YOUNG: Well, for some of them, it would have been a place where the captain,
who was the commander, would have been living in a two room base-like stucco,
or adobe house, with limited windows. That means no inside kitchen, no inside
plumbing. You had to go down to the Rio Grande, which was a mile away, to get
water. I mean, can you visualize trying to wash clothes in that type of
situation or even cook food? And of course, the desert can be beautiful
certain times of the year, probably from December to about April.
But I can just visualize July and August and September out there in the
New Mexican desert, I mean it just must have been unbearable. Pinky
periodically, of course, would take off and go back east, but at the same time,
the fact that she was willing to stay with her husband is one of the things
that gains my admiration for the woman. I don't think that there would have
been many women who would have lived in those conditions -- aristocratic women
-- that would have lived in those conditions. And that Fort Selden was
particularly isolated, probably the most isolated, army post in the western
frontier. And of course, at that fort, because it was so small, only one
company of men -- about 100 men, it's unlikely that she ever had any women to
socialize with. Because of the officers and the ranking of society, she
couldn't have gone in and socialized with, say, the sergeant's wife. She would
have had to have another officer's wife there. And I would assume that there
had been many a day when she was just bored out of her mind. I mean, the
captain had something to do. The boys had something to do. They could go out
and play and learn how to ride and shoot and chase rabbits and things like
that. But what she did all day long, I don't know, cooked and cleaned, I would
have thought. But still, no one to talk to, and those living conditions, that
was a harsh life. Very harsh.
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