Tenting on the Plains; or, General Custer in Kansas and Texas

by Elizabeth Bacon Custer

CHAPTER IX.

DISTURBED CONDITION OF TEXAS.

Texas was in a state of ferment from one end to the other. There was then no network of railroads running over its vast territory as there is now. Lawless acts might be perpetrated, and the inciters cross the Rio Grande into Mexico, before news of the depredations came to either military or civil headquarters. The regiments stationed at various points in the State had no easy duty. Jayhawkers, bandits and bush-whackers had everything their own way for a time. I now find, through official reports, what innumerable perplexities came up almost daily, and how difficult it was for an officer in command of a division to act in perfect justice to citizen, soldier and negro. It was the most natural result in the world that the restless throng let loose over the State from the Confederate service, should do what idle hands usually find to do. Consider what a land of tramps we were at the North, after the war; and if, in our prosperous States and Territories, when so many business industries were at once resumed, we suffered from that class of men who refused to work and kept outside the pale of the law by a stealthy existence, what would naturally be the condition of affairs in a country like Texas, for many years the hiding-place of outlaws?

My own father was one of the most patriotic men I ever knew. He was too old to enter the service—an aged man even in my sight, for he had not married till he was forty; but in every way that he could serve his country at home he was foremost among the elderly patriots of the North. I remember how little war moved me. The clash of arms and glitter of the soldiery only appealed to me as it did to thoughtless, light-hearted young girls still without soldier lovers or brothers, who lived too far from the scenes of battle to know the tragic side. But my father impressed me by his sadness, his tears, his lamentations over our country's misfortunes. He was the first in town to get the news from the front, and so eager to hear the result of some awful day, when lives were being lost by thousands on a hotly contested field, that he walked a bleak, lonely mile to the telegraph station, waiting till midnight for the last despatches, and weeping over defeats as he wearily trod the long way homeward. I remember his striding up and down the floor, his grand head bent over his chest in grief, and saying, so solemnly as to arrest the attention of my stepmother, usually absorbed in domestic affairs, and even of me, too happy then with the very exuberance of living to think, while the sadness of his voice touched even our thoughtlessness: "Oh! the worst of this calamity will not be confined to war: our land, even after peace is restored, will be filled with cut-throats and villains."

The prediction came true immediately in Texas, and the troops had to be stationed over the extensive territory. Before the winter was over, the civil authorities began to be able to carry out the laws; they worked, as they were obliged to do, in connection with the military, and the rioting, oppressions and assassinations were becoming less common. It was considered unnecessary to retain the division of cavalry as an organization, since all anticipated trouble with Mexico was over, and the troops need no longer be massed in great numbers. The necessity for a special commander for the cavalry in the State was over, and the General was therefore mustered out of service as a major-general of volunteers, and ordered North to await his assignment to a new station.

We had very little to do in preparation, as our camp outfit was about all our earthly possessions at that time. It was a trial to part with the elderly dogs, which were hardly worth the experiment of transporting to the North, especially as we had no reason to suppose we should see another deer, except in zoological gardens. The hounds fell into good and appreciative hands, being given either to the planter who had presented them, or to the officers of the regular regiment that had just been stationed in Texas for a five-years' detail. The cow was returned to the generous planter who lent her to us. She was now a fat, sleek creature, compared with her appearance when she came from among the ranch cattle. The stables were emptied, and our brief enjoyment of an embryo blue-grass farm, with a diminutive private track of our own, was at an end. Jack Rucker, Custis Lee, Phil and the blooded mare were to go; but the great bargains in fast ponies had to be sacrificed.

GENERAL CUSTER AT THE CLOSE OF THE WAR—AGED 25.

My old father Custer had been as concerned about my horse education as his sons. He also tried, as well as his boys, to attract my attention from the flowing manes and tails, by which alone I judged the merits of a horse, to the shoulders, length of limb, withers, etc. One day there came an incentive for perfecting myself in horse lore, for my husband said that if I would select the best pony in a number we then owned, I should have him. I sat on a keg in the stable-yard, contemplating the heels of the horses, and wishing fervently I had listened to my former lessons in horseflesh more attentively. All three men laughed at my perplexities, and even the soldiers who took care of the stable retired to a safe place to smile at the witticisms of their commanding officer, and were so deplorably susceptible to fun that even the wife of their chief was a subject for merriment. I was in imminent danger of losing my chance at owning a horse, and might to this day have remained ignorant of the peculiarly proud sensation one experiences over that possession, if my father Custer had not slyly and surreptitiously come over to my side. How he cunningly imparted the information I will not betray; but, since he was as good a judge of a horse as his sons, and had taught them their wisdom in that direction, it is needless to say that my final judgment, after repeated returns to the stable, was triumphant. Texas made the old saw read, All is fair in love, war and horse-trades, so I adapted myself to the customs of the country, and kept the secret of my wise judgment until the money that the pony brought—forty dollars in silver—was safely deposited in my grasping palm. I will not repeat the scoffing of the outwitted pair, after I had spent the money, at "Libbie's horse-dress," but content myself with my father's praise at the gown he had secured to me, when I enjoyed at the North the serenity of mind that comes of silken attire.