But the trombone player of the
Tenth Infantry band (a young Boston boy) had married a wife, and
now a baby had come to them. They could get no quarters, so we
took the family in, and, as the wife was an excellent cook, we
were able to give many small dinners. The walls of the house
being three feet thick, we were never troubled by the trombone
practice or the infant's cries. And many a delightful evening we
had around the board, with Father de Fourri, Rev. Mr. Meany (the
Anglican clergyman), the officers and ladies of the Tenth,
Governor and Mrs. Prince, and the brilliant lawyer folk of Santa
Fe.
Such an ideal life cannot last long; this existence of ours does
not seem to be contrived on those lines. At the end of a year,
orders came for Texas, and perhaps it was well that orders came,
or we might be in Santa Fe to-day, wrapt in a dream of past ages;
for the city of the Holy Faith had bound us with invisible
chains.
With our departure from Santa Fe, all picturesqueness came to an
end in our army life. Ever after that, we had really good houses
to live in, which had all modern arrangements; we had beautiful,
well-kept lawns and gardens, the same sort of domestic service
that civilians have, and lived almost the same life.
CHAPTER XXXII
TEXAS
Whenever I think of San Antonio and Fort Sam Houston, the perfume
of the wood violet which blossomed in mid-winter along the
borders of our lawn, and the delicate odor of the Cape jessamine,
seem to be wafted about me.
Fort Sam Houston is the Headquarters of the Department of Texas,
and all the Staff officers live there, in comfortable stone
houses, with broad lawns shaded by chinaberry trees. Then at the
top of the hill is a great quadrangle, with a clock tower and all
the department offices. On the other side of this quadrangle is
the post, where the line officers live.
General Stanley commanded the Department. A fine, dignified and
able man, with a great record as an Indian fighter. Jack knew him
well, as he had been with him in the first preliminary survey for
the northern Pacific Railroad, when he drove old Sitting Bull
back to the Powder River.
He was now about to reach the age of retirement; and as the day
approached, that day when a man has reached the limit of his
usefulness (in the opinion of an ever-wise Government), that day
which sounds the knell of active service, that day so dreaded and
yet so longed for, that day when an army officer is sixty-four
years old and Uncle Sam lays him upon the shelf, as that day
approached, the city of San Antonio, in fact the entire State of
Texas poured forth to bid him Godspeed; for if ever an army man
was beloved, it was General Stanley by the State of Texas.
