Following the Guidon (Illustrated Edition) - Elizabeth Bacon Custer

Скачать книгу

of them, in addition to revolting indignities, it was a wonder they lived. They were almost starved, some days only being allowed a morsel of mule-meat, not over an inch square at most, for an entire day. The squaws beat them with clubs when the Indians were absent, and once one of them was felled to the ground by a blow from these same jealous fiends.

      After all this dreadful life, it would seem as if the two women might have looked for immunity from future trouble, but in one instance it was not to be. Two years after their rescue, two of our officers were riding past a ranch and saw a little Indian boy playing before the house. Seeing him, they were too much interested not to inquire who lived there, and found, when the woman of the house came to the door, that it was one of the captives, whose face, owing to the tragic circumstances of the release, was fixed indelibly on their memory. It was impossible for her to resist detaining them a few moments, recalling again her gratitude to the troops for her rescue. When they asked if all went well with her, she could not help confiding to them the fact that the husband whom she had married after her return, instead of trying to make her forget the misery through which she had passed, often recalled all her year of captivity with bitterness, and was disposed to upbraid her, as if she had been in the least responsible for the smallest of her misfortunes.

      In the many letters which I have looked over to obtain my few notes of a winter that was so eventful, I have found only occasional allusions to the hardships undergone; but, little by little, references were made after the return of the command that gave some idea of the self-denial and self-control which every one had to exercise. If afterwards any one exhibited the slightest sign of obstinacy, some teasing voice was sure to pipe up and say, "What can you expect of a man who has dined on mule-steaks?" General Custer could not eat mule or horse when they were all reduced to that desperate strait, but in his hunger he told me he used to think that he might, to save himself from starvation, make up his mind to eat his dogs' ears; and as they trotted along in front of him, quite happy over their mule breakfast, he looked longingly at these devoted friends, but with a hope that he might be spared the necessity of mutilating them.

      The soldiers bartered for everything. One came to General Custer to beg to trade some tobacco for a loaf of bread. He received the half of the last loaf, but the tobacco was declined, as it was not the habit of General Custer to use it. That night the remaining half of the loaf was stolen. A little sack of oats was carefully treasured in General Custer's tent for his favorite horse, and the hungry animals left loose to pick what grass they could under the edges of the snow, came at night sniffing and snorting around the oats in hungry search. The horses grew so expert in foraging for themselves that they learned to put one hoof on a fallen sapling and tear off the bark with their teeth, as a dog holds and picks a bone.

      It was on that campaign that I first heard of a sack made of a buffalo-skin to sleep in, and not even then should I have learned that such an invention was known, had not the handsome Adonis who used this clever device been unmercifully teased for indulging in so much luxury.

      Indeed, it was mostly owing to the tormenting spirit of raillery, that is the characteristic of officer and soldier, that many of the hardships endured came to my knowledge at all. When the attention of a group was called to some comical situation, reminding the bystanders of some desperate plight, either of danger or deprivation, in which an officer had been placed, I had an insight into what had been endured by them all.

      I suppose that I never should have heard of several incidents of the winter, had it not been that the Kansas Volunteers afforded some amusement to our men, from the fact that they, though brave men, were inexperienced campaigners, and their complaints did not escape our men, who considered themselves scarred veterans in comparison. For years, if any one said, talking of a hoped-for leave of absence, or describing some one who was lonely, I can see home just as plain, I knew that it referred to a volunteer who was heard by some of our men crying with homesickness, and confiding his woes to his bunkey. At heart our men were sorry for them, as there were some pitiful instances of nostalgia among them; but when they whined like children they were apt to encounter ridicule.

      At the time when the supplies were getting low and half-rations were issued, and still the expedition pursued a fresh trail, instead of returning to the wagon train, the commanding officer ordered the band to play the regimental tunes, Garryowen, The Girl I left behind Me, etc., after camp was reached, in the hope of raising the spirits of the men. Evidently the soul of the Kansas Volunteers was not attuned to music when assailed by the pangs of hunger, for they were overheard to grumble and complain that Custer fed them on one hardtack a day and the Arkansaw Traveller.

      The story of the military part of the rest of the winter, unmarked by any battle, but full of parleyings, ruses, subterfuges, councils, and promises of peace on the part of the Indians, who eventfully did come to terms, has been much better told by another pen than mine. I needed only to outline the battle of the Washita, that I might introduce the prisoners who formed such a feature of our life during the following summer at Fort Hays, and explain how it came to pass that the regiment was able to have a permanent camp instead of being all off on a campaign at once.

      CHAPTER VI.

       IN CAMP ON BIG CREEK.

       Table of Contents

      Early in the spring the Seventh Cavalry found themselves again in Kansas, and with the cheering prospect of some degree of quiet. The same Big Creek on which they had been located two summers before was chosen for a camp; access was had to the regimental baggage, which had been stored, and every one prepared to make himself comfortable. Some of the officers took leave of absence, and after the year's separation from their families the rejoicing was great. Two of our number brought their wives back to camp. Others were deprived of that pleasure, because their wives could not endure the hardships, or their children were too young to bear the exposure. There was great exchanging of confidences concerning the experiences of the officers on their leaves, and much unreserved narrating of domestic scenes; for, full of railing as every one was, a man's family life was sacred, and he felt that he could speak of it freely; so it was indeed as if we were one family. Those who went home amused us, on their return, by their stories of how they had surprised the home people stealing in at the backdoor, catching up their wives and swinging them in air, while the frightened servants, hearing the screams, ran from the kitchen with hands covered with flour, and the coachman from the stable, still holding his curry-comb, all of them ready to defend their lady against the imagined burglar or assassin. One of our number reached home in the evening while his little son was sleeping. He was awakened in the morning by the vigorous application of a pair of little fists on his face, and an angry demand from the little fellow, accompanied by some terrible language that the youngster had learned at the cavalry stables, to get out of his mother's bed. He had, in the year that had elapsed, entirely forgotten how his father looked, and not knowing he was coming, he did not suspect the identity of the intruder.

      Those officers who had no families were busy over piles of love-letters awaiting them from the East, and sought in vain places where they might read in peace, for those who were not so fortunate as to have a sweet-heart rallied the lucky ones, and interfered as much as possible with the envied enjoyment. Still, it is

Скачать книгу