have been obliged to break his rest to go on picket duty at intervals all night. There was great strife to get this position, and it was difficult for the adjutant to make the selection. He sometimes carried his examination so far as to try and find dust on the carbines with his cambric handkerchief.
Guard mount in pleasant weather, with the adjutant and officer of the day in full uniform, each soldier perfect in dress, with the band playing, was a very interesting ceremony. In Dakota’s severe cold it looked like a parade of animals at the Zoo! All were compelled to wear buffalo overcoats and shoes, fur caps and gloves. When the orderly removed these heavy outside wraps, however, he stood out as fine a specimen of manhood as one ever sees. His place in our hall was near the stove, and on the table by his side were papers and magazines, many of which were sent by the Young Men’s Christian Association of New York. The general had once met the secretary of the society, and in response to his inquiry about reading-matter, he impressed him by a strong statement of what a treasure anything of the kind was at an isolated post.
There was usually a variety of reading-matter, but one day the orderly stole out to the cook with a complaint. He asked for the general’s Turf, Field, and Farm, or Wilkes’s Spirit of the Times, which he was accustomed to find awaiting him, and confessed that “those pious papers were too bagoted” for him! He usually sat still all day, only taking an occasional message for the general, or responding to a beckoning invitation from Mary’s brown finger at the kitchen-door. There he found a little offering from her of home things to eat. Occasionally, in the evening, the general forgot to dismiss him at taps. After that a warning cough issued from the hall. When this had been repeated several times, my husband used to look up so merrily and say to me it was remarkable how temporary consumption increased after the hour of bedtime had come. When the general had a message to send, he opened his door and rattled off his order so fast that it was almost impossible for one unacquainted with his voice to understand. If I saw the dazed eyes of a new soldier, I divined that probably he did not catch a word. Without the general’s noticing it, I slipped through our room into the hall and translated the message to him.
When I returned, and gave my husband the best imitation I could of the manner in which he spoke when hurried, and described the orderly, standing, rubbing his perplexed head over the unintelligible gibberish, he threw himself on the lounge in peals of laughter. While we were in the States, sometimes he was invited to address audiences, but being unaccustomed to public speaking, and easily embarrassed, he made very droll attempts. He realized that he had not the gift of oratory, and I used to wish that he would practise the art. I insisted, that if he continued to speak so fast in public, I would be obliged to stand beside him on the platform as interpreter for his hearers, or else take my position in the audience and send him a sign of warning from there. I proposed to do something so startling that he could not help checking his mad speed. He was so earnest about everything he did, I assured him no ordinary signal would answer, and we finished the laughing discussion by my volunteering to rise in the audience the next time he spoke, and raise an umbrella as a warning to slacken up!
CHAPTER XV.
GENERAL CUSTER’S LITERARY WORK.
When my husband began to write for publication, it opened to him a world of interest, and afterwards proved an unfailing source of occupation in the long Dakota winters. I think he had no idea, when it was first suggested to him, that he could write. When we were in New York, several years before, he told me how perfectly surprised he was to have one of the magazine editors seek him out and ask him to contribute articles every month. And a few days after he said, “I begin to think the editor does not imagine that I am hesitating about accepting his offer because I doubt my ability as a writer, but because he said nothing about payment at first; for to-day,” he added, not yet over his surprise at what seemed to him a large sum, “he came again and offered me a hundred dollars for each contribution.” We at once seemed to ourselves bonanzas. Many times afterwards we enjoyed intensely the little pleasures and luxuries given us by what his pen added to the family exchequer.
On the frontier, where the commanding officer keeps open house, he has little opportunity to have more than a passing glimpse of his pay accounts, so quickly do they go to settle table expenses. It made very little difference to us, though; our tastes became more simple each year that we lived so much out-of-doors. There was little dress competition in garrison, and in no way could we enjoy the general’s salary more than in entertaining.
At our first post after the war, the idle tediousness of the life was in such contrast to the whirl and dash of the years just passed that the days seemed insupportable to my husband. While there we entertained a charming officer of the old school. His experience and age made me venture to speak to him confidentially of the sympathy I felt for the aimlessness of my husband’s life. I was in despair trying to think of some way in which to vary the monotony; for though he said little, I could see how he fretted and chafed under such an existence. The old officer appreciated what I told him, and after thinking seriously for a time, urged me to try and induce him to explore new territory and write descriptive articles for publication. When the actual offer came afterwards, it seemed to me heaven-sent. I used every persuasive argument in my power to induce him to accept. I thought only of its filling up the idle hours. I believed that he had the gift of a ready writer, for though naturally reticent, he could talk remarkably well when started. I had learned to practise a little stratagem in order to draw him out. I used to begin a story and purposely bungle, so that, in despair, he would take it up, and in rapid graphic sentences place the whole scene before us. Afterwards he was commended for writing as he talked, and making his descriptions of plains life “pen pictures.”
The general said to me that it was with difficulty he suppressed a smile when his publisher remarked to him that his writing showed the result of great care and painstaking. The truth was, he dashed off page after page without copying or correcting. He had no dates or journal to aid him, but trusted to his memory to take him back over a period of sixteen years. I sat beside him while he wrote, and sometimes thought him too intent on his work to notice my going away. He would follow shortly, and declare that he would not write another line unless I returned. This was an effectual threat, for he was constantly behind, and even out there heard the cry for “copy” which the printer’s devil is always represented as making. I never had anything to do with his writing, except to be the prod which drove him to begin. He used to tell me that on some near date he had promised an article, and would ask me solemnly to declare to him that I would give him no peace until he had prepared the material. In vain I replied that to accept the position of “nag” and “torment” was far from desirable. He exacted the promise.
When he was in the mood for writing, we used laughingly to refer to it to each other as “genius burning.” At such times we printed on a card, “this is my busy day,” and hung it on the door. It was my part to go out and propitiate those who objected to the general shutting himself up to work.
While my father lived, he used to ask me if I realized what an eventful life I was leading, and never ceased to inquire in his letters if I was keeping a journal. When the most interesting portions of our life were passing, each day represented such a struggle on my part to endure the fatigues and hardships that I had no energy left to write a line when the evening came. My husband tried for years to incite me to write, and besought me to make an attempt as I sat by him while he worked. I greatly regret that I did not, for if I had I would not now be entirely without notes or dates, and obliged to trust wholly to memory for events of our life eleven years ago.
When my husband returned from the East in the spring of 1876 he had hardly finished his greeting before he said, “Let me get a book that I have been reading, and which I have marked for you.” While he sought it in his travelling-bag I brought one to him, telling him that I had underlined much of it for him, and though it was a novel, and he rarely read novels, he must make this book an exception. What was our surprise to find that we had selected the same story, and marked many of the same passages! One sentiment which the general had enclosed with double brackets in pencil, was a line spoken by the hero, who is an author. He begs the heroine