CHAPTER XVIII.

It took our first colored cook, a huge, strapping creature, who seemed a very giant in strength and stature, three days to scrub our tiny kitchen floor; and his ideas, one of which was that he should sleep until nine o’clock in the morning, nor did he awaken then unless called, were not to be changed to suit our convenience.

I remember so well our first breakfast! Rice batter cakes had been ordered; but the strangest looking and queerest tasting dish was produced, which, when questioned, the cook admitted was simply rice and molasses mixed together and fried in much grease.

Our last colored cook was so surly I was afraid of him, and rejoiced when he was finally replaced by a white man. On leaving us he moved to the little town of Brackett, and after only a few days had passed, murdered a woman, and to hide his guilt burned the house. Circumstantial evidence was so strong that he was captured and imprisoned in the little jail, which, constructed of heavy stone, was the only decent building in town. The murdered woman had been the widow of a white soldier, and his comrades-in-arms determined to avenge her. So, one night, under cover of the darkness, a number stormed the jail. Though well guarded, and the thick doors seemingly impregnable, they effected an entrance.

Meantime the garrison was greatly alarmed, for the town was so near we could hear the firing and tumult. The ladies were doubly frightened, because each one’s husband had been summoned to march at the head of his troops and quell the disturbance.

All were terrified, scarcely knowing what had happened, and the volume of sound that reached our ears made us dread untold dangers. We were frightened at having been left alone, and more alarmed for our husbands, because, in the promiscuous firing which began the moment the troops reached town, we knew not what shot had or might hit one of them.

Altogether we were panic-stricken, and moments seemed hours until the troops returned, which they did very soon, and without a single officer or soldier having been injured, although the shots were numerous enough to have killed an army.

The jail had been forced before the arrival of the troops; but the soldiers, though carefully searching every cell, had been unable to find the prisoner, and, after vowing vengeance on the authorities for having removed him, assembled outside, where they vented their wrath and disappointment by firing against the heavy stone building. When the cavalry reached the scene, and in their turn began to fire, every man disappeared, escaping under cover of the darkness and confusion, and found his way back to the fort, where at roll-call all answered to their names as innocently as possible.

The officers were inclined to condone the offense, both from sympathy with the murdered woman’s friends, and also because the murderer was such a despicable coward, as was proved not only by his taking a woman’s life, but also in his behavior afterward.

The first officer who entered the jail was Mr. Boyd, who was at once told by the sheriff that the murderer was secreted on its roof, which, unknown to outsiders, had a stone coping six feet high that well concealed him. A more pitiable object was never seen; for expecting every moment would be his last he was praying and groaning in true darkey fashion, and had the tumult outside been less would have been quickly discovered.

Mr. Boyd tried to calm him, but it was useless; the man was so thoroughly frightened he could not be silenced, but kept calling on the good Lord for protection, and throwing himself about with the most grotesque contortions of face and figure.

The sequel proved the soldiers to have been right in not trusting to the course of law, for in Texas no crime but that of horse-stealing is considered deserving of hanging; the murderer was only imprisoned, but fortunately for himself was taken to another county.

On this occasion Mr. Boyd interviewed a murderer to whose tender mercies his own family had been exposed, and after that I was allowed to have a white cook; for although they sometimes indulged in dissipation, colored men and women did the same, and there is no such fear known on earth as that a woman experiences when confronted by a drunken negro.

The cavalry stationed at Fort Clark previous to our arrival had been colored, though the infantry, which composed half the post, was white.

Never having been South before, we had much to learn before a home feeling was possible. The level country seemed strange after having lived among lovely mountains, and we had a new set of insects to deal with. I had thought nothing could be worse than my first enemies, the wasps, but soon found the immense roaches with which our house was actually crammed much more disagreeable. They not only covered the kitchen floor until it was black, but actually flew around our heads, and even invaded the bedrooms up-stairs until life seemed intolerable. A thorough system of cleaning and scrubbing was instituted; for they love dirt, which was, in fact, the original cause of such an undue supply. We tried borax and all other known remedies, and in time greatly lessened their numbers.

A picnic in Texas was simply impossible on account of the red bugs and wood-ticks, which were not only countless and disagreeable, but so poisonous that I knew an officer, who had been obliged to camp out on the ground, suffer so severely from their attentions that hospital treatment was necessary for weeks. The sores caused by these insects are frequently very painful, because they bury themselves beneath the skin, and actually have to be dug out.

The larger vermin, scorpions, tarantulas, centipeds, and snakes I did not mind; for they never molested us, and, like the really weighty trials of life, were more easily endured than minor ones. I speak from actual experience, having lived out of doors during our five years residence in Texas, and allowed my children to enjoy themselves in the same way, both because I deemed it necessary to health, and because observation had convinced me that those ladies who did otherwise suffered indescribably from fear; while to us, after we had settled down, every moment was a joy in spite of heat and vermin.

One evening a lady caller started frantically for the door immediately after having entered. The cause of her terror was a huge tarantula or spider of the most deadly sort, black, ugly, and venomous, which measured fully three inches around the body. I picked up a heavy basket and killed it. She called me very brave; but I thought greater bravery would have been required to permit it to live, when perhaps it might bite one of my children.

Our first winter at Fort Clark was delightful. All had comfortable double houses; and I felt very proud because of the bright, pretty carpets and lace curtains that had been sent from the East. The troops were called out only occasionally for Indian raids, but never went farther than the river which divides Texas from Mexico.

We enjoyed the game, which was so plentiful that delicious wild turkey could be enjoyed every day if desired. The one vegetable that grew almost spontaneously was sweet potato, which we luxuriated in for months, as it improved by keeping.

I scoured the country on horseback in all directions, and found a rare charm in those boundless prairies, carpeted with gray grass so thick the horse’s hoofs sank far out of sight, which made the pace an exhilarating bound. A stream, which rose from the clear spring that supplied us with water, flowed for miles amid groves of wild oak and pecan trees which it was my delight to explore.

We hunted jack rabbits a good deal. They were so numerous as to destroy all hopes of the gardens in which the early freshets had allowed us to indulge. A lady just from the East was appalled when I said that each small head of cabbage cost a dollar, and was really worth it; for the man who had sufficient enterprise to evade rabbits, and build walls against freshets, must also examine each cabbage leaf three times a day in order to destroy the ever encroaching worm or bug. This will not seem exaggerated to any one who has ever gardened under similar conditions.

Our little streams were beautiful, and so well stocked with delicious bass and trout that the children used to beg to picnic: after a day thus spent, it would take hours of diligent search to find the dozens of wood-ticks and tiny red insects which covered their clothing and buried themselves in their tender flesh. Sometimes one would escape notice, and be afterward found with head imbedded beneath the skin, and body distended to treble its original size.

Those torments made scouting in Texas a thing to be dreaded; and yet, after the first year of quiet, our cavalry were kept in the field nine months out of twelve. Though encamped most of the time on the banks of a stream only seven miles distant, yet none the less they were separated from us, and as the officers’ wives said, “Compelled us to keep up two messes, and incur great expense, besides being lonely and forlorn.”

The sun’s scorching heat made it impossible to raise any flowers, for if plants grew and budded the fierce heat would burn the outer petals so blossoms never fully opened. Only one plant, the Madeira vine, throve there, and it was esteemed a special luxury; for as the post was located on a high limestone ridge, and the houses were built of limestone, the white glare was something to be dreaded. Those luxuriant green vines covered our porches so closely as to form perfect little arbors, and enabled us to enjoy out-of-door life. At least two hammocks were swung on every veranda, and they were occupied most of the time, for the air was so hot and lifeless that effort was impossible.

Only one of the five summers we passed at Fort Clark was cool and comfortable. That year the rainy season commenced late and lasted throughout the summer. The other four were so fearfully hot and uncomfortable that we were much exhausted when cooler weather arrived.

Nevertheless, strange as it may seem, after we had once become accustomed to the life and that routine which alone makes existence in warm countries endurable, we were satisfied.

During the day our costumes were the lightest and airiest that could be devised. But when evening came—and no woman ever ventured out-of-doors until after sunset—we arrayed ourselves in pretty white dresses, and started forth to enjoy the breeze, whose never-failing, grateful presence was compensation for the day’s intense heat.

In that clear atmosphere the tiniest arc of a moon gives more light than does a full one under other conditions; so by the time its greatest splendor was reached, nothing on earth could have surpassed the perfect beauty of those southern nights. The air was soft and balmy, and every one rejoiced to find respite from the sun’s extreme heat. Indeed, the change was so grateful that we fell into a habit of almost turning night into day in our unwillingness to leave a scene of such enchantment.

Even our unsheltered, gray parade ground, on which grass absolutely refused to grow, was softened by the moon’s mellow rays into a semblance of all we desired it to be; and when, night after night, our glorious band played entrancing strains of sweet music on the luminous spot, we felt that life in the tropics was not so very unendurable after all.

Our limestone houses, which in the daytime could not be looked upon because of the blinding glare, were toned by the moon’s magic influence into poetic beauty, with their shading vines and groups of dainty ladies in white, and gallant officers in uniform.

I became wedded, heart and soul, to that part of our life, which made me quite willing to live and die in Texas, despite many more prosaic drawbacks.