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

by Elizabeth Bacon Custer

"STAND THERE, COWARDS, WILL YOU, AND SEE AN OLD MAN ROBBED?"

My father's story ceases without doing justice to himself; for the cunning manner in which he circumvented those mischievous fellows I remember, and it seems my husband had given a full account to our friend the Hon. Harry Conant. He writes to me, what is very true, that "it seems one must know the quaint and brave old man, to appreciate how exquisitely funny the incident, as told by the General, really was. The third day after the robbery the General and Tom, thinking their father engaged at a remote part of the boat, while talking over their escapade incautiously exhibited the pocket-book. Suddenly the hand that held it was seized in the strong grasp of the wronged father, who, lustily calling for aid, assured the passengers that were thronging up (and, being strangers, knew nothing of the relationship of the parties) that this purse was his, and that he had been robbed by these two scoundrels, and if they would assist in securing their arrest and restoring the purse, he would prove all he said. Seeing the crowd hesitate, he called out: 'For shame! stand there, cowards, will you, and see an old man robbed?' It was enough. The spectators rushed in, and the General was outwitted by his artful parent and obliged to explain the situation. But the consequent restoration of his property did not give him half the satisfaction that it did to turn the tables on the boys. Though they never acknowledged this robbery to their father, none were so proud of his victory as Tom and the General."

I must not leave to the imagination of the literal-minded people who may chance to read, the suspicion that my husband and Tom ever made their father in the least unhappy by their incessant joking. He met them half-way always, and I never knew them lack in reverence for his snowy head. He was wont to speak of his Texas life with his sons as his happiest year for many preceding, and used to say that, were it not for our mother's constantly increasing feebleness, he would go out to them in Kansas.

When he reached his own ground, he made Tom and the General pay for some of their plots and plans to render him uncomfortable, by coming to the foot of the stairs and roaring out (and he had a stentorian voice) that they had better be getting up, as it was late. Father Custer thought 6 o'clock a. m. was late. His sons differed. As soon as they found the clamor was to continue, assisted by the dogs, which he had released from the stable, leaping up-stairs and springing on our beds in excitement, they went to the head of the stairs, and shouted out for everything that the traveler calls for in a hotel—hot water, boot-black, cocktail, barber, morning paper, and none of these being forthcoming in the simple home, they vociferated in what the outsider might have thought angry voices, "What sort of hotel do you keep, any way?"

Father Custer had an answer for every question, and only by talking so fast and loud that they talked him down did they get the better of him. Our mother Custer almost invariably sided with her boys. It made no sort of difference if father Custer stood alone, he never seemed to expect a champion. He did seem to think that she was carrying her views to an advanced point, when she endeavored to decline a new cur that he had introduced into the house, on the strength of its having "no pedigree." Her sons talked dog to her so much that one would be very apt to be educated up to the demand for an authenticated grandfather. Besides, the "Towsers" and "Rovers" and all that sort of mongrels, to which she had patiently submitted in all the childhood of her boys and their boyish father, entitled her to some choice in after years.

At Cairo our partings began, for there some of the staff left us for their homes. We dreaded to give them up. Our harmonious life, and the friendships welded by the sharing of hardships and dangers, made us feel that it would be well if, having tested one another, we might go on in our future together. At Detroit the rest of our military family disbanded. How the General regretted them! The men, scarce more than boys even then, had responded to every call to charge in his Michigan brigade, and afterward in the Third Cavalry Division. Some, wounded almost to death, had been carried from his side on the battle-field, as he feared, forever, and had returned with wounds still unhealed. One of those valiant men has just died, suffering all these twenty-three years from his wound; but in writing, speaking in public when he could, talking to those who surrounded him when he was too weak to do more, one name ran through his whole anguished life, one hero hallowed his days, and that was his "boy-general." Still another of our military family, invalided by his eleven months' confinement in Libby Prison, set his wan, white face toward the uncertain future before him, and began his bread-winning, his soul undaunted by his disabled body. Another—oh, what a brave boy he was!—took my husband's proffered aid, and received an appointment in the regular army. He carried always, does now, a shattered arm, torn by a bullet while he was riding beside General Custer in Virginia. That did not keep him from giving his splendid energy, his best and truest patriotism, to his country down in Texas even after the war, for he rode on long, exhausting campaigns after the Indians, his wound bleeding, his life sapped, his vitality slipping away with the pain that never left him day or night. That summer when we were at home in Monroe, the General sent for him to come to us, and get his share of the pretty girls that Tom and the Michigan staff, who lived near us, were appropriating. The handsome, dark-haired fellow carried off the favors; for though the others had been wounded—Tom even then bearing the scarlet spot on his cheek where the bullet had penetrated—the last comer won, for he still wore his arm in a sling. The bewitching girls had before them the evidence of his valor, and into what a garden he stepped! He was a modest fellow, and would not demand too much pity, but made light of his wound, as is the custom of soldiers, who, dreading effeminacy, carry the matter too far, and ignore what ought not to be looked upon slightingly. One day he appeared without his sling, and a careless girl, dancing with him, grasped the arm in the forgetfulness of glee. The waves of torture that swept over the young hero's face, the alarm and pity of the girl, the instant biting of the lip and quick smile of the man, dreading more to grieve the pretty creature by him than to endure the physical agony—oh, how proud the General was of him, and I think he felt badly that a soldier cannot yield to impulse, and enfold his comrade in his arms, as is our woman's sweet privilege with one another.

Proudly the General followed the career of those young fellows who had been so near him in his war-life. Of all those in whom he continued always to retain an interest, keeping up in some instances a desultory correspondence, the most amazing evolution was that of the provost-marshal into a Methodist minister. Whether he was at heart a stern, unrelenting character, is a question I doubted, for he never could have developed into a clergyman. But he had the strangest, most implacable face, when sent on his thankless duty by his commanding officer. He it was who conducted the ceremonies that one awful day in Louisiana, when the execution and pardon took place. I remember the General's amazement when he received the letter in which the announcement of the new life-work was made. It took us both some time to realize how he would set about evangelizing. It was difficult to imagine him leading any one to the throne of grace, except at the point of the bayonet, with a military band playing the Dead March in Saul. I know how pleased my husband was, though, how proud and glad to know that a splendid, brave soldier had given his talents, his courage—and oh, what courage for a man of the world to come out in youth on the side of one mighty Captain!—and taken up the life of poverty, self-denial, and something else that the General also felt a deprivation, the roving life that deprives a Methodist minister of the blessings of a permanent home.

The delightful letters we used to get from our military family when any epoch occurred in their lives, like the choice of a profession or business (for most of them went back to civil life), their marriage, the birth of a son—all gave my husband genuine pleasure; and when their sorrows came he turned to me to write the letter—a heart-letter, which was his in all but the manipulation of the pen. His personal influence he gave, time and time again, when it was needed in their lives, and, best of all in my eyes, had patience with those who had a larger sowing of the wild-oat crop, which is the agricultural feature in the early life of most men.

Since I seek to make my story of others, I take the privilege of speaking of a class of heroes that I now seldom hear mentioned, and over whom, in instances of my husband's personal friends, we have grieved together. It is to those who, like his young staff-officer, bear unhealed and painful wounds to their life's end that I wish to beg our people to give thought. We felt it rather a blessing, in one way, when a man was visibly maimed; for if a leg or an arm is gone, the empty sleeve or the halting gait keeps his country from forgetting that he has braved everything to protect her. The men we sorrowed for were those who suffered silently; and there are more, North and South, than anyone dreams of, scattered all over our now fair and prosperous land. Sometimes, after they die, it transpires that at the approach of every storm they have been obliged to stop work, enter into the seclusion of their rooms, and endure the racking, torturing pain, that began on the battle-field so long ago. If anyone finds this out in their lifetime, it is usually by accident; and when asked why they suffer without claiming the sympathy that does help us all, they sometimes reply that the war is too far back to tax anyone's memory or sympathy now. Oftener, they attempt to ignore what they endure, and change the subject instantly. People would be surprised to know how many in the community, whom they daily touch in the jostle of life, are silent sufferers from wounds or incurable disease contracted during the war for the Union. The monuments, tablets, memorials which are strewn with flowers and bathed with grateful tears, have often tribute that should be partly given to the double hero who bears on his bruised and broken body the torture of daily sacrifice for his country. People, even if they know, forget the look, the word of acknowledgment, that is due the maimed patriot.

I recall the chagrin I felt on the Plains one day, when one of our Seventh Cavalry officers, with whom we had long been intimately associated—one whom our people called "Fresh Smith," or "Smithie," for short—came to his wife to get her to put on his coat. I said something in bantering tones of his Plains life making him look on his wife as the Indian looks upon the squaw, and tried to rouse her to rebellion. There was a small blaze, a sudden scintillation from a pair of feminine eyes, that warned me of wrath to come. The captain accepted my banter, threw himself into the saddle, laughed back the advantage of this new order of things, where a man had a combination, in his wife, of servant and companion, and tore out of sight, leaving me to settle accounts with the flushed madame. She told me, what I never knew, and perhaps might not even now, but for the outburst of the moment, that in the war "Smithie" had received a wound that shattered his shoulder, and though his arm was narrowly saved from amputation, he never raised it again, except a few inches. As for putting on his coat, it was an impossibility.