Defending General Custer's Legacy: Complete Illustrated Trilogy . Elizabeth Bacon Custer

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СКАЧАТЬ carefully, for the figures were invariably dismembered. My husband’s first occupation was to hang the few pictures and mend the statuettes. He glued on the broken portions and moulded putty in the crevices where the biscuit had crumbled. Sometimes he had to replace a bit that was lost, and, as he was very fond of modelling, I rather imagined that he was glad of an opportunity to practise on our broken statuettes.

      My husband, like many other men who achieve success in the graver walks of life, could go on and accomplish his ends without being dependent on the immediate voice of approval. In all the smaller, more trifling acts of daily life he asked for a prompt acknowledgment. It amused me greatly, it was so like a woman, who can scarcely exist without encouragement. When he had reset an arm or modelled a cap I could quite honestly praise his work.

      On one occasion we found the head of a figure entirely severed from the trunk. Nothing daunted, he fell to patching it up again. I had not the conscience to promise him the future of a Thorwaldsen this time. The distorted throat, made of unwieldy putty, gave the formerly erect, soldierly neck a decided appearance of goitre. My laughter discouraged the impromptu artist, who for one moment felt that a “restoration” is not quite equal to the original. He declared that he would put a coat of gray paint over all, so that in a dim corner they might pass for new. I insisted that it should be a very dark corner! Both of the statuettes represented scenes from the war. One was called “Wounded to the Rear,” the other, “Letter Day.” The latter was the figure of a soldier sitting in a cramped, bent position, holding an inkstand in one hand and scratching his head for thoughts, with the pen. The inane poise of his chin as he looked up into the uninspiring air, and the hopeless expression of his eyes as he searched for ideas, showed how unusual to him were all efforts at composition.

      We had a witty friend who had served with my husband during the war. Many an evening in front of our open fire they fought over their old battles together. He used to look at the statuette quizzically, as he seated himself near the hearth, and once told us that he never saw it without being reminded of his own struggles during the war to write to his wife. She was Southern in sympathies as well as in birth, but too absolutely devoted to her husband to remain at her Southern home. When he wrote to her at the North, where she was staying, it was quite to be understood that there was a limit to topics between them, as they kept strictly to subjects that were foreign to the vexed question. To the army in the field, the all-absorbing thought was of the actual occurrences of the day. The past was for the time blotted out; the future had no personal plans in the hearts of men who fought as our heroes did. And so it came to pass that the letters between the two, with such diversity of sentiment regarding the contest, were apt to be short and solely personal. How the eyes of that bright man twinkled when he said, “I used to look just like that man in the Rogers statuette, when I was racking my brains to fill up the sheet of paper. My orders carried me constantly through the country where my wife’s kin lived. Why, Custer, old man, I could not write to her and say, ‘I have cut the canal in the Shenandoah Valley and ruined your mother’s plantation;’ or, ‘Yesterday I drove off all your brother’s stock to feed our army.’ Of course one can’t talk sentiment on every line, and so I sometimes sent off a mighty short epistle.”

      We often lounged about my husband’s room at dusk without a lamp. The firelight reflected the large glittering eyes of the animals’ heads, and except that we were such a jolly family, the surroundings would have suggested arenas and martyrs. I used to think that a man on the brink of mania a potu, thrust suddenly into such a place in the dim flickering light, would be hurried to his doom by fright. We loved the place dearly. The great difficulty was that the general would bury himself too much, in the delight of having a castle as securely barred as if the entrance were by a portcullis.

      When he had worked too long and steadily I opened the doors, determined that his room should not resemble that of Walter Scott. An old engraving represents a room in which but one chair is significantly placed. In our plans for a home in our old age we included a den for my husband at the top of the house. We had read somewhere of one like that ascribed to Victor Hugo. The room was said not even to have a staircase, but was entered by a ladder which the owner could draw up the aperture after him.

      CHAPTER XX.

       THE SUMMER OF THE BLACK HILLS EXPEDITION.

       Table of Contents

      I used to be thankful that ours was a mounted regiment on one account: if we had belonged to the infantry, the regiment would have been sent out much sooner. The horses were too valuable to have their lives endangered by encountering a blizzard, while it was believed that an enlisted man had enough pluck and endurance to bring him out of a storm in one way or another. Tardy as the spring was up there, the grass began at last to be suitable for grazing, and preparations for an expedition to the Black Hills were being carried on. I had found accidentally that my husband was fitting up an ambulance for travelling, and as he never rode in one himself, nor arranged to take one for his own comfort, I decided at once that he was planning to take me with him. Mary and I had lived in such close quarters that she counted on going also, and went to the general to petition. To keep her from knowing that he intended to take us, he argued that we could not get along with so little room; that there was only to be allowed half a wagon for the camp outfit of the head-quarters mess. “You dun’ know better’n that, giniral?” she replied; “me and Miss Libbie could keep house in a flour-barr’l.”

      At the very last, news came through Indian scouts that the summer might be full of danger, and my heart was almost broken at finding that the general did not dare to take me with him. Whatever peril might be awaiting me on the expedition, nothing could be equal to the suffering of suspense at home.

      The black hour came again, and with it the terrible parting which seemed a foreshadowing of the most intense anguish that our Heavenly Father can send to his children. When I resumed my life, and tried to portion off the day with occupations, in order that the time should fly faster, I found that the one silver thread running through the dark woof of the dragging hours was the hope of the letters we were promised. Scouts were to be sent back four times during the absence of the regiment.

      The infantry came to garrison our post. In the event of attack, my husband left a Gatling gun on the hills at the rear of the camp. It is a small cannon, which is discharged by turning a crank that scatters the shot in all directions, and is especially serviceable at short range. A detachment of soldiers was stationed on the bluff back of us, that commanded the most extended view of the country. The voice of the sentinel calling, at regular intervals during the night, “All’s well,” often closed our anxious eyes. Out there one slept lightly, and any unusual noise was attributed to an attack on our pickets, and caused us many a wakeful hour. With what relief we looked up daily to the little group of tents, when we finally realized that we were alone.

      The officer who commanded this little station was an old bachelor who did not believe in marriage in the army. Not knowing this, we told him, with some enthusiasm, how safe and thankful we felt in having him for our defender. He quite checked our enthusiasm by replying, briefly, “that in case of attack, his duty was to protect Government property; the defence of women came last.” This was the first instance I had ever known of an officer who did not believe a woman was God’s best gift to man.

      We were not effectually suppressed, for the only safe place in which we could walk was along the beat of the sentry, on the brow of the hill, near the tent of this zoological specimen. Here we resorted every evening at twilight to try and get cool, for the sun burns fiercely during the short Northern summer. With the hot weather the mosquito war began—Fort Lincoln was celebrated as the worst place in the United States for these pests. The inundations recurring each spring opposite us, brought later in the year myriads of the insects; those I had known on the Red River of the South were nothing in comparison. If the wind was in a certain direction, СКАЧАТЬ