Tenting on the Plains (Illustrated Edition) - Elizabeth Bacon Custer

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utterly incongruous in the wild pine forest that surrounded it. We returned to the river, and visited two forts on the bank opposite Alexandria. They were built by a Confederate officer who used his Federal prisoners for workmen. The General took in at once the admirable situation selected, which commanded the river for many miles. He thoroughly appreciated, and endeavored carefully to explain to me, how cleverly the few materials at the disposal of the impoverished South had been utilized. The moat about the forts was the deepest our officers had ever seen. Closely as my husband studied the plan and formation, he said it would have added greatly to his appreciation, had he then known, what he afterward learned, that the Confederate engineer who planned this admirable fortification was one of his classmates at West Point, of whom he was very fond. In 1864 an immense expedition of our forces was sent up the Red River, to capture Shreveport and open up the great cotton districts of Texas. It was unsuccessful, and the retreat was rendered impossible by low water, while much damage was done to our fleet by the very Confederate forts we were now visiting. A dam was constructed near Alexandria, and the squadron was saved from capture or annihilation by this timely conception of a quick-witted Western man, Colonel Joseph Bailey. The dam was visible from the walls of the forts, where we climbed for a view.

      As we resumed our ride to the steamer, the General, who was usually an admirable pathfinder, proposed a new and shorter road; and liking variety too much to wish to travel the same country twice over, all gladly assented. Everything went very well for a time. We were absorbed in talking, noting new scenes on the route, or, as was our custom when riding off from the public highway, we sang some chorus; and thus laughing, singing, joking, we galloped over the ground thoughtlessly into the very midst of serious danger. Apparently, nothing before us impeded our way. We knew very little of the nature of the soil in that country, but had become somewhat accustomed to the bayous that either start from the river or appear suddenly inland, quite disconnected from any stream. On that day we dashed heedlessly to the bank of a wide bayou that poured its waters into the Red River. Instead of thinking twice, and taking the precaution to follow its course farther up into the country, where the mud was dryer and the space to cross much narrower, we determined not to delay, and prepared to go over. The most venturesome dashed first on to this bit of dried slough, and though the crust swayed and sunk under the horses' flying feet, it still seemed caked hard enough to bear every weight. There were seams and fissures in portions of the bayou, through which the moist mud oozed; but these were not sufficient warning to impetuous people. Another and another sprang over the undulating soil. Having reached the other side, they rode up and down the opposite bank shouting to us where they thought it the safest to cross, and of course interlarded their directions with good-natured scoffing about hesitation, timidity, and so on. The General, never second in anything when he could help it, remained behind to fortify my sinking heart and urge me to undertake the crossing with him. He reminded me how carefully Custis Lee had learned to follow and to trust to him, and he would doubtless plant his hoofs in the very tracks of his own horse. Another of our party tried to bolster up my courage, assuring me that if the heavy one among us was safely on the other bank, my light weight might be trusted. I dreaded making the party wait until we had gone further up the bayou, and might have mustered up the required pluck had I not met with trepidation on the part of my horse. His fine, delicate ears told me, as plainly as if he could speak, that I was asking a great deal of him. We had encountered quicksands together in the bed of a Virginia stream, and both horse and rider were recalling the fearful sensation when the animal's hindlegs sank, leaving his body engulfed in the soil. With powerful struggles with his forefeet and muscular shoulders, we plunged to the right and left, and found at last firm soil on which to escape. With such a recollection still fresh, as memory is sure to retain terrors like that, it was hardly a wonder that we shrank from the next step. His trembling flanks shook as much as the unsteady hand that held his bridle. He quivered from head to foot, and held back. I urged, and patted his neck, while we both continued to shiver on the brink. The General laughed at the two cowards we really were, but still gave us time to get our courage up to the mark. The officer remaining with us continued to encourage me with assurances that there was "not an atom of danger," and finally, with a bound, shouting out, "Look how well I shall go over!" sprang upon the vibrating crust. In an instant, with a crack like a pistol, the thin layer of solid mud broke, and down went the gay, handsomely caparisoned fellow, engulfed to his waist in the foul black crust. There was at once a commotion. With no ropes, it was hard to effect his release. His horse helped him most, struggling frantically for the bank, while the officers, having flung themselves off from their animals to rush to his rescue, brought poles and tree branches, which the imbedded man was not slow to grasp and drag himself from the perilous spot when only superhuman strength could deliver him, as the mud of a bayou sucks under its surface with great rapidity anything with which it comes in contact. As soon as the officer was dragged safely on to firm earth, a shout went up that rent the air with its merriment. Scarcely any one spoke while they labored to save the man's life, but once he was out of peril, the rescuers felt their hour had come. They called out to him, in tones of derision, the vaunting air with which he said just before his engulfment, "Look at me; see how I go over!" He was indeed a sorry sight, plastered from head to foot with black mud. Frightened as I was—for the trembling had advanced to shivering, and my chattering teeth and breathless voice were past my control—I still felt that little internal tremor of laughter that somehow pervades one who has a sense of the ludicrous in very dangerous surroundings.

      I had certainly made a very narrow escape, for it would have been doubly hard to extricate me. The riding habits in those days were very long, and loaded so with lead to keep them down in high winds—and, I may add, in furious riding—that it was about all I could do to lift my skirt when I put it on.

      I held my horse with a snaffle, to get good, smooth going out of him, and my wrists became pretty strong; but in that slough I would have found them of little avail, I fear. There remained no opposition to seeking a narrower part of the bayou, above where I had made such an escape, and there was still another good result of this severe lesson after that: when we came to such ominous-looking soil, Custis Lee and his mistress were allowed all the shivering on the brink that their cowardice produced, while the party scattered to investigate the sort of foundation we were likely to find, before we attempted to plunge over a Louisiana quagmire.

      The bayous were a strange feature of that country. Often without inlet or outlet, a strip of water appeared, black and sluggish, filled with logs, snags, masses of underbrush and leaves. The banks, covered with weeds, noisome plants and rank tangled vegetation, seemed the dankest, darkest, most weird and mournful spots imaginable, a fit home for ghouls and bogies. There could be no more appropriate place for a sensational novelist to locate a murder. After a time I became accustomed to these frequently occurring water-ways, but it took me a good while to enjoy going fishing on them. The men were glad to vary their days by dropping a line in that vile water, and I could not escape their urging to go, though I was excused from fishing.

      On one occasion we went down the river on a steamer, the sailors dragging the small boats over the strip of land between the river and the bayou, and all went fishing or hunting. This excursion was one that I am likely to remember forever. The officers, intent on their fishing, were rowed slowly through the thick water, while I was wondering to myself if there could be, anywhere, such a wild jungle of vines and moss as hung from the trees and entangled itself in the mass of weeds and water-plants below. We followed little indentations of the stream, and the boat was rowed into small bays and near dark pools, where the fish are known to stay, and finally we floated. The very limbs of the trees and the gnarled trunks took on human shape, while the drooping moss swayed as if it might be the drapery of a lamia, evolved out of the noisome vapors and floating above us. These fears and imaginings, which would have been put to flight by the assurances of the General, had he not been so intent on his line, proved to be not wholly spectres of the imagination. A mass of logs in front of us seemed to move. They did move, and the alligator, that looked so like a tree-trunk, established his identity by separating himself from the floating timber and making off. It was my scream, for the officers themselves did not enjoy the proximity of the beast, that caused the instant use of the oars and a quick retreat.

      I went fishing after that, of course; I couldn't get out of it; indeed I was supported through my tremors by a pleasure to which a woman cannot be indifferent—that of being wanted on all sorts of excursions. But logs in

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