At the time of General Kilpatrick's famous raid, when he went to take Richmond, General Custer was ordered to make a détour in an opposite direction, in order to deceive the Confederate army as to the real object to be accomplished. This ruse worked so successfully, that General Custer and his command were put in so close and dangerous a situation it was with difficulty that any of them escaped. The General told me that when the pursuit of the enemy was hottest, and everyone doing his utmost to escape, he saw Johnnie driving a light covered wagon at a gallop, which was loaded with turkeys and chickens. He had received his orders from Eliza, before setting out, to bring back something for the mess, and the boy had carried out her directions with a vengeance. He impressed into his service the establishment that he drove, and filled it with poultry. Even in the mêlée and excitement of retreat, the General was wonderfully amused, and amazed too, at the little fellow's fearlessness. He was too fond of him to leave him in danger, so he galloped in his direction and called to him, as he stood up lashing his horse, to abandon his capture or he would be himself a prisoner. The boy obeyed, but hesitatingly, cut the harness, sprang upon the horse's unsaddled back, and was soon with the main column. The General, by his delay, was obliged to take to an open field to avoid capture, and leap a high fence in order to overtake the retreating troops.
He became more and more interested in the boy, who was such a combination of courage and fidelity, and finally arranged to have him enlist as a soldier. The war was then drawing to its close, and he secured to the lad a large bounty, which he placed at interest for him, and after the surrender, persuaded Johnnie to go to school. It was difficult to induce him to leave; but my husband realized what injustice it was to keep him in the menial position to which he desired to return, and finally left him, with the belief that he had instilled some ambition into the boy.
A year and a half afterward, as we were standing on the steps of the gallery of our quarters at Fort Riley, we noticed a stripling of a lad walking toward us, with his head hanging on his breast, in the shy, embarrassed manner of one who doubts his reception. With a glad cry, my husband called out that it was Johnnie Cisco, and bounded down the steps to meet him. After he was assured of his welcome, he told us that it had been impossible for him to stay away, he longed so constantly to be again with us, and added that if we would only let him remain, he would not care what he did. Of course, the General regretted the giving up of his school; but, now that he had made the long journey, there was no help for it, and he decided that he should continue with us until he could find him employment, for he was determined that he should not reënlist. The boy's old and tried friend, Eliza, at once assumed her position of "missus," and, kind-hearted tyrant! gave him every comfort and made him her vassal, without a remonstrance from the half-grown man, for he was only too glad to be in the sole home he knew, no matter on what terms. Soon after his coming, the General obtained from one of the managers of the Wells Fargo Express Company a place of messenger; and the recommendation he gave the boy for honesty and fidelity was confirmed over and over again by the officers of the express line. He was known on the entire route from Ogden to Denver, and was entrusted with immense amounts of gold in its transmission from the Colorado mines to the States. Several times he came to our house for a vacation, and my husband had always the unvarying and genuine welcome that no one doubted when once given, and he did not fail to praise and encourage the friendless fellow. Eliza, after learning what the lad had passed through, in his dangers from Indians, treated him like a conquering hero, but alternately bullied and petted him still. At last there came a long interval between his visits, and my husband sent to the express people to inquire. Poor Johnnie had gone like many another brave employee of that venturesome firm. In a courageous defense of the passengers and the company's gold, when the stage was attacked, he had been killed by the Indians. Eliza kept the battered valise that her favorite had left with us, and mourned over it as if it had been something human. I found her cherishing the bag in a hidden corner, and recalling to me, with tears, how warm-hearted Johnnie was, saying that the night the news of her old mother's death came to her from Virginia, he had sat up till daybreak to keep the fire going. "Miss Libbie, I tole him to go to bed, but he said, 'No, Eliza, I can't do it, when you are in trouble: when I had no friends, and couldn't help myself, you helped me.'" After that, the lad was always "poor Johnnie," and many a boy with kinsfolk of his own is not more sincerely mourned.
As the days drew nearer for the expedition to set out, my husband tried to keep my spirits up by reminding me that the council to be held with the chiefs of the warlike tribes, when they reached that part of the country infested with the marauding Indians, was something he hoped might result in our speedy reunion. He endeavored to induce me to think, as he did, that the Indians would be so impressed with the magnitude of the expedition, that, after the council, they would accept terms and abandon the war-path. Eight companies of our own regiment were going out, and these, with infantry and artillery, made a force of fourteen hundred men. It was really a large expedition, for the Plains; but the recollections of the thousands of men in the Third Cavalry Division, which was the General's command during the war, made the expedition seem too small, even for safety.
No one can enumerate the terrors, imaginary and real, that filled the hearts of women on the border in those desperate days. The buoyancy of my husband had only a momentary effect in the last hours of his stay. That time seemed to fly fast; but no amount of excitement and bustle of preparation closed my eyes, even momentarily, to the dragging hours that awaited me. Such partings are such a torture that it is difficult even to briefly mention them. My husband added another struggle to my lot by imploring me not to let him see the tears that he knew, for his sake, I could keep back until he was out of sight. Though the band played its usual departing tune, "The Girl I Left Behind Me," if there was any music in the notes, it was all in the minor key to the men who left their wives behind them. No expedition goes out with shout and song, if loving, weeping women are left behind. Those who have not assumed the voluntary fetters that bind us for weal or for woe, and render it impossible to escape suffering while those we love suffer, or rejoicing while those to whom we are united are jubilant, felt too keenly for their comrades when they watched them tear themselves from clinging arms inside the threshold of their homes, even to keep up the stream of idle chaffing that only such occasions can stop. There was silence as the column left the garrison. Alas! the closed houses they left were as still as if death had set its seal upon the door; no sound but the sobbing and moans of women's breaking hearts.
Eliza stood guard at my door for hours and hours, until I had courage, and some degree of peace, to take up life again. A loving, suffering woman came to sleep with me for a night or two. The hours of those first wakeful nights seemed endless. The anxious, unhappy creature beside me said, gently, in the small hours, "Libbie, are you awake?" "Oh, yes," I replied, "and have been for ever so long." "What are you doing?" "Saying over hymns, snatches of poetry, the Lord's Prayer backward, counting, etc., to try to put myself to sleep." "Oh, say some rhyme to me, in mercy's name, for I am past all hope of sleep while I am so unhappy!" Then I repeated, over and over again, a single verse, written, perhaps, by some one who, like ourselves, knew little of the genius of poetry, but, alas! much of what makes up the theme of all the sad verses of the world:
"There's something in the parting hour
That chills the warmest heart;
But kindred, comrade, lover, friend,
Are fated all to part.
But this I've seen, and many a pang
Has pressed it on my mind—
The one that goes is happier
Than he who stays behind."
Perhaps after I had said this, and another similar verse, over and over again, in a sing-song, droning voice, the regular breathing at my side told me that the poor, tired heart had found temporary forgetfulness; but when we came to the sad reality of our lonely life next day, every object in our quarters reminded us what it is to "stay behind." There are no lonely women who will not realize how the very chairs, or anything in common use, take to themselves voices and call out reminders of what has been and what now is. Fill up the time as we might, there came each day, at twilight, an hour that should be left out of every solitary life. It is meant only for the happy, who need make no subterfuges to fill up hours that are already precious.