The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1906-07-15
ARMY WOMAN'S EXPERIENCE
OF LIFE ON THE FRONTIER
BY ETHEL ARMIES.

| The roads We're rocky, without shade; the
rides, long and tiresome, thirty to thirty
| five miles made a day The hot July
| sun-and 1t Is hot in TeXas-blazed down
| on the weary little cavalcade. At length,
on the eighth day-the fort.
concho was then regimental headquar-
tiers of the Tenth cavalry and one of
the largest posts In Southwestern Texas.
| Eight full companies were stationed
| there; besides the officers quarters and
the barracks, were hospitals, guard
| houses, a big commissary and library
But the buildings had rather tum-
bledown aspect. Across one fork of the
Concho river was little village, San
Angela, holy name yelling a gambling
den. There was a two weeks wait at
| Coneho, as part of the troop whose sta
| ton was to be changed to FIT. Stockton
was out on a scout
| Everything was not agreeable, al
| though there were many dinners. sup
pers, teas parties. dances. all the social
functions of an exclusive east life was
| deadly monotonous. Everything from the
arrival of the mail stage to the most
| trivial morsel of gossip, became an event
| of abnormal interest
1t was goodly number, one hundred
told in all, that started forth at length
| from Concho the morning of the second
week en- route for Stockton a full eight
days ride One troop of cavalry, its Off
GERS, their families and servants. drivers
| and teamsters.
The country was a desert now Five
hundred miles from a railroad, scarce a
man, scarce a tree. The only water avail
able was the hot, bitter stuff in the can
| teens obtained from noisome water holes
| No fruit, no butter, fresh bread or milk;
only canned stuffs. Often the fording of
rivers was fraught with imminent peril;
| there was also constant expectation of
an Indian attack. This for women, reared
| in cities and for little babies.
A vast rolling stretch of parched prairie
burned by the suns fierce heat into a
gray silver glisten. that blinded the eyes
like snow; the long, gray CANA grass,
the prickly cactii the spiked leaves and
the white blossoms of the Spanish bayo-
net, the stumpy mesquite. and far off the
amphitheatre hills .massed rock on rock,
regular as a coliseum with never a tree
or a green thing-naked stone which in
the darkness of night gave forth sound.
as the vocal Memnon of Egypt, the moan,
the eerie moan of the coyote.
Driving hard by the treacherous Pecos
stream, muddy, narrow, deep as death,
with bitter tasting waters.
With 1t all the whining, the never-ceas-
ing complaints of one of the young wom-
en- who had recently married and who
didn't know army life was like that and
wanted to go home to mama" She need
ed a more broiling sun yet to still her
into silence, and she got it. There is no
room in the army for women who COM
! plain, neither for men
There was the adobe ranch of Mexican
here and there; the dark man himself
| working In his field with the broad SOM
| brero covering him. his wife in her
| founced calico skirt riding by on a hairy,
| long-eared burro, her children with their
| star-like eyes borne before her; Jesuit
| father with sun-browned, kindly face,
| saluting while passing. making the sign
| of the cross. then fading on his mule
| into the far amphitheatre hills.
| All, picturesl Pictures sublimel They
| come at the world
=, And yet one could grow tired of tia
I draught of air, a cup of water-that was
what mortals wanted.
At length the adobe post. Fort Stockton!
| Hot. desolate. alone, the flag, ever the
| flag. waving YEARLY over 1t.
The heart of the true armv woman
might sink as she sees it all. that blank
| desolation! but she greets 1t with a smile
and light laughter.
Is there a soldier better than that?