CHAPTER V.
OUT OF THE WILDERNESS.
As we came out of the forest, the country improved somewhat. The farm-houses began to show a little look of comfort, and it occurred to us that we might now vary the monotony of our fare by marketing. My husband and I sometimes rode on in advance of the command, and approached the houses with our best manners, soliciting the privilege of buying butter and eggs. The farmer's wife was taking her first look at Yankees, but she found that we neither wore horns nor were cloven-footed, and she even so far unbent as to apologize for not having butter, adding, what seemed then so flimsy an excuse, that "I don't make more than enough butter for our own use, as we are only milking seven cows now." We had yet to learn that what makes a respectable dairy at home was nothing in a country where the cows give a cupful of milk and all run to horns. It was a great relief to get out of the wilderness, but though our hardships were great, I do not want them to appear to outnumber the pleasures. The absence of creature comforts is easily itemized. We are either too warm or too cold, we sleep uncomfortably, we have poor food, we are wet by storms, we are made ill by exposure. Happiness cannot be itemized so readily; it is hard to define what goes to round and complete a perfect day. We remember hours of pleasure as bathed in a mist that blends all shades into a roseate hue; but it is impossible to take one tint from colors so perfectly mingled, and define how it adds to the perfect whole.
The days now seemed to grow shorter and brighter. In place of the monotonous pines, we had magnolia, mulberry, pecan, persimmon and live-oak, as well as many of our own Northern trees, that grew along the streams. The cactus, often four feet high, was covered with rich red blossoms, and made spots of gorgeous color in the prairie grass. I had not then seen the enormous cacti of old Mexico, and four feet of that plant seemed immense, as at home we labored to get one to grow six inches. The wild-flowers were charming in color, variety and luxuriance. The air, even then beginning to taste of the sea, blew softly about us. Stillman no longer blackened his soul with prophecies about the streams on which we nightly pitched our tents. The water did flow in them, and though they were then low, so that the thousands of horses were scattered far up and down when watering-time came, the green scum of sluggish pools was a thing of the past.
A few days before we reached what was to be a permanent camp, a staff-officer rode out to meet us, and brought some mail. It was a strange sensation to feel ourselves restored by these letters to the outside world. General Custer received a great surprise. He was brevetted major, lieutenant-colonel and brigadier-general in the regular army. The officers went off one side to read their sweethearts' letters; and some of our number renewed their youth, sacrificed in that dreadful forest to fever, when they read the good news of the coming of their wives by sea. At Hempstead we halted, and the General made a permanent camp, in order to recruit men and horses after their exhausting march. Here General Sheridan and some of his staff came, by way of Galveston, and brought with them our father Custer, whom the General had sent for to pay us a visit. General Sheridan expressed great pleasure at the appearance of the men and horses, and heard with relief and satisfaction of the orderly manner in which they had marched through the enemy's country, of how few horses had perished from the heat, and how seldom sunstroke had occurred. He commended the General—as he knew how to do so splendidly—and placed him in command of all the cavalry in the State. Our own Division then numbered four thousand men.
I was again mortified to have to be compelled to lie down for a day or two, as so many weeks in the saddle had brought me to the first discovery of a spinal column. It was nothing but sheer fatigue, for I was perfectly well, and could laugh and talk with the rest, though not quite equal to the effort of sitting upright, especially as we had nothing but camp-stools, on which it is impossible to rest. Indisposition, or even actual illness, has less terrors in army life than in the States. We were not condemned to a gloomy upper chamber in a house, and shut in alone with a nurse whom we had never before seen. In our old life, ailing people lay on a lounge in the midst of all the garrison, who were coming and going a dozen times a day, asking, "How does it go now?" and if you had studied up anything that they could do for you? I principally recall being laid up by fatigue, because of the impetuous assault that my vehement father Custer made on his son for allowing me to share the discomforts; and when I defended my husband by explaining how I had insisted upon coming, he only replied, "Can't help it if you did. Armstrong, you had no right to put her through such a jaunt." It was amusing to see the old man's horror when our staff told him what we had been through. It would have appeared that I was his own daughter, and the General a son-in-law, by the manner in which he renewed his attack on the innocent man. Several years afterward it cost Lieutenant James Calhoun long pleading, and a probationary state of two years, before the old man would consent to his taking his daughter Margaret into the army. He shook his gray head determinedly, and said, "Oh, no; you don't get me to say she shall go through what Libbie has." But the old gentleman was soon too busy with his own affairs, defending himself against not only the ingenious attacks of his two incorrigible boys, but the staff, some of whom had known him in Monroe. His eyes twinkled, and his face wrinkled itself into comical smiles, as he came every morning with fresh tales of what a "night of it he had put in." He had a collection of mild vituperations for the boys, gathered from Maryland, Ohio and Michigan, where he had lived, which, extensive as the list was, did not, in my mind, half meet the situation.
The stream on which we had encamped was wide and deep, and had a current. Our tents were on the bank, which gently sloped to the water. We had one open at both ends, over which was built a shade of pine boughs, which was extended in front far enough for a porch. Some lumber from a pontoon bridge was made into the unusual luxury of a floor. My husband still indulged my desire to have the traveling-wagon at the rear, so that I might take up a safe position at night, when sleep interrupted my vigils over the insects and reptiles that were about us constantly. The cook-tent, with another shade over it, was near us, where Eliza flourished a skillet as usual. The staff were at some distance down the bank, while the Division was stretched along the stream, having, at last, plenty of water. Beyond us, fifty miles of prairie stretched out to the sea. We encamped on an unused part of the plantation of the oldest resident of Texas, who came forth with a welcome and offers of hospitality, which we declined, as our camp was comfortable. His wife sent me over a few things to make our tent habitable, as I suppose her husband told her that our furniture consisted of a bucket and two camp-stools. There's no denying that I sank down into one of the chairs, which had a back, with a sense of enjoyment of what seemed to me the greatest luxury I had ever known. The milk, vegetables, roast of mutton, jelly, and other things which she also sent, were not enough to tempt me out of the delightful hollow, from which I thought I never could emerge again. But military despots pick up their families and carry them out to their dinner, if they refuse to walk. The new neighbors offered us a room with them, but the General never left his men, and it is superfluous to say that I thought our clean, new hospital tent, as large again as a wall-tent, and much higher, was palatial after the trials of the pine forests.
The old neighbor continued his kindness, which was returned by sending him game after the General's hunt, and protecting his estate. He had owned 130 slaves, with forty in his house. He gave us dogs and sent us vegetables, and spent many hours under our shade. He had lived under eight governments in his Texas experience, and, possibly, the habit of "speeding the parting and welcoming the coming guest" had something to do with his hospitality. I did not realize how Texas had been tossed about in a game of battle-door and shuttle-cock till he told me of his life under Mexican rule, the Confederacy, and the United States.
I find mention, in an old letter to my parents, of a great luxury that here appeared, and quote the words of the exuberant and much-underlined girl missive: "I rejoice to tell you that I am the happy possessor of a mattress. It is made of the moss which festoons the branches of all the trees at the South. The moss is prepared by boiling it, then burying it in the ground for a long time, till only the small thread inside is left, and this looks like horse-hair. An old darkey furnished the moss for three dollars, and the whole thing only cost seven dollars—very cheap for this country. We are living finely now; we get plenty of eggs, butter, lard and chickens. Eliza cooks better than ever, by a few logs, with camp-kettles and stew-pans. She has been washing this past week, and drying her things on a line tied to the tent-poles and on bushes, and ironing on the ground, with her ironing-sheet held down by a stone on each corner. To-day we are dressed in white. She invites us to mark Sunday by the luxury of wearing white. Her 'ole miss used to.' We are regulated by the doings of that 'ole miss,' and I am glad that among the characteristics of my venerable predecessor, which we are expected to follow, wearing white gowns is included."
Eliza, sitting here beside me to-day, has just reminded me of that week, as it was marked in her memory by a catastrophe. Eliza's misfortunes were usually within the confines of domestic routine. I quote her words: "It was on the Gros Creek, Miss Libbie, that I had out that big wash, and all your lace-trimmed things, and all the Ginnel's white linen pants and coats. I didn't know nothin' 'bout the high winds then, but I ain't like to forget 'em ever again. The first thing I I knew, the line was jest lifted up, and the clothes jest spread in every direction, and I jest stood still and looked at 'em, and I says, 'Is this Texas? How long am I to contend with this?' [With hands uplifted and a camp-meeting roll in her eyes.] But I had to go to work and pick 'em all up. Some fell in the sand, and some on the grass. I gathered 'em all, with the sun boiling down hot enough to cook an egg. While I was a-pickin' 'em up, the Ginnel was a-standin' in the tent entrance, wipin' down his moustache, like he did when he didn't want us to see him laughin'. Well, Miss Libbie, I was that mad when he hollered out to me, 'Well, Eliza, you've got a spread-eagle thar.' Oh, I was so mad and hot, but he jest bust right out laughin'. But there wasn't anything to do but rinse and hang 'em up again."
We had been in camp but a short time when the daughter of the newly appointed collector of the port came from their plantation near to see us. She invited me to make my home with them while we remained, but I was quite sure there was nothing on earth equal to our camp. The girl's father had been a Union man during the war, and was hopelessly invalided by a long political imprisonment. I remember nothing bitter, or even gloomy, about that hospitable, delightful family. The young girl's visit was the precursor of many more, and our young officers were in clover. There were three young women in the family, and they came to our camp and rode and drove with us, while we made our first acquaintance with Southern home life. The house was always full of guests. The large dining-table was not long enough, however, unless placed diagonally across the dining-room, and it was sometimes laid three times before all had dined. The upper part of the house was divided by a hall running the length of the house. On one side the women and their guests—usually a lot of rollicking girls—were quartered, while the men visitors had rooms opposite; and then I first saw the manner in which a Southern gallant comes as a suitor or a friend. He rode up to the house with his servant on another horse, carrying a portmanteau. They came to stay several weeks. I wondered that there was ever an uncongenial marriage in the South, when a man had such a chance to see his sweetheart. This was one of the usages of the country that our Northern men adopted when they could get leave to be absent from camp, and delightful visits we all had.
It seemed a great privilege to be again with women, after the long season in which I had only Eliza to represent the sex. But I lost my presence of mind when I went into a room for the first time and caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. The only glass I had brought from the East was broken early in the march, and I had made my toilet by feeling. The shock of the apparition comes back to me afresh, and the memory is emphasized by my fastidious mother's horror when she saw me afterward. I had nothing but a narrow-brimmed hat with which to contend against a Texas sun. My face was almost parboiled and swollen with sunburn, while my hair was faded and rough. Of course, when I caught the first glimpse of myself in the glass I instantly hurried to the General and Tom, and cried out indignantly, "Why didn't you tell me how horridly I looked?"—the inconsistent woman in me forgetting that it would not have made my ugliness any easier to endure. My husband hung his head in assumed humility when he returned me to my mother, six months later, my complexion seemingly hopelessly thickened and darkened; for, though happily it improved after living in a house, it never again looked as it did before the Texas life. My indignant mother looked as if her son-in-law was guilty of an unpardonable crime. I told her, rather flippantly, that it had been offered up on the altar of my country, and she ought to be glad to have so patriotic a family; but she withered the General with a look that spoke volumes. He took the first opportunity to whisper condescendingly that, though my mother was ready to disown me, and quite prepared to annihilate him, he would endeavor not to cast me off, if I was black, and would try to like me, "notwithstanding all."
The planters about the country began to seek out the General, and invite him to go hunting; and, as there was but little to do while the command was recruiting from the march, he took his father and the staff and went to the different plantations where the meet was planned. The start was made long before day, and breakfast was served at the house where the hunters assembled, dinner being enjoyed at the same hospitable board on the return at night. Each planter brought his hounds, and I remember the General's delight at his first sight of the different packs—thirty-seven dogs in all—and his enthusiasm at finding that every dog responded to his master's horn. He thereupon purchased a horn, and practiced in camp until he nearly split his cheeks in twain, not to mention the spasms into which we were driven; for his five hounds, presents from the farmers, ranged themselves in an admiring and sympathetic semicircle, accompanying all his practicing by tuning their voices until they reached the same key. I had no idea it was such a difficult thing to learn to sound notes on a horn. When we begged off sometimes from the impromptu serenades of the hunter and his dogs, the answer was, "I am obliged to practice, for if anyone thinks it is an easy thing to blow on a horn, just let him try it." Of course Tom caught the fever, and came in one day with the polished horn of a Texas steer ready for action. The two were impervious to ridicule. No detailed description of their red, distended cheeks, bulging eyes, bent and laborious forms, as they struggled, suspended the operation. The early stages of this horn music gave little idea of the gay picture of these debonair and spirited athletes, as they afterward appeared. When their musical education was completed, they were wont to leap into the saddle, lift the horn in unconscious grace to their lips, curbing their excited and rearing horses with the free hand, and dash away amidst the frantic leaping, barking and joyous demonstration of their dogs.
At the first hunt, when one of our number killed a deer, the farmers made known to our officers, on the sly, the old established custom of the chase. While Captain Lyon stood over his game, volubly narrating, in excited tones, how the shot had been sent and where it had entered, a signal, which he was too absorbed to notice, was given, and the crowd rushed upon him and so plastered him with blood from the deer that scarcely an inch of his hair, hands and face was spared, while his garments were red from neck to toes. After this baptism of gore, they dragged him to our tent on their return, to exhibit him, and it was well that he was one of the finest-hearted fellows in the world, for day and night these pestering fellows kept up the joke. Notwithstanding he had been subjected to the custom of the country, which demands that the blood of the first deer killed in the chase shall anoint the hunter, he had glory enough through his success to enable him to submit to the penalty.
Tom also shot a deer that day, but his glory was dimmed by a misfortune, of which he seemed fated never to hear the last. The custom was to place one or two men at stated intervals in different parts of the country where the deer were pretty sure to run, and Tom was on stand watching through the woods in the direction from which the sound of the dogs came. As the deer bounded toward him, he was so excited that when he fired, the shot went harmlessly by the buck and landed in one of the General's dogs, killing the poor hound instantly. Though this was a loss keenly felt, there was no resisting the chance to guy the hunter. Even after Tom had come to be one of the best shots in the Seventh Cavalry, and when the General never went hunting without him, if he could help it, he continued to say, "Oh, Tom's a good shot, a sure aim—he's sure to hit something!" Tom was very apt, also, to find newspaper clippings laid around, with apparent carelessness by his brother, where he would see them. For example, like this one, which I have kept among some old letters, as a reminder of those merry days: "An editor went hunting the other day, for the first time in twenty-two years, and he was lucky enough to bring down an old farmer by a shot in the leg. The distance was sixty-six yards."
We had long and delightful rides over the level country. Sometimes my husband and I, riding quietly along at twilight, for the days were still too warm for much exercise at noon-time, came upon as many as three coveys of quail scurrying to the underbrush. In a short walk from camp he could bag a dozen birds, and we had plenty of duck in the creek near us. The bird dog was a perpetual pleasure. She was the dearest, chummiest sort of house-dog, and when we took her out she still visited with us perpetually, running to us every now and again to utter a little whine, or to have us witness her tail, which, in her excitement in rushing through the underbrush, cacti and weeds, was usually scratched, torn and bleeding. The country was so dry that we could roam at will, regardless of roads. Our horses were accustomed to fording streams, pushing their way through thickets and brambles, and becoming so interested in making a route through them that my habit sometimes caught in the briars, and my hat was lifted off by the low-hanging moss and branches; and if I was not very watchful, the horse would go through a passage between two trees just wide enough for himself, and rub me off, unless I scrambled to the pommel. The greater the obstacles my husband encountered, even in his sports, the more pleasure it was to him. His own horses were so trained that he shot from their backs without their moving. Mine would also stand fire, and at the report of a gun, behaved much better than his mistress.
Eliza, instead of finding the General wearing his white linen to celebrate Sunday, according to her observances, was apt to get it on week-days after office-hours, far too often to suit her. On the Sabbath, she was immensely puffed up to see him emerge from the tent, speckless and spotless, because she said to me, "Whilst the rest of the officers is only too glad to get a white shirt, the Ginnel walks out among 'em all, in linen from top to toe." She has been sitting beside me, talking over a day at that time: "Do you mind, Miss Libbie, that while we was down in Texas the Ginnel was startin' off on a deer-hunt, I jest went up to him and tole him, 'Now, Ginnel, you go take off them there white pants.' He said so quiet, sassy, cool, roguish-like, 'The deer always like something white'—telling me that jest 'cause he wanted to keep 'em on. Well, he went, all the same, and when he came back, I says, 'I don't think the deer saw you in those pants.' He was covered with grass-stains and mud, and a young fawn swinging across the saddle. But them pants was mud and blood, and green and yellow blotches, from hem to bindin'. But he jest laughed at me because I was a-scoldin', and brought the deer out to me, and I skinned it the fust time I ever did, and cooked it next day, and we had a nice dinner."
At that time Eliza was a famous belle. Our colored coachman, Henry, was a permanent fixture at the foot of her throne, while the darkeys on the neighboring plantations came nightly to worship. She bore her honors becomingly, as well as the fact that she was the proud possessor of a showy outfit, including silk dresses. The soldiers to whom Eliza had been kind in Virginia had given her clothes that they had found in the caches where the farmers endeavored to hide their valuables during the war. Eliza had made one of these very receptacles for her "ole miss" before she left the plantation, and while her conscience allowed her to take the silken finery of some other woman whom she did not know, she kept the secret of the hiding-place of her own people's valuables until after the war, when the General sent her home in charge of one of his sergeants to pay a visit. Even the old mistress did not know the spot that Eliza had chosen, which had been for years a secret, and she describes the joy at sight of her, and her going to the place in the field and digging up the property "with right smart of money, too, Miss Libbie—enough, with that the Ginnel gave me to take home, to keep 'em till the crops could be harvested."
This finery of Eliza's drove a woman servant at the next place to plan a miserable revenge, which came near sending us all into another world. We were taking our breakfast one morning, with the table spread under the awning in front of our tent. The air, not yet heated by the sun, came over the prairie from the sea. The little green swift and the chameleon, which the General had found in the arbor roof and tamed as pets, looked down upon as reposeful and pretty a scene as one could wish, when we suddenly discovered a blaze in the cook-tent, where we had now a stove—but Eliza shall tell the story; "When I fust saw the fire, Miss Libbie, I was a-waitin' on you at breakfast. Then the first thought was the Ginnel's powder-can, and I jest dropped everythin' and ran and found the blaze was a-runnin' up the canvas of my tent, nearly reachin' the powder. The can had two handles, and I ketched it up and ran outside. When I first got in the tent, it had burnt clar up to the ridge-pole on one side. Some things in my trunk was scorched mightily, and one side of it was pretty well burnt. The fire was started right behind my trunk, not very near the cook-stove. The Ginnel said to me how cool and deliberate I was, and he told me right away that if my things had been destroyed, I would have everythin' replaced, for he was bound I wasn't going to lose nothin'."
My husband, in this emergency, was as cool as he always was. He followed Eliza as she ran for the powder-can, and saved the tent and its contents from destruction, and, without doubt, saved our lives. The noble part that I bore in the moment of peril was to take a safe position in our tent, wring my hands and cry. If there was no one else to rush forward in moments of danger, courage came unexpectedly, but I do not recall much brave volunteering on my part.
Eliza put such a broad interpretation upon the General's oft-repeated instruction not to let any needy person go away from our tent or quarters hungry, that occasionally we had to protest. She describes to me now his telling her she was carrying her benevolence rather too far, and her replying, "Yes, Ginnel, I do take in some one once and a while, off and on." "Yes," he replied to me, "more on than off, I should say." "One chile I had to hide in the weeds a week, Miss Libbie. The Ginnel used to come out to the cook-tent and stand there kinder careless like, and he would spy a little path running out into the weeds. Well, he used to carry me high and dry about them little roads leading off to folks he said I was a-feedin.' I would say, when I saw him lookin' at the little path in the weeds, 'Well, what is it, Ginnel?' He would look at me so keen-like out of his eyes, and say, 'That's what I say.' Then he'd say he was goin' to get a couple of bloodhounds, and run 'em through the bushes to find out just how many I was a-feedin'. Then, Miss Libbie, we never did come to a brush or a thicket but that he would look around at me so kinder sly like, and tell me that would be a fust-rate ranch for me. Then I would say, 'Well, it's a good thing I do have somebody sometimes, 'cause my cook-tent is allus stuck way off by itself, and it's lonesome, and sometimes I'm so scart.' But, you know, Miss Libbie," she added, afraid I might think she reflected on one whose memory she reveres, "my tent was obliged to be a good bit off, 'cause the smell of the cookin' took away the Ginnel's appetite; he was so uncertain like in his eatin', you remember."
In Texas, two wretched little ragamuffins—one, of the poor white trash, and another a negro—were kept skulking about the cook-tent, making long, circuitous détours to the creek for water, for fear we would see them, as they said "Miss Lize tole us you'd make a scatter if you knew 'no 'count' chillern was a-bein' fed at the cook-tent." They slipped into the underbrush at our approach, and lay low in the grass at the rear of the tent if they heard our voices. The General at first thought that, after Eliza had thoroughly stuffed them and made them fetch and carry for her, they would disappear, and so chose to ignore their presence, pretending he had not seen them. But at last they appeared to be a permanent addition, and we concluded that the best plan would be to acknowledge their presence and make the best of the infliction; so we named one Texas, and the other Jeff. Eliza beamed, and told the orphans, who capered out boldly in sight for the first time, and ran after Miss "Lize" to do her bidding. Both of them, from being starved, wretched, and dull, grew quite "peart" under her care. The first evidence of gratitude I had was the creeping into the tent of the little saffron-colored white boy, with downcast eyes, mumbling that "Miss Lize said that I could pick the scorpions out of your shoes." I asked, in wonder—one spark of generosity blazing up before its final obliteration—"And how, in the name of mercy, do you get on with the things yourself?" He lifted up a diminutive heel, and proudly showed me a scar. The boy had probably never had on a pair of shoes, consequently this part of his pedal extremity was absolutely so callous, so evidently obdurate to any object less penetrating than a sharpened spike driven in with a hammer, I found myself wondering how a scorpion's little spear could have effected an entrance through the seemingly impervious outer cuticle. Finally, I concluded that at a more tender age that "too solid flesh" may have been susceptible to an "honorable wound." It turned out that this cowed and apparently lifeless little midget was perfectly indifferent to scorpions. By this time I no longer pretended to courage of any sort; I had found one in my trunk, and if, after that, I was compelled to go to it, I flung up the lid, ran to the other side of the tent, and "shoo-shooed" with that eminently senseless feminine call which is used alike for cows, geese, or any of these acknowledged foes. Doubtless a bear would be greeted with the same word, until the supposed occupants had run off. Night and morning my husband shook and beat my clothes while he helped me to dress. The officers daily came in with stories of the trick, so common to the venomous reptiles, of hiding between the sheets, and the General then even shook the bedding in our eyrie room in the wagon. Of all this he was relieved by the boy that Eliza called "poor little picked sparrow," who was appointed as my maid. Night and morning the yellow dot ran his hands into shoes, stockings, night-gown, and dress-sleeves, in all the places where the scorpions love to lurk; and I bravely and generously gathered myself into the armchair while the search went on.
Eliza has been reminding me of our daily terror of the creeping, venomous enemy of those hot lands. She says, "One day, Miss Libbie, I got a bite, and I squalled out to the Ginnel, 'Somethin's bit me!' The Ginnel, he said, 'Bit you! bit you whar?' I says, 'On my arm;' and, Miss Libbie, it was pizen, for my arm it just swelled enormous and got all up in lumps. Then it pained me so the Ginnel stopped a-laughin' and sent for the doctor, and he giv' me a drink of whiskey. Then what do you think! when I got better, didn't he go and say I was playin' off on him, just to get a big drink of whiskey? But I 'clar' to you, Miss Libbie, I was bad off that night. The centipede had crept into my bedclothes, and got a good chance at me, I can tell you."
Our surgeon was a naturalist, and studied up the vipers and venomous insects of that almost tropical land. He showed me a captured scorpion one day, and, to make me more vigilant, infuriated the loathsome creature till it flung its javelin of a tail over on its back and stung itself to death.
Legends of what had happened to army women who had disregarded the injunctions for safety were handed down from elder to subaltern, and a plebe fell heir to these stories as much as to the tactics imparted by his superiors, or the campaigning lore. I hardly know when I first heard of the unfortunate woman who lingered too far behind the cavalcade, in riding for pleasure or marching, and was captured by the Indians, but for ten years her story was related to me by officers of all ages and all branches of the service as a warning. In Texas, the lady who had been frightfully stung by a centipede pointed every moral. The sting was inflicted before the war, and in the far back days of "angel sleeves," which fell away from the arm to the shoulder. Though this misfortune dated back from such a distant period, the young officers, in citing her as a warning to us to be careful, described the red marks all the way up the arm, with as much fidelity as if they had seen them. No one would have dreamed that the story had filtered through so many channels. But surely one needed little warning of the centipede. Once seen, it made as red stains on the memory as on the beautiful historic arm that was used to frighten us. The Arabs call it the mother of forty-four, alluding to the legs; and the swift manner in which it propels itself over the ground, aided by eight or nine times as many feet as are allotted to ordinary reptiles, makes one habitually place himself in a position for a quick jump or flight while campaigning in Texas. We had to be watchful all the time we were in the South. Even in winter, when wood was brought in and laid down beside the fireplace, the scorpions, torpid with cold at first, crawled out of knots and crevices, and made a scattering till they were captured. One of my friends was stationed at a post where the quarters were old and of adobe, and had been used during the war for stables by the Confederates. It was of no use to try to exterminate these reptiles; they run so swiftly it takes a deft hand and a sure stroke to finish them up. Our officers grew expert in devising means to protect themselves, and, in this instance, a box of moist mud, with a shingle all ready, was kept in the quarters. When a tarantula showed himself, he was plastered on the wall. It is impossible to describe how loathsome that great spider is. The round body and long, far-reaching legs are covered with hairs, each particular hair visible; and the satanic eyes bulge out as they come on in your direction, making a feature of every nightmare for a long time after they are first seen. 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 associated 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.