by Judy Alter
The buffalo wallow was another serious obstacle to riding, one that nearly threw me more than once. Ten to fifteen feet in circumference, these were great basins hollowed out by buffalo rolling in the mud. The sun-baked rim did not give under a horse's hooves, but woe to him who tried to leap into the depression and spring out again.
"Libbie, we're going on a hunt tomorrow," Autie announced one day. "You'll ride in an ambulance with Mrs. Miles and Rebecca."
"Fine," I said enthusiastically, though inwardly I wondered if it was safe. It had not been long since the killing of the Indian chiefs, and I feared hostiles at every corner, though I was not about to let Autie see me being anything less than game again so soon. My fear of the Indians had disgraced me enough. Besides, no women had been taken on hunts before, at least not that I knew of, and it was, I sensed, Autie's way of giving me a gift.
Still, when we were settled in the ambulance and I discovered a cavalry detachment waiting to escort us, I grew more nervous—why so much protection unless trouble was expected? And when Katherine Miles began to moan that she wished her husband would ride with her instead of ahorseback, my anxiety increased—what could be severe enough to make a cavalryman leave his horse for a wagon? I listened for, and heard, the small signs of change on a cavalry march—the sudden rattle of steel, short and low exclamations from the troopers, horses' ears jumping into erect alertness from a listless droop, the click of the hoof that evidenced a change of gait. Each small signal set me to scanning the horizon to find the cause, and each time I saw behind every tuft of grass, every sagebrush and clump of cactus, the hidden movements of a hostile Indian. Once, coming to a stream, I felt the whole train suddenly jerk to a halt. In alarm, I stuck my head out the side, only to have the company physician explain that a well-armed foe had stopped us.
"As soon as the essence-peddler sees fit to move on, we'll march," the doctor said laughingly, and the whole command waited on the pleasure of a skunk.
But then the cry was heard. "Buffalo!" My eyes saw only great black blotches against the faultless sky, for I had not then ever seen a buffalo, and I attributed to them the ferocity of the tiger, the strength of the lion. I had no idea how peaceful the big beasts were if left alone.
In a low voice Autie gave orders for the hunt, and instantly all the merry bantering of the horsemen stopped. They murmured, each soldier examining his girth, bit, bridle, stirrups, and firearms. Then, at a low signal, they all gave rein to their excited horses and dashed up from the little divide where they had hidden, leeward so that the quick nostrils of the buffalo picket might not sniff danger. Within minutes they were lost to our sight over a rise, and we had nothing for it but to wait patiently.
After a bit Tom came riding up to announce that Autie had wounded a buffalo and waited for us before he put in the death shot. I saw Catherine pale, and I felt a trifle weak myself, but on we went until we were confronted with a huge beast pawing the ground, his short tail waving defiance and rage, his bloodshot eyes glittering from beneath the thick mat of bushy hair on his forehead, his horns ripping up the sod. As the officers darted up to him, he plunged forward to gore their horses and, failing, dug his hoofs into the soil and tore up the earth, throwing the dust about him in his fury.
Autie gave the telling shot, and mercifully the big beast rolled over, shook his frame once, and struggled no more. We had left the ambulance to walk around him, using up adjectives at an alarming rate trying to describe our surprise at the size of the beast when suddenly Autie grabbed Katherine Miles—a general's wife! had he no better sense?—and placed her on the dead carcass. Though she screamed in terror, Autie handed her a knife and told her to cut a tuft from the head as a trophy. The poor woman's hands trembled so much that Tom had to cut it for her. Autie told her she was now the queen of the hunt, and she managed to thank him graciously, though it was plain she was miserably uncomfortable. Rebecca and I were each given a tuft, and we retired to the carriage rather than watch the cutting up of the animal. Our soldiers were unskilled at this butchery—not having the long practice of the Indians—and, as Autie told me later, they made a bloody job worse by their inexperience.
Later in the day, during an attack on a particularly ferocious bull, one of the riders went down. We watched from our safe distance with our hearts in our throats. None could identify the wounded man. Rebecca, who had captivated all the single men but had not given her heart to any one soldier, was in deep sympathy but curiously removed from the anxiety Katherine and I felt, each wondering for our husband's safety. At last the doctor rode toward us, saying that a certain sergeant had been thrown after his horse stepped in a prairie-dog hole. Though he lay motionless for an alarming time, he soon enough jumped up and declared himself "all right." It was suspected, however, that his arm was sprained. What was really needed, the doctor explained, was some whiskey to insure that the injured man did not faint.
Quietly Katherine Miles produced a small vial of whiskey and offered it to the doctor. We all hid smiles of amazement, for she was well-known as a vociferous teetotaler. "You never know," she explained haughtily, "when there might be an emergency."
"You don't mean Mrs. Miles," Autie exclaimed that night. "Old lady, you're wrong. She's never had a drop."
"No, Autie," I said, "she must carry it for emergencies."
"I wonder what she considers an emergency," he mused, and I threw a pillow at him for his suspicions.
* * *
"Old lady, we're going on our last buffalo hunt of the summer, and J. C. Evans is coming to join us," Autie announced triumphantly one day.
"The politician?" I asked with surprise.
"Yes. I've been after him ever so long, and he's finally found time to come. You will make him welcome, won't you?" He looked like a pleading young boy, asking me please to like his friends.
I wanted to remind him that I'd entertained almost 200 people since the summer began—friends of his, lady friends of mine, official army visitors, even two English dukes—and I suspected I could make one more guest welcome. But Mr. Evans was more important to Autie than most of our visitors—Autie still harbored political ambitions, though he never voiced them to me. Still, I knew that he sometimes wanted a way out of the army and saw politics as the answer.
"Yes, Autie," I sighed. "Eliza will cook buffalo steaks for him, and I shall ramble on at length about the glories of life on the prairie."
"Libbie, there's no need to be sarcastic!" he replied indignantly.
J. C. Evans, whom I'd never met, turned out to be an enormous man, surely almost 300 pounds and far too much for any of our horses. He rode in the ambulance with me, and I found him distasteful after we'd driven ten feet from camp.
"Well, well, so you're Libbie! Armstrong talks a great deal of you and how game you are."
I smiled but could think of no appropriate reply.
"How game are you, Mrs. Custer?"
Was it my imagination or was that question accompanied by a leer? "Not very," I replied. "I'm afraid many things on the prairie alarm me. Like vermin."
"Armstrong tells me you take everything in stride and are always ready for a little fun," he said, inching closer to me on the bench that ran the side of the ambulance. He was not an attractive man, his bulk coming not just from large stature but from an indulgence in food and drink. His face tended toward the florid, and his chin hung in folds from his face. As he spoke to me, sweat glistened on his forehead, in spite of a pleasant prairie breeze.
Autie came riding back just then. "Are you two getting along famously?" he asked in the too-hearty tone that he used when he was uncertain.
I smiled at him, my expression a frozen imitation of someone who is "getting along famously," but my adversary said, "Yes, yes, of course, Armstrong. You just go on and find those buffalo for us."
Autie shot me one curious look and then rode away. For the rest of the ride to the hunt, I dodged Mr. Evans's innuendos and denied his suggestions. If things really got sticky, I reasoned, I could
always call on the ambulance driver for help. It seemed to me we rode farther that day to find buffalo than we ever had before. Mr. Evans, when his attention could be diverted from me, was enthralled with the jackrabbits, the speed with which the staghounds chased them, the hawks that circled the prairie—in short, everything he saw.
We camped on the prairie that night without much privacy, so that I had little occasion to tell Autie of his friend's advances. Next morning the hunters were off at dawn—Mr.
Evans having been trusted to a sturdy horse—and I was mercifully left behind to follow more leisurely in the ambulance.
After a good run the hunters returned triumphant. Twenty-four buffalo had been shot, but the buffalo had extracted their toll. One of the party had been literally herded into the creek by an angry bull; one horse had been gored, and another had the hide scraped off the length of its side by a horn; a newcomer to buffalo hunting sported a hole in his sleeve, which revealed that the aim of his pistol had not been quite what he intended it to be; and still another complained that the palm of his hand, blackened by powder, smarted a great deal, though he could not explain where the ball went. But it was J. C. Evans who had suffered the worst.
Having spotted his buffalo, he'd taken off at a breakneck speed—a foolish thing for any novice in country dotted with prairie-dog holes, but doubly so for a man of his weight. Trying to circle his buffalo, Evans positioned his horse so that its flank was scraped by the enraged buffalo's horns. The horse in turn bolted, and though Evans—to hear Autie tell it—made a valiant effort to keep his seat, he lost his balance and went headlong to the ground, right in front of the furious buffalo bull.
Every soldier within sight rushed the bull, who fortunately decided it was more valiant to run than to fight and left the country before Evans regained consciousness. When Autie told me this, I had to restrain myself from saying, "My compliments to the buffalo." After a period of insensibility, Evans rebounded with a black eye and bruised cheek to show for his adventure—"no money could buy these souvenirs," he declared—and went on with the hunt. Grudgingly, I gave him credit for boldness in that, but his other boldness solicited only my disgust.
Autie was perfectly blind to the man's advances to me, but not Tom. "Libbie," he cried, riding alongside the ambulance that bore us back to camp, "wasn't Evans here a bully sport?"
I stared at him. A bully sport? Tom had never, ever used those words in his life! "Yes," I managed to agree, "bully."
Thereafter Tom rode alongside us, bragging all the while on Mr. Evans's sportsmanship, in spite of dark and threatening glances from the latter. And I had all I could do to keep from laughing aloud. In addition to humiliating Evans, Tom showed me that our friendship could continue.
Late that night, as we three sat under the fly of our tent, Tom said jokingly, "You know, Autie, I think Evans is sweet on Libbie."
"Of course he is," Autie agreed casually, "who wouldn't be?"
Tom's face clouded for just a minute, but when he answered, his tone was light again. "I'm serious. You'd better watch out for competition."
"My friends," Autie said calmly, "know better than to have designs on my wife. I'd kill the man who looked at her in the wrong way."
Or beat him senseless, I thought with a shudder, remembering James Coker.
The next day the hunters went out again, but Autie loosed his staghounds ahead of them. Contrary to their usual habit, the dogs became separated from Autie and followed others of the party. Several of the dogs were hounding a buffalo when some of the party thoughtlessly opened fire. Autie's favorite dog, Maida, the companion of all his marches the past winter, was killed instantly by a shot from Evans's rifle.
"Terribly sorry," he apologized, "but you know how it goes. Dog got in the way." Mr. Evans, not devoted to animals himself, could not fathom Autie's attachment to his animals, and his apology reflected his inability to understand.
* * *
One night as summer drew to a close I came upon Eliza sitting on a stump, staring off into the Kansas sunset. When I spoke to her—"Eliza, is something the matter?"—she looked at me with the most solemn face I've ever seen.
"Miss Libbie," she said, "I'm lonely out here."
"Lonely?" I laughed at first, not believing her. "Eliza, you have us, and we're family."
"No, you're not," she said deliberately. "You and the ginnel are good to me, but it's not the same. I'se alone. You's always got the ginnel, but I ain't got nobody, and there ain't no picnics, nor church sociables, nor buryings out here."
"But, Eliza," I said, absolutely dumbfounded as she brushed aside a tear, "you've always been so happy, so cheerful... and you've always had more men around you than any other woman I know." It was true—she'd fed them all from the bounty of our table, increasing our food bills by no small amount.
"That don't matter, Miss Libbie," she said. "What good's men if'n they's just after a good time? It's not like you and the ginnel."
Little you understand about that, I thought. "What can I do to help?"
"Nothin'. I'se gonna leave, go to Leavenworth. I know a few other cooks there...." She looked half-afraid that I would forbid her to go.
"The general won't eat without you here," I said.
"Yes, ma'am, he will. There's cooks in Hays City waiting for work. He'll be just fine. And Miss Libbie, I got to go."
When I reported all this to Autie, he stormed and ranted and took off for Eliza's tent in the dark of the night. I heard loud voices raised—both Autie's deep voice and Eliza's lighter one—but I could not make out the words.
"She's going," he said when he came back, in a tone that clearly indicated that he couldn't believe any of his inner circle, even his cook, would leave him. "She's been with me since the war, and she's leaving. What will I do?"
"Look at it from her point of view, Autie. She's not getting any younger... and she probably wants a home and family."
"Insolent, that's what she was," he said, ignoring the fact that I'd spoken. "Just plain insolent. Told me I'd have to make do without her."
I hardly saw that as insolent, but I didn't think this was the time to tell Autie that.
Autie ranted and raved, working himself into such a fit that by the time Eliza left, two days later, he barely nodded at her, and I could see that her heart was broken. I followed her to the ambulance that was to take her to Hays City and said, "Remember not to look right or left," a joking reference to the scare that had been put into all of us about the evils of Hays City.
"No, ma'am," she said dully. "The ginnel? He ain't forgiven me?"
"He'll get over it, Eliza," I said. "You must do what you feel you have to. Here." And I handed her $30, the most I could spare from my meager housekeeping fund.
"Miss Libbie, I think these last years I done worked for you and not him, and I'll never forget you."
We hugged, and I watched her ride off. She never looked back, and I could tell from her rigid back that she was having a hard time controlling her emotions.
"The disloyal wretch gone?" Autie asked when I returned.
"Yes, Autie, she's gone... with no 'God's blessing' from you." He ignored me, and I went boldly on. "You know, Autie, for years the rumor has been that she was your mistress as well as your cook. Whether or not that was true, you could at least have bid her farewell."
He looked astounded. "You've heard those rumors?"
"Of course. Haven't you?"
"Well... yes, but I... I always thought you were protected from them."
"Were they true, Autie?" I asked my question directly, looking straight at him.
"Of course not," he said with predictable indignation. "Libbie, how could you even think that, you who are the one love of my life?"
Ah, Autie, sometimes you protested too much. But I guess we'll never know about Eliza.
* * *
The summer ended with a blow that once again destroyed my confidence in Autie—and threatened my love for him. Rebecca and I had walked out one evening t
o the edge of the camp to catch the breeze. It had been one of those stifling days on the prairie when nothing moves, not one blade of grass, and the air hangs heavy, as though in anticipation of a storm. Toward evening great dark clouds began to pile up to the west, and we thought to catch the breeze and watch the storm approach.
When the lightning looked to be moving closer, we reluctantly returned to camp, Rebecca to her small tent and I to our larger quarters. But as I approached, loud voices stopped me.
"I know Monahsetah had another baby," Autie was saying. "What has that to do with me?"
"Everything," Tom replied. "The baby has blue eyes and red in its hair."
"There's no proof," Autie retorted too quickly.
"Monahsetah is all the proof that's needed, Autie. For God's sake..."
"Libbie will never see that baby," Autie said fiercely, "and if she does, well attribute the red hair and blue eyes to you."
"No, brother, we won't," Tom said in tones of steel that I'd never heard from him before. "I have lied to Libbie for the last time."
"You won't tell her...." Was there just a hint of begging in Autie's voice?
"No, I won't tell her, unless you force me to. But, Autie, be warned... you best treat Libbie with all the kindness she deserves, or I'll do worse than tell her about Monahsetah."
Tom left our tent so abruptly that I barely had time to round one corner and get out of his sight. He marched away, his back straight and stiff. Hidden by the side of the tent, I stood motionless as a wave of nausea swept over me. Then I fled to the river and was sick.
"Libbie!" Autie said when I returned, having dabbed river water on my face in an effort to hide swollen eyes. "Where have you been? Even with the sentries, you know better than to be out at night. I was scared half out of my mind." His arms reached to enfold me.