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

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СКАЧАТЬ of those merry days: "An editor went hunting the other day, for the first time in twenty-two years, and he was lucky enough to bring down an old farmer by a shot in the leg. The distance was sixty-six yards."

      We had long and delightful rides over the level country. Sometimes my husband and I, riding quietly along at twilight, for the days were still too warm for much exercise at noon-time, came upon as many as three coveys of quail scurrying to the underbrush. In a short walk from camp he could bag a dozen birds, and we had plenty of duck in the creek near us. The bird dog was a perpetual pleasure. She was the dearest, chummiest sort of house-dog, and when we took her out she still visited with us perpetually, running to us every now and again to utter a little whine, or to have us witness her tail, which, in her excitement in rushing through the underbrush, cacti and weeds, was usually scratched, torn and bleeding. The country was so dry that we could roam at will, regardless of roads. Our horses were accustomed to fording streams, pushing their way through thickets and brambles, and becoming so interested in making a route through them that my habit sometimes caught in the briars, and my hat was lifted off by the low-hanging moss and branches; and if I was not very watchful, the horse would go through a passage between two trees just wide enough for himself, and rub me off, unless I scrambled to the pommel. The greater the obstacles my husband encountered, even in his sports, the more pleasure it was to him. His own horses were so trained that he shot from their backs without their moving. Mine would also stand fire, and at the report of a gun, behaved much better than his mistress.

      Eliza, instead of finding the General wearing his white linen to celebrate Sunday, according to her observances, was apt to get it on week-days after office-hours, far too often to suit her. On the Sabbath, she was immensely puffed up to see him emerge from the tent, speckless and spotless, because she said to me, "Whilst the rest of the officers is only too glad to get a white shirt, the Ginnel walks out among 'em all, in linen from top to toe." She has been sitting beside me, talking over a day at that time: "Do you mind, Miss Libbie, that while we was down in Texas the Ginnel was startin' off on a deer-hunt, I jest went up to him and tole him, 'Now, Ginnel, you go take off them there white pants.' He said so quiet, sassy, cool, roguish-like, 'The deer always like something white'—telling me that jest 'cause he wanted to keep 'em on. Well, he went, all the same, and when he came back, I says, 'I don't think the deer saw you in those pants.' He was covered with grass-stains and mud, and a young fawn swinging across the saddle. But them pants was mud and blood, and green and yellow blotches, from hem to bindin'. But he jest laughed at me because I was a-scoldin', and brought the deer out to me, and I skinned it the fust time I ever did, and cooked it next day, and we had a nice dinner."

      At that time Eliza was a famous belle. Our colored coachman, Henry, was a permanent fixture at the foot of her throne, while the darkeys on the neighboring plantations came nightly to worship. She bore her honors becomingly, as well as the fact that she was the proud possessor of a showy outfit, including silk dresses. The soldiers to whom Eliza had been kind in Virginia had given her clothes that they had found in the caches where the farmers endeavored to hide their valuables during the war. Eliza had made one of these very receptacles for her "ole miss" before she left the plantation, and while her conscience allowed her to take the silken finery of some other woman whom she did not know, she kept the secret of the hiding-place of her own people's valuables until after the war, when the General sent her home in charge of one of his sergeants to pay a visit. Even the old mistress did not know the spot that Eliza had chosen, which had been for years a secret, and she describes the joy at sight of her, and her going to the place in the field and digging up the property "with right smart of money, too, Miss Libbie—enough, with that the Ginnel gave me to take home, to keep 'em till the crops could be harvested."

      This finery of Eliza's drove a woman servant at the next place to plan a miserable revenge, which came near sending us all into another world. We were taking our breakfast one morning, with the table spread under the awning in front of our tent. The air, not yet heated by the sun, came over the prairie from the sea. The little green swift and the chameleon, which the General had found in the arbor roof and tamed as pets, looked down upon as reposeful and pretty a scene as one could wish, when we suddenly discovered a blaze in the cook-tent, where we had now a stove—but Eliza shall tell the story; "When I fust saw the fire, Miss Libbie, I was a-waitin' on you at breakfast. Then the first thought was the Ginnel's powder-can, and I jest dropped everythin' and ran and found the blaze was a-runnin' up the canvas of my tent, nearly reachin' the powder. The can had two handles, and I ketched it up and ran outside. When I first got in the tent, it had burnt clar up to the ridge-pole on one side. Some things in my trunk was scorched mightily, and one side of it was pretty well burnt. The fire was started right behind my trunk, not very near the cook-stove. The Ginnel said to me how cool and deliberate I was, and he told me right away that if my things had been destroyed, I would have everythin' replaced, for he was bound I wasn't going to lose nothin'."

      My husband, in this emergency, was as cool as he always was. He followed Eliza as she ran for the powder-can, and saved the tent and its contents from destruction, and, without doubt, saved our lives. The noble part that I bore in the moment of peril was to take a safe position in our tent, wring my hands and cry. If there was no one else to rush forward in moments of danger, courage came unexpectedly, but I do not recall much brave volunteering on my part.

      Eliza put such a broad interpretation upon the General's oft-repeated instruction not to let any needy person go away from our tent or quarters hungry, that occasionally we had to protest. She describes to me now his telling her she was carrying her benevolence rather too far, and her replying, "Yes, Ginnel, I do take in some one once and a while, off and on." "Yes," he replied to me, "more on than off, I should say." "One chile I had to hide in the weeds a week, Miss Libbie. The Ginnel used to come out to the cook-tent and stand there kinder careless like, and he would spy a little path running out into the weeds. Well, he used to carry me high and dry about them little roads leading off to folks he said I was a-feedin.' I would say, when I saw him lookin' at the little path in the weeds, 'Well, what is it, Ginnel?' He would look at me so keen-like out of his eyes, and say, 'That's what I

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