Once after this my husband, by hiding, contrived to be present, though unseen, at one of these funeral ceremonies:
"Princes, this clay must be your bed,
In spite of all your towers,
The tall, the wise, the reverend head,
Must lie as low as yours."
He so timed his verses that with one wrench he gave the final turn to the poor chicken's head as he jerked out the last line. My husband, perfectly convulsed himself, was in terror for fear Uncle Charley would have his feelings hurt by seeing us, and hearing my giggling, and I nearly smothered myself in the attempt to get back to our tent, where the General threw himself down with shrieks of laughter.
We varied our march by many an exciting race after jack-rabbits. The chapparral bushes defeated us frequently by making such good hiding-places for the hare.[D] If we came to a long stretch of open prairie, and a rabbit lifted his doe-like head above the grass, the General uttered a wild whoop to his dog, a "Come on!" to me, and off we dashed. Some of the staff occasionally joined, while our father Custer bent over his old roan horse, mildly struck him with a spur, and was in at the death. The ground was excellent for a run—level and grassy. We had a superb greyhound called Byron, that was devoted to the General, and after a successful chase it was rewarded with many a demonstration of affection. He was the most lordly dog, I think, I ever saw—powerful, with deep chest, and carrying his head in a royal way. When he started for a run, with his nostrils distended and his delicate ears laid back on his noble head, each bound sent him flying through the air. He hardly touched the elastic cushions of his feet to earth, before he again was spread out like a dark, straight thread. This gathering and leaping must be seen, to realize how marvelous is the rapidity and how the motion seems flying, almost, as the ground is scorned except at a sort of spring bound. He trotted back to the General, if he happened to be in advance, with the rabbit in his mouth, and, holding back his proud head, delivered the game only to his chief. The tribute that a woman pays to beauty in any form, I gave to Byron, but I never cared much for him. A greyhound's heart could be put into a thimble. Byron cared for the General as much as his cold soul could for any one, but it was not to be compared with the dear Ginnie: she was all love, she was almost human.
The dog was in an injured state with me much of the time. In quarters he resented all my rights. My husband had a great fashion of flinging himself on the bed, or even on the floor, if it was carpeted. He told me he believed he must unconsciously have acquired the habit at West Point, where the zeal of the cadet seems divided between his studies and an effort to keep the wrinkles out of the regulation white pantaloons, which, being of duck, are easily creased. What punishment Government sees fit to inflict for each separate crease, I don't know, but certainly its embryo soldiers have implanted in them a fear of consequences, even regarding rumpled linen. As soon as the General tossed himself on the bed, Byron walked to him and was invited to share the luxury. "Certainly," my husband used to say, sarcastically; "walk right up here on this clean white spread, without troubling yourself to care whether your feet are covered with mud or not. Your Aunt Eliza wants you to lie on nice white counterpanes; she washes them on purpose for you." Byron answered this invitation by licking his host's hand, and turning in the most scornful manner on me, as I uttered a mild protest regarding his muddy paws. The General quickly remarked that I made invidious distinctions, as no spread seemed too fine or white for Ginnie, in my mind, while if Eliza happened to enter, a pair of blazing eyes and an energetically expressed opinion of Byron ensued, and he retorted by lifting his upper lip over some of the whitest fangs I ever saw. The General, still aiding and abetting, asked the dog to let Aunt Eliza see what an intelligent, knowing animal he was—how soon he distinguished his friends from his foes. Such an exasperating brute, and such a tormenting master, were best left alone. But I was tired, and wanted to lie down, so I told Eliza that if she would stand there, I would try the broom, a woman's weapon, on his royal highness. Byron wouldn't move, and growled even at me. Then I quite meekly took what little place was left, the General's sense of mischief, and his peculiar fondness for not interfering in a fight, now coming in to keep him silent. The dog rolled over, and shammed sleep, but soon planting his feet against my back, which was turned in high dudgeon, he pushed and pushed, seemingly without premeditation, his dreadful eyes shut, until I was nearly shoved off. I was conquered, and rose, afraid of the dog and momentarily irritated at my defeat and his tyranny, while Eliza read a lesson to the General. She said, "Now see what you've done. You keer more for that pesky, sassy old hound than you does for Miss Libbie. Ginnel, I'd be 'shamed, if I was you. What would your mother Custer think of you now?" But my feelings were not seriously hurt, and the General, having watched to the last to see how far the brute would carry his jealousy, gave him a kick that sent him sprawling on the floor, springing up to restore me to my place and close the colored harangue that was going on at the foot of the bed. Eliza rarely dignified me with the honor of being referee in any disputed question. She used to say, "No matter whether it's right or wrong, Miss Libbie's sho' to side with the Ginnel." Her droll way of treating him like a big boy away from home for the first time, always amused him. She threatened to tell his mother, and brought up that sainted woman in all our encounters, as she did in the dog episode just mentioned, as if the very name would restore order at once, and give Eliza her own way in regulating us. But dear mother Custer had been in the midst of too many happy scuffles, and the centre of too many friendly fisticuffs among her active, irrepressible boys, in the old farm-days, for the mention of her name to restore order in our turbulent household.
FOOTNOTES:
[B] Don Juan was a horse captured by our soldiers during the war, and bought, as was the custom, by the General, for the appraised value of a contract horse. It was the horse that ran away with him at the grand review, and it afterward died in Michigan.
[C] An abbreviation of the General's second name, Armstrong, given him by his elder sister's children, when they were too young to pronounce the full name Armstrong.
[D] I never liked hunting when the game was killed, and I was relieved to find how often the hare rabbit escaped into the thickets.