Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1889-09-22

preparation the pretty devices for beau
tifying the home are torn from the walls
or hurriedIy jumbled into crowded pack
ing cases; the choice garments crushed
into trunks; the china which, in her in
experience, the young wife has brought
from home, instead of earthenware, is
pat into barrels by clumsy hands.
Officers are seldom afraid Of their dig
nifty being injured by doing manual
labor, especially if hv so doing they can
make life easier for their wives. But
when orders come to move, their whole
attention must be given TO the prepare
ton of the men and horses FOR the jour
ney, and to the experimenting of the
packing of company papers, records
and property. Consequently, the wife is
gwen soldiers at such n time, whose
hearts are most willing, but whose awk-
ward hands are apt TO make havoc with
the household laTes and penates.
At dawn the next day the ambulance
in which she IS to journey is brought to
the door, and almost filled with the last
forgotten traps, guns, books, ammuni-
ton, baskets and boxes.
In the first place, the ambulance in
which the bride is going to travel for
hundreds of miles is not luxurious
equipage. The government builds them
for the sick, but happily there are few
i'll people on the frontier, and they are
therefore often loaned 10 the officers
by the QuaTteTmasteT to trans
port their families. The wagon is
long enough to admit of two seats on
the side being joined in the middle and
constructed into a bed over six feet long,
on which the wounded or sick can lie.
Under these seats at the end are round
holes, in which the kegs of water are car
red The entrance is at the rear and the
steps are low, SO one can get III and out
readily. The driver on the front seat
can be cut off by a curtain from those in
side. In time officers are enabled to
save up money enough TO buy con-
demned ambulance. the running gear of
which needs little repairing.
The seats are then arranged across and
recovered, as well as the top of the
wagon, the steps changed to the side,
and the conveyance is not only made very
comfortable, but there IS hardly a trace
of the gloomy old hospital wagon of the
government. An officer just home from
a wedding festivity, and having to buy
his little domestic outfit, is not usually
prepared to purchase and make over a
vehicle of any kind. nor can he fit his
wife out with a horse and equipments,
with which, later in their history, she
varies many weary march.
The saving up process is slow work,
with all the expenses entailed by the
frequent change Of station, so that
newly married woman is apt to journey
at first in an ambulance.
At dawn the troops move out and the
wagons are pulled into line and begin
their mOnOtonous march Of four miles
an hour, sometimes varied by a long
stop at the crossing of a stream, where
bridge Is made or a causeway of logs.
No matter how smooth the road, the
traps inside the ambulance roll around
and, with the persistent obstinacy Of
inanimate things, which makes them
seem human in their perversity, they
plunge toward the open door to tumble
out
The traveller spends the day slipping
from the leather seat and recovering
herself The seat Is narrow, hard, and
has no back, except the slender wooden
strips of the frame over which the cover
is stretched 1t is dusty, and there is a
tantaIiZing dry heat, whnle the sun beats
down TemOrselessly on the black water
proof cover. The luncheon, hastily pre-
water in the canteen is warm.
And yet, at the END of twenty-five
miles of this irksome journey, l have
seen the sweetest face, pale, perhaps,
but not fTowning, look out of the en-
trance of the wagon and greet her hus-
band without a murmur. She speaks al
ways of the loneliness: that sort of muir
muring no man minds, since he kuows it
is for him the sentiment IS called forth.
Most of them say something like this:
of a girl marries man and comes out
here she rather expects to see something
of her husband, don I you think? and
then he lowers his voice and makes some
reply that the driver tries in vain to
hear; for d soldier, from the highest to
the lowest, has a world of romance in his
nature.
The promises of q few weeks or months
before of a girl in tulie and lace and or
ange flowers, with all the glamour of
first love, all the allurementS of luXurI-
Gus surroundings, were not idle words.
With such chances before her to prove
her devotion, she enters into her life
Joyous at the very thought that no one
can doubt that she married but for one
reason.
Her Journey over the plains is but the
of the pioneer: there was no royal road
over those sun baked prairies The wind
storms shrieked around the ambu-
lance, rocking ii in Its violence, or
tore the canvas of the tent in its fierce
ness with just the same savage fury that
1t did the lumber wagon of the frontiers
man. The sun scorched and the rain
soaked the military pioneer just as it did
the brave man who sought new home.
There was this to be SAID for the pioneer:
when he finally located he did not move
again, unless from some untOward cir
cumstances With an officer the march
ing was from sun to sun, - and, like
woman 5 work, it was never done. -
Soma may suggest that the military wife
had not the ever present fear of Indians
in her jouTneyings that the wife of the
pioneer had. But she had, though. We
have, even now, with peace brooding
over the land, a very small army
\ few years since there was an i'm
mense frontier to protect, and often our
brave little army was divided up so that
small knots Of men had 60 be marched
from one post TO another through the
very worst of the Indian country. The
garrisons were even too small for safety,
and behind an insecure log stockade our
IN OF, hove heard the Oruies the Ybreofs