CHAPTER XVII.
A FLOOD AT FORT HAYS.
Before General Custer left for Fort McPherson, he removed our tents to a portion of that branch of Big Creek on which the post was established. He selected the highest ground he could find, knowing that the rainy season was not yet over, and hoping that, if the camp were on a knoll, the ground would drain readily and dry quickly after a storm. We were not a great distance from the main stream and the fort, but still too far to recognize anyone that might be walking in garrison. The stream on which we were located was tortuous, and on a bend above us the colonel commanding, his adjutant and his escort were established. Between us and the fort, General and Mrs. Gibbs were camped, while the tents of a few officers on detached duty were still farther on. The sentinel's beat was along a line between us and the high ground, where the Indians were likely to steal upon us from the bluffs. This guard walked his tour of duty on a line parallel with the stream, but was too far from it to observe the water closely. Each little group of tents made quite a show of canvas, as we had abundance of room to spread out, and the quartermaster was not obliged to limit us to any given number of tents. We had a hospital tent for our sitting-room, with a wall-tent pitched behind and opening out of the larger one, for our bedroom. There was a wall-tent for the kitchen, near, and behind us, the "A" tent for the soldier whom the General had left to take care of us in his absence. We were as safely placed, as to Indians, as was possible in such a country. As is the custom in military life, the officers either came every day, or sent to know if I could think of anything they could do for my comfort. The General had thought of everything, and, besides, I did my best not to have any wants. I was as capable of manufacturing needs as anyone, and could readily trump up a collection in garrison, but I was rendered too wary by the uncertainty of my tenure of that (to me) valuable little strip of ground that held my canvas house, to allow my presence to be brought home to those gallant men as a trouble or a responsibility. The idea that I might have to retreat eastward was a terror, and kept in subjection any passing wish I might indulge to have anything done for me. I would gladly have descended into one of the cellar-like habitations that were so common in Kansas then, and had my food handed down to me, if this would have enabled the officers to forget that I was there, until the expedition returned from the Platte. Yet the elements were against me, and did their best to interfere with my desire to obliterate myself, as far as being an anxiety to others was concerned.
One night we had retired, and were trying to believe that the thunder was but one of those peculiar menacing volleys of cloud-artillery that sometimes passed over harmlessly; but we could not sleep, the roar and roll of thunder was so alarming. There is no describing lightning on the Plains. While a storm lasts, there seems to be an incessant glare. To be sure, there is not the smallest flash that does not illumine the tent, and there is no way of hiding from the blinding light. In a letter written to my husband while the effect of the fright was still fresh on my mind, I told him "the heavens seemed to shower down fire upon the earth, and in one minute and a half we counted twenty-five distinct peals of thunder." There seemed to be nothing for us to do but to lie quaking and terrified under the covers. The tents of the officers were placed at some distance from ours intentionally, as it is impossible to speak low enough, under canvas, to avoid being heard, unless a certain space intervenes. It is the custom to allow a good deal of ground to intervene, if the guard is so posted as to command the approach to all the tents. The result was, that we dared not venture to try to reach a neighbor; we simply had to endure the situation, as no cry could be heard above the din of the constantly increasing storm. In the midst of this quaking and misery, the voice of some officers outside called to ask if we were afraid. Finding that the storm was advancing to a tornado, they had decided to return to us and render assistance if they could, or at least to quiet our fears. The very sound of their voices calmed us, and we dressed and went into the outer tent to admit them. The entrance had been made secure by leather straps and buckles that the General had the saddler put on; and in order to strengthen the tents against these hurricanes, which we had already learned were so violent and sudden, he had ordered poles at each corner sunk deep into the ground. These, being notched, had saplings laid across either side, and to these the tent-ropes were bound. We were thus seemingly secured between two barriers. He even went further in his precautions, and fastened a picket-rope, which is a small cable of itself, to either end of the ridge-pole, stretching it at the front and rear, and fasting it with an iron pin driven into the ground. As we opened two or three of the straps to admit the officers and Eliza, who always overcame every obstacle to get to me in danger, the wind drove in a sheet of rain upon us, and we found it difficult to strap the opening again. As for the guy-ropes and those that tied the tent at the sides, all this creaking, loosening cordage proved how little we could count upon its stability. The great tarpaulin, of the heaviest canvas made, which was spread over our larger tent and out in the front for a porch, flapped wildly, lashing our poor little "rag house" as if in a fury of rage. Indeed, the whole canvas seemed as if it might have been a cambric handkerchief, for the manner in which it was wrenched and twisted above and on all sides of us. The tallow candle was only kept lighted by surrounding it with boxes to protect its feeble flame from the wind. The rain descended in such sheets, driven by the hurricane, that it even pressed in the tent-walls; and in spite of the trenches, that every good campaigner digs about the tent, we were almost inundated by the streams that entered under the lower edge of the walls.
The officers, finding we were sure to be drenched, began to fortify us for the night. They feared the tent would go down, and that the ridge-pole of a hospital-tent, being so much larger than that of a wall-tent, would do some fatal injury to us. They piled all the available furniture in a hollow square, leaving a little space for us. Fortunately, some one, coming down from the post a few days before, had observed that we had no table. There was no lumber at the post, and the next best thing was to send us a zinc-covered board which had first served for a stove; secondly, with the addition of rude supports, as our table, and now did duty in its third existence as a life-preserver; for the ground was softening with the moisture, and we could not protect our feet, except for the narrow platform on which we huddled. At last the booming of the thunder seemed to abate somewhat, though the wind still shrieked and roared over the wide plain, as it bore down upon our frail shelter. But the tent, though swaying and threatening to break from its moorings, had been true to us through what we supposed to be the worst of the tempest, and we began to put some confidence in the cordage and picket-pins. The officers decided to return to their tents, promising to come again should there be need, and we reluctantly permitted them to go. Eliza put down something on which we could step over the pools into the other tent, and we fell into bed, exhausted with terror and excitement, hardly noticing how wet and cold we and the blankets were.
Hardly had we fallen into a doze, when the voice of the guard at the entrance called out to us to get up and make haste for our lives; the flood was already there! We were so agitated that it was difficult even to find the clothes that we had put under the pillow to keep them from further soaking, much more to get into them. It was then impossible to remain inside of the tent. We crept through the opening, and, to our horror, the lightning revealed the creek—which we had last seen, the night before, a little rill in the bottom of the gully—now on a level with the high banks. The tops of good-sized trees, which fringed the stream, were barely visible, as the current swayed the branches in its onward sweep. The water had risen in that comparatively short time thirty-five feet, and was then creeping into the kitchen tent, which, as usual, was pitched near the bank. I believe no one attempted to account for those terrific rises in the streams, except as partly due to water-spouts, which were common in the early days of Kansas. I have seen the General hold his watch in his hand after the bursting of a rain-cloud, and keep reckoning for the soldier who was measuring with a stick at the stream's bed, and for a time it recorded an inch a minute.
Of course the camp was instantly astir after the alarm of the guard. But the rise of the water is so insidious often, that a sentinel walking his beat a few yards away will sometimes be unconscious of it until the danger is upon the troops. The soldiers, our own man, detailed as striker, and Eliza, were not so "stampeded," as they expressed it, as to forget our property. Almost everything that we possessed in the world was there, much of our property being fortunately still boxed. I had come out to camp with a valise, but the wagon-train afterward brought most of our things, as we supposed we had left Fort Riley forever. The soldiers worked like beavers to get everything they could farther from the water, upon a little rise of ground at one side of our tents. Eliza, the coolest of all, took command, and we each carried what we could, forgetting the lightning in our excitement.
The officers who had come to us in the early part of the tempest now returned. They found their own camp unapproachable. The group of tents having been pitched on a bend in the crooked stream, which had the advantage of the circle of trees that edged the water, was now found to be in the worst possible locality, as the torrent had swept over the narrow strip of earth and left the camp on a newly made island, perfectly inaccessible. The lives of the men and horses stranded on this little water-locked spot were in imminent peril. The officers believed us when we said we would do what we could to care for ourselves if they would go at once, as they had set out to do, and find succor for the soldiers. It was a boon to have something that it was necessary to do, which kept us from absolute abandonment to terror. We hardly dared look toward the rushing torrent; the agony of seeing the water steal nearer and nearer our tent was almost unendurable. As we made our way from the heap of household belongings, back and forth to the tent, carrying burdens that we could not even have lifted in calmer moments, the lightning became more vivid and the whole arc above us seemed aflame. We were aghast at what the brilliant light revealed. Between the bluffs that rose gradually from the stream, and the place where we were on its banks, a wide newly made river spread over land that had been perfectly dry, and, as far as any one knew, had never been inundated before. The water had overflowed the banks of the stream above us, and swept across the slight depression that intervened between our ground and the hills. We were left on that narrow neck of land, and the water on either side of us, seen in the lightning's glare, appeared like two boundless seas. The creek had broken over its banks and divided us from the post below, while the garrison found themselves on an island also, as the water took a new course down there, and cut them off from the bluffs. This was a misfortune to us, as we had so small a number of men and sorely needed what help the post could have offered.