Everything pertaining to the Indians was new and interesting to me. While we were in Kansas the tribes were at war, and we had not the opportunity to see their daily life as we did while passing through the Sioux reservations on the march.
I regretted each day that brought us nearer to the conclusion of our journey, for though I had been frightened by Indians, and though we had encountered cold, storms, and rough life, the pleasures of the trip over-balanced the discomforts.
CHAPTER VIII.
SEPARATION AND REUNION.
The day at last came for our march of five hundred miles to terminate. A rickety old ferryboat that took us over the river made a halt near Fort Rice, and there we established ourselves. Strange to say, the river was no narrower there than it was so many hundred miles below, where we started. Muddy and full of sand-bars as it was, we began bravely to drink the water, when the glass had been filled long enough for the sediment partially to settle, and to take our bath in what at first seemed liquid mud. We learned after a time to settle the water with alum, and we finally became accustomed to the taste.
The commandant at Fort Rice was most hospitable, and his wife charming. The quarters were very ordinary frame buildings, with no modern improvements. They were painted a funereal tint, but one warranted to last. The interior showed the presence of a tasteful woman. She met us as cheerfully as if she were in the luxurious home from which we knew she had gone as a girl to follow a soldier’s life. Contrast often helps us to endure, and Dakota was not so bad as their last station in Arizona. The dinner was excellent, and our entertainers were the happy possessors of a good cook. Rarely do army people have two good servants at the same time on the frontier. Our host and hostess made no apologies, but quietly waited on the table themselves, and a merry time we had over the blunders of the head of the house, who was a distinguished general, in his endeavors to find necessary dishes in the china closet.
A steamer that arrived a day or two after we had reached Fort Rice brought the regimental property, consisting of everything that was not used on the march. Our household effects and trunks were delivered to us in a very sorry condition. They had been carelessly stored on the wharf at Yankton, near the government warehouse, without any covering, during all the storms that drenched us coming up the river. Almost everything was mildewed and ruined. We tried to dry our clothing in the sun. Many a little bit of silken finery that we had cherished since our marriage days, feeling sure that we should never attain to such grandeur again, was suspended from the tent-ropes, stained and dull. Our sister’s husband helped her to unpack her clothes and his own soaked uniform. He was dignified and reserved by nature, but on that occasion the barriers were broken. I heard him ask Margaret to excuse him while he went outside the tent to make some remarks to himself that he felt the occasion demanded. There were furious people on all sides, and savage speeches about the thoughtlessness of those who had left our property exposed to snow and rain, when we were no longer there to care for it. I endured everything until my pretty wedding-dress was taken out, crushed and spotted with mildew. My husband had great control over himself in the small annoyances of life, and was able to repeat again the proverb he had adopted in his boyhood, “Never cry for spilled milk.” How he could submit so quietly, when he took out his prized books and the few pictures I knew that he valued, was a mystery.
All thought began now to centre on the coming events of the summer. It was decided that the regiment was to go out to guard the engineers of the Northern Pacific Railroad while they surveyed the route from Bismarck to the Yellowstone River. The ladies necessarily were to be left behind. Now began the summer of my discontent. I longed to remain in Dakota, for I knew it would take much longer for our letters to reach us if we went East. Besides, it was far more comforting to stay at a military post, where every one was interested in the expedition, and talked about it as the chief topic of concern. I remembered when I had gone East before, during a summer when our regiment was fighting Indians, and my idea was that the whole country would be almost as absorbed as we were, how shocked I was to be asked, when I spoke of the regiment, “Ah, is there a campaign, and for what purpose has it gone out?”
I was willing to live in a tent alone at the post, but there were not even tents to be had. Then we all looked with envious eyes at the quarters at Fort Rice. The post was small, and there were no vacant rooms except in the bachelor quarters. These are so called when the unmarried men take rooms in the same house and mess together. No opportunity was given us to wheedle them into offering us a place. Our officers hinted to them, but they seemed to be completely intimidated regarding women. They received an honest and emphatic “no” when they asked if the ladies of the 7th Cavalry quarrelled. Even then these wary men said “they did not dare to offer to take in any women.” They added that there were but three in the post, and no two of them spoke to each other. They thought if we were asked to remain it might be the history of the Kilkenny cats repeated, and they were obdurate.