He talked a good deal about the North Star, and the fork in
the road, and that we must be sure not to miss it.
It was a still, hot, starlit night. Jack and the driver sat on
the front seat. They had taken the back seat out, and my little
boy and I sat in the bottom of the wagon, with the hard cushions
to lean against through the night. I suppose we were drowsy with
sleep; at all events, the talk about the fork of the road and the
North Star faded away into dreams.
I awoke with a chilly feeling, and a sudden jolt over a rock. "I
do not recollect any rocks on this road, Jack, when we came over
it in the ambulance," said I.
"Neither do I," he replied.
I looked for the North Star: I had looked for it often when in
open boats. It was away off on our left, the road seemed to be
ascending and rocky: I had never seen this piece of road before,
that I was sure of.
"We are going to the eastward," said I, "and we should be going
northwest."
"My dear, lie down and go to sleep; the man knows the road; he is
taking a short cut, I suppose," said the Lieutenant. There was
something not at all reassuring in his tones, however.
The driver did not turn his head nor speak. I looked at the North
Star, which was getting farther and farther on our left, and I
felt the gloomy conviction that we were lost on the desert.
Finally, at daylight, after going higher and higher, we drew up
in an old deserted mining-camp.
The driver jerked his ponies up, and, with a sullen gesture,
said, "We must have missed the fork of the road; this is Picket
Post."
"Great Heavens!" I cried; "how far out of the way are we?"
"About fifteen miles," he drawled, "you see we shall have to go
back to the place where the road forks, and make a new start."
I nearly collapsed with discouragement. I looked around at the
ruined walls and crumbling pillars of stone, so weird and so grey
in the dawning light: it might have been a worshipping place of
the Druids. My little son shivered with the light chill which
comes at daybreak in those tropical countries: we were hungry and
tired and miserable: my bones ached, and I felt like crying.
We gave the poor ponies time to breathe, and took a bite of cold
food ourselves.
Ah! that blighted and desolate place called Picket Post! Forsaken
by God and man, it might have been the entrance to Hades.
Would the ponies hold out? They looked jaded to be sure, but we
had stopped long enough to breathe them, and away they trotted
again, down the mountain this time, instead of up.
It was broad day when we reached the fork of the road, which we
had not been able to see in the night: there was no mistaking it
now.
We had travelled already about forty miles, thirty more lay
before us; but there were no hills, it was all flat country, and
the owner of these brave little ponies said we could make it.
As we neared the MacDowell canon, we met Captain Corliss marching
out with his company (truly they had lost no time in starting for
California), and he told his First Lieutenant he would make slow
marches, that we might overtake him before he reached Yuma.
We were obliged to wait at Camp MacDowell for Sergeant Stone to
arrive with our wagonful of household goods, and then, after a
mighty weeding out and repacking, we set forth once more, with a
good team of mules and a good driver, to join the command. We
bade the Sixth Cavalry people once more good-bye, but I was so
nearly dead by this time, with the heat, and the fatigue of all
this hard travelling and packing up, that the keener edge of my
emotions was dulled. Eight days and nights spent in travelling
hither and thither over those hot plains in Southern Arizona, and
all for what?
Because somebody in ordering somebody to change his station, had
forgotten that somebody's regiment was about to be ordered out of
the country it had been in for four years. Also because my
husband was a soldier who obeyed orders without questioning them.
If he had been a political wire-puller, many of our misfortunes
might have been averted. But then, while I half envied the wives
of the wire-pullers, I took a sort of pride in the blind
obedience shown by my own particular soldier to the orders he
received.
After that week's experience, I held another colloquy with
myself, and decided that wives should not follow their husbands
in the army, and that if I ever got back East again, I would
stay: I simply could not go on enduring these unmitigated and
unreasonable hardships.
The Florence man staid over at the post a day or so to rest his
ponies. I bade him good-bye and told him to take care of those
brave little beasts, which had travelled seventy miles without
rest, to bring us to our destination. He nodded pleasantly and
drove away. "A queer customer," I observed to Jack.
"Yes," answered he, "they told me in Florence that he was a 'road
agent' and desperado, but there did not seem to be anyone else,
and my orders were peremptory, so I took him. I knew the ponies
could pull us through, by the looks of them; and road agents are
all right with army officers, they know they wouldn't get
anything if they held 'em up."
"How much did he charge you for the trip?" I asked.
