Vanished Arizona: Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman. Martha Summerhayes

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ officers, and several officers with their wives, about eight or nine in all, and we could have had a merry time enough but for the awful heat, which destroyed both our good looks and our tempers. The fare was meagre, of course; fresh biscuit without butter, very salt boiled beef, and some canned vegetables, which were poor enough in those days. Pies made from preserved peaches or plums generally followed this delectable course. Chinamen, as we all know, can make pies under conditions that would stagger most chefs. They may have no marble pastry-slab, and the lard may run like oil, still they can make pies that taste good to the hungry traveller.

      But that dining-room was hot! The metal handles of the knives were uncomfortably warm to the touch; and even the wooden arms of the chairs felt as if they were slowly igniting. After a hasty meal, and a few remarks upon the salt beef, and the general misery of our lot, we would seek some spot which might be a trifle cooler. A siesta was out of the question, as the staterooms were insufferable; and so we dragged out the weary days.

      At sundown the boat put her nose up to the bank and tied up for the night. The soldiers left the barges and went into camp on shore, to cook their suppers and to sleep. The banks of the river offered no very attractive spot upon which to make a camp; they were low, flat, and covered with underbrush and arrow-weed, which grew thick to the water's edge. I always found it interesting to watch the barge unload the men at sundown.

      At twilight some of the soldiers came on board and laid our mattresses side by side on the after deck. Pajamas and loose gowns were soon en evidence, but nothing mattered, as they were no electric lights to disturb us with their glare. Rank also mattered not; Lieutenant-Colonel Wilkins and his wife lay down to rest, with the captains and lieutenants and their wives, wherever their respective strikers had placed their mattresses (for this was the good old time when the soldiers were allowed to wait upon officers 'families).

      Under these circumstances, much sleep was not to be thought of; the sultry heat by the river bank, and the pungent smell of the arrow-weed which lined the shores thickly, contributed more to stimulate than to soothe the weary nerves. But the glare of the sun was gone, and after awhile a stillness settled down upon this company of Uncle Sam's servants and their followers. (In the Army Regulations, wives are not rated except as "camp followers.")

      But even this short respite from the glare of the sun was soon to end; for before the crack of dawn, or, as it seemed to us, shortly after midnight, came such a clatter with the fires and the high-pressure engine and the sparks, and what all they did in that wild and reckless land, that further rest was impossible, and we betook ourselves with our mattresses to the staterooms, for another attempt at sleep, which, however, meant only failure, as the sun rose incredibly early on that river, and we were glad to take a hasty sponge from a basin of rather thick looking river-water, and go again out on deck, where we could always get a cup of black coffee from the Chinaman.

      And thus began another day of intolerable glare and heat. Conversation lagged; no topic seemed to have any interest except the thermometer, which hung in the coolest place on the boat; and one day when Major Worth looked at it and pronounced it one hundred and twenty-two in the shade, a grim despair seized upon me, and I wondered how much more heat human beings could endure. There was nothing to relieve the monotony of the scenery. On each side of us, low river banks, and nothing between those and the horizon line. On our left was Lower [*] California, and on our right, Arizona. Both appeared to be deserts.

      * This term is here used (as we used it at Ehrenberg) to

       designate the low, flat lands west of the river, without any

       reference to Lower California proper—the long peninsula

       belonging to Mexico.

      As the river narrowed, however, the trip began to be enlivened by the constant danger of getting aground on the shifting sand-bars which are so numerous in this mighty river. Jack Mellon was then the most famous pilot on the Colorado, and he was very skilful in steering clear of the sand-bars, skimming over them, or working his boat off, when once fast upon them. The deck-hands, men of a mixed Indian and Mexican race, stood ready with long poles, in the bow, to jump overboard, when we struck a bar, and by dint of pushing, and reversing the engine, the boat would swing off.

      On approaching a shallow place, they would sound with their poles, and in a sing-song high-pitched tone drawl out the number of feet. Sometimes their sleepy drawling tones would suddenly cease, and crying loudly, "No alli agua!" they would swing themselves over the side of the boat into the river, and begin their strange and intricate manipulations with the poles. Then, again, they would carry the anchor away off and by means of great spars, and some method too complicated for me to describe, Captain Mellon would fairly lift the boat over the bar.

      But our progress was naturally much retarded, and sometimes we were aground an hour, sometimes a half day or more. Captain Mellon was always cheerful. River steamboating was his life, and sand-bars were his excitement. On one occasion, I said, "Oh! Captain, do you think we shall get off this bar to-day?" "Well, you can't tell," he said, with a twinkle in his eye; "one trip, I lay fifty-two days on a bar," and then, after a short pause, "but that don't happen very often; we sometimes lay a week, though; there is no telling; the bars change all the time."

      Sometimes the low trees and brushwood on the banks parted, and a young squaw would peer out at us. This was a little diversion, and picturesque besides. They wore very short skirts made of stripped bark, and as they held back the branches of the low willows, and looked at us with curiosity, they made pictures so pretty that I have never forgotten them. We had no kodaks then, but even if we had had them, they could not have reproduced the fine copper color of those bare shoulders and arms, the soft wood colors of the short bark skirts, the gleam of the sun upon their blue-black hair, and the turquoise color of the wide bead-bands which encircled their arms.

      One morning, as I was trying to finish out a nap in my stateroom, Jack came excitedly in and said: "Get up, Martha, we are coming to Ehrenberg!" Visions of castles on the Rhine, and stories of the middle ages floated through my mind, as I sprang up, in pleasurable anticipation of seeing an interesting and beautiful place. Alas! for my ignorance. I saw but a row of low thatched hovels, perched on the edge of the ragged looking river-bank; a road ran lengthwise along, and opposite the hovels I saw a store and some more mean-looking huts of adobe.

      "Oh! Jack!" I cried, "and is that Ehrenberg? Who on earth gave such a name to the wretched place?"

      "Oh, some old German prospector, I suppose; but never mind, the place is all right enough. Come! Hurry up! We are going to stop here and land freight. There is an officer stationed here. See those low white walls? That is where he lives. Captain Bernard of the Fifth Cavalry. It's quite a place; come out and see it."

      But I did not go ashore. Of all dreary, miserable-looking settlements that one could possibly imagine, that was the worst. An unfriendly, dirty, and Heaven-forsaken place, inhabited by a poor class of Mexicans and half-breeds. It was, however, an important shipping station for freight which was to be sent overland to the interior, and there was always one army officer stationed there.

      Captain Bernard came on board to see us. I did not ask him how he liked his station; it seemed to me too satirical; like asking the Prisoner of Chillon, for instance, how he liked his dungeon.

      I looked over towards those low white walls, which enclosed the Government corral and the habitation of this officer, and thanked my stars that no such dreadful detail had come to my husband. I did not dream that in less than a year this exceptionally hard fate was to be my own.

      We left Ehrenberg with no regrets, and pushed on up river.

      On the third of September the boilers "foamed" so that we had to tie up for nearly a day. This was caused by the water being so very muddy. The Rio Colorado deserves its name, СКАЧАТЬ