Mower County transcript. [volume] (Lansing, Minn.) 1868-1915, 1885-12-09
BOOTS AND SADDLES.

BOOTS AND SADDLES.
Lie In Dakota with Gen. Custer, as
Described by His Wife--Army Life
on the Frontier.
Barely glancing at the life of Gen.
Custer from the day he ''graduated at
West Point just in time to take part in
the battle OF Bull Rum and just touch
ing his part in the civil war, his visit
to his sisters home in Mrs. Clusters
''native town, Monroe, Mich, during
the winter of 1861" when the writer
first met him, their marriage in Febru-
ary, 1864, and her own first experience
ION the extreme wing of the Army of
the Potomac, in an isolated Virginia
farmhouse finishing my honeymoon
alone,' where the generals old colored
servant Eliza comforted her, Mrs.
Custer begins the detail of her book
with the order that sent Custer to
Dakota in 1873, and closed it with the
reception of the news of the battle of
the Little Big Horn in the summer of
1876. So the story told in this book
covers only about three years of
Clusters life. And in her account of
these years Mrs. Custer writes as an
earnest, buoyant, all victorious woman
would modestly talk-not in stilted
detail or in mouthing formality at
tempting to magnify the facts, but CIV
ing quick vivacious chances, as things
naturally recur to the memory in talk
ing, leaving all the while far more
unsaid than told at all. The East will
read the book with the strangest sort
of admiration and surprise, and the
west, especially the people of Dakota
notably the old residenters-will
give it most enthusiastic welcome. 1t
is a breath from the prairies, frank and
beautiful, with the chaste dignity of a
woman pure and exalted affection.
Mrs. Custer says that ''when orders
came in the spring of 1873 for the 9TH
calvalry to 60 into the field again Gen.
Custer was delighted" The regiment
was stationed in various parts of the
South on the very disagreeable duty of
breaking up illicit distilleries and sup
pressing the Ku-Klux, and not an hour
elapsed after the official document
announcing our change of station had
arrived before our house was torn up.
In the confusion ] managed to retire to
corner with an atlas and sur
reptitiously look up the territory to
which we were going. From the first day
of our marriage Gen. Custer celebrated
every order to move with wild demon
STATIONS of Joy. His, exuberances of
spirit always found expression in some
boyish pranks before he could set to
work seriously to prepare for duty. As
soon as the officer announcing the order
to move had disappeared all sorts of
wild hilarity began. had learned to
take up safe position on the top of
the table, that is, if I had not already
been forcibly placed there as specta-
tor" Occasionally at such times the
general would accidently break weak
chair or two, when ELIAS "wooly
head would thrust itself through the
door to reprimand her master and say
''Chairs don t grow on trees in these
yere parts gen'l. But the hilarity
went on all the same till the household
goods and gods were gotten into few
gunny sacks and barrels. So began
the move for the summer campaign
against the Indians. In all
the confusion nobody was cross. To
the general it meant a reunion with his
regiment and new activity, and also
a good deal more than that. To Mrs.
Custerit meant new and vigorous life,
alternately with ''months of loneliness,
anxiety, and terror" Fortunately,
there was too much to do to leave leis-
ure for thoughts.
After some days in tho cars Mrs.
Custer says, they ''were glad to stop on
an open plain about mile from Yank-
ton, where the railroad ended 1t was
on the Missouri bottom land east of
Yankton. 1.-The long trains were un-
loaded of their freight, and the plains
about them seemed to swarm with men
and horses" Mrs. Custer was ''helped
down from the Pullman car, where in
AssAu "OONA0s AAAlAAOA0S 1A<A push 0uAe
rounded them, to the ground perfectly
bare of every earthly comfort. The
other ladies of the regiment went on to
hotel in the town." The general
and Mrs. Custer undertook to hire and
tit up little frame shanty found near
the hating ground. AS night came
on there came also one of Dakota's
worst billiards. The household be-
longings were gathered together. the
generals dogs feeling the storm in adj
vance crowded into the shanty. There
was family of little new puppies,
cage of knocking birds,
and another of canaries. The
general himself grew sick. The biz
zard came; the shanty rocked in the
roaring winds. Mrs. Custer was fright
cned at the change from the mild
southern weather to this inhuman cold,
and for once in her life gave up to tears.
While the storm raced the a6iutant