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.
CHAPTER VI.
A TEXAS NORTHER.
We had not been long in our camp at Hempstead, before the wives of two of the staff arrived by way of Galveston. Their tents were put on a line with or near ours, and arbors built over them. One of these women, Mrs. Greene, had been one of my dearest girlhood friends, and every pleasure of my happy life was enhanced by the presence of this lovely woman. We all went out, after the heat of the day, on long rides about the country. Our father Custer was a fine rider, and not only sat his horse well, but it was almost impossible to unseat him. He grew more wary and watchful of his tormenting sons every day. If they halted, apparently only to say a casual word or so to their paternal, that keen old man spurred his horse to one side with the agility of a circus-rider, just in time to avoid the flying heels of the horse of his offspring in front of him, which had been taught to fling his hoofs up when touched just back of the saddle. If both boys came together and rode one on each side of him, he looked uneasily from one to the other, suspicious of this sudden exhibition of friendship; and well he might, for while one fixed his attention by some question that provoked an answer, usually about politics, the other gave a quick rap on the back of the horse, and the next thing, the father was grasping the pommel to keep from being flung forward of the animal as he threw up his heels and plunged his head down, making the angle of an incline plane. Even when, after a concerted plan, one rode up and pulled the cape of the elder man's overcoat over his head and held it there a moment, while the other gave the horse a cut, he sat like a centaur, and no surprise unseated him or loosened his grip on the reins. They knew his horsemanship well, as he had ridden after the hounds in Maryland and Virginia in his younger days, and had taught them to sit a horse bareback, when their little fat legs were too short to describe a curve on the animal's side. Of course I was always begging to have them spare father, but it was needless championship. He enjoyed their pranks with all his fun-loving soul.