During their separation, while Autie hunted the last of the Cheyenne, there was a long period of no correspondence, as if he had fallen off the edge of the earth. On his return, he dared to chide Libbie for her coldness. Their marriage had become so strained it hardly mattered if they were together or apart. Perceived inattention, jealousy over causes both real and imagined; more absences by his traveling back east, leaving her alone; rumors of women both while he was away and right under her nose at Leavenworth, one a married woman no less. Her one surety—their love—taken from her, making it less easy to endure other difficulties.
Then, suddenly, rescue came in the form of a new assignment.
The Plains tribes had been satisfactorily settled on their reservations, and the army was no longer needed. The happiest days of their marriage began when Autie was assigned out of the States to Dakota Territory, one of the most severe, forbidding outposts that existed. None of that mattered to Libbie because it was just the two of them on a train, headed on a grand adventure like in the beginning. The War had formed in them an appetite for movement and activity despite its dangers. Open space was a lure they couldn’t resist.
After Kansas they had been in Kentucky two years, Autie doing policing duties of breaking up the Klan and shutting down illegal distilleries. It was dull and grinding work, not what he had been trained for. The only salvation that they both indulged in was a love of horseracing; for a while they even considered becoming breeders.
Autie was elated to be returning to the wide-open spaces of the frontier as commander of the reconstituted 7th Cavalry, which had been spread across the South. They would guard the engineers of the Northern Pacific Railway as it surveyed routes to the Yellowstone. What might have made another man tremble—the fearsomeness of the warring Sioux—made him giddy.
It was Libbie’s observation that great military leaders, from Napoleon down to Sheridan, excelled in winning wars but were seldom interested in the monotony of keeping the ensuing peace. So it was with Autie. When the new orders came he ran crashing through the house, threw a chair, and broke it in his elation. He picked her up off her feet and swung her around to a lazy waltz rhythm of his own making. They played that day like children, giggling at meals, making faces at each other until finally Eliza complained.
“I’ve had enough of you two acting undignified.”
Dakota Territory was home to the most rebellious of the remaining tribes, the Lakota Sioux. Subduing them would elevate Autie’s status as nothing else had been capable of doing those last years since the Washita battle.
They would go off and leave the unsavory, less happy parts of their lives behind. If she had learned anything from Autie it was the possibility of constant reinvention. When Tom came to celebrate the news, she perched on the dining room table where Autie had lifted her to be out of harm’s way while they played at “romps.” The dogs joined in, yipping and running in wild circles from parlor to dining room to kitchen.
* * *
ON THE TRAIN TRIP to Dakota, the whole regiment of nine hundred men, and as many accompanying horses, with matching provisions and luggage, weighed the train down so that they crawled slowly, heavily through the land. The leisurely pace was further compounded by long stops during which the horses were disembarked, watered, and exercised. Soldiers took advantage of the stops to walk and stretch, or if near a town, to forage for food.
At one such stop, they commandeered a diner, all at once filling the long communal tables and overwhelming the tiny kitchen. There was only a short time to eat and make it back to the train again. There being no separate table for servants, Autie, Eliza, and Libbie sat together, the seating arrangement more of happenstance than principle, and waited for their supper of chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes.
When the owner of the establishment, a stout man in his middle years wearing greasy coveralls, came out, they paid little attention. The man portentously walked up to Eliza and told her to leave. The room quieted. Although the War had been won years ago, people’s attitudes, especially in the more provincial parts, had not.
Autie looked down hard at the table as if he were studying the wood grain.
“We are hungry and short of time. Be a gentleman and move off.”
“I will not have colored eat at my tables. It’s the law here.”
“My observation is that you provide no table for servants. The girl has to eat.”
“Not my problem.”
“She is traveling with the military. She is my charge. She will dine with us, and only then will we leave.”
Eliza had stopped breathing and looked ready to pass out. She began to rise.
“It’s okay, General…” she whispered.
“Sit down!”
Autie grabbed her arm without gentleness and pulled her back down.
“You can all leave, far as I’m concerned. Suit yourself. Take the nigger with you,” the owner said.
Eliza was up, ready to run from the establishment. Autie grabbed her and forced her back down in her seat. His face had gone dark red.
“You are talking to the brigadier general of the Seventh Cavalry, sir.”
The owner grew rigid as a board.
“Get her up, or I will do it for you.”
Libbie melted, petrified in her seat. She put her hand over Eliza’s and felt both of their tremblings.
The owner made a move toward Eliza, and Autie leaped to his feet as if on a spring. His face was frozen in the most fearsome expression she had ever seen on him. Was this the side of Autie hidden from her, the part that existed in battle? The entire restaurant of soldiers sprang up with him, leaving only the two women seated. The owner stopped. Looking around, he made a quick calculation and without a word walked back to the kitchen. It was a miracle the man lived and his establishment wasn’t razed.
“Good,” Autie said, rubbing his hands together. “Now that bit of unpleasantness is behind us, let’s eat.”
After the food arrived, the incident entirely forgotten, Autie ate with relish, joking with the men while Eliza and Libbie sat stunned, not touching their food.
“Eat up, girls. It’s a long afternoon ahead,” he said.
The meat tasted like cardboard in Libbie’s mouth, the potatoes like paste.
As they left the establishment, Autie shouted to the kitchen, where the owner had sequestered himself.
“Two meals were unsatisfactory!” He grabbed a full cherry pie off the counter. “We are taking this in lieu.”
After that day, Eliza would never allow a word to be spoken against Autie.
* * *
ON THE MANY train stops they used the opportunity to also take the dogs out to stretch their legs. Horses, dogs, men—the scene resembled nothing so much as a carnival in flight. People in the surrounding areas stopped and gawked at them, the passing of a train still novel, or came to find out their destination. The travelers represented the larger world to these people and stood for the benevolence of the faraway government in Washington, which had promised to make the land safe.
More often than not, they brought gifts of food, grateful for the army’s protection and cognizant of the hardship of such a posting. When they realized Autie was on board, it became cause for outright celebration, as he was considered a hero for his actions on the plains. Sometimes as the train passed small towns, guns would be fired in the air, and crowds would cheer them on.
* * *
MANY WOMEN SET their hearts on an extravagant gift for their birthday, but Libbie was never such a one. That particular year the day fell during their train trip so there was even less possible in the name of preparation. What did happen was that Eliza managed to use the engine’s bed of coals to produce a dinner of steaks and potatoes out of thin air.
There she came, beaming at her cunning, carrying a board and tea towels. She ordered Autie and Libbie to sit on opposite benches facing each other, their knees forming the “legs” of the table. The rolling of the train, the pressure from cutting the meat, everything threatened to tip the table one way or another. When Autie reached for the breadbasket, the whole thing almost flipped over, water glasses sloshing big drops on the pats of butter, and then their laughter made it worse.
For dessert Eliza presented a large plate of macaroons, Libbie’s favorite, and peppermint iceberg puffs, favored by Autie. She stood proudly while they ate them, describing how at a stop that morning Autie had hurried off the train and into the village investigating bakeries, sampling at each place until he found the very best ones.
By the time Eliza met him with her bag of groceries there was a long line of boys who had heard the famous Boy General was in town and followed him, a little disappointed that he was simply a man in search of macaroons to please his wife, not the fierce Indian fighter of the newspapers, always mounted on a rearing stallion and flashing his saber.