CHAPTER IX.
CAMPING BY NIGHT—FORLORN WOMEN—BEAUMONT—HOUSTON.
We were going to Texas, the great State that opened its hospitable doors to hundreds of refugees fleeing like ourselves from their own homes. We were going to Texas for many reasons.
A loving brother was there, and our slaves were there at peaceful work on land cultivated on shares. We had, besides, the feeling that the Federals could never get a foothold on its boundless prairies, though they had made an ominous beginning by capturing its most valuable seaport; but, above and beyond all, we could take refuge in Mexico if the worse came to the worst.
We had long journeys of days that ran into weeks, of camping under a tent that was scarce large enough to cover four. Every night after the day’s ride, fodder, that was picked up in the fields bordering the road, was carefully spread on the bare ground, with comforts and a blanket on top, and we stowed ourselves away, each with a child to keep warm. Often we rose in the morning to find the ground covered with frost, and the tent too stiff to be folded into the wagon. Then, crossing rivers by rope-ferries, “manned” by women whose husbands were in the mountains of Virginia or the swamps around Vicksburg—frail rope-ferries, that could only take one vehicle at a time without risk of sinking; riding by day, camping by night, occasionally in rainy weather asking shelter at houses by the road-side; though never refused, the accommodations were always scant and more or less uncomfortable. Proceeding west, we found the people poorer and more ignorant, consequently more helpless. In many instances only women and children were left in the almost destitute farm-houses. One rainy Sunday afternoon we stopped at a miserable country house—the first one we had seen all that day—which consisted of two rooms and a porch perched a few feet above the ground on the inevitable six stumps which formed the foundation, and a retreat at the same time for pigs and chickens. After rapping and calling for some time, finding no response, and the door on the latch, we ventured to enter the deserted house. The rafters were hung with long leaves of partly cured tobacco, and there was a remnant of fire on the capacious hearth, with other evidences that the owner was temporarily absent. Not a living thing was to be seen around the premises but a broken-down, one-eyed horse, and an ancient rooster, that strutted around in solitary state. In the course of the afternoon two forlorn women made their appearance with a handkerchief full of “borrowed” corn-meal, for, except a pound or two of rusty bacon, they had nothing whatever in the house to eat. It was difficult for my husband to believe they could be so destitute that they had to walk in a drizzling rain four miles to a neighbor to borrow a half-peck of meal; he freely offered to pay any price for a few ears of corn for the mules. They were not to be had.
Their husbands (they were mother and daughter) had gone “to fight Lincoln,” they pathetically told us, and when they went, “now gwine on two year,” they expected to “git done with the job” in a month. The poor women had eaten everything their husbands left them but the “terbacker,” and, from the way they smoked and chewed that night, I am afraid they consumed all that before the men returned, if, alas! they ever did. We had hoped, being only twenty miles or so from the town of Beaumont, on the Sabine River, to find some variation in our own camp-diet. The poor baby had been fed on sweet-potatoes—the brave little fellow only six months old. When we asked for milk, they showed us the old one-eyed mar, stretching her long, skinny neck over the broken fence, as the “onlyest she-critter’” they had. In despair for ourselves and pity for them, we brought out our camp supplies—coffee, sugar, salt, and hard-tack—and the famished women enjoyed a sumptuous feast with the hot corn-bread and fried bacon they were able to add.
We were allowed to occupy their only bed, and I think there were a million of cimices lectuarii in it, for Henry and the patient little baby presented the appearance of having measles when we awoke the next morning.
We parted from our wagon and its camping facilities at the door of this old cabin, sending it by road direct to Houston, proposing ourselves to take cars at Beaumont, thereby saving at least sixty miles of wagon travel, which mode of conveyance had become intolerably wearisome to the children.
The only tavern at that picturesquely located town was less adapted to the accommodation of man than of beast. There was but one guest-chamber, and its only entrance was through a combination of office, bar, smoking and lounging room, presided over by the landlord, a kindly, hunchbacked dwarf, whose wife, a comely, intelligent woman, by the way, was the first “dipper” I ever saw. She confined herself mostly to the kitchen, where her pot of snuff and dip-stick were conveniently at hand on the window-sill, and between dips—I refrain from describing the process—attended to her domestic duties. The universal assembly-room was the only one provided with a fireplace. As a severe storm of rain and sleet, accompanied by a sharp fall in temperature, set in on Monday, the very day of our arrival, and continued with increasing fury until Friday, I sat all those days in a corner by a smoky fire, with baby wrapped in shawls on my lap. We were the only lodgers, so far as could be discovered, but the boarders hung round the same pitiful fire from meal to meal, reluctant to brave the inhospitable elements. They smoked pipes, talked, chewed, and expectorated hour after hour, but I was so glad of a warm, dry corner, and not inappreciative of the scant courtesy showed to the only lady in the crowd, that I had no complaints to make. No recollection remains to me regarding the time-table of the Houston and Beaumont Railroad, but a dim idea dawns that it was intended to make a round trip daily, Deo volente, which implied “weather permitting”; but when rain soaked the wood piled by the road-side so that it would not make steam, or when sleet made the rails slippery, travel was entirely suspended. As both these contingencies existed the week we were in Beaumont, of course no travel could be thought of.
At Orange faint rumors were circulated that Galveston had been recaptured by the Confederates. Proceeding west, those rumors became more frequent and positive; and the last day at Beaumont we had the happiness to have them verified by eye-witnesses of General Magruder’s heroic and gallant act, which could scarcely have been excelled by any similar event of the war. The story, repeated again and again, with added particulars at every recital, gave us mighty food for boastful talk, and our hearts so glowed with the warmth of excitement, that it was not surprising the sun burst out from the dark clouds then and there, and scattered the sleety rain-drops.
Master Henry had been so long confined to the smoky, stale odor of the sitting-room, that he took immediate advantage of the clearing weather to explore the town, whose mysteries he had studied for days through the grimy, rain-spotted windows. When missed, he could not be found. Beaumont is located on a high, almost perpendicular bluff, which runs sheer down to the bed of the narrow river. As the tavern was only a stone’s-throw from this precipitous bank, the first thought was that the child might have tumbled into the river. Our kind landlord himself headed a search, and, when the children at the school were dismissed at recess, they also joined in. When, some time afterward, the enterprising young scamp was found, quietly watching the men at work in a saw-mill out of town, the whole population had already been aroused. Meanwhile my husband—with an occasional little inquiring trip to the door, which did not arouse my suspicions—remained with me engaged in earnest discussion of the news from Galveston, in which, as in all particulars concerning the war, I was always so easily interested as to become for the time oblivious of every other subject. So well did he manage the self-imposed task, that the little truant was brought back before I had felt any anxiety on the score of his absence.