Vanished Arizona: Recollections of the Army Life by a New England WomanSummerhayes, Martha
History
Vanished Arizona: Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman
Summerhayes, Martha
Arizona -- Biography; Arizona -- Description and travel; Summerhayes, Martha, 1844-1926; United States. Army -- Military life
Under the burning mid-day sun of Arizona, on May 16th, our six good
mules, with the long whip cracking about their ears, and the ambulance
rattling merrily along, brought us into the village of Ehrenberg. There
was one street, so called, which ran along on the river bank, and then a
few cross streets straggling back into the desert, with here and there
a low adobe casa. The Government house stood not far from the river, and
as we drove up to the entrance the same blank white walls stared at me.
It did not look so much like a prison, after all, I thought. Captain
Bernard, the man whom I had pitied, stood at the doorway, to greet
us, and after we were inside the house he had some biscuits and wine
brought; and then the change of stations was talked of, and he said to
me, "Now, please make yourself at home. The house is yours; my things
are virtually packed up, and I leave in a day or two. There is a soldier
here who can stay with you; he has been able to attend to my simple
wants. I eat only twice a day; and here is Charley, my Indian, who
fetches the water from the river and does the chores. I dine generally
at sundown."
A shadow fell across the sunlight in the doorway; I looked around and
there stood "Charley," who had come in with the noiseless step of the
moccasined foot. I saw before me a handsome naked Cocopah Indian, who
wore a belt and a gee-string. He seemed to feel at home and began to
help with the bags and various paraphernalia of ambulance travellers.
He looked to be about twenty-four years old. His face was smiling and
friendly and I knew I should like him.
The house was a one-story adobe. It formed two sides of a hollow square;
the other two sides were a high wall, and the Government freight-house
respectively. The courtyard was partly shaded by a ramada and partly
open to the hot sun. There was a chicken-yard in one corner of the
inclosed square, and in the centre stood a rickety old pump, which
indicated some sort of a well. Not a green leaf or tree or blade of
grass in sight. Nothing but white sand, as far as one could see, in all
directions.
Inside the house there were bare white walls, ceilings covered with
manta, and sagging, as they always do; small windows set in deep
embrasures, and adobe floors. Small and inconvenient rooms, opening
one into another around two sides of the square. A sort of low veranda
protected by lattice screens, made from a species of slim cactus, called
ocotilla, woven together, and bound with raw-hide, ran around a part of
the house.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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