TO MY SON HARRY SUMMERHAYES
WHO SHARED THE VICISSITUDES OF MY LIFE IN ARIZONA,
THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
Preface
I have written this story of my army life at the urgent and
ceaseless request of my children.
For whenever I allude to those early days, and tell to them the
tales they have so often heard, they always say: "Now, mother,
will you write these stories for us? Please, mother, do; we must
never forget them."
Then, after an interval, "Mother, have you written those stories
of Arizona yet?" until finally, with the aid of some old letters
written from those very places (the letters having been
preserved, with other papers of mine, by an uncle in New England
long since dead), I have been able to give a fairly connected
story.
I have not attempted to commemorate my husband's brave career in
the Civil War, as I was not married until some years after the
close of that war, nor to describe the many Indian campaigns in
which he took part, nor to write about the achievements of the
old Eighth Infantry. I leave all that to the historian. I have
given simply the impressions made upon the mind of a young New
England woman who left her comfortable home in the early
seventies, to follow a second lieutenant into the wildest
encampments of the American army.
Hoping the story may possess some interest for the younger women
of the army, and possibly for some of our old friends, both in
the army and in civil life, I venture to send it forth.
