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Tenting on the Plains (Illustrated Edition)
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I. GOOD-BY TO THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC
CHAPTER II. NEW ORLEANS AFTER THE WAR
CHAPTER III. A MILITARY EXECUTION
CHAPTER IV. MARCHES THROUGH PINE FORESTS
CHAPTER V. OUT OF THE WILDERNESS
CHAPTER VI. A TEXAS NORTHER
CHAPTER VII. LIFE IN A TEXAS TOWN
CHAPTER VIII. LETTERS HOME
CHAPTER IX. DISTURBED CONDITION OF TEXAS
CHAPTER X. GENERAL CUSTER PARTS WITH HIS STAFF AT CAIRO AND DETROIT
CHAPTER XI. ORDERS TO REPORT AT FORT RILEY, KANSAS
CHAPTER XII. WESTWARD HO!—FIGHTING DISSIPATION IN THE SEVENTH CAVALRY—GENERAL CUSTER'S TEMPTATIONS
CHAPTER XIII. A MEDLEY OF OFFICERS AND MEN
CHAPTER XIV. THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE
CHAPTER XV. A PRAIRIE FIRE
CHAPTER XVI. SACRIFICES AND SELF-DENIAL OF PIONEER DUTY—CAPTAIN ROBBINS AND COLONEL COOK ATTACKED, AND FIGHT FOR THREE HOURS
CHAPTER XVII. A FLOOD AT FORT HAYS
CHAPTER XVIII. ORDERED BACK TO FORT HARKER
CHAPTER XIX. THE FIRST FIGHT OF THE SEVENTH CAVALRY
Elizabeth Bacon Custer
General Custer in Kansas and Texas
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Eliza often cooked under fire, and only lately one of the General's staff, recounting war days, described her as she was preparing the General's dinner in the field. A shell would burst near her; she would turn her head in anger at being disturbed, unconscious that she was observed, begin to growl to herself about being obliged to move, but take up her kettle and frying-pan, march farther away, make a new fire, and begin cooking as unperturbed as if it were an ordinary disturbance instead of a sky filled with bits of falling shell. I do not repeat that polite fiction of having been on the spot, as neither the artist nor I had Eliza's grit or pluck; but we arranged the camp-kettle, and Eliza fell into the exact expression, as she volubly began telling the tale of "how mad those busting shells used to make her." It is an excellent likeness, even though Eliza objects to the bandana, which she has abandoned in her new position; and I must not forget that I found her one day turning her head critically from side to side looking at her picture; and, out of regard to her, will mention that her nose, of which she is very proud, is, she fears, a touch too flat in the sketch. She speaks of her dress as "completely whittled out with bullets," but she would like me to mention that "she don't wear them rags now."
When Eliza reached New York this past autumn, she told me, when I asked her to choose where she would go, as my time was to be entirely given to her, that she wanted first to go to the Fifth Avenue Hotel and see if it looked just the same as it did "when you was a bride, Miss Libbie, and the Ginnel took you and me there on leave of absence." We went through the halls and drawing-rooms, narrowly watched by the major-domo, who stands guard over tramps, but fortified by my voice, she "oh'd" and "ah'd" over its grandeur to her heart's content. One day I left her in Madison Square, to go on a business errand, and cautioned her not to stray away. When I returned I asked anxiously, "Did any one speak to you, Eliza?" "Everybody, Miss Libbie," as nonchalant and as complacent as if it were her idea of New York hospitality. Then she begged me to go round the Square, "to hunt a lady from Avenue A, who see'd you pass with me, Miss Libbie, and said she knowed you was a lady, though I reckon she couldn't 'count for me and you bein' together." We found the Avenue A lady, and I was presented, and, to her satisfaction, admired the baby that had been brought over to that blessed breathing-place of our city.
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