6. ARMES, George A. Ups and Downs of an Army
Officer. Washington, 1900. xix [1] 784 pp., engraved
frontispiece portrait, numerous illustrations (some
photographic). Large 8vo, original brown pictorial cloth
stamped in silver. Minor shelf wear, generally fine and
bright, much better condition than usually found.
First
edition. Eberstadt 115:95: "Adventures on the Colorado,
Texas, and Kansas border from 1866 to 1881. Details the
march from Fort Wallace to Fort Sedgwick; campaign against
the Sioux; Indian campaigns on the Sabine; the great
Buffalo Hunt of 1868; Fort Dodge in ’69, etc. Col.
Armes spent some twenty-odd years fighting red men on his
front and red tape to his rear. In both pursuits he was
eminently successful. The quisquilious quibblings of the
army bureaucracy are described with a minuteness and
enthusiastic eclat quite in keeping with the tempo
of the Colonel’s accounts of his forays against the
savages further to the west. And rightly so—both were
after his scalp." Graff 86. Howes A316. Nevins, Civil
War Books I, p. 72. Rader 171. WLA, A Literary
History of the West, p. 108: "Honors for the most
unusual memoir certainly must go to George A. Armes, an
officer who was court-martialed seven times....Ups and
Downs gives the researcher an insight into a side of
the army that is not usually exhibited." Includes Texas
material from San Antonio, Abilene, Fort Stockton, Fort
McKavett, Fort Concho, and other locations.
($150-300)