We reached Helena before luncheon, and I soon found Miss Duncan, who was expecting me. We did not start back until the second day, so she and I visited all the shops and then drove out to Sulphur Spring. The way everybody and everything have grown and spread out since the Northern Pacific Railroad has been running cars through Helena is most amazing. It was so recently a mining town, just "Last Chance Gulch," where Chinamen were digging up the streets for gold, almost undermining the few little buildings, and Chinamen also were raising delicious celery, where now stand very handsome houses. Now Main street has many pretentious shops, and pretty residences have been put up almost to the base of Mount Helena.
The ride back was uneventful, greatly to Miss Duncan's disappointment. It is her first visit to the West, and she wants to see cowboys and all sorts of things. I should have said "wanted to see," for I think that already her interest in brass buttons is so great the cowboys will never be thought of again. There were two at Rock Creek, but they were uninteresting—did not wear "chaps," pistols, or even big spurs. At the Bird-Tail not one sheep was to be seen—every one had been sheared, and the big band driven back to its range. Miss Duncan is a pretty girl, and unaffected, and will have a delightful visit at this Western army post, where young girls from the East do not come every day. And then we have several charming young bachelors!
FORT SHAW, MONTANA TERRITORY, December, 1887.
THE excitement is about over. Our guests have returned to their homes, and now we are settling down to our everyday garrison life. The wedding was very beautiful and as perfect in every detail as adoring father and mother and loving friends could make it. It was so strictly a military wedding, too—at a frontier post where everything is of necessity "army blue"—the bride a child of the regiment, her father an officer in the regiment many years, and the groom a recent graduate from West Point, a lieutenant in the regiment. We see all sorts of so-called military weddings in the East—some very magnificent church affairs, others at private houses, and informal, but there are ever lacking the real army surroundings that made so perfect the little wedding of Wednesday evening.
The hall was beautifully draped with the greatest number of flags of all sizes—each one a "regulation," however—and the altar and chancel rail were thickly covered with ropes and sprays of fragrant Western cedars and many flowers, and from either side of the reredos hung from their staffs the beautifully embroidered silken colors of the regiment. At the rear end of the hall stood two companies of enlisted men—one on each side of the aisle—in shining full-dress uniforms, helmets in hand. The bride's father is captain of one of those companies, and the groom a lieutenant in the other. As one entered the hall, after passing numerous orderlies, each one in full-dress uniform, of course, and walked up between the two companies, every man standing like a statue, one became impressed by the rare beauty and military completeness of the whole scene.
The bride is petite and very young, and looked almost a child as she and her father slowly passed us, her gown of heavy ivory satin trailing far back of her. The orchestra played several numbers previous to the ceremony—the Mendelssohn March for processional, and Lohengrin for recessional, but the really exquisite music was during the ceremony, when there came to us softly, as if floating from afar over gold lace and perfumed silks and satins, the enchanting strains of Moszkowski's Serenade! Faye remained with the orchestra all the time, to see that the music was changed at just the right instant and without mistake. The pretty reception was in the quarters of Major and Mrs. Stokes, and there also was the delicious supper served. Some of the presents were elegant. A case containing sixty handsome small pieces of silver was given by the officers of the regiment. A superb silver pitcher by the men of Major Stokes's company, and an exquisite silver after-dinner coffee set by the company in which the groom is a lieutenant. Several young officers came down from Fort Assiniboine to assist as ushers, and there were at the post four girls from Helena. An army post is always an attractive place to girls, but it was apparent from the first that these girls came for an extra fine time. I think they found it!
They were all at our cotillon Monday evening, and kept things moving fast. It was refreshing to have a new element, and a little variety in partners. We have danced with each other so much that everyone has become more or less like a machine. Faye led, dancing with Miss Stokes, for whom the german was given. The figures were very pretty—some of them new—and the supper was good. To serve refreshments of any kind at the hall means much work, for everything has to be prepared at the house—even coffee, must be sent over hot; and every piece of china and silver needed must be sent over also. Mrs. Hughes came from Helena on Saturday and remained with me until yesterday.
You know something of the awful times I have had with servants since Hulda went away! First came the lady tourist—who did us the honor to consent to our paying her expenses from St. Paul, and who informed me upon her arrival that she was not obliged to work out—no indeed—that her own home was much nicer than our house—that she had come up to see the country, and so forth. We found her presence too great a burden, particularly as she could not prepare the simplest meal, and so invited her to return to her elegant home. Then came the two women—the mother to Mrs. Todd, the daughter to me—who were insulted because they were expected to occupy servant's rooms, and could not "eat with the family"—so Mrs. Todd and I gave them cordial invitations to depart. Then came my Russian treasure—a splendid cook, but who could not be taught that a breakfast or dinner an hour late mattered to a regimental adjutant, and wondered why guard mounting could not be held back while she prepared an early breakfast for Faye. After a struggle of two months she was passed on. A tall, angular woman with dull red hair drawn up tight and twisted in a knot as hard as her head, was my next trial. She was the wife of a gambler of the lowest type, but that I did not know while she was here.
One day I told her to do something that she objected to, and with her hands clinched tight she came up close as if to strike me. I stood still, of course, and quietly said, "You mustn't strike me." She looked like a fury and screamed, "I will if I want to!" She was inches taller than I, but I said, "If you do, I will have you locked in the guardhouse." She became very white, and fairly hissed at me, "You can't do that—I ain't a soldier." I told her, "No, if you were a soldier you would soon be taught to behave yourself," and I continued, "you are in an army post, however, and if you do me violence I will certainly call the guard." Before I turned to go from the room I looked up at her and said, "Now I expect you to do what I have told you to do." I fully expected a strike on my head before I got very far, but she controlled herself. I went out of the house hoping she would do the same and never return, but she was there still, and we had to tell her to go, after all. I must confess, though, that the work she had objected to doing she did nicely while I was out. Miller told me that she had three pistols and two large watches in her satchel when she went away.
Then came a real treasure—Scotch Ellen—who has been with us six months, and has been very satisfactory every way. To be sure she has had awful headaches, and often it has been necessary for some one to do her work. She and the sergeant's wife prepared the supper for the german, and everything was sent to the hall in a most satisfactory way—much to my delight. Nothing wrong was noticed the next morning either, until she carried chocolate to Mrs. Hughes, when I saw with mortification that she looked untidy, but thinking of the confusion in her part of the house, I said nothing about it.