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

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СКАЧАТЬ ignorance, and did not even know that an army of 70,000 men was being organized under General Sheridan's masterly hand. My husband read the Eastern papers to me, and took the liberty of reserving such articles as might prove incendiary in his family. If our incorrigible scamp spoke of the expected wealth he intended to acquire from the sacking of palaces and the spoils of churches, he was frowned upon, not only because the General tried to teach him that there were some subjects too sacred to be touched by his irreverent tongue, but because he did not wish my anxieties to be aroused by the prospect of another campaign. As much of my story must be of the hardships my husband endured, I have here lingered a little over the holiday that our journey and the detention in New Orleans gave him. I hardly think any one can recall a complaint of his in those fourteen years of tent-life; but he was taught, through deprivations, how to enjoy every moment of such days as that charming journey and city experience gave us.

      The steamer chartered to take troops up the Red River was finally ready, and we sailed the last week in June. There were horses and Government freight on board. The captain was well named Greathouse, as he greeted us with hospitality and put his little steamer at our disposal. Besides the fact that this contract for transportation would line his pockets well, he really seemed glad to have us. He was a Yankee, and gave us his native State (Indiana) in copious and inexhaustible supplies, as his contribution to the talks on deck. Long residence in the South had not dimmed his patriotism; and in the rapid transits from deck to pilot-house, of this tall Hoosier, I almost saw the straps fastening down the trousers of Brother Jonathan, as well as the coat-tails cut from the American flag, so entirely did he personate in his figure our emblematic Uncle Sam. It is customary for the Government to defray the expenses of officers and soldiers when traveling under orders; but so much red-tape is involved that they often pay their own way at the time, and the quartermaster reimburses them at the journey's end. The captain knew this, and thought he would give himself the pleasure of having us as his guests. Accordingly, he took the General one side, and imparted this very pleasing information. Even with the provident ones this would be a relief; while we had come on board almost wrecked in our finances by the theatre, the tempting flowers, the fascinating restaurants, and finally, a disastrous lingering one day in the beguiling shop of Madam Olympe, the reigning milliner. The General had bought some folly for me, in spite of the heroic protest that I made about its inappropriateness for Texas, and it left us just enough to pay for our food on our journey, provided we ordered nothing extra, and had no delays. Captain Greathouse little knew to what paupers he was extending his hospitality. No one can comprehend how carelessly and enjoyably army people can walk about with empty pockets, knowing that it is but a matter of thirty days' waiting till Richard shall be himself again. My husband made haste to impart the news quietly to the staff, that the captain was going to invite them all to be his guests, and so relieve their anxiety about financial embarrassment. The scamp saw a chance for a joke, and when the captain again appeared he knew that he was going to receive the invitation, and anticipated it. In our presence he jingled the last twenty-six cents he had in the world against the knife in his almost empty pockets, assumed a Crœsus-like air, and begged to know the cost of the journey, as he loftily said he made it a rule always to pay in advance. At this, the General, unable to smother his laughter, precipitated himself out of the cabin-door, nearly over the narrow guard, to avoid having his merriment seen. When the captain said blandly that he was about to invite our party to partake of his hospitality, our scamp bowed, and accepted the courtesy as if it were condescension on his part, and proceeded to take possession, and almost command, of the steamer.

      It was a curious trip, that journey up the Red River. We saw the dull brownish-red water from the clay bed and banks mingling with the clearer current of the Mississippi long before we entered the mouth of the Red River. We had a delightful journey; but I don't know why, except that youth, health and buoyant spirits rise superior to everything. The river was ugliness itself. The tree trunks, far up, were gray and slimy with the late freshet, the hanging moss adding a dismal feature to the scene. The waters still covered the low, muddy banks strewn with fallen trees and underbrush. The river was very narrow in places, and in our way there were precursors of the Red River raft above. At one time, before Government work was begun, the raft extended forty-five miles beyond Shreveport, and closed the channel to steamers. Sometimes the pilot wound us round just such obstructions—logs and driftwood jammed in so firmly, and so immovable, they looked like solid ground, while rank vegetation sprung up through the thick moss that covered the decaying tree trunks. The river was very crooked. The whistle screeched when approaching a turn; but so sudden were some of these, that a steamer coming down, not slackening speed, almost ran into us at one sharp bend. It shaved our sides and set our boat a-quivering, while the vituperations of the boat's crew, and the loud, angry voices of the captain and pilot, with a prompt return of such civilities from the other steamer, made us aware that emergencies brought forth a special and extensive set of invectives, reserved for careless navigation on the Red River of the South. We grew to have an increasing respect for the skill of the pilot, as he steered us around sharp turns, across low water filled with branching upturned tree trunks, and skillfully took a narrow path between the shore and a snag that menacingly ran its black point out of the water. A steamer in advance of us, carrying troops, had encountered a snag, while going at great speed, and the obstructing tree ran entirely through the boat, coming out at the pilot-house. The troops were unloaded and taken up afterward by another steamer. Sometimes the roots of great forest trees, swept down by a freshet, become imbedded in the river, and the whole length of the trunk is under water, swaying up and down, but not visible below the turbid surface. The forest is dense at some points, and we could see but a short distance as we made our circuitous, dangerous way.

      The sand-bars, and the soft red clay of the river-banks, were a fitting home for the alligators that lay sunning themselves, or sluggishly crawled into the stream as the General aimed at them with his rifle from the steamer's guards. They were new game, and gave some fresh excitement to the long, idle days. He never gave up trying, in his determined way, for the vulnerable spot in their hide just behind the eye. I thought the sand-hill crane must have first acquired its tiresome habit of standing on one leg, from its disgust at letting down the reserve foot into such thick, noisome water. It seemed a pity that some of those shots from the steamer's deck had not ended its melancholy existence. Through all this mournful river-way the guitar twanged, and the dense forest resounded to war choruses or old college glees that we sent out in happy notes as we sat on deck. I believe Captain Greathouse bade us good-by with regret, as he seemed to enjoy the jolly party, and when we landed at Alexandria he gave us a hogshead of ice, the last we were to see for a year.

      A house abandoned by its owners, and used by General Banks for headquarters during the war, was selected for our temporary home. As we stepped upon the levee, a tall Southerner came toward me and extended his hand. At that time the citizens were not wont to welcome the Yankee in that manner. He had to tell me who he was, as unfortunately I had forgotten, and I began to realize the truth of the saying, that "there are but two hundred and fifty people in the world," when I found an acquaintance in this isolated town. He proved to be the only Southerner I had ever known in my native town in Michigan, who came there when a lad to visit kinsfolk. In those days his long black hair, large dark eyes and languishing manner, added to the smooth, soft-flowing, flattering speeches, made sad havoc in our school-girl ranks. I suppose the youthful and probably susceptible hearts of our circle were all set fluttering, for the boy seemed to find pleasure in a chat with any one of us that fell to him in our walks to and from school. The captivating part of it all was the lines written on the pages of my arithmetic, otherwise so odious to me—"Come with me to my distant home, where, under soft Southern skies, we'll breathe the odor of orange groves." None of us had answered to his "Come," possibly because of the infantile state of our existence, possibly because the invitation was too general. And here stood our youthful hero, worn prematurely old and shabby after his four years of fighting for "the cause." The boasted "halls of his ancestors," the same to which we had been so ardently invited, were a plain white cottage. No orange groves, but a few lime-trees sparsely scattered over the prescribed lawn. In the pleasant visit that we all had, there was discreet avoidance of the poetic license he had taken in early years, when describing his home under the southern sky.

      Alexandria had been partly burned during the war, and was built СКАЧАТЬ