see nothing of the enemy. Still, every eye watched the long ravines that intersect the Plains and form such fastnesses for the wily foe. There is so little to prepare you for these cuts in the smooth surface of the plain, that an unguarded traveler comes almost upon a deep fissure in the earth, before dreaming that the lay of the land was not all the seeming level that stretches on to sunset. ”

“ To a looker-on like me, it seemed very much like reducing men to machines. The men made so much trouble on the campaign—and we knew of it by the many letters that came into garrison in one mail, as well as by personal observation, when in the regiment—that I did not find much sympathy in my heart for them. In one night, while I was at Fort Hays, forty men deserted, and in so bold [399] and deliberate a manner, taking arms, ammunition, horses, and quantities of food, that the officers were roused to action, for it looked as if not enough men would be left to protect the fort. ”

“ I find that it is impossible to make the life clear to citizens, even when they ask me to describe personally something of frontier days, unless they may have been over the Plains in their journeys to and from the Pacific coast. Even then, they look from the windows of the Pullman car on to the desert, white with alkali, over which the heat rises in waves, and upon earth that struggles to give even life to the hardy cactus or sage-brush. ”