Following the Guidon (Illustrated Edition). Elizabeth Bacon Custer

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      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 a well-known fact that a soldier is usually a lover. The old saw, "Love rules the camp, the court, the grove," is one that fits all nations and all eras. Officers are pretty fearless about their devotion; if not avowing it openly, still wearing all sorts of love-pledges chains and lockets which with the open-throated shirt in a campaign are easily seen, or keepsakes on the watch-chain: perhaps a curious ring which could not be mistaken for a man's under any circumstances, or other such things. I have even seen a bangle made large enough to encircle the arm, and locked on, of course, by fair hands. A Catholic officer often wore an Agnus Dei, and I believe that many a man would have disfigured himself with an ear-ring if the girl he left behind him had asked to pierce his ear for that purpose. They did not hesitate to carry their sweet-hearts pictures in their inner pockets, and around the camp-fire take them out and look at the loved faces by the firelight the last thing before sleeping. Imagine, then, with all these officers, most of whom were in love with women, either their wives or the girls they hoped to make their wives, what a time of rejoicing it was when partial civilization was again reached, and the cars of the railroad were almost in sight, meaning to them an opportunity to go East—or failing that, at least a daily mail! Every one's heart seemed to be merry; the sound of laughter and song rang out from the tents, and the soldiers danced in the company streets to the music of an Irish bagpipe (differing somewhat from the Scotch instrument, but with just as merry music) that belonged to a recruit newly arrived.

      Our summer camp was between two and three miles from Fort Hays, on Big Creek. Sometimes the stream ran along for a distance with no timber or underbrush to border it, but the place selected for our tents was under a fringe of good sized cotton-wood-trees. It was most gratifying to have this protection, and after a hot ride on the arid plain we came under the boughs and saw, with a real home feeling, the white tents gleaming in the shade. All about us the undulating country stretched its naked, glaring surface; not even clumps of bushes survived the scorching sun or the fierce tornadoes of wind that swept unchecked over the great unbroken stretch of country.

      Professor Hayden so clearly explains the peculiar formation of the plains that I here insert a few paragraphs from his account of the matter:

      We believe that at the close of the cretaceous period the ocean rolled uninterruptedly across the area now occupied by the Rocky Mountain Ranges. Near the close of the cretaceous era the surface had reached an elevation so great as to form long lines of separation between the waters of the Atlantic, on the east, and those of the Pacific on the west; and thus this great water-shed began to rise above the surrounding country. Then, also, began the existence of the first of that series of fresh-water lakes which we now know was a most prominent feature in the physical geography of this country during the tertiary period.

      During the cretaceous period there was a gradual, slow elevation of the whole country west of the Mississippi; that about the close of that period the crust of the earth had been strained to its utmost tension, and long lines of fracture commenced, which formed the nucleus of our present mountain ranges. At the close of the cretaceous period, in the early days of the tertiary, when the crust had been elevated to its utmost tension, it broke sometimes in long lines of fracture, which gave birth to these lofty, continuous ranges along the eastern portion of the Rocky Mountains, as the Wind River, Big Horn, Black Hills, or the basaltic ridges formed by outbursts of melted matter arranged in series of sharp peaks or sierras.

      It is possible to trace the growth of the continent, step by step, from the purely marine waters of the cretaceous ocean and the period when the mountain ranges were elevated in well-defined lines above the waters, causing the ocean to recede to the eastward on the one side, and to the westward on the other. The Rocky Mountains formed immense water-sheds, which gave birth to innumerable fresh-water streams, which fed those great tertiary lakes along the eastern slope, two out of the four or five, of great extent. We believe that one, the great Lignite basin, extends as far southward as California, possibly, westward over the mountains to Utah, and northward probably to the Arctic Sea, interrupted by the upheaval of mountain СКАЧАТЬ