CHAPTER XXVII
THE EIGHTH FOOT LEAVES ARIZONA
And now after the eight days of most distressing heat, and the
fatigue of all sorts and varieties of travelling, the nights
spent in a stage-coach or at a desert inn, or in the road agent's
buckboard, holding always my little son close to my side, came
six days more of journeying down the valley of the Gila.
We took supper in Phoenix, at a place known as "Devine's." I was
hearing a good deal about Phoenix; for even then, its gardens,
its orchards and its climate were becoming famous, but the season
of the year was unpropitious to form a favorable opinion of that
thriving place, even if my opinions of Arizona, with its
parched-up soil and insufferable heat, had not been formed
already.
We crossed the Gila somewhere below there, and stopped at our old
camping places, but the entire valley was seething hot, and the
remembrance of the December journey seemed but an aggravating
dream.
We joined Captain Corliss and the company at Antelope Station,
and in two more days were at Yuma City. By this time, the
Southern Pacific Railroad had been built as far as Yuma, and a
bridge thrown across the Colorado at this point. It seemed an
incongruity. And how burning hot the cars looked, standing there
in the Arizona sun!
After four years in that Territory, and remembering the days,
weeks, and even months spent in travelling on the river, or
marching through the deserts, I could not make the Pullman cars
seem a reality.
We brushed the dust of the Gila Valley from our clothes, I
unearthed a hat from somewhere, and some wraps which had not seen
the light for nearly two years, and prepared to board the train.
I cried out in my mind, the prayer of the woman in one of
Fisher's Ehrenberg stories, to which I used to listen with
unmitigated delight, when I lived there. The story was this:
"Mrs. Blank used to live here in Ehrenberg; she hated the place
just as you do, but she was obliged to stay. Finally, after a
period of two years, she and her sister, who had lived with her,
were able to get away. I crossed over the river with them to
Lower California, on the old rope ferry-boat which they used to
have near Ehrenberg, and as soon as the boat touched the bank,
they jumped ashore, and down they both went upon their knees,
clasped their hands, raised their eyes to Heaven, and Mrs. Blank
said: 'I thank Thee, oh Lord! Thou hast at last delivered us from
the wilderness, and brought us back to God's country. Receive my
thanks, oh Lord!'"
And then Fisher used to add: "And the tears rolled down their
faces, and I knew they felt every word they spoke; and I guess
you'll feel about the same way when you get out of Arizona, even
if you don't quite drop on your knees," he said.
The soldiers did not look half so picturesque, climbing into the
cars, as they did when loading onto a barge; and when the train
went across the bridge, and we looked down upon the swirling red
waters of the Great Colorado from the windows of a luxurious
Pullman, I sighed; and, with the strange contradictoriness of the
human mind, I felt sorry that the old days had come to an end.
For, somehow, the hardships and deprivations which we have
endured, lose their bitterness when they have become only a
memory.
CHAPTER XXVIII
CALIFORNIA AND NEVADA
A portion of our regiment was ordered to Oregon, to join General
Howard, who was conducting the Bannock Campaign, so I remained
that summer in San Francisco, to await my husband's return.
I could not break away from my Arizona habits. I wore only white
dresses, partly because I had no others which were in fashion,
partly because I had become imbued with a profound indifference
to dress.
"They'll think you're a Mexican," said my New England aunt (who
regarded all foreigners with contempt). "Let them think," said I;
"I almost wish I were; for, after all, they are the only people
who understand the philosophy of living. Look at the tired faces
of the women in your streets," I added, "one never sees that sort
of expression down below, and I have made up my mind not to be
caught by the whirlpool of advanced civilization again."
Added to the white dresses, I smoked cigarettes, and slept all
the afternoons. I was in the bondage of tropical customs, and I
had lapsed back into a state of what my aunt called
semi-barbarism.
"Let me enjoy this heavenly cool climate, and do not worry me," I
begged. I shuddered when I heard people complain of the cold
winds of the San Francisco summer. How do they dare tempt Fate,
thought I, and I wished them all in Ehrenberg or MacDowell for
one summer. "I think they might then know something about
climate, and would have something to complain about!"
How I revelled in the flowers, and all the luxuries of that
delightful city!
The headquarters of the Eighth was located at Benicia, and
General Kautz, our Colonel, invited me to pay a visit to his
wife. A pleasant boat-trip up the Sacramento River brought us to
Benicia. Mrs. Kautz, a handsome and accomplished Austrian,
presided over her lovely army home in a manner to captivate my
fancy, and the luxury of their surroundings almost made me
speechless.
"The other side of army life," thought I.
A visit to Angel Island, one of the harbor defences, strengthened
this impression. Four years of life in the southern posts of
Arizona had almost made me believe that army life was indeed but
"glittering misery," as the Germans had called it.
