LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER II.

      FORT LEAVENWORTH TO FORT McPHERSON.

      IT was my good fortune during our sojourn at Fort Leavenworth to be domesticated temporarily in the house of an officer of General Hancock's staff. His wife was a charming little German woman who could not speak a word of English, and, being unac- quainted with German myself, our conversation was carried on mainly by a sort of sign language in quite a primitive manner. It was sufficient, however, to indicate our mutual kindly feeling and interest, as she, in social hours, drank her mild beer and kept industriously at work at her knitting, while I, for want of a beer taste and inclination, was relegated to lemonade and fancy work.

      This respite doubtless strengthened me in a measure, at least, for future activities immediately at hand.

      When the hour arrived for my departure, this sympathetic, considerate friend, on bidding good-by, handed me two "Prayer Books, " a "Life of Benjamin Franklin, " and one of "Thaddeus of Warsaw " for my diversion along the way. Pos- sibly she did not know the Prayer Books as such, and that they might prove otherwise than a diver- sion on the journey. And then, on the turbid Mis- souri, my husband and myself were bound for Omaha, not the Omaha of to-day with its teeming population and commercial importance, but an

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       MY ARMY LIFE

      ordinary river town ambitious to become the gate- way to a future magnificent State.

      We Americans already treat as a matter of course the union of the two oceans by the construc- tion of the Panama Canal, and cease to wonder at such a mighty project, but at the close of the Civil War the idea of uniting the Atlantic slope to the Pacific slope by rail had not been conceived, but its execution was put in hand, through the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad from Omaha as its initial point, conceded by all concerned to be a great step in national expansion and a colossal event in the history of American railroad enterprise. That wizard of practical science, the civil engineer, had faith, ability, and the backing of patriotic citi- zens with ample money at their command, so that if he did not remove the Rocky Mountains he went over them and through them, until he constructed a steel railway to transport a resistless tide of humanity westward, such as never before had been deemed within the reach of many coming genera- tions. And if, as has been stated, there lingered in the public mind at the close of the Civil War the possibility of the far west being dissatisfied with a Union of States so entirely cut off from compen- satory advantages by high mountain barriers and broad barren plains that it would also secede from the old Union and form an independent government of its own, it remains a fact that to the patriotism of a few rich men who furnished the capital, and not alone to the Government, we are largely indebted for this gigantic enterprise.

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       OUTWARD BOUND

      The Government did indeed vote a subsidy in land, and issued bonds to the company at the rate of $16,000.00 per mile across the plains and $45,000.00 per mile across the mountains; and now, instead of one road, as then anticipated, we have three transcontinental lines, all built within the memory of the writer, who had the unique experi- ence of being the only woman passenger on the first passenger train that went over the newly-laid track, nearly one hundred miles west from Omaha.

      And so, upon leaving Fort Leavenworth, we em- barked for the untried future, whatever that might prove to be, and any calculations, based upon former experiences, were of no avail whatever. Our initiation, however, was not long delayed. Even before we reached the terminus of the new track, to exchange our means of conveyance, a wrecked con- struction train impeded further progress and we were forced to halt, high, and very dry, for one entire day, "waiting for things to come to pass," and, "more than twenty miles from a lemon." I felt, perhaps not unworthily, the experience and attitude of ' * patience on a monument, "sol endured the ordeal, while patient hands extricated us from our dilemma.

      One can imagine the physical discomfort to a lone woman stranded on the broad open plain, minus the present every-day conveniences of tank and toilet, so indispensable to comfort in travel. The monotony of our first ambulance ride, after leaving the railroad, was absolutely barren of inter- est, and in view of our later experience with the

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      MY ARMY LIFE

      Platte River, of which we had no previous warning, I have never understood exactly how we actually crossed it in company with several emigrant wagons, wholly oblivious of its hidden mysteries and mani- fold dangers, unless the very change from the other modes of travel made the ambulance ride a consoling hint that we were actually on the way to our des- tined goal.

      We passed through, or rather by, old Fort Kearney, once a famous frontier post, which had been left in the charge of an Ordnance Sergeant soon after the Eighteenth Infantry had left its barracks early in the summer for their western expedition to Montana, which we were about to join, and began to realize that "thus far" we were still within the limits of civilized occupation, but practically on its very frontier. Little "Dobey Town," dignified by the ambitious sobriquet of Kearney City, only three miles west from the fort and long known as an Overland Stage Station, was left behind without regret, and with eager anticipa- tions we hastened toward Fort McPherson, the first army post along the

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