Following the Guidon (Illustrated Edition). Elizabeth Bacon Custer

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      When California Joe first joined the general in the Washita country he studied him pretty thoroughly. In his rough vernacular, he wanted to "size him up", and see if he was really soldier enough for him to "foller." The contrast between a plainsman's independence and the deference and respect for rank that is instilled into a soldier is very marked. The enlisted man rarely speaks to his superior unless spoken to, and he usually addresses an officer in the third person. The scout, on the contrary, owns the plains, according to his views, and he addresses the stranger or the military man with an air of perfect equality; but long acquaintance with their ways taught me that at heart these men were just as full of deference for any brave man they served as is the soldier. In coming to an understanding with the general regarding his giving his services as scout, Joe asked his commander a few pointed questions about himself. He wished to know how he intended to hunt Indians. There had been some officers whom he had known who had gone to war in a wagon; the troopers called them "feather-bed soldiers." So Joe said: "S'pose you're after Injuns, and really want to hev a tussle with 'em, would ye start after 'em on hoss back, or would ye climb into an ambulance and be hauled after 'em? That's the pint I'm headin' for." After putting the general through such a catechism, he decided to let himself be employed, as it was evident from his own impressions, and from what he had heard, that there was not much doubt that the chief was, in his own language, "spilin' for a fight" just as much as he himself was.

      Joe was made the chief of scouts at once; but honors did not sit easily upon him, for in celebrating his advancement he made night hideous with his yells. The scout gets drunk just as he does everything else—with all his might. Living all his life beyond the region of law and its enforcement; being a perfect shot, he is able, usually, to carry out his spree according to his own wishes. He tells the man who might express a wish for a peaceful, quiet night that he had better not tackle him, and emphasizes his remark by drawing out of the small arsenal that encircles his body a pistol, which, pointed accurately, renders the average man quick to say, "It's of no consequence", and retire. I do not even like to say that the scouts were ever drunk, for they were profoundly sober when they went off on their perilous journeys with despatches; and when I think how all our lives were in their hands when they were sent for succor, and how often they took messages across country to put troops or settlements on their guard, or of a hundred other daring deeds of theirs, I prefer to remember only the faithful discharge of duty, not the carousal that sometimes followed the reaction caused by overstrained nerves and the relief from hours and days of impending death.

      Anticipating a little, I remember that California Joe was selected for the most important scouting duty of the winter, which was nothing less than the transmission of the despatch announcing the success of the battle of the Washita. The command was then far away from Camp Supply; it was midwinter, and the Indians were thoroughly aroused and on guard. It was not known how great the distance was that he must traverse, but the troops had taken four days to accomplish it. Joe was asked how many scouts he would like to take, and after going off to deliberate, returned, with the reply that he "didn't want no more ner his pardner, fur in this 'ere bizness more is made by dodgin' and runnin' than by fightin'." At dark he started, without giving the slightest evidence that he regarded the perilous undertaking as anything more than a commonplace occurrence.

      One peculiarity of these men was their evident inability to feel surprise; the most extraordinary occurrences made so little impression upon them that it would seem as if they must have had a previous existence, and become familiar in another life with the strange events which made us gasp with astonishment. How often I have heard the officers refer to the variety these men made in the tedium of the march, by their stories of adventure, their wit, and their fearless and original expression of views! It was conceded that they "drew a long bow" sometimes, but the tales of their own lives were startling enough without the least necessity for exaggeration.

      One story from the mines was told me, and may have lost nothing in the telling. An Irishman who was pretty drunk fell into a shaft sixty-five feet deep. He picked himself up unhurt, but partially sobered, and seeing a passage leading into the open air, he made his way out to the side of the mountain. Then he walked up till he reached the shaft, and looking down into its depths, was heard to say, "Be gorry, and I'm thinking it would kill me if I was to fall down there agin."

      The scouts and frontiersmen were not slow to express their opinion on the few women they encountered, and a tale was told of a family consisting of a mother and several strapping daughters who lived in a cabin on the route over which cattle were driven to market. The "gals", as the Western man terms them, took care of some cows, and the narrator of the story stopped there to get milk. As he sat near the fire smoking, the rawboned, shrivelled old mother bent over the fireplace puffing at a clay pipe, perfectly stolid and silent, until one girl came in and silently stood at the fire trying to dry her homespun dress. Without raising herself, and in a drawling tone, the mother said, presently, "Sal, there's a coal under you fut." In no more animated tone and without even moving, her offspring replied, "Which fut, mammy?" The girl had run barefoot all her life over the shale and rough ground of that country, and the red-hot coal was some time in making its way through the hard surface to a tissue that had any sensitiveness.

      The widow of a miner, who kept boarders, was also on the scant list of female acquaintances of one of the frontiersmen, who describes a person called the "bouncer", who seems to be a well-recognized functionary in such establishments. He is always big and strong, and his duties consist in bringing to time people who neglect to pay their bill, and for this service he is boarded without charge. An Eastern man, a "tenderfoot", on one occasion asked some one to pass the gravy, whereupon the bouncer placed his pistol on the table and quietly remarked, "Any man as calls sop gravy has got to eat dust or 'pologize."

      At that time we all returned to civilization with a goodly collection of frontier stories that had not found their way into the omnivorous newspaper, and our talk was full of allusions to jokes among ourselves, or to portions of these way-side tales that we had appropriated, because they fitted into our daily life so well. We believed, and there was no reason why we should doubt it, that the amusing or venturesome stories of these men were their own experiences, and I need not dwell upon the zest it gives to the listener when the hero of a tale is present as he tells it.

      Another relief to the weariness of a march was hunting game, which was so plentiful that no one need run the risk of straying far from the command in search of it. The wild turkeys were the greatest treat of all, that winter, and there were so many of them that the soldiers' messes had all they wanted while the command remained in the locality they frequented. A former officer of General СКАЧАТЬ