Buffalo Soldier, originally a term of opprobrium, had been adopted by the black cavalrymen as a designation of honor, and one fact about Fort Garner summarized that situation: the effective complement had begun at 246, but because of desertion, conniving to escape difficult duty and slow recruitment it would become only 232; but of the 134 black horsemen assigned to Fort Garner, only two would desert over a period of three years; of the white infantrymen, fourteen had already gone by the end of the first four months. To be a Buffalo Soldier was a sterling attainment. Many of these men had entered Union service in the darkest days of the war and they had served heroically, fighting both the avowed enemy at the South and the insidious one at the North. From the beginning they had known they were not liked and were not wanted, and during peace this dislike was hammered home in a hundred mean and malicious ways.
For example, the parade ground at Fort Garner had been in operation less than a week when Wetzel came to Reed with a serious complaint: ‘General, when the troops line up at morning and evening review, the Buffalo Soldiers, as is proper, stand at the south, before their stables. Could you direct Colonel Minor to keep his niggers well removed from my men? We cannot tolerate the smell.’
When Reed broached the subject to Minor, the Wisconsin man showed no animosity, nor did his cavalrymen when he jokingly asked them to muster ‘just a wee bit to the south, so we don’t offend anyone.’ The cavalrymen knew how desperately they were appreciated when at the height of some offensive against the Indians, they appeared at the critical moment to support infantry units pinned down by Indian fire: ‘We was there when you needed us and we’ll be there next time, too.’ It was unpleasant, sometimes, being a Buffalo Soldier, but the work provided moments of great satisfaction, and it was for these that the black troops drilled so strenuously and served with such resilient humor.
A distinctive component of any frontier fort was the group of wives who managed to stay with their husbands, often under the most appalling conditions, and Fort Garner was blessed with two of the finest. The mud huts had scarcely been roofed over when Louise Reed, the commander’s wife, and Bertha Wetzel, wife of the senior infantry officer, appeared in a cargo wagon which they had commandeered at Jacksborough. Mrs. Reed brought her ten-year-old daughter, who reveled in the ride across the plains, and such household gear as she and Mrs. Wetzel could assemble, not only for their own families but for all the others at the fort.
When the two women drove onto the parade grounds, men cheered, for those long associated with the four companies were well acquainted with the contributions such energetic wives made to soldiering, and within two days evidences of improved conditions were seen. Mrs. Reed gave a tea at which the eight officers and the four wives were present, and on the next day Mrs. Wetzel carried her teapots to Suds Row, where she assured the washerwomen that if they had any problems with the men, they would find support from her. She served them sandwiches and called each by name.
The two women were remarkably similar. Each was a little taller than average, a little thinner. Mrs. Reed was from her husband’s state of Vermont; Mrs. Wetzel had met her German husband when he was stationed at a fort in Minnesota. Each had a strong affiliation with her Protestant church, and each was painfully aware that her husband was probably going to remain in his present rank for as long as he wore the uniform. They were about the same age, too, in their early thirties, and whereas neither could ever have been termed beautiful, each had acquired from years of service that noble patina which comes from dedication to duty and the building of a good home. One enlisted man who had never spoken directly to the commander’s wife said: ‘The two good days at a new fort: when we put a roof over where we sleep and when Mrs. Reed appears.’ In the postwar period she had helped make life easier at three different forts as the army moved resolutely west, and although this was the poorest site of the lot, she observed with pleasure that the land was flat and easy to manage and the water supply copious: ‘The rest will come in due time.’
One factor at Fort Garner displeased her. Johnny Minor, one of the best leaders of cavalry and a man who already bore a heavy burden because he was required to lead black troops, had a pretty little wife named Nellie, who gave him much trouble. She despised his assignment and humiliated her husband’s black cavalrymen by refusing ever to speak to them; to her they did not exist, except when she was talking with the other wives. Then she called the Buffalo Soldiers ‘those apes,’ and lamented that it was they who prevented Johnny from gaining the promotions he deserved.
Mrs. Reed would not tolerate such dissension and halted Nellie whenever it began, but Mrs. Wetzel, so admirable in other respects, shared her husband’s deep distrust of colored troops: ‘Colonel Wetzel tells me constantly when we talk at night of how irresponsible they are. He says it’s bad enough to serve with cavalry …’ At the most inappropriate times she would forcefully proclaim her husband’s harsh theories about the cavalry: ‘And I mean any cavalry, not just the unfortunate Negroes. The colonel tells me: “Horses require so much fodder, and this must be carried along in so many wagons that the cavalry winds up doing nothing but riding happily along, guarding its own train. In fight after fight, the poor infantry is far ahead, doing the dirty work, while the cavalry lags behind, bringing up its food.” ’
Mrs. Reed, wife of an infantry officer, believed that most of what Mrs. Wetzel said was true: ‘The cavalry really is a most wasteful branch,’ but she also knew that to keep peace in the fort, this constant barrage of criticism must be silenced, or at least muffled, so she cautioned her friend against blatant disparagement. For some days Mrs. Wetzel kept quiet, but she was a Scandinavian, well educated by her parents, who found it impossible to remain silent when she saw error, and one afternoon when most of the officers and all the wives were present, she erupted: ‘It’s a known fact that during the first days of a campaign against the Indians, the cavalry is most daring, dashing here and there. But we rarely encounter Indians during those first days, and soon the cavalry horses are worn down, so that they can barely keep up with the infantry. And by the end of the second week the horses are so tired, they cannot keep up. On all days after that, the foot soldiers have to make camp early, and sit there waiting for the cavalry to drift in. From the twelfth day on they’re really useless, for not only are they exhausted, but they’ve also used up all their fodder.’
‘Why do we bother with them?’ young Andrew Masters from Illinois asked, and Mrs. Wetzel replied with more insight than she suspected: ‘Because generals like to ride horses at Fourth of July parades.’
This was too much for Louise Reed: ‘This talk must stop. And it must not be resumed in my house. My husband is commander of a mixed unit, mixed in all ways, and it must remain harmonious.’
The attention of the two senior women was diverted from the deficiencies of the cavalry to the more exciting behavior of young Nellie Minor, who found time heavy on her hands while her husband was off on an extended scout with his black horsemen. On the first afternoon she arranged an uneasy tea for the other wives. On the second she took the Reed daughter on a canter along the Brazos River. And on the third, following the good example set by Mrs. Wetzel, she went down to Suds Row to encourage the women there, but she was repelled by the conditions in which they worked and could find nothing in common to talk about.
On the fourth day she saddled one of the horses reserved for wives and planned her informal saunter along Bear Creek in such a way that she had a good chance of encountering the Irishman Jim Logan as he returned from a morning canter to the north. They did meet, well apart from the fort, and they rode for several exhilarating miles back toward Jacksborough. They did not dismount, but each was aware of considerable electricity in the air, for as Nellie observed as they rode side by side: ‘It’s like the quiet before a summer thunderstorm.’ Actually, it was well into the winter of 1870, but she was correct in feeling that great events impended, for not only was her attraction to this dashing Irishman becoming known at the fort, b
ut Comanche to the west were about to become active again.
On this afternoon neither she nor Jim Logan was much concerned about Indians, for when they dipped down behind a small hill to the Larkin tank where no one could see them, she rode very close to him, saying as they moved slowly across the grassy plain: ‘You ride extremely well.’
‘My father taught me, in Ireland.’
‘What’s Ireland like?’
‘Greener than this.’
‘Do you miss it?’
‘We starved.’
‘Were you brave in the war?’
‘I knew how to handle horses, I knew how to fight. So they made me a major.’
‘I know. Do you mind being a lieutenant now?’
‘Wars come and go. I was lucky to have found mine young. But to tell you the truth, Mrs. Minor, I don’t feel unlucky to be a lieutenant during the long years.’ He turned sideways and smiled, a ravishing, honest smile: ‘My level even in war was just about captain. I was never meant to be a major, wasn’t entitled. But I’m a damned good lieutenant.’
She leaned over and kissed him: ‘You’re a captivating man, Major, and in my mind you’ll always be a major.’
He grasped at her arm, holding her close to him for a protracted kiss, and each knew at that moment that if either made even the slightest motion toward dismounting, there would be a frenzied scene among the sagebrush, but neither made such a move, and gradually they worked their way back toward Bear Creek, along which they rode with feigned unconcern until the fort became barely visible on the far horizon.
‘Shouldn’t you ride in alone?’ Logan suggested, and she agreed that this might be prudent, but before they parted she moved close again, and kissed him even more passionately: ‘I long to be with you, Jim,’ but he said simply: ‘Johnny’s my superior, you know.’
So she rode directly to the fort while he made a far swing to the east, coming in much later on the Jacksborough Road, but such maneuvers fooled no one. Fort Garner quickly knew it had a dangerous love affair on its hands, and Mrs. Reed did not propose to have some young snippet bored with frontier life imperil her husband’s already difficult command. As always, she went directly to the source of potential trouble, or rather, she summoned the source to her quarters.
‘Nellie, sit down. It’s my duty as an older woman and as the wife of the commander to warn you that you are playing a very dangerous game.
‘But—’
‘I seek none of your shabby excuses. Nellie, at the fort in Arkansas you behaved the same way, and you came very close to ruining three careers. I shall not allow you to imperii my husband’s command. Stay away from Major Logan.’
‘I haven’t—’
‘Not yet. But you intend to.’
‘How can you talk like this? I’m not obligated—’
‘You’re obligated to conduct yourself properly when you’re in my husband’s command.’ She said this with such accumulated force of character that Nellie blanched.
‘I will endanger no one,’ she said softly.
‘Nellie, can’t you find happiness with your husband? He’s a splendid man. My husband cherishes him.’
‘He works with niggers, and he smells of niggers, and he can never amount to anything.’
Very harshly Mrs. Reed said: ‘If you believe that, Nellie, you must leave this fort today.’ When the sniffling younger woman tried to speak, Mrs. Reed silenced her: ‘I said today.’ Her voice rose: ‘Pack your things while I stand over you, and leave this fort, because if you stay, you can bring only tragedy.’
‘I can’t go. I have nowhere to go.’ She began to weep.
Mrs. Reed did not attempt to console her. Instead, she waited for the tears to halt, and then she asked, flatly but also with obvious compassion: ‘So what shall we do?’
‘We?’
‘Yes, this is as much my problem as yours.’
‘I can’t go. I have nowhere, I tell you.’
‘Then I shall tell you what you must do. Love your husband. Help him as Mrs. Wetzel and I help ours. Take pride in his accomplishments, which are many. And stay clear of Jim Logan.’
‘Will you tell the others?’
‘The others told me.’ Now she softened: ‘Nellie, I’m always the last woman on the post to know what’s happening to the wives in my husband’s command. Believe me, I do not look for trouble, I castigate no one. But when trouble is brought to my attention, so blatantly that I cannot …’ She hesitated, choked, and had to fight back her own tears.
‘Nellie, I think we should pray,’ and the two officer’s wives, there at the remotest outpost of their civilization, knelt and prayed. When they rose Mrs. Reed took Nellie’s hand and said: ‘Who ever promised you that an army officer’s life would be pleasant? Believe me, this storm which assails you now will pass.’
‘I am torn apart, Mrs. Reed.’
‘Have you ever sat in a lonely fort, with snow about the door, and watched your child die? That’s being torn apart, and even that storm passes.’
‘I shall try.’
‘And I shall …’ She wanted to say either ‘I shall pray for you’ or ‘I shall watch you,’ but she knew that each was inappropriate and inaccurate. So she did not finish her promise, because what she proposed doing was much more practical. She would ask her husband to keep his young Irish cavalryman absent from the fort as often as possible and on missions of maximum duration.
Among the men on the frontier who followed the establishment of Fort Garner with close attention was a small, scrawny fugitive with watery blue eyes and a somewhat withered left arm; he lurked in Santa Fe, waiting for any good chance that would enable him to slip back into his preferred Texas. His name was Amos Peavine, and his ancestors had prowled the Neutral Ground, that bandits’ no man’s land bordering old Louisiana.
As a young man with a bad arm he had had to be more clever than most and had soon built a reputation throughout East Texas as a holdup man and a ruthless killer. He was so devious, so quick to strike, that men started calling him Rattlesnake, and some, to their quick dismay, tried shooting at him, but he, well aware of his disability, had trained himself so assiduously in the use of guns that it was always he who drew first, fired first, and nodded ceremoniously as his would-be assailant fell.
Frontier gunmen, noticing his affected left arm, assumed that it played no part in his behavior, but they were wrong. Through long practice Rattlesnake Peavine could bring that bad arm up across his belt, providing a rocklike platform on which to rest the gun as it was being fired, and the action was so swift and smooth that even close watchers could not detect exactly what had happened.
In those hectic days he began to carry two Colts, and since his left hand was practically useless, he slung them both on his right hip, the only gunman known to do so. He spent about a year, 1863, perfecting holsters for his two guns, and then another, 1864, in shortening the barrels to make the guns easier to swing loose. This made his draw a fraction of a second quicker than that of a challenger. He also invented a clever way of making the trigger more responsive to his right forefinger: he filed down each sear until even a whisper would release it.
Peavine did not notch his guns to keep track of their effectiveness; he was content to be known as ‘that little bastard, about a hundred and thirty pounds, who can shoot faster than a rattlesnake strikes, and more deadly.’ At nineteen he was an authentic Texas badman.
During the war he had ranged the northern border, siding now with the Union forces, more often with the Confederate, but proving so unreliable to each that in the end both armies were trying to hang him, and it was then that he felt it advisable to quit Texas: ‘I got me a passel of enemies in this state. North or South, they don’t realize a man is entitled to make a livin’. No future for me here.’ What was more persuasive: ‘Hell, come peace they hain’t much goods movin’, a man hain’t got much chance to pick a few bundles off for hisself.’
He had drifted slowly toward Santa Fe on the principle ‘A man ca
in’t make it in Texas, he can always succeed in New Mexico,’ and after trying vainly to profit from the exposed trade with Mexico, he discovered that the real money was to be made in a trade centuries old and infamously dishonorable. The Plains Indians wanted whiskey and rifles, and generations of disreputable traders had found profitable ways of supplying them. Spaniards had done so in the 1600s, Frenchmen in the 1700s, Mexicans in the first years of the 1800s, and now a wily crew of adventurers from Kentucky, Mississippi and Texas continued the tradition.
Amos Peavine was the most daring of the bunch, for he traded with the most deadly of the tribes. He was a Comanchero, a lawless man who roamed the Comanchería, that vast expanse of wasteland which coincided with the buffalo range. Especially he worked the Texas plains, and when he learned that a new fort was to be established on Bear Creek, he rejoiced, because although it brought more soldiers into the area, which meant a greater chance that he would ultimately be shot, it also brought two developments extremely favorable to him: the Indians under attack would have to have more guns, and the slow military trains crossing the empty plains carrying guns and ammunition would be more open to attack. A really crafty Comanchero stole guns from the army, sold them to the Comanche, then served as tracker for the army when it went out to confront the well-armed Indians. A Comanchero prospered in troubled times, and was adept at devising strategies for keeping them troubled.
While Mrs. Reed was lecturing young Mrs. Minor on proper behavior at a frontier fort, Rattlesnake Peavine was some two hundred miles to the west, astride a winded old horse and leading a Rocky Mountain burro he had obtained from a Mexican family by the persuasive process of shooting the entire clan in one unbroken fusillade.
He was on a mission fraught with a medley of dangers, and any man who was afraid of nature, Indians or the retaliation of the United States Army would have blanched at what faced him as he probed the empty plains, seeking contact with Chief Matark of the Comanche. Scorpions and snakes awaited him if he was careless when he dismounted; death from dehydration got those who missed their water holes, so infrequent and so hot and alkali-ridden when found. Indian tribes at war with the Comanche would surely kill him if they caught him, and he faced equal danger from Comanche to whom he could not identify himself quickly. And there were always new forts with energetic new commanders eager to take up the chase against any despised Comanchero.