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

by Elizabeth Bacon Custer

Assigning quarters according to rank goes on smoothly for a time, but occasionally an officer reports for duty who ranks everyone. Not long ago this happened at a distant post, and the whole line went down like a row of bricks, as eight officers' families were ousted by his arrival, the lowest in rank having to move out one of the non-commissioned officers who had lived in a little cabin with two rooms. If possible, in choosing a time to visit our frontier posts, let this climax of affairs be avoided. Where there is little to vary life the monotony is apt to be deeply stirred by private rages, which would blow away in smoke if there was anything else to think of. It is rather harrowing to know that some one has an eye on the home you have furnished with your own means. I could hardly blame a man I knew, who, in an outburst of wrath concerning an officer who had at last uprooted him, secretly rejoiced that a small room that had been the object of envy, having been built at the impoverished post of refuse lumber from the stables, was unendurable on a warm day; and the new possessor was left to find it out when he had settled himself in the coveted house.

THE OFFICER'S DRESS—A NEW-COMER FOR A CALL.

After our quarters were chosen by the Colonel, we took another house, of moderate size, bought a few pieces of furniture of an officer leaving the post, and began to live our first homelike life. The arrival of the new officers was for a time our only excitement. Most of them had been in the volunteer service, and knew nothing of the regular army. There was no one to play practical jokes on the first comers; but they had made some ridiculous errors in dress and deportment, when reporting at first, and they longed to take out their mortification at these harmless mistakes, by laying pitfalls for the verdant ones who were constantly arriving. The discipline of the regular army, and the punctilious observance compelling the wearing of the uniform, was something totally new to men who had known little of parades in their fighting days in the tented field. If it was possible to intimidate a new officer by tales of the strictness of the commanding officer regarding the personal appearance of his regiment, they did so. One by one, those who had preceded the last comer called in to pay their compliments; but by previous agreement they one and all dwelt upon the necessity of his making a careful toilet before he approached the august presence of the Lieutenant-colonel. Then one or two offered carelessly to help him get himself up for the occasion. Our brother Tom had arrived by this time, but there was nothing to be made out of him, for he had served a few months with a regular regiment before being transferred to ours. He was therefore sent one day to prepare me for the call of an officer who had been assisted into his new uniform by the mischievous knot of men who had been longest with us. If I had known to what test I was to be put to keep my face straight, or had dreamed what a gullible creature had come into their roguish hands, I would not have consented to receive him. But it was one of the imperative roles that each officer, after reporting for duty, must pay a formal visit to the commanding officer and his family. I went into the parlor to find a large, and at that time awkward, man, in full uniform, which was undeniably a tight fit for his rather portly figure. He wore cavalry boots, the first singularity I noticed, for they had such expanse of top I could not help seeing them. They are of course out of order with a dress coat. The red sash, which was then en règle for all officers, was spread from up under his arms to as far below the waist line as its elastic silk could be stretched. The sword-belt, with sabre attached, surrounded this; and, folded over the wide red front, were his large hands, encased in white cotton gloves. He never moved them; nor did he move an eyelash, so far as I could discover, though it seems he was full of internal tremors, for the officers had told him on no account to remove his regulation hat. At this he demurred, and told them I would surely think he was no gentleman; but they assured him I placed military etiquette far above any ordinary rule for manners in the presence of ladies, while the truth was I was rather indifferent as to military rules of dress. As this poor man sat there, I could think of nothing but a child who is so carefully dressed in new furbelows that it sits as if it were carved out of wood, for fear of disarranging the finished toilet. Diana made an almost instant excuse to leave the room. The General's mustache quivered, and he moved restlessly around, even coming again to shake hands with the automaton and bid him welcome to the regiment; but finally he dashed out of the door to enjoy the outburst of mirth that he could no longer control. I was thus left to meet the situation as best I could, but was not as fortunate as the General, who had a friendly mustache to curtain the quiver in his mouth. The poor victim apparently recalled to himself the martial attitude of Washington crossing the Delaware, or Napoleon at Waterloo, and did not alter the first position he had assumed. In trying to prevent him from seeing my confusion, I redoubled my efforts to entertain him, and succeeded only too well, for when he slowly moved out of the door I found myself tired out, and full of wrath toward my returning family. I never could remember that these little spurts of rage were the primest fun for my people. The poor officer who had been so guyed did not gratify his tormentors by getting angry, but fell to planning new mischief for the next arrival. He lost no time in begging my pardon for the hat, and though I never saw much of him afterward, he left only pleasant impressions on my mind of a kind-hearted man, and one of those rare beings who knew how to take a joke.

We derived great pleasure from our horses and dogs during the autumn. A very pretty sorrel horse was selected for Diana, but we had little opportunity to have her for a companion. The young officers engaged her a week in advance, and about all we saw of her riding was an avalanche of flying curls as she galloped off beside some dashing cavalier. I remember once, when she was engaged otherwise, and my horse temporarily disabled, I took hers, and my husband kept begging me to guide the animal better, for it was nettling his fiery beast by insisting upon too close proximity. It finally dawned upon us that the little horse was a constitutional snuggler, and we gave up trying to teach him new tricks. But how the General shouted, and bent himself forward and back in his saddle, after the horse had almost crushed his leg and nothing would keep him at a distance. He could hardly wait to get back to garrison, and when we did, he walked into the midst of a collection of the beaux and told the whole story of how dreadfully demoralized a cavalry horse in good and regular standing could become, in the hands of a belle. The girl blushed, and the officers joined in the laughter, and yet every one of them had doubtless been busy in teaching that little telltale animal this new development of character.

It was delightful ground to ride over about Fort Riley. Ah! what happy days they were, for at that time I had not the slightest realization of what Indian warfare was, and consequently no dread. We knew that the country they infested was many miles away, and we could ride in any direction we chose. The dogs would be aroused from the deepest sleep at the very sight of our riding costumes, and by the time we were well into them and whip in hand, they leaped and sprang about the room, tore out on the gallery, and tumbled over one another and the furniture in racing back, and such a din of barking and joyful whining as they set up—the noisier the better for my husband. He snapped his whip to incite them, and bounded around crying out, "Whoop'em up! whoop'em up!" adding to the mêlée by a toot on the dog-horn he had brought from the Texas deer-hunts. All this excited the horses, and when I was tossed into the saddle amidst this turmoil, with the dogs leaping around the horses' heads, I hardly knew whether I was myself or the venturesome young woman who spends her life in taking airy flights through paper-covered circles in a sawdust ring. It took some years for me to accustom myself to the wild din and hubbub of our starting for a ride or a hunt. As I have said before, I had lived quietly at home, and my decorous, suppressed father and mother never even spoke above a certain tone. The General's father, on the contrary, had rallied his sons with a hallo and resounding shouts from their childhood. So the hullabaloo of all our merry startings was a thing of my husband's early days, and added zest to every sport he undertook.

Coming from Michigan, where there is a liberal dispensation of swamp and quagmire, having been taught by dear experience that Virginia had quicksands and sloughs into which one could disappear with great rapidity, and finally, having experienced Texas with its bayous, baked with a deceiving crust of mud, and its rivers with quicksand beds, very naturally I guided my horse around any lands that had even a depression. Indeed, he spoke volumes with his sensitive ears, as the turf darkened in hollows, and was ready enough to be guided by the rein on his satin-like neck, to the safer ground. It was a long time before I realized that all the Plains were safe. We chose no path, and stopped at no suspicion of a slough. Without a check on the rein, we flew over divide after divide, and it is beyond my pen to describe the wild sense of freedom that takes possession of one in the first buoyant knowledge that no impediment, seemingly, lies between you and the setting sun. After one has ridden over conventional highways, the beaten path marked out by fences, hedges, bridges, etc., it is simply an impossibility to describe how the blood bounds in the veins at the freedom of an illimitable sea. No spongy, uncertain ground checks the course over the Plains; it is seldom even damp, and the air is so exhilarating one feels as if he had never breathed a full breath before. Almost the first words General Sherman said to me out there were, "Child, you'll find the air of the Plains is like champagne," and so it surely was. Oh, the joy of taking in air without a taint of the city, or even the country, as we know it in farm life! As we rode on, speaking enthusiastically of the fragrance and purity of the atmosphere, our horses neighed and whinnied to each other, and snuffed the air, as if approving all that was said of that "land of the free." My husband could hardly breathe, from the very ecstasy of realizing that nothing trammeled him. He scarcely left the garrison behind him, where he was bound by chains of form and ceremony—the inevitable lot of an officer, where all his acts are under surveillance, where he is obliged to know that every hour in the day he is setting an example—before he became the wildest and most frolicsome of light-hearted boys. His horse and he were one, not only as he sat in the saddle, a part of the animal, swayed by every motion of the active, graceful beast, but such unison of spirit took possession of each, it was hard to believe that a human heart did not beat under the broad, splendid chest of the high-strung animal.

It were well if human hearts responded to our fondness, and came instantly to be en rapport with us, as did those dear animals when they flew with us out to freedom and frolic, over the divides that screened us from the conventional proprieties. My husband's horse had almost human ways of talking with him, as he leaned far out of the saddle and laid his face on the gallant animal's head, and there was a gleam in the eye, a proud little toss of the head, speaking back a whole world of affection. The General could ride hanging quite out of sight from the opposite side, one foot caught in the stirrup, his hand on the mane; and it made no difference to his beloved friend, he took any mode that his master chose to cling to him as a matter of course, and curveted and pranced in the loftiest, proudest way. His manner said as plainly as speech, "See what we two can do!" I rarely knew him to have a horse that did not soon become so pervaded with his spirit that they appeared to be absolutely one in feeling. I was obliged, usually, to submit to some bantering slur on my splendid Custis Lee. Perhaps a dash at first would carry the General and the dogs somewhat in advance. My side had a trick of aching if we started off on a gallop, and I was obliged to keep a tight rein on Custis Lee at first, as he champed at the bit, tossed his impatient head, and showed every sign of ignominious shame. The General, as usual, called out, "Come on, old lady! Hurry up that old plug of yours; I have one orderly; don't want another"—this because the soldier in attendance is instructed to ride at a certain distance in the rear. After a spurt of tremendous speed, back flew the master to beg me to excuse him; he was ready now to ride slowly till "that side of mine came round to time," which it quickly did, and then I revenged the insult on my swift Lee, and the maligner at last called out, "That's not so bad a nag, after all."

The horses bounded from the springy turf as if they really hated the necessity of touching the sod at all. They were very well matched in speed, and as on we flew were "neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place." Breathless at last, horses, dogs and ourselves made a halt. The orderly with his slow troop horse was a speck in the distance. Of course I had gone to pieces little by little, between the mad speed and rushing through the wind of the Plains. Those were ignominious days for women—thank fortune they are over! Custom made it necessary to disfigure ourselves with the awkward waterfall, and, no matter how luxuriant the hair, it seemed a necessity to still pile up more. With many a wrathful opinion regarding the fashion, the General took the hairpins, net and switch, and thrust them into the breast of his coat, as he said, "to clear the decks for action for another race." It was enough that he offered to carry these barbarities of civilization for me, without my bantering him about his ridiculousness if some accidental opening of his coat in the presence of the officers, who were then strangers, revealed what he scoffingly called "dead women's hair."