by Judy Alter
The house burned very quickly. Fortunately, it was a still night, with no wind to carry the flames. Otherwise the whole garrison might have burned. It seemed that the chimney had been defective all along, and that gas from the petroleum paper, inserted between the plastering and the outer walls to keep out the cold, had exploded, creating the noise that I thought killed Autie.
Next morning I stared at a sorry collection of torn, broken, and scorched effects. Most of my clothes were gone, and I lost silver and linen, along with what laces and finery I had. But what troubled me most was the loss of my collection of clippings about Autie... and of the wig I'd had made from his curls when he cut them after the war.
Rebecca fared even more poorly, for every stitch of her clothing was gone, along with her purse, which carried the goods to replace the lost clothing. Next day she sat before us in borrowed clothes at least three times too large, when a clothes basket was delivered to the door with a note begging her to consider herself "the daughter of the regiment." The basket contained much of what she needed immediately, and later the wives of the Seventh came with needles and thimbles, and the scissors flew as they outfitted us both.
We had lived in our new house just under a month when it burned. We managed to find squatters' quarters on the post, while our house was being rebuilt.
The new house stood on the same spot as the old, in the midst of the seven frame houses of Officers' Row, which edged the parade ground on the west. Facing the line from the east were the barracks for enlisted men, with attached kitchens and mess halls. On the north and south of the rectangle that made up the fort were the commissary and quartermaster storehouses, adjutant's office, guardhouse, and hospital. The entire fort sat in a broad, level plain between the river and the slopes and rose to the tableland on the west; on the brow of the hills to the north were the buildings of the infantrymen.
There were about forty of us—officers and their wives—at Lincoln that winter, and we stuck to each other like glue. It was another winter of hunting and dancing, though Autie and I had fewer personal demons to keep at bay. And though he was always ready for a hunt, Autie danced less.
"My writing, Libbie," he would explain, closeting himself in his study, a room in which he delighted. Having at last a study all his own, he had decorated it with furniture pillaged from other rooms in the house and with an array of stuffed trophies—a buffalo he'd shot in Dakota, meek jack rabbits on the mantel, a black-tailed deer, and several antelope. Next to these trophies were photographs of the men Autie admired—General McClellan, Little Phil Sheridan, and the actor Lawrence Barrett, who had become his great, good friend. My picture, in my bridal dress, hung over the desk.
Galaxy Magazine was collecting his articles, intending to publish them in a volume entitled My Life on the Plains, and Autie rewrote—polishing, he called it—and rewrote until I was sure his hand would be numb. During the day I was to be at his side constantly; sometimes he wrote, other times he read to me from biographies of Napoleon, who fascinated him, or a life of Daniel Webster that he particularly liked.
Autie could not endure for me to be gone during the day, and I remember once when I went to visit with some of the wives, gathered over a quilt. An orderly soon appeared.
"The general," he said with a glint in his eyes, "sends his compliments and wants to know when he shall send the trunks."
The women all thought it terribly amusing, and I pretended to join the hilarity as I excused myself to return to my master. But I was seething, the kind of anger that rises up and then dissipates almost as quickly. I held on to it until I confronted Autie.
"That was rude," I said staunchly.
"But honest," he answered, completely unrepentant. "I do not like to have you gone."
I could have argued with him, protested my right to a visit with the ladies, but it would only have put a barrier, however small, between us, and I was driven these days by a need to be in harmony with Autie.
"You're hopeless," I said, going to him with open arms.
"I would stop writing if you'd accompany me to the bedroom," he murmured.
"Autie, not in the middle of the day, with the orderly right outside the door! Go back to your writing."
There were some among the group to whom I did not take easily. Two or three officers resented Autie because he was younger than they and had jumped over them in rank; others had been reprimanded by him and clung to their resentment.
"I shall not welcome Colonel Benteen into my house," I said defiantly. "He has been too critical of you."
"If you wish to please me?" he asked.
"Oh, all right, Autie, but I shan't be cordial."
And then, late at night, Autie would do his imitation of my greeting to Benteen or another dishonored guest—a coldly formal shake of the hand, a distant greeting, a demeanor so uppity that his act collapsed me into giggles and made me promise to do better.
In the evenings Autie excused me to be hostess. He believed that as post commander he should keep his house open to the garrison at all times—but he also believed that I should entertain while he hid in his study. I would slip away as I could for a little visit with him, perhaps even a waltz to the strains that floated from a nearby room where others danced. But he made only rare and brief appearances in the parlor. The fact that he was being rude never occurred to Autie, and I lacked the nerve to tell him. Instead, I made bright little jokes to our company about his isolation and even, once, laughed about being married to a monk.
"Tom tells me you compared me to a monk," he said icily when we retired that night. "I should think you know better than that." His lovemaking was rough and demanding that night, as though he were both punishing me and proving that he was far from any monastery.
* * *
Spring is tardy in the North. Flowers bloom in Michigan long before they appear in the Dakotas, and I used to watch for the first blade of grass, the first bunch of flowers—a kind of blue anemone. But that spring of 1874 I had to wait for soldiers to bring me flowers.
"You must not go beyond the garrison limits," Autie said sternly. "I've posted station pickets on the high ground at the rear of the post. There are Indians all around."
"Oh, but Autie, to be confined... I want to ride to see the prairie turn green."
"You shall ride with me," he said, "on the other side of the river."
The east bank was considered the safe shore, and the first mild day Autie proved good to his word and took me riding there. Making our way through the underbrush, we startled a magnificent black-tailed deer, which leapt straight into the air, his superb head turned searchingly toward us, and then bounded away, hardly seeming to touch the earth. Unable to resist the temptation, we followed, although we were without either dogs or guns.
"Libbie, stop!" Autie commanded after we'd gone but a little distance. "We cannot go farther."
"Autie," I protested, "this is the safe side of the river." I, who was afraid of everything, saw no reason for fear.
"It's not been four days since a patrol found the body of a white man staked out on the ground... tortured," he said grimly. "Right along here."
"Autie!" I held my ears, as though afraid Autie would reveal the details of the poor man's death, details I never, ever wanted to hear. "Take me home," I said quickly.
After that I never asked to walk beyond the pickets. We took our air by dawdling on the veranda, where we had a fine view of the valley and the mules, who nibbled at its sprouting grass.
"Indians! Help! Indians!" The shouts came to us distantly one early morning. Soon a guard, who'd been working prisoners just outside the post, came riding on the double, perilously seated on an unsaddled mule. With blanched face and protruding eyeballs, he called out that the Indians were running off the herd.
"Sound 'Boots and Saddles,' " Autie said to his orderly, "and keep it up until I tell you to stop." By then a cloud of dust could be seen rising through a gap in the bluffs.
With the sound of the first notes, the
porches of the company quarters and the parade ground were alive with men. Without asking a question, they rushed to the stables, threw saddles on their horses, and rode to the parade grounds. Some were in jackets, others in flannel shirtsleeves, many hatless—they were a motley-looking crowd. But once they learned the cause of the alarm, they demanded immediate action.
Autie detailed one officer to stay with the garrison, kissed me quickly and cautioned me not to leave the post, and flung himself into the saddle, leading the command toward that cloud of dust. In twenty minutes from the first alarm, the garrison was emptied.
"Libbie," Rebecca said tentatively, "they've all gone. We're... we're alone."
"Of course not, dear," I said complacently. "The soldiers on garrison duty are here."
"Libbie, look about you." Her eyes were wide with fright, and she was paler than usual.
I had been so busy watching the exodus that I'd not paid attention to anything else. Now as I turned my head from side to side, surveying the post from one end to the other, I saw nary a soldier. "They've gone," I repeated wonderingly. Then, seeing Rebecca about to faint, I added, "It's perfectly all right, dear. They won't go more than a mile or so after those mules."
I would never have told that child what I knew about Indians—that they rarely attacked a post, but an unprotected post would be more temptation than they could resist, that they may even have driven the mules off as a trick to empty the garrison of its men and officers, that they could attack, burn the buildings, capture the women, that... my mind reeled with the possibilities, all of them dire. At least this time there was no James Coker nor Tom Custer charged with putting a bullet in my brain. It was cold comfort.
"Come, ladies," I said, mustering all my brave and cheerful tones, "we'll wait at our house for their return. They'll be along directly."
A group of nervous women followed me, though not one gave voice to the fear that lurked in all of us. We sat on the veranda, making idiotic small talk, our eyes glued to the bluffs.
"What did you say?"... "I'm sorry, I missed that...." The conversation was fragmented, disjointed by our lack of attention.
Rebecca grabbed my hand so hard, I feared for a moment that she had broken it. "Autie's guns," she said. "Shouldn't you get them?"
In spite of my terror, I nearly laughed aloud. "What for?" I asked. "I know nothing about them."
Annie Yates, wife of Captain George Yates, surprised us all by producing a tiny Remington pistol. "I'll teach you to load it," she offered, holding the pistol nervously away from her.
I hardly thought one tiny handgun would do any good, but I praised Annie for her thoughtfulness.
The one officer who was left visited the pickets, making sure of their arms, and then came to reassure us. It was an impossible task, and I know he longed to give it up. We asked twenty times when the command would return—how could he know?—and how far they'd gone, and what Indians had attacked, and on and on with such aimless questions as only terrified women can devise.
Late in the afternoon a cloud of dust appeared over the bluffs, and we longed to run to the crest to see what was coming. "We must not," I said firmly, holding Maggie Calhoun by the arm, for I feared she would run off, her promise to stay within the garrison totally forgotten.
At length the mule herd returned, driven by a few soldiers. Our disappointment was obvious. The rest of the command, we were told, was pursuing the Indians. Dinner was a disaster—no one could eat, though Mary coaxed us with her best efforts—and the evening promised to set in long and anxious.
Suddenly the notes of "Garryowen" broke the evening silence, and as we rushed outside, we saw the men returning from an entirely different direction than that which had taken them away in the morning. It was a joyous reunion. Though the separation had not been long, it was intense.
They had captured no Indians, for the quarry had dismounted and hidden in the underbrush. Suffering from lack of food and water, with fagged horses, the command returned home rather than continue the chase. Next day men limped about the post, and when they sat, it was with the groans of old men, for they had not ridden during the winter, and a sudden ride of so many miles had bruised their bones... and their pride.
* * *
Spring may have finally brought the green shoots of new grass, but just as surely it brought the summer campaign. I remember once seeing a new, tender, green blade and crushing it under my heel, because it was a harbinger of a long and lonely summer for me. Autie never talked of official policy to me, so what I knew about forthcoming expeditions—and the policy behind them—came from post rumor, which was never lacking.
Sheridan was convinced that the army needed a post in the Black Hills, land that had been granted to the Sioux as part of their reservation in the treaty of 1868. Sheridan meant this post to discourage the Sioux from raiding to the east and south. What Autie didn't tell me—and I learned by rumor—was that the expedition was also to search for gold. For years gossip had placed large gold deposits in the Black Hills, and now the American imagination saw that sacred Sioux territory as the last great mining frontier of the West. I saw it as an abyss that could swallow Autie.
"I hear you've ordered an ambulance outfitted," I said one day as I sat by his side in his study.
"Oh, Libbie," he said quickly, "don't misunderstand. It's not for you and Mary. Why, you two couldn't get along in such cramped quarters.... I'd have to separate the two of you three times a day." But he was grinning as he said it, and I knew the ambulance was for me.
"The ginnel knows me and Miss Libbie could keep house in a flour barrel," Mary said, when I told her of his ploy.
I was relieved, for somehow I felt that as long as I went with Autie, he would be safe. It was an old, familiar feeling now, that need to be close enough to Autie to extend my protection over him. Sometimes I thought it pretentious of me... but not enough that I could banish the conviction.
"Libbie," he said, approaching me very solemnly one day at dinner, "the scouts have decreed that it will be a much more dangerous summer than we anticipated. You will remain behind."
"And Mary?" I asked, catching my breath with disappointment and hoping the tremor in my voice didn't show.
"Mary will go. I need a cook."
"That's not fair!" I flared.
"I am neither married to Mary nor in love with her," he said firmly, closing the subject.
Autie never realized that no terror on the march could equal, for me, the terror of being left behind with my imagination.
The Black Hills expedition marched out of Fort Lincoln on July 2, 1874. Autie had the band play "The Girl I Left Behind Me," and the women left behind watched as the Seventh left for the summer. Then we settled down to waiting.
It was a long summer, and the most remarkable thing about it was the mosquitoes. The short northern summer can boast hideously hot days, and we would walk out in the evening, seeking a cool breeze, only to be attacked by mosquitoes far worse than any I'd known in the South. We wore scarves over our heads, whisked handkerchiefs before our faces, and beat the air with fans. Yet if we were still for a moment, swarms of the wretched insects attacked instantly, so that constant motion was required. Still we longed to sit on the veranda, and someone discovered that wrapping one's ankles in newspapers and drawing the stockings over was effective protection; then we tucked our skirts closely around us and fixed ourselves in chairs from which we dared not move. We were a sight, though fortunately there were none of our men there to laugh at us.
I measured the summer by trips to Bismarck, which necessitated crossing the Missouri. With Autie by my side, I'd crossed reluctantly, but alone, or in the company of women and orderlies, I found the river increasingly terrifying. The current was so swift and the water so muddy that even the strongest swimmer could hardly save himself if he fell in. Several soldiers had drowned, trying to cross in frail skiffs to the drinking houses on the safe side. Every time I crossed, I imagined I saw the upturned faces of those men in the wate
r, though I wouldn't in truth have known any of them. My fear was, I suspect, a reflection of my terror for Autie, but it was nonetheless real to me, and I hated those trips. I would rather have run out of staples and sewing supplies. And yet I found it impossible to remain behind when the others went shopping for diversion.
Autie wrote only four times during the whole long summer, letters full of the charm of the country that had never before, he told me, been seen by white men. It was a summertime frolic for Autie—except for the killing of his first grizzly, it was unremarkable. They encountered no Indians... and they found little gold. On August 30 they marched back into Fort Lincoln.
"Libbie, aren't you coming to watch them march in?" Rebecca, dressed in a fine new sprigged muslin, stared at me, aghast.
"I can't," I said, tears streaming down my face, even while I laughed with excitement. "I can't... let Autie see me crying." I was so overjoyed at his return that no power on earth could have dammed the tears that flowed down my cheeks. And if I went out now, all the world would see my swollen eyes.
But then Autie rode by our house, and I was out the door and down the steps before I even realized it. I only came to my senses when I heard a great cheer from the men, and I realized that they were cheering because I was in Autie's arms, pulled up onto his horse and locked in his powerful, welcoming embrace. Such displays are not common in the cavalry.
When I gained control, I looked at the men. They were sunburned, their hair faded, their clothes so patched that the original blue was scarcely visible. Their boots were out at the toes, and their clothing beyond repair. The instruments of the band were tarnished and jammed, but they could still play "Garryowen," the tune to which the regiment always returned. The Seventh was home... and from the clouds and gloom of the summer days, I walked again into the broad sunshine that my husband's blithe spirit made.
In September we left for Monroe, but we were back by late November. And Autie's spirits were raised to new heights by the news that his book, My Life on the Plains, drawn from the Galaxy articles, was now available in one volume of 256 pages.
