by Tatjana Soli
After Kansas they had been in Kentucky two years, Autie doing policing duties of breaking up the Klan and shutting down illegal distilleries. It was dull and grinding work, not what he had been trained for. The only salvation that they both indulged in was a love of horseracing; for a while they even considered becoming breeders.
Autie was elated to be returning to the wide-open spaces of the frontier as commander of the reconstituted 7th Cavalry, which had been spread across the South. They would guard the engineers of the Northern Pacific Railway as it surveyed routes to the Yellowstone. What might have made another man tremble—the fearsomeness of the warring Sioux—made him giddy.
It was Libbie’s observation that great military leaders, from Napoleon down to Sheridan, excelled in winning wars but were seldom interested in the monotony of keeping the ensuing peace. So it was with Autie. When the new orders came he ran crashing through the house, threw a chair, and broke it in his elation. He picked her up off her feet and swung her around to a lazy waltz rhythm of his own making. They played that day like children, giggling at meals, making faces at each other until finally Eliza complained.
“I’ve had enough of you two acting undignified.”
Dakota Territory was home to the most rebellious of the remaining tribes, the Lakota Sioux. Subduing them would elevate Autie’s status as nothing else had been capable of doing those last years since the Washita battle.
They would go off and leave the unsavory, less happy parts of their lives behind. If she had learned anything from Autie it was the possibility of constant reinvention. When Tom came to celebrate the news, she perched on the dining room table where Autie had lifted her to be out of harm’s way while they played at “romps.” The dogs joined in, yipping and running in wild circles from parlor to dining room to kitchen.
* * *
ON THE TRAIN TRIP to Dakota, the whole regiment of nine hundred men, and as many accompanying horses, with matching provisions and luggage, weighed the train down so that they crawled slowly, heavily through the land. The leisurely pace was further compounded by long stops during which the horses were disembarked, watered, and exercised. Soldiers took advantage of the stops to walk and stretch, or if near a town, to forage for food.
At one such stop, they commandeered a diner, all at once filling the long communal tables and overwhelming the tiny kitchen. There was only a short time to eat and make it back to the train again. There being no separate table for servants, Autie, Eliza, and Libbie sat together, the seating arrangement more of happenstance than principle, and waited for their supper of chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes.
When the owner of the establishment, a stout man in his middle years wearing greasy coveralls, came out, they paid little attention. The man portentously walked up to Eliza and told her to leave. The room quieted. Although the War had been won years ago, people’s attitudes, especially in the more provincial parts, had not.
Autie looked down hard at the table as if he were studying the wood grain.
“We are hungry and short of time. Be a gentleman and move off.”
“I will not have colored eat at my tables. It’s the law here.”
“My observation is that you provide no table for servants. The girl has to eat.”
“Not my problem.”
“She is traveling with the military. She is my charge. She will dine with us, and only then will we leave.”
Eliza had stopped breathing and looked ready to pass out. She began to rise.
“It’s okay, General…” she whispered.
“Sit down!”
Autie grabbed her arm without gentleness and pulled her back down.
“You can all leave, far as I’m concerned. Suit yourself. Take the nigger with you,” the owner said.
Eliza was up, ready to run from the establishment. Autie grabbed her and forced her back down in her seat. His face had gone dark red.
“You are talking to the brigadier general of the Seventh Cavalry, sir.”
The owner grew rigid as a board.
“Get her up, or I will do it for you.”
Libbie melted, petrified in her seat. She put her hand over Eliza’s and felt both of their tremblings.
The owner made a move toward Eliza, and Autie leaped to his feet as if on a spring. His face was frozen in the most fearsome expression she had ever seen on him. Was this the side of Autie hidden from her, the part that existed in battle? The entire restaurant of soldiers sprang up with him, leaving only the two women seated. The owner stopped. Looking around, he made a quick calculation and without a word walked back to the kitchen. It was a miracle the man lived and his establishment wasn’t razed.
“Good,” Autie said, rubbing his hands together. “Now that bit of unpleasantness is behind us, let’s eat.”
After the food arrived, the incident entirely forgotten, Autie ate with relish, joking with the men while Eliza and Libbie sat stunned, not touching their food.
“Eat up, girls. It’s a long afternoon ahead,” he said.
The meat tasted like cardboard in Libbie’s mouth, the potatoes like paste.
As they left the establishment, Autie shouted to the kitchen, where the owner had sequestered himself.
“Two meals were unsatisfactory!” He grabbed a full cherry pie off the counter. “We are taking this in lieu.”
After that day, Eliza would never allow a word to be spoken against Autie.
* * *
ON THE MANY train stops they used the opportunity to also take the dogs out to stretch their legs. Horses, dogs, men—the scene resembled nothing so much as a carnival in flight. People in the surrounding areas stopped and gawked at them, the passing of a train still novel, or came to find out their destination. The travelers represented the larger world to these people and stood for the benevolence of the faraway government in Washington, which had promised to make the land safe.
More often than not, they brought gifts of food, grateful for the army’s protection and cognizant of the hardship of such a posting. When they realized Autie was on board, it became cause for outright celebration, as he was considered a hero for his actions on the plains. Sometimes as the train passed small towns, guns would be fired in the air, and crowds would cheer them on.
* * *
MANY WOMEN SET their hearts on an extravagant gift for their birthday, but Libbie was never such a one. That particular year the day fell during their train trip so there was even less possible in the name of preparation. What did happen was that Eliza managed to use the engine’s bed of coals to produce a dinner of steaks and potatoes out of thin air.
There she came, beaming at her cunning, carrying a board and tea towels. She ordered Autie and Libbie to sit on opposite benches facing each other, their knees forming the “legs” of the table. The rolling of the train, the pressure from cutting the meat, everything threatened to tip the table one way or another. When Autie reached for the breadbasket, the whole thing almost flipped over, water glasses sloshing big drops on the pats of butter, and then their laughter made it worse.
For dessert Eliza presented a large plate of macaroons, Libbie’s favorite, and peppermint iceberg puffs, favored by Autie. She stood proudly while they ate them, describing how at a stop that morning Autie had hurried off the train and into the village investigating bakeries, sampling at each place until he found the very best ones.
By the time Eliza met him with her bag of groceries there was a long line of boys who had heard the famous Boy General was in town and followed him, a little disappointed that he was simply a man in search of macaroons to please his wife, not the fierce Indian fighter of the newspapers, always mounted on a rearing stallion and flashing his saber.
LIBBIE
When the train finally stopped after days of traveling, they felt such relief. On an open plain outside Yankton, Dakota Territory, the train disgorged itself of its contents and went back the way it had come. They were at the end of the world. Yet ahead of them lay a five-hundred-mile tre
k to their destination of Fort Rice, which was as removed from the larger world as it was possible to be and still be of it.
Men, horses, crates, dogs, birds, sacks of food, barrels, personal furniture—a whole town deconstructed and in motion. The soldiers were to set up temporary camp out in the open, it being April, even though spring in such a northern clime was very different from the heat of Kentucky, where they had come from. The wives of the regiment went into town to be lodged in comfort at the sole hotel. In her vanity, Libbie, a stolid veteran of summer camp and its discomforts, preferred to stay in camp because there she would avoid the biggest hardship—being separated from her Autie.
While waiting for the tents to be set up, she sat in an enclosure formed by their trunks and looked after the menagerie they had hauled with them—a litter of pups, full-grown dogs, a mockingbird, and a profusion of canaries in their cages. The animals felt as great a relief as she to be off the train and on firm earth again. The stillness and quiet were a great luxury.
She basked in the weak April sunshine, yet even as she sat there, eyes closed, her face tracking the light like a sunflower, she felt a puff of cold air so that she crossed her arms over her chest to ward off the temporary chill. To her astonishment clouds had appeared from nowhere. It felt like an unnatural enchantment. Little did she know it was only the beginning.
As the morning progressed the wind blew, first lightly, then with increasing force. Temperatures dropped so quickly, she hurriedly dug out her winter coat from a chest as goose flesh rose on her arms. Lucky that she did, because even as she buttoned it the winds assumed gale strength.
Libbie sat huddled in a blanket, using a chest as windbreak, jealously spying a ramshackle wooden hut that looked as if it was uninhabited. She decided to make an effort to rent it while Autie was busy setting up the individual companies in their camps. She found the farmer who owned it, and he agreed to barter its use in return for supplies as raindrops began to spit down from the sky. While soldiers brought in her belongings, along with water and firewood, Eliza went to town to procure a stove, holding an old piece of canvas over her head for protection. Libbie congratulated herself on setting up a temporary little home. By afternoon Eliza had returned with food but no stove just as the first snowflakes fell. It was not just a flurry but an outright storm.
Autie returned exhausted, his hands and feet frozen. The change in climate in a few short days from the sweltering April heat of Memphis, where they had bivouacked while gathering men and supplies for the expedition, to the far-north freeze affected many of the men with illness. After tucking Autie under buffalo robes, Libbie sent for the doctor, who came and prescribed medicine that she was to give him every hour through the night.
Luckily the raging of the now blizzard precluded all thoughts of sleep. The cabin gave the lie to the label shelter, the only thing worse being directly outside. Huge gaps between the logs had yet to be caulked and allowed the wind to blow in freely. Eliza went from gap to gap, plugging the most distressing of them with packed snow from the piles that had formed inside. They huddled at each side of Autie’s bed while he plunged into a fevered delirium.
For the umpteenth time Libbie realized how even in their personal life his optimism kept her hopeful and of good cheer. The ability to make people feel safe and capable of the difficulties that arose was as rare as hen’s teeth. In that hour, though, Libbie had no choice but to be in charge. She couldn’t afford the panic and tears that threatened. It would not suffice to hide in the closet or under the bed from the world’s dangers.
The thought that there was no closet or bed even if she wanted them made her smile, and the idea that she could find humor in these dire circumstances gave her courage. How disappointed Autie would be on his recovery to learn of her poor example, and so she set about playing the leader to their small group.
The first order of business was food. Eliza and she bundled up as best they could and stepped outside to light a tiny fire to cook a hot meal. Libbie prided herself on having survived all types of harsh, inclement weather, but a Dakota blizzard was beyond anything she had encountered. The snow fell so fine and thick she could not see her hand in front of her. It whirled around her—one could not discern if it fell from the sky or rose up from the ground. The sun was just a pale memory hidden somewhere in all the blinding whiteness.
Eliza and she held each other’s coattails in order not to get lost. Four steps away from the cabin, it had disappeared behind them. Eliza put her small bundle of kindling down while Libbie held on to her coat with one hand, the wall of the cabin with the other. If one played the child’s game of blindman and spun around, one could easily go in the wrong direction and be lost altogether.
Tales were numerous of frozen bodies found mere feet from safety. Dakota storms were the reason barns were built close to houses. It was a commonplace that during a blizzard one did not dare cross even such a limited space in order to care for livestock without a rope strung from kitchen door to stable for safe passage.
It was the strangest feeling of suffocation, as if the snow were sand, and each breath became a labor.
Libbie’s face numbed; her eyelashes furred so she could only squint. Snow came at them from all angles. Her legs were frozen despite the wool blankets she wore, and she longed for Autie’s heavy buffalo robes, impervious to weather, with which the Indians draped themselves.
Each time Eliza managed to nurse a small flame to life, the storm took a big huff and quickly extinguished it. After the fifth attempt, they realized the hopelessness of their cause. Eliza complained her fingers were frozen stiff, and she could no longer handle the matches. Resigned to a cold supper, they stumbled back in. Libbie’s spirits were low. She longed to cower in the corner, and it took everything to resist that urge.
In camp the soldiers and horses suffered far worse. When the adjutant came for orders, Libbie marveled how he’d managed to find them. With difficulty Autie sat up. The decision was made to break camp and retreat to Yankton, requesting shelter from the townspeople. Since travel was too dangerous for Autie in his condition, they would stay put. Duty discharged, he slumped down and went back to sleep.
After Libbie heard the last of the horses pass the cabin on the road to town, there followed the most forlorn silence, accompanied only by the howling wind. For a panicked moment she considered rushing outside and begging to be taken with them, but at mid-afternoon it was already dark, the soldiers must hurry, and in Autie’s debilitated state they would be a fatal burden.
Autie burned like a coal with fever. Libbie examined the state of the shelter that she had chosen so casually but now depended on for their survival. Incredibly, the wind increased, its groans growing louder and more agonized, the entire structure leaning with each buffet of wind. It was not impossible that the roof might blow off, if the whole thing, built without a foundation, did not simply overturn like the child’s playhouse it resembled. The building was like an old tugboat put out to sea past its prime, and they might just as surely perish in snow as at sea.
Fully dressed, Libbie remained under the blankets next to Autie to keep warm. He was burning up, his face red and damp with perspiration. He tossed the robes off as regularly as she put them back, tucking them under his chin. Each hour she warmed her icy fingers with her breath so that she could pour his medicine into a spoon without spilling a precious drop. In this way they passed the night, the most isolated and frightful one she could remember, assuming an end to the storm with the coming morning.
Libbie had finally fallen into a light sleep when a heavy, thudding sound became part of her dream. She woke and saw Eliza frantically trying to open the door. For a moment, Libbie thought the girl had gone mad and jumped up to stop her until she realized the pounding was coming from the outside. Had rescue arrived? The door was frozen shut. After the two women finally managed to tug it open, they were met with a wall of snow that they had to dig through with their bare hands even as those on the outside dug in with shovels. At long
last, six soldiers stumbled inside.
Poor men! They had lost their way on foot to Yankton. Disoriented, they retraced their steps even as those steps were being erased. Blindly they had passed the hut numerous times, locating it at last only by the faint glow of the oil lamp that Eliza had the foresight to put in the tiny window. As soon as the men came into the shelter, though, Libbie realized that their needs—fire, bedding, food, medicines—far outstripped her ability to aid. In desperation she remembered the carpets packed for the new home at the garrison. Eliza and she broke open a chest and were able to wrap each man in a rug cocoon.
Only as they warmed did their real suffering begin. Frostbitten hands and feet pained them as if needles were being driven into their flesh. Their cries set the women on edge, making them feel helpless. Food that might have fed three for a week now was stretched between nine people. Eliza lamented that they had no liquor to warm the men and ease their discomfort. Something had to be done. The doctor who promised to check on Autie had not shown, stranded in town or, unthinkably, lost in the storm.
Eliza let out a small squeal and clapped her hands.
“I know just the thing!”
Her idea was the bottle of alcohol they had for the spirit lamps; not the most palatable, but it was a dire situation. Just a thimbleful each brought a small bit of relief to the men.
When morning appeared, their hopes of rescue were crushed again. The storm intensified its raging. What light came to them was dim twilight, drifts burying them alive. Ailing soldiers, her husband ill, Eliza and she without the means to prepare food or give medicine—Libbie quaked inside but refused to show it.
There were many times during those years when she feared for her life, but that storm was something apart. She felt at the ebb of her existence and her equally doomed fellow creatures shared the bottom with her.