The Sweetheart of Company Q
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

My father had me join the army. He said that it would make a man of me, because I wasn’t man enough to work the land like him and my brother. It turns out that he was wrong – about making me a man, that is.

The recruitment people came through our town, and he said to them – “We really appreciate the work that cavalry is doing around here, what with the Indians and all. Our family wants to do our bit, but what with the work that needs to be done I can only spare my youngest, Dwight. But this young fella, he is smart and I think he will really appreciate the army life.”

I think I got the message. Pa didn’t want me so why would I want to stay? In any case it was too late to do much about it – they had me in blue and they had me doing drills and such that same day.

I never thought of myself as a soldier, but the first thing you learn is that the army gives you a home and that is what I needed. All you have to do is march here, and march there, and clean your gun, and fire your gun, and fold your blanket, just the same as everybody else. I could do that. It was just that I was not much suited for life in the saddle and the drill sergeant realized that in the first week.

“What can you do, Kid?” he said. I think he sort of liked me. I didn’t say much and I was tidy, but I was smallish and weak yet still willing.

He suggested that I become Assistant Company Clerk to Corporal Blades, running administration for Company Q of the US 3rd Cavalry Regiment stationed in West Texas. The company was under the command of Captain James Dundass. I was happy enough, but it was not long before I found my true vocation. I was in the Captain’s office looking at a map on the wall and I noticed that Promise Peak was in the wrong place, so I fixed it. The Captain asked who had moved that hill and I owned up.

“I know where that is, Captain, because it is on the same line parallel to these other hills, running north at 300 degrees on the compass.” He could see I was right.

“Can you draw me a new map?” he asked. So I did, and I got my own desk.

“The army needs maps, Dwight,” he said. He liked me too.

I was doing such good work that Captain Dundass basically let me do as I liked, including the style of my uniform. I loved my M1872 blouse – such a nice jacket, but of course I kept it hung up while I was at work at my map table. I liked my pants tight and my shirt loose, and I was very attached to my neckerchief, even wearing it indoors. The standard issue was yellow, but other troops wore red. I had both in a size a little too large for my slim neck, and would choose either or. People said that I brightened up the blockhouse. I liked that.

Captain Dundass did not insist that I cut my hair. Some officers had long hair (the late General Custer comes to mind) but an enlisted man should have short hair. It was just that I did have very attractive hair. The Captain was not the only one to remark on it.

I was still a part of Q Company and people would often call me “The Sweetheart of Company Q” – somebody to remind tough and dusty soldiers of what they were fighting for, even though that was not what I was. I liked being special. Other people liked it too.

The next thing I knew was that our company was being moved to Fort Thorn in New Mexico. That was February 1861, the month that the southern states left the Union. Things were going to get nasty as a series of incidents out East had proven. Texas became a rebel state.

I am not sure that there was a single map of the New Mexico and Arizona Territories those days, and certainly there were changes from that time on. The Federal government divided New Mexico and Arizona by a line north to south, but the rebels drew the line east to west. I needed to recognize all boundaries, including the claims by Indian bands.

It did not help that the war in these territories was between not two but three sides. The Apache laughed when they saw the white men fighting each other, and then they waged their own war. Both the US and the rebels lost battles.

We had to evacuate Fort Thorn when the treacherous General Sibley (who had been Captain Dundass’s commanding officer in the US Army and resigned to join the rebels) appeared at the head of a confederate column. Captain Dundass took us north to Fort Goodwin and then I was posted to Fort Whipple, where my job was to draw maps.

I was good at my job so the army tolerated my “eccentricities” and I have to say that this may have encouraged me to press further. Fort Whipple was not just a bastion but a major town – in fact the capital of the reduced loyal Arizona at the time. On occasion when I chose to go to town not in uniform I could choose to wear whatever I liked, and I have to say that I experimented a little.

By July 1862 Federal Forces had driven the confederates out of what their map called “Confederate Arizona” but by then we were fully at war with the Indians. I would like to think that I had a part to play in the two victories of the US cavalry against the Apaches at Mount Gray (April 7, 1864) and Doubtful Canyon (May 3, 1864) because it was the maps that I drew in March that helped win the battles I never witnessed. That was because I was wounded in the service of my country.

Captain Dundass requested accurate maps of the Sierra Bonita Mountains for the Californians who had joined Union forces from out west. He asked me whether I would go south with his Indian scout, who was known as “Iron Jack”. It was not something I looked forward to, but I was a soldier and I followed orders, especially if Captain Dundass was giving them.

I had a special hat made for the journey. It had a very broad brim and It could be pinned up at the side or the front with a steel badge. I cut a dashing figure in my unique uniform, if I say so myself.

I had time to ride alongside Iron Jack and to learn his story. He was a “dog soldier” of the Cheyenne tribe of northeast Colorado, one of a number of a group of warriors who had given up family life for the study of war and killing. But he said that he did have a wife named “Moonbeam” who he said was very much like me.

“But a wife is a woman, so how is she like me?” I asked him.

“She is not a woman either,” said he. “But she has the spirit of a woman inside her, just as you do, and I love the spirit.”

I have to say that got me to thinking as we rode. Did I have the spirit of a woman inside me? If I did that might explain a lot of who I was – how I dressed and how I received my pleasures.

Jack and I scouted the country, me with my compass, protractor and plane table, and him with a pole and tape. It was when we were returning that we were attacked by a small group of Apache Indians and I was injured. Jack killed them all. I have never seen such ferocity, and I understood how the Dog Soldiers had won their reputation. But he was tender too, when he was tending to my wounds using all the traditional medicines that are known to the Indian peoples.

“This is not an accident but fate at work,” he said of my injury. “My beloved Moonbeam had to do this to herself, but for you the gods have decided and done their work for you. The medicines that I have applied and had you drink are those that Moonbeam would use.”

He took me back to Captain Dundass. He saved my life. I am ashamed to say that after fighting with the cavalry at Doubtful Canyon he left the army to return to the dog soldiers and five years later he died at the Battle of Summit Springs in Colorado.

I left the army too. Captain Dundass said that I was entitled to be invalided out even though I could still walk, although riding anything but sidesaddle was now no longer possible. Sidesaddle is, of course, how some women ride, so I guess like Iron Jack had been saying, fate was pushing me away from all things male. The inner woman was now very much to be worn on the outside.

I went by the name of Dulcie, because it seemed nicer than Dwight. But I never claimed to be anything other than what I was. I let people judge me as they found me, which is pretty much been the way I always lived my life. It seemed to me that only my father had me wrong, but he was lost to me and that caused me no sorrow. Everybody else assumed that I was a woman, and I would respond to them as was expected of a woman, which is again, pretty much the way I lived my life. It had served me well and it continued to do that.

I was still aged barely 22 years, and as a woman I received even more attention than I had as the half a woman I had been as “The Sweetheart of Company Q”. In those days the territories were hopelessly short of any women, let alone unattached young and pretty ones. I have to admit that I took full advantage of my good looks, but I was determined not to take up one of the many offers to be a saloon girl. I simply accepted small favors while I undertook respectable work.

People would say that I was keeping myself pure for marriage, but the truth is that I was keeping them ignorant of my true status. It was more for convenience than out of any shame. Around any garrison of the US Cavalry, I knew that I had protectors if needed.

But I did not belong in such places. It was better for Dulcie to start afresh. So, I settled in Tucson, Arizona where I did illustrations for the newspaper The Arizona Citizen. But I never lost my love of maps. In time I had the great joy to meet James McConnell, who I believe is the greatest cartographer America has ever produced, and his friend Frank Pezolt who was able to turn Jim’s maps into works of art. They offered me a job and I took it with gusto.

Jim and I shared a love of maps, and in time it had to become a love for one another. I was duty bound to tell him my story, but after his initial shock he asked me to marry him.

“I have a huge country to map,” he said. “But with “The Sweetheart of Company Q” by my side it will be twice the joy to do it.” How could a woman say no? How could I, who was not that, say no?

I did ask whether in our travels we could find our way to the Southern Cheyenne Indian Reservation near El Reno, Oklahoma where I was to meet Iron Jack’s wife Moonbeam. Our embrace was a special moment. He had spoken of me.

“A man like our Jack could make a woman of anybody, just by entering them” she said.

“He was special, I agree,” I said. “But he never did that to me. For me he just finished the work of a whole company of men.”

And that is enough said about that.

The End

Author’s Note: Special thanks to Eric for his fact checking on American history for this one. Thanks also to Erin, for the idea. The work of James McConnell can be found in the Library of Congress, and the artistic renderings of maps into vistas by Frank Pezolt are worth looking into.