Constance at Two and One-Half Years.
Street in El Paso in Its Deserted Days, About 1870.
April 1, 1885, the regiment exchanged stations with the Third Cavalry in Arizona. We made that long and distressing march also with wagon and ambulance transportation. Arriving at El Paso in a terrible sand-storm, we found the Rio Grande unfordable. The only bridge crossed into Mexico three miles below the New Mexican line. According to international law, we could not pass over Mexican territory without the consent of the two governments, so we were delayed a week most uncomfortably, awaiting the tedious international interchanges to enable us to cross. We finally arrived at Deming (in a terrible sand-storm), meeting most of the troops of the 3d Cavalry there.
I was ordered to Fort Thomas on the Gila River, next to Yuma, the hottest post in the republic and the most sickly, excepting none. It was one of the most desolate posts in which we ever served. The valley was very low and hot. The mountains on each side of the river were some six or seven thousand feet higher than the valley and only about six or eight miles apart, so what little rain there was fell on these mountains.
I have often seen a heavy storm pass across the river from mountain to mountain, and watched almost a cloudburst of rain falling from the immense height only to be absorbed by the arid atmosphere before it reached the valley. Here many of our soldiers died in an epidemic of a very malignant, burning fever, which the post surgeon, Dr. Edward Carter, was unable to check. Informed that if we had ice the doctor could save many lives, I made requisition for an ice machine to cost three thousand dollars. It was twice returned by the War Department disapproved, the principal reason being that the Quartermaster General and the Surgeon General could not agree which department should pay for the wood to run the engine!
Exasperated, I appealed to General Sheridan personally. General Sheridan gave the two chieftains his opinion of them in such strong language that the appropriation for the machine was soon furnished, the first authorized in the army.
Our little daughter Constance was taken with the disease, and Dr. Carter told us that she might not recover without ice. I wired Colonel Shafter, commanding Fort Grant, half way to the railroad seventy miles away, and he supplied me with two hundred pounds, rolled in blankets, within twelve hours. The day after the doctor reduced my daughter's temperature and she recovered.
While at Thomas the Northern Apaches went on the warpath, Geronimo and his wild followers devastating the settlements and killing many men, women and children, whom we buried in the post cemetery. This war lasted two years before our troops drove the Apaches into Mexico and, by agreement with the Mexican Government, followed them there, capturing Geronimo.