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

by Elizabeth Bacon Custer

There were troopers who had entered the service from a romantic love of adventure, with little idea of what stuff a man must be made if he is hourly in peril, or, what taxes the nerves still more, continually called upon to endure privation.

The mines were evidently the great object that induced the soldier to enlist that year. The Eastern papers had wild accounts of the enormous yield in the Rocky Mountains, and free transportation by Government could be gained by enlisting. At that time, when the railroad was incomplete, and travel almost given up on account of danger to the stages; when the telegraph, which now reaches the destination of the rogue with its warning far in advance of him, had not even been projected over the Plains—it was the easiest sort of escape for a man, for when once he reached the mines he was lost for years, and perhaps died undiscovered.

Recruits of the kind sent to us would, even under favorable circumstances, be difficult material from which to evolve soldierly men; and considering their terrible hardships, it was no wonder the regiment was nearly decimated. In enlisting, the recruit rarely realizes the trial that awaits him of surrendering his independence. We hear and know so much in this country of freedom that even a tramp appreciates it. If a man is reasonably subordinate, it is still very hard to become accustomed to the infinitesimal observances that I have so often been told are "absolutely necessary to good order and military discipline." To a looker-on like me, it seemed very much like reducing men to machines. The men made so much trouble on the campaign—and we knew of it by the many letters that came into garrison in one mail, as well as by personal observation, when in the regiment—that I did not find much sympathy in my heart for them. In one night, while I was at Fort Hays, forty men deserted, and in so bold and deliberate a manner, taking arms, ammunition, horses, and quantities of food, that the officers were roused to action, for it looked as if not enough men would be left to protect the fort. A conspiracy was formed among the men, by which a third of the whole command planned to desert at one time. Had not their plotting been discovered, there would not have been a safe hour for those who remained, as the Indians lay in wait constantly. My husband, in writing of that wholesale desertion in the early months of the regiment's history, makes some excuse for them, even under circumstances that would seem to have put all tribulation and patience out of mind.

After weary marches, the regiment found itself nearing Fort Wallace with a sense of relief, feeling that they might halt and recruit in that miserable but comparatively safe post. They were met by the news of the ravages of the cholera. No time could be worse for the soldiers to encounter it. The long, trying campaign, even extending into the Department of the Platte, had fatigued and disheartened the command. Exhaustion and semi-starvation made the men an easy prey. The climate, though so hot in summer, had heretofore been in their favor, as the air was pure, and, in ordinary weather, bracing. But with cholera, even the high altitude was no protection. No one could account for the appearance of the pestilence; never before or since had it been known in so elevated a part of our country. There were those who attributed the scourge to the upturning of the earth in the building of the Kansas Pacific Railroad; but the engineers had not even been able to prospect as far as Wallace on account of the Indians. An infantry regiment, on its march to New Mexico, halted at Fort Wallace, and even in their brief stay the men were stricken down, and with inefficient nurses, no comforts, not even wholesome food, it was a wonder that there was enough of the regiment left for an organization. The wife of one of the officers, staying temporarily in a dug-out, fell a victim, and died in the wretched underground habitation in which an Eastern farmer would refuse to shelter his stock.

It was a hard fate for our Seventh Cavalry men. Their camp, outside the garrison, had no protection from the remorseless sun, and the poor fellows rolled on the hot earth in their small tents, without a cup of cold water or a morsel of decent food. The surgeons fought day and night to stay the spread of the disease, but everything was against them. The exhausted soldiers, disheartened by long, hard, unsuccessful marching, had little desire to live when once seized by the awful disease.

With the celerity with which evil news travels, much of what I have written came back to us. Though the mails were so uncertain, and travel was almost discontinued, still the story of the illness and desperate condition of our regiment reached us, and many a garbled and exaggerated tale came with the true ones. Day after day I sat on the gallery of the quarters in which we were temporarily established, watching for the first sign of the cavalryman who brought our mail. Doubtless he thought himself a winged Mercury. In reality, no snail ever crept so slowly. When he began his walk toward me, measuring his regulation steps with military precision, a world of fretful impatience possessed me. I wished with all my soul I was, for the moment, any one but the wife of his commanding officer, that I might pick up my skirts and fly over the grass, and snatch the parcel from his hand. When he finally reached the gallery, and swung himself into position to salute, my heart thumped like the infantry drum. Day after day came the same pompous, maddening words: "I have the honor to report there are no letters for Mrs. Major-General George Armstrong Custer." Not caring at last whether the man saw the flush of disappointment, the choking breath, and the rising tears, I fled in the midst of his slow announcement, to plunge my wretched head into my pillow, hoping the sound of the sobs would not reach Eliza, who was generally hovering near to propose something that would comfort me in my disappointment.

She knew work was my panacea, and made an injured mouth over the rent in her apron, which, in her desires to keep me occupied, she was not above tearing on purpose. With complaining tones she said, "Miss Libbie, ain't you goin' to do no sewin' for me at all? 'Pears like every darkey in garrison has mo' clo'es than I has"—forgetting in her zeal the abbreviation of her words, about which her "ole miss" had warned her. Sewing, reading, painting, any occupation that had beguiled the hours, lost its power as those letterless days came and went. I was even afraid to show my face at the door when the mail-man was due, for I began to despair about hearing at all. After days of such gloom, my leaden heart one morning quickened its beats at an unusual sound—the clank of a sabre on our gallery and with it the quick, springing steps of feet unlike the quiet infantry around us. The door, behind which I paced uneasily, opened, and with a flood of sunshine that poured in, came a vision far brighter than even the brilliant Kansas sun. There before me, blithe and buoyant, stood my husband! In an instant, every moment of the preceding months was obliterated. What had I to ask more? What did earth hold for us greater than what we then had? The General, as usual when happy and excited, talked so rapidly that the words jumbled themselves into hopeless tangles, but my ears were keen enough to extract from the medley the fact that I was to return at once with him.

Eliza, half crying, scolding as she did when overjoyed, vibrated between kitchen and parlor, and finally fell to cooking, as a safety-valve for her overcharged spirits. The General ordered everything she had in the house, determined, for once in that summer of deprivations, to have, as the soldiers term it, one "good, square meal."

After a time, when my reason was again enthroned, I began to ask what good fortune had brought him to me. It seems that my husband, after reaching Fort Wallace, was overwhelmed with the discouragements that met him. His men dying about him, without his being able to afford them relief, was something impossible for him to face without a struggle for their assistance. A greater danger than all was yet to be encountered, if the right measures were not taken immediately. Even the wretched food was better than starvation, and so much of that had been destroyed, with the hope of the arrival of better, that there was not enough left to ration the men, and unless more came they would starve, as they were out then two hundred miles from the railroad. If a scout was sent, his progress was so slow, hiding all day and traveling only by night, it would take so long that there might be men dying from hunger as well as cholera, before he could return with aid. And, besides this scarcity of food, the medical supplies were insufficient. The General, prompt always in action, suddenly determined to relieve the beleaguered place by going himself for medicines and rations. He took a hundred men to guard the wagons that would bring relief to the suffering, and in fifty-five hours they were at Fort Hays, one hundred and fifty miles distant. It was a terrible journey. He afterward made a march of eighty miles in seventeen hours, without the horses showing themselves fagged; and during the war he had marched a portion of his Division of cavalry, accompanied by horse artillery, ninety miles in twenty-four hours.