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My brother, then unmarried, and my sister Harriet were living
together in New Rochelle and to them we went. Harry's vacation
enabled him to be with us, and we had a delightful summer. It was
good to be on the shores of Long Island Sound.

In the autumn, not knowing what next was in store for us, I
placed my dear little Katharine at the Convent of the Sacred
Heart at Kenwood on the Hudson, that she might be able to
complete her education in one place, and in the care of those
lovely, gentle and refined ladies of that order.

Shortly after that, Captain Jack was ordered to David's Island,
New York Harbor (now called Fort Slocum), where we spent four
happy and uninterrupted years, in the most constant intercourse
with my dear brother and sister.

Old friends were coming and going all the time, and it seemed so
good to us to be living in a place where this was possible.

Captain Summerhayes was constructing officer and had a busy life,
with all the various sorts of building to be done there.

David's Island was then an Artillery Post, and there were several
batteries stationed there. (Afterwards it became a recruiting
station.) The garrison was often entirely changed. At one time,
General Henry C. Cook was in command. He and his charming
Southern wife added so much to the enjoyment of the post. Then
came our old friends the Van Vliets of Santa Fe days; and Dr. and
Mrs. Valery Havard, who are so well known in the army, and then
Colonel Carl Woodruff and Mrs. Woodruff, whom we all liked so
much, and dear Doctor Julian Cabell, and others, who completed a
delightful garrison.

And we had a series of informal dances and invited the
distinguished members of the artist colony from New Rochelle, and
it was at one of these dances that I first met Frederic
Remington. I had long admired his work and had been most anxious
to meet him. As a rule, Frederic did not attend any social
functions, but he loved the army, and as Mrs. Remington was fond
of social life, they were both present at our first little
invitation dance.

About the middle of the evening I noticed Mr. Remington sitting
alone and I crossed the hall and sat down beside him. I then told
him how much I had loved his work and how it appealed to all army
folks, and how glad I was to know him, and I suppose I said many
other things such as literary men and painters and players often
have to hear from enthusiastic women like myself. However,
Frederic seemed pleased, and made some modest little speech and
then fell into an abstracted silence, gazing on the great flag
which was stretched across the hall at one end, and from behind
which some few soldiers who were going to assist in serving the
supper were passing in and out. I fell in with his mood
immediately, as he was a person with whom formality was
impossible, and said: "What are you looking at, Mr. Remington?"
He replied, turning upon me his round boyish face and his blue
eyes gladdening, "I was just thinking I wished I was behind in
there where those blue jackets are--you know--behind that flag
with the soldiers--those are the men I like to study, you know, I
don't like all this fuss and feathers of society"--then, blushing
at his lack of gallantry, he added: "It's all right, of course,
pretty women and all that, and I suppose you think I'm dreadful
and--do you want me to dance with you--that's the proper thing
here isn't it?" Whereupon, he seized me in his great arms and
whirled me around at a pace I never dreamed of, and, once around,
he said, "that's enough of this thing, isn't it, let's sit down,
I believe I'm going to like you, though I'm not much for women."
I said "You must come over here often;" and he replied, "You've
got a lot of jolly good fellows over here and I will do it."

Afterwards, the Remingtons and ourselves became the closest
friends. Mrs. Remington's maiden name was Eva Caton, and after
the first few meetings, she became "little Eva" to me--and if
ever there was an embodiment of that gentle lovely name and what
it implies, it is this woman, the wife of the great artist, who
has stood by him through all the reverses of his early life and
been, in every sense, his guiding star.

And now began visits to the studio, a great room he had built on
to his house at New Rochelle. It had an enormous fire place where
great logs were burned, and the walls were hung with the most
rare and wonderful Indian curios. There he did all the painting
which has made him famous in the last twenty years, and all the
modelling which has already become so well known and would have
eventually made him a name as a great sculptor. He always worked
steadily until three o'clock and then there was a walk or game of
tennis or a ride. After dinner, delightful evenings in the
studio.

Frederic was a student and a deep thinker. He liked to solve all
questions for himself and did not accept readily other men's
theories. He thought much on religious subjects and the future
life, and liked to compare the Christian religion with the
religions of Eastern countries, weighing them one against the
other with fairness and clear logic.

And so we sat, many evenings into the night, Frederic and Jack
stretched in their big leather chairs puffing away at their
pipes, Eva with her needlework,and myself a rapt listener:
wondering at this man of genius, who could work with his creative
brush all day long and talk with the eloquence of a learned
Doctor of Divinity half the night.

During the time we were stationed at Davids Island, Mr. Remington
and Jack made a trip to the Southwest, where they shot the
peccary (wild hog) in Texas and afterwards blue quail and other
game in Mexico. Artist and soldier, they got on famously together
notwithstanding the difference in their ages.

And now he was going to try his hand at a novel, a real romance.
We talked a good deal about the little Indian boy, and I got to
love White Weasel long before he appeared in print as John
Ermine.The book came out after we had left New Rochelle--but I
received a copy from him, and wrote him my opinion of it, which
was one of unstinted praise. But it did not surprise me to learn
that he did not consider it a success from a financial point of
view.

"You see," he said a year afterwards, "that sort of thing does
not interest the public. What they want,"--here he began to mimic
some funny old East Side person, and both hands
gesticulating--"is a back yard and a cabbage patch and a cook
stove and babies' clothes drying beside it, you see, Mattie," he
said. "They don't want to know anything about the Indian or the
half-breed, or what he thinks or believes." And then he went off
into one of his irresistible tirades combining ridicule and abuse
of the reading public, in language such as only Frederic
Remington could use before women and still retain his dignity.
"Well, Frederic," I said, "I will try to recollect that, when I
write my experiences of Army Life."

In writing him my opinion of his book the year before, I had
said, "In fact, I am in love with John Ermine." The following
Christmas he sent me the accompanying card.

Now the book was dramatized and produced, with Hackett as John
Ermine, at the Globe Theatre in September of 1902--the hottest
weather ever on record in Boston at that season. Of course seats
were reserved for us; we were living at Nantucket that year, and
we set sail at noon to see the great production. We snatched a
bite of supper at a near-by hotel in Boston and hurried to the
theatre, but being late, had some difficulty in getting our
seats.

The curtain was up and there sat Hackett, not with long yellow
hair (which was the salient point in the half-breed scout) but
rather well-groomed, looking more like a parlor Indian than a
real live half-breed, such as all we army people knew. I thought
"this will never do."

The house was full, Hackett did the part well, and the audience
murmured on going out: "a very artistic success." But the play
was too mystical, too sad. It would have suited the "New Theatre"
patrons better. I wrote him from Nantucket and criticized one or
two minor points, such as the 1850 riding habits of the women,
which were slouchy and unbecoming and made the army people look
like poor emigrants and I received this letter in reply:

WEBSTER AVENUE,
NEW ROCHELLE, N. Y.

My dear Mrs. S.,

Much obliged for your talk--it is just what we want--proper
impressions.

I fought for that long hair but the management said the audience
has got to, have some Hackett--why I could not see--but he is a
matinee idol and that long with the box office.

We'll dress Katherine up better.

The long rehearsals at night nearly killed me--I was completely
done up and came home on train Monday in that terrific heat and
now I am in the hands of a doctor. Imagine me a week without
sleep.

Hope that fight took Jack back to his youth. For the stage I
don't think it was bad. We'll get grey shirts on their men later.

The old lady arrives to-day--she has been in Gloversville.

I think the play will go--but, we may have to save Ermine. The
public is a funny old cat and won't stand for the mustard.

Well, glad you had a good time and of course you can't charge me
up with the heat.

Yours,
FREDERICK R.


Remington made a trip to the Yellowstone Park and this is what he
wrote to Jack. His letters were never dated.

My dear Summerhayes:

Say if you could get a few puffs of this cold air out here you
would think you were full of champagne water. I feel like a d---
kid--

I thought I should never be young again--but here I am only 14
years old--my whiskers are falling out.

Capt. Brown of the 1st cay. wishes to be remembered to you both.
He is Park Superintendent. Says if you will come out here he will
take care of you and he would.

Am painting and doing some good work. Made a "govt. six" yesterday.

In the course of time, he bought an Island in the St. Lawrence
and they spent several summers there.

On the occasion of my husband accepting a detail in active
service in Washington at the Soldiers' Home, after his
retirement, he received the following letter.


INGLENEUK, CHIPPEWA BAY, N. Y.

My dear Jack--

So there you are--and I'm d--- glad you are so nicely fixed. It's
the least they could do for you and you ought to be able to enjoy
it for ten years before they find any spavins on you if you will
behave yourself, but I guess you will drift into that Army and
Navy Club and round up with a lot of those old alkalied
prairie-dogs whom neither Indians nor whiskey could kill and Mr.
Gout will take you over his route to Arlington.

I'm on the water wagon and I feel like a young mule. I am never
going to get down again to try the walking. If I lose my whip I
am going to drive right on and leave it.

We are having a fine summer and I may run over to Washington this
winter and throw my eye over you to see how you go. We made a
trip down to New Foundland but saw nothing worth while. I guess I
am getting to be an old swat--I can't see anything that didn't
happen twenty years ago,

Y--
FREDERICK R.


At the close of the year just gone, this great soul passed from
the earth leaving a blank in our lives that nothing can ever
fill. Passed into the great Beyond whose mysteries were always
troubling his mind. Suddenly and swiftly the call came--the hand
was stilled and the restless spirit took its flight.




CHAPTER XXXIII

DAVID'S ISLAND

At Davids' Island the four happiest years of my army life glided
swiftly away.

There was a small steam tug which made regular and frequent trips
over to New Rochelle and we enjoyed our intercourse with the
artists and players who lived there.

Zogbaum, whose well known pictures of sailors and warships and
soldiers had reached us even in the far West, and whose charming
family added so much to our pleasure.

Julian Hawthorne with his daughter Hildegarde, now so well known
as a literary critic; Henry Loomis Nelson, whose fair daughter
Margaret came to our little dances and promptly fell in love with
a young, slim, straight Artillery officer. A case of love at
first sight, followed by a short courtship and a beautiful little
country wedding at Miss Nelson's home on the old Pelham Road,
where Hildegarde Hawthorne was bridesmaid in a white dress and
scarlet flowers (the artillery colors) and many famous literary
people from everywhere were present.

Augustus Thomas, the brilliant playwright, whose home was near
the Remingtons on Lathers' Hill, and whose wife, so young, so
beautiful and so accomplished, made that home attractive and
charming.

Francis Wilson, known to the world at large, first as a singer in
comic opera, and now as an actor and author, also lived in New
Rochelle, and we came to have the honor of being numbered
amongst his friends. A devoted husband and kind father, a man of
letters and a book lover, such is the man as we knew him in his
home and with his family.

And now came the delicious warm summer days. We persuaded the
Quartermaster to prop up the little row of old bathing houses
which had toppled over with the heavy winter gales. There were
several bathing enthusiasts amongst us; we had a pretty fair
little stretch of beach which was set apart for the officers'
families, and now what bathing parties we had! Kemble, the
illustrator, joined our ranks--and on a warm summer morning the
little old Tug Hamilton was gay with the artists and their
families, the players and writers of plays, and soon you could
see the little garrison hastening to the beach and the swimmers
running down the long pier, down the run-way and off head first
into the clear waters of the Sound. What a company was that! The
younger and the older ones all together, children and their
fathers and mothers, all happy, all well, all so gay, and we of
the frontier so enamored of civilization and what it brought us!
There were no intruders and ah! those were happy days. Uncle Sam
seemed to be making up to us for what we had lost during all
those long years in the wild places.

Then Augustus Thomas wrote the play of "Arizona" and we went to
New York to see it put on, and we sat in Mr. Thomas' box and saw
our frontier life brought before us with startling reality.

And so one season followed another. Each bringing its pleasures,
and then came another lovely wedding, for my brother Harry gave
up his bachelor estate and married one of the nicest and
handsomest girls in Westchester County, and their home in New
Rochelle was most attractive. My son was at the Stevens Institute
and both he and Katharine were able to spend their vacations at
David's Island, and altogether, our life there was near to
perfection.

We were doomed to have one more tour in the West, however, and
this time it was the Middle West.

For in the autumn of '96, Jack was ordered to Jefferson
Barracks, Missouri, on construction work.

Jefferson Barracks is an old and historic post on the Mississippi
River, some ten miles south of St. Louis. I could not seem to
take any interest in the post or in the life there. I could not
form new ties so quickly, after our life on the coast, and I did
not like the Mississippi Valley, and St. Louis was too far from
the post, and the trolley ride over there too disagreeable for
words. After seven months of just existing (on my part) at
Jefferson Barracks, Jack received an order for Fort Myer, the
end, the aim, the dream of all army people. Fort Myer is about
three miles from Washington, D. C.

We lost no time in getting there and were soon settled in our
pleasant quarters. There was some building to be done, but the
duty was comparatively light, and we entered with considerable
zest into the social life of the Capital. We expected to remain
there for two years, at the end of which time Captain Summerhayes
would be retired and Washington would be our permanent home.

But alas! our anticipation was never to be realized, for, as we
all know, in May of 1898, the Spanish War broke out, and my
husband was ordered to New York City to take charge of the Army
Transport Service, under Colonel Kimball.

No delay was permitted to him, so I was left behind, to pack up
the household goods and to dispose of our horses and carriages as
best I could.

The battle of Manila Bay had changed the current of our lives,
and we were once more adrift.

The young Cavalry officers came in to say good-bye to Captain
Jack: every one was busy packing up his belongings for an
indefinite period and preparing for the field. We all felt the
undercurrent of sadness and uncertainty, but "a good health" and
"happy return" was drunk all around, and Jack departed at
midnight for his new station and new duties.

The next morning at daybreak we were awakened by the tramp, tramp
of the Cavalry, marching out of the post, en route for Cuba.

We peered out of the windows and watched the troops we loved so
well, until every man and horse had vanished from our sight.

Fort Myer was deserted and our hearts were sad.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* *

My sister Harriet, who was visiting us at that time, returned
from her morning walk, and as she stepped upon the porch, she
said: "Well! of all lonesome places I ever saw, this is the worst
yet. I am going to pack my trunk and leave. I came to visit an
army post, but not an old women's home or an orphan asylum: that
is about all this place is now. I simply cannot stay!"

Whereupon, she proceeded immediately to carry out her resolution,
and I was left behind with my young daughter, to finish and close
up our life at Fort Myer.

To describe the year which followed, that strenuous year in New
York, is beyond my power.

That summer gave Jack his promotion to a Major, but the anxiety
and the terrible strain of official work broke down his health
entirely, and in the following winter the doctors sent him to
Florida, to recuperate.

After six weeks in St. Augustine, we returned to New York. The
stress of the war was over; the Major was ordered to Governor's
Island as Chief Quartermaster, Department of the East, and in the
following year he was retired, by operation of the law, at the
age limit.

I was glad to rest from the incessant changing of stations; the
life had become irksome to me, in its perpetual unrest. I was
glad to find a place to lay my head, and to feel that we were not
under orders; to find and to keep a roof-tree, under which we
could abide forever.

In 1903, by an act of Congress, the veterans of the Civil War,
who had served continuously for thirty years or more were given
an extra grade, so now my hero wears with complacency the silver
leaf of the Lieutenant-Colonel, and is enjoying the quiet life of
a civilian.

But that fatal spirit of unrest from which I thought to escape,
and which ruled my life for so many years, sometimes asserts its
power, and at those times my thoughts turn back to the days when
we were all Lieutenants together, marching across the deserts and
mountains of Arizona; back to my friends of the Eighth Infantry,
that historic regiment, whose officers and men fought before the
walls of Chapultepec and Mexico, back to my friends of the Sixth
Cavalry, to the days at Camp MacDowell, where we slept under the
stars, and watched the sun rise from behind the Four Peaks of the
MacDowell Mountains: where we rode the big cavalry horses over
the sands of the Maricopa desert, swung in our hammocks under the
ramadas; swam in the red waters of the Verde River, ate canned
peaches, pink butter and commissary hams, listened for the
scratching of the centipedes as they scampered around the edges
of our canvas-covered floors, found scorpions in our slippers,
and rattlesnakes under our beds.

The old post is long since abandoned, but the Four Peaks still
stand, wrapped in their black shadows by night, and their purple
colors by day, waiting for the passing of the Apache and the
coming of the white man, who shall dig his canals in those arid
plains, and build his cities upon the ruins of the ancient Aztec
dwellings.

The Sixth Cavalry, as well as the Eighth Infantry, has seen many
vicissitudes since those days. Some of our gallant Captains and
Lieutenants have won their stars, others have been slain in
battle.

Dear, gentle Major Worth received wounds in the Cuban campaign,
which caused his death, but he wore his stars before he obeyed
the "last call."

The gay young officers of Angel Island days hold dignified
commands in the Philippines, Cuba, and Alaska.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * *

My early experiences were unusually rough. None of us seek such
experiences, but possibly they bring with them a sort of
recompense, in that simple comforts afterwards seem, by contrast,
to be the greatest luxuries.

I am glad to have known the army: the soldiers, the line, and the
Staff; it is good to think of honor and chivalry, obedience to
duty and the pride of arms; to have lived amongst men whose
motives were unselfish and whose aims were high; amongst men who
served an ideal; who stood ready, at the call of their country,
to give their lives for a Government which is, to them, the best
in the world.

Sometimes I hear the still voices of the Desert: they seem to be
calling me through the echoes of the Past. I hear, in fancy, the
wheels of the ambulance crunching the small broken stones of the
malapais, or grating swiftly over the gravel of the smooth white
roads of the river-bottoms. I hear the rattle of the ivory rings
on the harness of the six-mule team; I see the soldiers marching
on ahead; I see my white tent, so inviting after a long day's
journey.

But how vain these fancies! Railroad and automobile have
annihilated distance, the army life of those years is past and
gone, and Arizona, as we knew it, has vanished from the face of
the earth.

THE END.

APPENDIX.

NANTUCKET ISLAND, June 1910.

When, a few years ago, I determined to write my recollections of
life in the army, I was wholly unfamiliar with the methods of
publishers, and the firm to whom I applied to bring out my book,
did not urge upon me the advisability of having it electrotyped,
firstly, because, as they said afterwards, I myself had such a
very modest opinion of my book, and, secondly because they
thought a book of so decidedly personal a character would not
reach a sale of more than a few hundred copies at the farthest.
The matter of electrotyping was not even discussed between us.
The entire edition of one thousand copies was exhausted in about
a year, without having been carried on the lists of any
bookseller or advertised in any way except through some circulars
sent by myself to personal friends, and through several excellent
reviews in prominent newspapers.

As the demand for the book continued, I have thought it advisable
to re-issue it, adding a good deal that has come into my mind
since its publication.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * *

It was after the Colonel's retirement that we came to spend the
summers at Nantucket, and I began to enjoy the leisure that never
comes into the life of an army woman during the active service of
her husband. We were no longer expecting sudden orders, and I was
able to think quietly over the events of the past.

My old letters which had been returned to me really gave me the
inspiration to write the book and as I read them over, the people
and the events therein described were recalled vividly to my
mind--events which I had forgotten, people whom I had
forgotten--events and people all crowded out of my memory for
many years by the pressure of family cares, and the succession of
changes in our stations, by anxiety during Indian campaigns, and
the constant readjustment of my mind to new scenes and new
friends.

And so, in the delicious quiet of the Autumn days at Nantucket,
when the summer winds had ceased to blow and the frogs had ceased
their pipings in the salt meadows, and the sea was wondering
whether it should keep its summer blue or change into its winter
grey, I sat down at my desk and began to write my story.

Looking out over the quiet ocean in those wonderful November
days, when a peaceful calm brooded over all things, I gathered up
all the threads of my various experiences and wove them together.

But the people and the lands I wrote about did not really exist
for me; they were dream people and dream lands. I wrote of them
as they had appeared to me in those early years, and, strange as
it may seem, I did not once stop to think if the people and the
lands still existed.

For a quarter of a century I had lived in the day that began with
reveille and ended with "Taps."

Now on this enchanted island, there was no reveille to awaken us
in the morning, and in the evening the only sound we could hear
was the "ruck" of the waves on the far outer shores and the sad
tolling of the bell buoy when the heaving swell of the ocean came
rolling over the bar.

And so I wrote, and the story grew into a book which was
published and sent out to friends and family.

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