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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1086 ***
+
+                          [Picture: Book cover]
+
+ [Picture: “Buffalo Bill took me on Soldier Boy to Thunder-Bird’s Camp”]
+
+
+
+
+
+                              A Horse’s Tale
+
+
+                                    BY
+                                Mark Twain
+
+                              ILLUSTRATED BY
+                             LUCIUS HITCHCOCK
+
+                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]
+
+                           LONDON AND NEW YORK
+                            HARPER & BROTHERS
+                           PUBLISHERS .. MCMVII
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                Copyright, 1906, by Harper & Brothers.
+
+                               * * * * *
+
+                         _All rights reserved_
+
+                       Published October, 1907.
+
+                  _Printed in United States of America_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+CHAP.                                                             PAGE
+       I.  SOLDIER BOY—PRIVATELY TO HIMSELF                          1
+      II.  LETTER FROM ROUEN—TO GENERAL ALISON                      12
+     III.  GENERAL ALISON TO HIS MOTHER                             19
+      IV.  CATHY TO HER AUNT MERCEDES                               25
+       V.  GENERAL ALISON TO MERCEDES                               33
+      VI.  SOLDIER BOY AND THE MEXICAN PLUG                         56
+     VII.  SOLDIER BOY AND SHEKELS                                  82
+    VIII.  THE SCOUT-START.  BB AND LIEUTENANT-GENERAL              88
+           ALISON
+      IX.  SOLDIER BOY AND SHEKELS AGAIN                            90
+       X.  GENERAL ALISON AND DORCAS                               100
+      XI.  SEVERAL MONTHS LATER.  ANTONIO AND THORNDIKE            116
+     XII.  MONGREL AND THE OTHER HORSE                             129
+    XIII.  GENERAL ALISON TO HIS MOTHER                            133
+     XIV.  SOLDIER BOY—TO HIMSELF                                  145
+      XV.  GENERAL ALISON TO MRS. DRAKE, THE COLONEL’S WIFE        149
+
+
+
+
+Illustrations
+
+“Buffalo Bill took me on Soldier Boy to                 _Frontispiece_
+Thunder-Bird’s Camp”
+“Look at that file of cats in your chair”                        p. 48
+“Every morning they go clattering down into the                     66
+plain”
+“There was nothing to do but stand by”                              92
+“His strength failed and he fell at her feet”                      150
+
+
+
+
+Acknowledgements
+
+
+Although I have had several opportunities to see a bull-fight, I have
+never seen one; but I needed a bull-fight in this book, and a trustworthy
+one will be found in it.  I got it out of John Hay’s _Castilian Days_,
+reducing and condensing it to fit the requirements of this small story.
+Mr. Hay and I were friends from early times, and if he were still with us
+he would not rebuke me for the liberty I have taken.
+
+The knowledge of military minutiæ exhibited in this book will be found to
+be correct, but it is not mine; I took it from _Army Regulations_, ed.
+1904; _Hardy’s Tactics_—_Cavalry_, revised ed., 1861; and _Jomini’s
+Handbook of Military Etiquette_, West Point ed., 1905.
+
+It would not be honest in me to encourage by silence the inference that I
+composed the Horse’s private bugle-call, for I did not.  I lifted it, as
+Aristotle says.  It is the opening strain in _The Pizzicato_ in _Sylvia_,
+by Delibes.  When that master was composing it he did not know it was a
+bugle-call, it was I that found it out.
+
+Along through the book I have distributed a few anachronisms and unborn
+historical incidents and such things, so as to help the tale over the
+difficult places.  This idea is not original with me; I got it out of
+Herodotus.  Herodotus says, “Very few things happen at the right time,
+and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will
+correct these defects.”
+
+The cats in the chair do not belong to me, but to another.
+
+These are all the exceptions.  What is left of the book is mine.
+
+                                                               MARK TWAIN.
+
+LONE TREE HILL, DUBLIN,
+NEW HAMPSHIRE, _October_, 1905.
+
+
+
+
+Part I
+
+
+I
+SOLDIER BOY—PRIVATELY TO HIMSELF
+
+
+I AM Buffalo Bill’s horse.  I have spent my life under his saddle—with
+him in it, too, and he is good for two hundred pounds, without his
+clothes; and there is no telling how much he does weigh when he is out on
+the war-path and has his batteries belted on.  He is over six feet, is
+young, hasn’t an ounce of waste flesh, is straight, graceful, springy in
+his motions, quick as a cat, and has a handsome face, and black hair
+dangling down on his shoulders, and is beautiful to look at; and nobody
+is braver than he is, and nobody is stronger, except myself.  Yes, a
+person that doubts that he is fine to see should see him in his beaded
+buck-skins, on my back and his rifle peeping above his shoulder, chasing
+a hostile trail, with me going like the wind and his hair streaming out
+behind from the shelter of his broad slouch.  Yes, he is a sight to look
+at then—and I’m part of it myself.
+
+I am his favorite horse, out of dozens.  Big as he is, I have carried him
+eighty-one miles between nightfall and sunrise on the scout; and I am
+good for fifty, day in and day out, and all the time.  I am not large,
+but I am built on a business basis.  I have carried him thousands and
+thousands of miles on scout duty for the army, and there’s not a gorge,
+nor a pass, nor a valley, nor a fort, nor a trading post, nor a
+buffalo-range in the whole sweep of the Rocky Mountains and the Great
+Plains that we don’t know as well as we know the bugle-calls.  He is
+Chief of Scouts to the Army of the Frontier, and it makes us very
+important.  In such a position as I hold in the military service one
+needs to be of good family and possess an education much above the common
+to be worthy of the place.  I am the best-educated horse outside of the
+hippodrome, everybody says, and the best-mannered.  It may be so, it is
+not for me to say; modesty is the best policy, I think.  Buffalo Bill
+taught me the most of what I know, my mother taught me much, and I taught
+myself the rest.  Lay a row of moccasins before me—Pawnee, Sioux,
+Shoshone, Cheyenne, Blackfoot, and as many other tribes as you please—and
+I can name the tribe every moccasin belongs to by the make of it.  Name
+it in horse-talk, and could do it in American if I had speech.
+
+I know some of the Indian signs—the signs they make with their hands, and
+by signal-fires at night and columns of smoke by day.  Buffalo Bill
+taught me how to drag wounded soldiers out of the line of fire with my
+teeth; and I’ve done it, too; at least I’ve dragged _him_ out of the
+battle when he was wounded.  And not just once, but twice.  Yes, I know a
+lot of things.  I remember forms, and gaits, and faces; and you can’t
+disguise a person that’s done me a kindness so that I won’t know him
+thereafter wherever I find him.  I know the art of searching for a trail,
+and I know the stale track from the fresh.  I can keep a trail all by
+myself, with Buffalo Bill asleep in the saddle; ask him—he will tell you
+so.  Many a time, when he has ridden all night, he has said to me at
+dawn, “Take the watch, Boy; if the trail freshens, call me.”  Then he
+goes to sleep.  He knows he can trust me, because I have a reputation.  A
+scout horse that has a reputation does not play with it.
+
+My mother was all American—no alkali-spider about _her_, I can tell you;
+she was of the best blood of Kentucky, the bluest Blue-grass aristocracy,
+very proud and acrimonious—or maybe it is ceremonious.  I don’t know
+which it is.  But it is no matter; size is the main thing about a word,
+and that one’s up to standard.  She spent her military life as colonel of
+the Tenth Dragoons, and saw a deal of rough service—distinguished service
+it was, too.  I mean, she _carried_ the Colonel; but it’s all the same.
+Where would he be without his horse?  He wouldn’t arrive.  It takes two
+to make a colonel of dragoons.  She was a fine dragoon horse, but never
+got above that.  She was strong enough for the scout service, and had the
+endurance, too, but she couldn’t quite come up to the speed required; a
+scout horse has to have steel in his muscle and lightning in his blood.
+
+My father was a bronco.  Nothing as to lineage—that is, nothing as to
+recent lineage—but plenty good enough when you go a good way back.  When
+Professor Marsh was out here hunting bones for the chapel of Yale
+University he found skeletons of horses no bigger than a fox, bedded in
+the rocks, and he said they were ancestors of my father.  My mother heard
+him say it; and he said those skeletons were two million years old, which
+astonished her and made her Kentucky pretensions look small and pretty
+antiphonal, not to say oblique.  Let me see. . . . I used to know the
+meaning of those words, but . . . well, it was years ago, and ’tisn’t as
+vivid now as it was when they were fresh.  That sort of words doesn’t
+keep, in the kind of climate we have out here.  Professor Marsh said
+those skeletons were fossils.  So that makes me part blue grass and part
+fossil; if there is any older or better stock, you will have to look for
+it among the Four Hundred, I reckon.  I am satisfied with it.  And am a
+happy horse, too, though born out of wedlock.
+
+And now we are back at Fort Paxton once more, after a forty-day scout,
+away up as far as the Big Horn.  Everything quiet.  Crows and Blackfeet
+squabbling—as usual—but no outbreaks, and settlers feeling fairly easy.
+
+The Seventh Cavalry still in garrison, here; also the Ninth Dragoons, two
+artillery companies, and some infantry.  All glad to see me, including
+General Alison, commandant.  The officers’ ladies and children well, and
+called upon me—with sugar.  Colonel Drake, Seventh Cavalry, said some
+pleasant things; Mrs. Drake was very complimentary; also Captain and Mrs.
+Marsh, Company B, Seventh Cavalry; also the Chaplain, who is always kind
+and pleasant to me, because I kicked the lungs out of a trader once.  It
+was Tommy Drake and Fanny Marsh that furnished the sugar—nice children,
+the nicest at the post, I think.
+
+That poor orphan child is on her way from France—everybody is full of the
+subject.  Her father was General Alison’s brother; married a beautiful
+young Spanish lady ten years ago, and has never been in America since.
+They lived in Spain a year or two, then went to France.  Both died some
+months ago.  This little girl that is coming is the only child.  General
+Alison is glad to have her.  He has never seen her.  He is a very nice
+old bachelor, but is an old bachelor just the same and isn’t more than
+about a year this side of retirement by age limit; and so what does he
+know about taking care of a little maid nine years old?  If I could have
+her it would be another matter, for I know all about children, and they
+adore me.  Buffalo Bill will tell you so himself.
+
+I have some of this news from over-hearing the garrison-gossip, the rest
+of it I got from Potter, the General’s dog.  Potter is the great Dane.
+He is privileged, all over the post, like Shekels, the Seventh Cavalry’s
+dog, and visits everybody’s quarters and picks up everything that is
+going, in the way of news.  Potter has no imagination, and no great deal
+of culture, perhaps, but he has a historical mind and a good memory, and
+so he is the person I depend upon mainly to post me up when I get back
+from a scout.  That is, if Shekels is out on depredation and I can’t get
+hold of him.
+
+
+
+II
+LETTER FROM ROUEN—TO GENERAL ALISON
+
+
+_MY dear Brother-in-Law_,—Please let me write again in Spanish, I cannot
+trust my English, and I am aware, from what your brother used to say,
+that army officers educated at the Military Academy of the United States
+are taught our tongue.  It is as I told you in my other letter: both my
+poor sister and her husband, when they found they could not recover,
+expressed the wish that you should have their little Catherine—as knowing
+that you would presently be retired from the army—rather than that she
+should remain with me, who am broken in health, or go to your mother in
+California, whose health is also frail.
+
+You do not know the child, therefore I must tell you something about her.
+You will not be ashamed of her looks, for she is a copy in little of her
+beautiful mother—and it is that Andalusian beauty which is not
+surpassable, even in your country.  She has her mother’s charm and grace
+and good heart and sense of justice, and she has her father’s vivacity
+and cheerfulness and pluck and spirit of enterprise, with the
+affectionate disposition and sincerity of both parents.
+
+My sister pined for her Spanish home all these years of exile; she was
+always talking of Spain to the child, and tending and nourishing the love
+of Spain in the little thing’s heart as a precious flower; and she died
+happy in the knowledge that the fruitage of her patriotic labors was as
+rich as even she could desire.
+
+Cathy is a sufficiently good little scholar, for her nine years; her
+mother taught her Spanish herself, and kept it always fresh upon her ear
+and her tongue by hardly ever speaking with her in any other tongue; her
+father was her English teacher, and talked with her in that language
+almost exclusively; French has been her everyday speech for more than
+seven years among her playmates here; she has a good working use of
+governess—German and Italian.  It is true that there is always a faint
+foreign fragrance about her speech, no matter what language she is
+talking, but it is only just noticeable, nothing more, and is rather a
+charm than a mar, I think.  In the ordinary child-studies Cathy is
+neither before nor behind the average child of nine, I should say.  But I
+can say this for her: in love for her friends and in high-mindedness and
+good-heartedness she has not many equals, and in my opinion no superiors.
+And I beg of you, let her have her way with the dumb animals—they are her
+worship.  It is an inheritance from her mother.  She knows but little of
+cruelties and oppressions—keep them from her sight if you can.  She would
+flare up at them and make trouble, in her small but quite decided and
+resolute way; for she has a character of her own, and lacks neither
+promptness nor initiative.  Sometimes her judgment is at fault, but I
+think her intentions are always right.  Once when she was a little
+creature of three or four years she suddenly brought her tiny foot down
+upon the floor in an apparent outbreak of indignation, then fetched it a
+backward wipe, and stooped down to examine the result.  Her mother said:
+
+“Why, what is it, child?  What has stirred you so?”
+
+“Mamma, the big ant was trying to kill the little one.”
+
+“And so you protected the little one.”
+
+“Yes, mamma, because he had no friend, and I wouldn’t let the big one
+kill him.”
+
+“But you have killed them both.”
+
+Cathy was distressed, and her lip trembled.  She picked up the remains
+and laid them upon her palm, and said:
+
+“Poor little anty, I’m so sorry; and I didn’t mean to kill you, but there
+wasn’t any other way to save you, it was such a hurry.”
+
+She is a dear and sweet little lady, and when she goes it will give me a
+sore heart.  But she will be happy with you, and if your heart is old and
+tired, give it into her keeping; she will make it young again, she will
+refresh it, she will make it sing.  Be good to her, for all our sakes!
+
+My exile will soon be over now.  As soon as I am a little stronger I
+shall see my Spain again; and that will make me young again!
+
+                                                                 MERCEDES.
+
+
+
+III
+GENERAL ALISON TO HIS MOTHER
+
+
+I AM glad to know that you are all well, in San Bernardino.
+
+. . . That grandchild of yours has been here—well, I do not quite know
+how many days it is; nobody can keep account of days or anything else
+where she is!  Mother, she did what the Indians were never able to do.
+She took the Fort—took it the first day!  Took me, too; took the
+colonels, the captains, the women, the children, and the dumb brutes;
+took Buffalo Bill, and all his scouts; took the garrison—to the last man;
+and in forty-eight hours the Indian encampment was hers, illustrious old
+Thunder-Bird and all.  Do I seem to have lost my solemnity, my gravity,
+my poise, my dignity?  You would lose your own, in my circumstances.
+Mother, you never saw such a winning little devil.  She is all energy,
+and spirit, and sunshine, and interest in everybody and everything, and
+pours out her prodigal love upon every creature that will take it, high
+or low, Christian or pagan, feathered or furred; and none has declined it
+to date, and none ever will, I think.  But she has a temper, and
+sometimes it catches fire and flames up, and is likely to burn whatever
+is near it; but it is soon over, the passion goes as quickly as it comes.
+Of course she has an Indian name already; Indians always rechristen a
+stranger early.  Thunder-Bird attended to her case.  He gave her the
+Indian equivalent for firebug, or fire-fly.  He said:
+
+“’Times, ver’ quiet, ver’ soft, like summer night, but when she mad she
+blaze.”
+
+Isn’t it good?  Can’t you see the flare?  She’s beautiful, mother,
+beautiful as a picture; and there is a touch of you in her face, and of
+her father—poor George! and in her unresting activities, and her fearless
+ways, and her sunbursts and cloudbursts, she is always bringing George
+back to me.  These impulsive natures are dramatic.  George was dramatic,
+so is this Lightning-Bug, so is Buffalo Bill.  When Cathy first
+arrived—it was in the forenoon—Buffalo Bill was away, carrying orders to
+Major Fuller, at Five Forks, up in the Clayton Hills.  At mid-afternoon I
+was at my desk, trying to work, and this sprite had been making it
+impossible for half an hour.  At last I said:
+
+“Oh, you bewitching little scamp, _can’t_ you be quiet just a minute or
+two, and let your poor old uncle attend to a part of his duties?”
+
+“I’ll try, uncle; I will, indeed,” she said.
+
+“Well, then, that’s a good child—kiss me.  Now, then, sit up in that
+chair, and set your eye on that clock.  There—that’s right.  If you
+stir—if you so much as wink—for four whole minutes, I’ll bite you!”
+
+It was very sweet and humble and obedient she looked, sitting there,
+still as a mouse; I could hardly keep from setting her free and telling
+her to make as much racket as she wanted to.  During as much as two
+minutes there was a most unnatural and heavenly quiet and repose, then
+Buffalo Bill came thundering up to the door in all his scout finery,
+flung himself out of the saddle, said to his horse, “Wait for me, Boy,”
+and stepped in, and stopped dead in his tracks—gazing at the child.  She
+forgot orders, and was on the floor in a moment, saying:
+
+“Oh, you are so beautiful!  Do you like me?”
+
+“No, I don’t, I love you!” and he gathered her up with a hug, and then
+set her on his shoulder—apparently nine feet from the floor.
+
+She was at home.  She played with his long hair, and admired his big
+hands and his clothes and his carbine, and asked question after question,
+as fast as he could answer, until I excused them both for half an hour,
+in order to have a chance to finish my work.  Then I heard Cathy
+exclaiming over Soldier Boy; and he was worthy of her raptures, for he is
+a wonder of a horse, and has a reputation which is as shining as his own
+silken hide.
+
+
+
+IV
+CATHY TO HER AUNT MERCEDES
+
+
+OH, it is wonderful here, aunty dear, just paradise!  Oh, if you could
+only see it! everything so wild and lovely; such grand plains, stretching
+such miles and miles and miles, all the most delicious velvety sand and
+sage-brush, and rabbits as big as a dog, and such tall and noble
+jackassful ears that that is what they name them by; and such vast
+mountains, and so rugged and craggy and lofty, with cloud-shawls wrapped
+around their shoulders, and looking so solemn and awful and satisfied;
+and the charming Indians, oh, how you would dote on them, aunty dear, and
+they would on you, too, and they would let you hold their babies, the way
+they do me, and they _are_ the fattest, and brownest, and sweetest little
+things, and never cry, and wouldn’t if they had pins sticking in them,
+which they haven’t, because they are poor and can’t afford it; and the
+horses and mules and cattle and dogs—hundreds and hundreds and hundreds,
+and not an animal that you can’t do what you please with, except uncle
+Thomas, but _I_ don’t mind him, he’s lovely; and oh, if you could hear
+the bugles: _too—too—too-too—too—too_, and so on—perfectly beautiful!  Do
+you recognize that one?  It’s the first toots of the _reveille_; it goes,
+dear me, _so_ early in the morning!—then I and every other soldier on the
+whole place are up and out in a minute, except uncle Thomas, who is most
+unaccountably lazy, I don’t know why, but I have talked to him about it,
+and I reckon it will be better, now.  He hasn’t any faults much, and is
+charming and sweet, like Buffalo Bill, and Thunder-Bird, and Mammy
+Dorcas, and Soldier Boy, and Shekels, and Potter, and Sour-Mash,
+and—well, they’re _all_ that, just angels, as you may say.
+
+The very first day I came, I don’t know how long ago it was, Buffalo Bill
+took me on Soldier Boy to Thunder-Bird’s camp, not the big one which is
+out on the plain, which is White Cloud’s, he took me to _that_ one next
+day, but this one is four or five miles up in the hills and crags, where
+there is a great shut-in meadow, full of Indian lodges and dogs and
+squaws and everything that is interesting, and a brook of the clearest
+water running through it, with white pebbles on the bottom and trees all
+along the banks cool and shady and good to wade in, and as the sun goes
+down it is dimmish in there, but away up against the sky you see the big
+peaks towering up and shining bright and vivid in the sun, and sometimes
+an eagle sailing by them, not flapping a wing, the same as if he was
+asleep; and young Indians and girls romping and laughing and carrying on,
+around the spring and the pool, and not much clothes on except the girls,
+and dogs fighting, and the squaws busy at work, and the bucks busy
+resting, and the old men sitting in a bunch smoking, and passing the pipe
+not to the left but to the right, which means there’s been a row in the
+camp and they are settling it if they can, and children playing _just_
+the same as any other children, and little boys shooting at a mark with
+bows, and I cuffed one of them because he hit a dog with a club that
+wasn’t doing anything, and he resented it but before long he wished he
+hadn’t: but this sentence is getting too long and I will start another.
+Thunder-Bird put on his Sunday-best war outfit to let me see him, and he
+was splendid to look at, with his face painted red and bright and intense
+like a fire-coal and a valance of eagle feathers from the top of his head
+all down his back, and he had his tomahawk, too, and his pipe, which has
+a stem which is longer than my arm, and I never had such a good time in
+an Indian camp in my life, and I learned a lot of words of the language,
+and next day BB took me to the camp out on the Plains, four miles, and I
+had another good time and got acquainted with some more Indians and dogs;
+and the big chief, by the name of White Cloud, gave me a pretty little
+bow and arrows and I gave him my red sash-ribbon, and in four days I
+could shoot very well with it and beat any white boy of my size at the
+post; and I have been to those camps plenty of times since; and I have
+learned to ride, too, BB taught me, and every day he practises me and
+praises me, and every time I do better than ever he lets me have a
+scamper on Soldier Boy, and _that’s_ the last agony of pleasure! for he
+is the charmingest horse, and so beautiful and shiny and black, and
+hasn’t another color on him anywhere, except a white star in his
+forehead, not just an imitation star, but a real one, with four points,
+shaped exactly like a star that’s hand-made, and if you should cover him
+all up but his star you would know him anywhere, even in Jerusalem or
+Australia, by that.  And I got acquainted with a good many of the Seventh
+Cavalry, and the dragoons, and officers, and families, and horses, in the
+first few days, and some more in the next few and the next few and the
+next few, and now I know more soldiers and horses than you can think, no
+matter how hard you try.  I am keeping up my studies every now and then,
+but there isn’t much time for it.  I love you so! and I send you a hug
+and a kiss.
+
+                                                                    CATHY.
+
+P.S.—I belong to the Seventh Cavalry and Ninth Dragoons, I am an officer,
+too, and do not have to work on account of not getting any wages.
+
+
+
+V
+GENERAL ALISON TO MERCEDES
+
+
+SHE has been with us a good nice long time, now.  You are troubled about
+your sprite because this is such a wild frontier, hundreds of miles from
+civilization, and peopled only by wandering tribes of savages?  You fear
+for her safety?  Give yourself no uneasiness about her.  Dear me, she’s
+in a nursery! and she’s got more than eighteen hundred nurses.  It would
+distress the garrison to suspect that you think they can’t take care of
+her.  They think they can.  They would tell you so themselves.  You see,
+the Seventh Cavalry has never had a child of its very own before, and
+neither has the Ninth Dragoons; and so they are like all new mothers,
+they think there is no other child like theirs, no other child so
+wonderful, none that is so worthy to be faithfully and tenderly looked
+after and protected.  These bronzed veterans of mine are very good
+mothers, I think, and wiser than some other mothers; for they let her
+take lots of risks, and it is a good education for her; and the more
+risks she takes and comes successfully out of, the prouder they are of
+her.  They adopted her, with grave and formal military ceremonies of
+their own invention—solemnities is the truer word; solemnities that were
+so profoundly solemn and earnest, that the spectacle would have been
+comical if it hadn’t been so touching.  It was a good show, and as
+stately and complex as guard-mount and the trooping of the colors; and it
+had its own special music, composed for the occasion by the bandmaster of
+the Seventh; and the child was as serious as the most serious war-worn
+soldier of them all; and finally when they throned her upon the shoulder
+of the oldest veteran, and pronounced her “well and truly adopted,” and
+the bands struck up and all saluted and she saluted in return, it was
+better and more moving than any kindred thing I have seen on the stage,
+because stage things are make-believe, but this was real and the players’
+hearts were in it.
+
+It happened several weeks ago, and was followed by some additional
+solemnities.  The men created a couple of new ranks, thitherto unknown to
+the army regulations, and conferred them upon Cathy, with ceremonies
+suitable to a duke.  So now she is Corporal-General of the Seventh
+Cavalry, and Flag-Lieutenant of the Ninth Dragoons, with the privilege
+(decreed by the men) of writing U.S.A. after her name!  Also, they
+presented her a pair of shoulder-straps—both dark blue, the one with F.
+L. on it, the other with C. G.  Also, a sword.  She wears them.  Finally,
+they granted her the _salute_.  I am witness that that ceremony is
+faithfully observed by both parties—and most gravely and decorously, too.
+I have never seen a soldier smile yet, while delivering it, nor Cathy in
+returning it.
+
+Ostensibly I was not present at these proceedings, and am ignorant of
+them; but I was where I could see.  I was afraid of one thing—the
+jealousy of the other children of the post; but there is nothing of that,
+I am glad to say.  On the contrary, they are proud of their comrade and
+her honors.  It is a surprising thing, but it is true.  The children are
+devoted to Cathy, for she has turned their dull frontier life into a sort
+of continuous festival; also they know her for a stanch and steady
+friend, a friend who can always be depended upon, and does not change
+with the weather.
+
+She has become a rather extraordinary rider, under the tutorship of a
+more than extraordinary teacher—BB, which is her pet name for Buffalo
+Bill.  She pronounces it _beeby_.  He has not only taught her seventeen
+ways of breaking her neck, but twenty-two ways of avoiding it.  He has
+infused into her the best and surest protection of a
+horseman—_confidence_.  He did it gradually, systematically, little by
+little, a step at a time, and each step made sure before the next was
+essayed.  And so he inched her along up through terrors that had been
+discounted by training before she reached them, and therefore were not
+recognizable as terrors when she got to them.  Well, she is a daring
+little rider, now, and is perfect in what she knows of horsemanship.
+By-and-by she will know the art like a West Point cadet, and will
+exercise it as fearlessly.  She doesn’t know anything about side-saddles.
+Does that distress you?  And she is a fine performer, without any saddle
+at all.  Does that discomfort you?  Do not let it; she is not in any
+danger, I give you my word.
+
+You said that if my heart was old and tired she would refresh it, and you
+said truly.  I do not know how I got along without her, before.  I was a
+forlorn old tree, but now that this blossoming vine has wound itself
+about me and become the life of my life, it is very different.  As a
+furnisher of business for me and for Mammy Dorcas she is exhaustlessly
+competent, but I like my share of it and of course Dorcas likes hers, for
+Dorcas “raised” George, and Cathy is George over again in so many ways
+that she brings back Dorcas’s youth and the joys of that long-vanished
+time.  My father tried to set Dorcas free twenty years ago, when we still
+lived in Virginia, but without success; she considered herself a member
+of the family, and wouldn’t go.  And so, a member of the family she
+remained, and has held that position unchallenged ever since, and holds
+it now; for when my mother sent her here from San Bernardino when we
+learned that Cathy was coming, she only changed from one division of the
+family to the other.  She has the warm heart of her race, and its lavish
+affections, and when Cathy arrived the pair were mother and child in five
+minutes, and that is what they are to date and will continue.  Dorcas
+really thinks she raised George, and that is one of her prides, but
+perhaps it was a mutual raising, for their ages were the same—thirteen
+years short of mine.  But they were playmates, at any rate; as regards
+that, there is no room for dispute.
+
+Cathy thinks Dorcas is the best Catholic in America except herself.  She
+could not pay any one a higher compliment than that, and Dorcas could not
+receive one that would please her better.  Dorcas is satisfied that there
+has never been a more wonderful child than Cathy.  She has conceived the
+curious idea that Cathy is _twins_, and that one of them is a boy-twin
+and failed to get segregated—got submerged, is the idea.  To argue with
+her that this is nonsense is a waste of breath—her mind is made up, and
+arguments do not affect it.  She says:
+
+“Look at her; she loves dolls, and girl-plays, and everything a girl
+loves, and she’s gentle and sweet, and ain’t cruel to dumb brutes—now
+that’s the girl-twin, but she loves boy-plays, and drums and fifes and
+soldiering, and rough-riding, and ain’t afraid of anybody or anything—and
+that’s the boy-twin; ’deed you needn’t tell _me_ she’s only _one_ child;
+no, sir, she’s twins, and one of them got shet up out of sight.  Out of
+sight, but that don’t make any difference, that boy is in there, and you
+can see him look out of her eyes when her temper is up.”
+
+Then Dorcas went on, in her simple and earnest way, to furnish
+illustrations.
+
+“Look at that raven, Marse Tom.  Would anybody befriend a raven but that
+child?  Of course they wouldn’t; it ain’t natural.  Well, the Injun boy
+had the raven tied up, and was all the time plaguing it and starving it,
+and she pitied the po’ thing, and tried to buy it from the boy, and the
+tears was in her eyes.  That was the girl-twin, you see.  She offered him
+her thimble, and he flung it down; she offered him all the doughnuts she
+had, which was two, and he flung them down; she offered him half a paper
+of pins, worth forty ravens, and he made a mouth at her and jabbed one of
+them in the raven’s back.  That was the limit, you know.  It called for
+the other twin.  Her eyes blazed up, and she jumped for him like a
+wild-cat, and when she was done with him she was rags and he wasn’t
+anything but an allegory.  That was most undoubtedly the other twin, you
+see, coming to the front.  No, sir; don’t tell _me_ he ain’t in there.
+I’ve seen him with my own eyes—and plenty of times, at that.”
+
+“Allegory?  What is an allegory?”
+
+“I don’t know, Marse Tom, it’s one of her words; she loves the big ones,
+you know, and I pick them up from her; they sound good and I can’t help
+it.”
+
+“What happened after she had converted the boy into an allegory?”
+
+“Why, she untied the raven and confiscated him by force and fetched him
+home, and left the doughnuts and things on the ground.  Petted him, of
+course, like she does with every creature.  In two days she had him so
+stuck after her that she—well, _you_ know how he follows her everywhere,
+and sets on her shoulder often when she rides her breakneck rampages—all
+of which is the girl-twin to the front, you see—and he does what he
+pleases, and is up to all kinds of devilment, and is a perfect nuisance
+in the kitchen.  Well, they all stand it, but they wouldn’t if it was
+another person’s bird.”
+
+Here she began to chuckle comfortably, and presently she said:
+
+“Well, you know, she’s a nuisance herself, Miss Cathy is, she _is_ so
+busy, and into everything, like that bird.  It’s all just as innocent,
+you know, and she don’t mean any harm, and is so good and dear; and it
+ain’t her fault, it’s her nature; her interest is always a-working and
+always red-hot, and she can’t keep quiet.  Well, yesterday it was
+‘Please, Miss Cathy, don’t do that’; and, ‘Please, Miss Cathy, let that
+alone’; and, ‘Please, Miss Cathy, don’t make so much noise’; and so on
+and so on, till I reckon I had found fault fourteen times in fifteen
+minutes; then she looked up at me with her big brown eyes that can plead
+so, and said in that odd little foreign way that goes to your heart,
+
+“’Please, mammy, make me a compliment.”
+
+“And of course you did it, you old fool?”
+
+“Marse Tom, I just grabbed her up to my breast and says, ‘Oh, you po’
+dear little motherless thing, you ain’t got a fault in the world, and you
+can do anything you want to, and tear the house down, and yo’ old black
+mammy won’t say a word!’”
+
+“Why, of course, of course—_I_ knew you’d spoil the child.”
+
+She brushed away her tears, and said with dignity:
+
+“Spoil the child? spoil _that_ child, Marse Tom?  There can’t _anybody_
+spoil her.  She’s the king bee of this post, and everybody pets her and
+is her slave, and yet, as you know, your own self, she ain’t the least
+little bit spoiled.”  Then she eased her mind with this retort: “Marse
+Tom, she makes you do anything she wants to, and you can’t deny it; so if
+she could be spoilt, she’d been spoilt long ago, because you are the very
+_worst_!  Look at that pile of cats in your chair, and you sitting on a
+candle-box, just as patient; it’s because they’re her cats.”
+
+          [Picture: “‘Look at that pile of cats in your chair’”]
+
+If Dorcas were a soldier, I could punish her for such large frankness as
+that.  I changed the subject, and made her resume her illustrations.  She
+had scored against me fairly, and I wasn’t going to cheapen her victory
+by disputing it.  She proceeded to offer this incident in evidence on her
+twin theory:
+
+“Two weeks ago when she got her finger mashed open, she turned pretty
+pale with the pain, but she never said a word.  I took her in my lap, and
+the surgeon sponged off the blood and took a needle and thread and began
+to sew it up; it had to have a lot of stitches, and each one made her
+scrunch a little, but she never let go a sound.  At last the surgeon was
+so full of admiration that he said, ‘Well, you _are_ a brave little
+thing!’ and she said, just as ca’m and simple as if she was talking about
+the weather, ‘There isn’t anybody braver but the Cid!’  You see? it was
+the boy-twin that the surgeon was a-dealing with.
+
+“Who is the Cid?”
+
+“I don’t know, sir—at least only what she says.  She’s always talking
+about him, and says he was the bravest hero Spain ever had, or any other
+country.  They have it up and down, the children do, she standing up for
+the Cid, and they working George Washington for all he is worth.”
+
+“Do they quarrel?”
+
+“No; it’s only disputing, and bragging, the way children do.  They want
+her to be an American, but she can’t be anything but a Spaniard, she
+says.  You see, her mother was always longing for home, po’ thing! and
+thinking about it, and so the child is just as much a Spaniard as if
+she’d always lived there.  She thinks she remembers how Spain looked, but
+I reckon she don’t, because she was only a baby when they moved to
+France.  She is very proud to be a Spaniard.”
+
+Does that please you, Mercedes?  Very well, be content; your niece is
+loyal to her allegiance: her mother laid deep the foundations of her love
+for Spain, and she will go back to you as good a Spaniard as you are
+yourself.  She has made me promise to take her to you for a long visit
+when the War Office retires me.
+
+I attend to her studies myself; has she told you that?  Yes, I am her
+school-master, and she makes pretty good progress, I think, everything
+considered.  Everything considered—being translated—means holidays.  But
+the fact is, she was not born for study, and it comes hard.  Hard for me,
+too; it hurts me like a physical pain to see that free spirit of the air
+and the sunshine laboring and grieving over a book; and sometimes when I
+find her gazing far away towards the plain and the blue mountains with
+the longing in her eyes, I have to throw open the prison doors; I can’t
+help it.  A quaint little scholar she is, and makes plenty of blunders.
+Once I put the question:
+
+“What does the Czar govern?”
+
+She rested her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand and took that
+problem under deep consideration.  Presently she looked up and answered,
+with a rising inflection implying a shade of uncertainty,
+
+“The dative case?”
+
+Here are a couple of her expositions which were delivered with tranquil
+confidence:
+
+“_Chaplain_, diminutive of chap.  _Lass_ is masculine, _lassie_ is
+feminine.”
+
+She is not a genius, you see, but just a normal child; they all make
+mistakes of that sort.  There is a glad light in her eye which is pretty
+to see when she finds herself able to answer a question promptly and
+accurately, without any hesitation; as, for instance, this morning:
+
+“Cathy dear, what is a cube?”
+
+“Why, a native of Cuba.”
+
+She still drops a foreign word into her talk now and then, and there is
+still a subtle foreign flavor or fragrance about even her exactest
+English—and long may this abide! for it has for me a charm that is very
+pleasant.  Sometimes her English is daintily prim and bookish and
+captivating.  She has a child’s sweet tooth, but for her health’s sake I
+try to keep its inspirations under check.  She is obedient—as is proper
+for a titled and recognized military personage, which she is—but the
+chain presses sometimes.  For instance, we were out for a walk, and
+passed by some bushes that were freighted with wild goose-berries.  Her
+face brightened and she put her hands together and delivered herself of
+this speech, most feelingly:
+
+“Oh, if I was permitted a vice it would be the _gourmandise_!”
+
+Could I resist that?  No.  I gave her a gooseberry.
+
+You ask about her languages.  They take care of themselves; they will not
+get rusty here; our regiments are not made up of natives alone—far from
+it.  And she is picking up Indian tongues diligently.
+
+
+
+VI
+SOLDIER BOY AND THE MEXICAN PLUG
+
+
+“WHEN did you come?”
+
+“Arrived at sundown.”
+
+“Where from?”
+
+“Salt Lake.”
+
+“Are you in the service?”
+
+“No.  Trade.”
+
+“Pirate trade, I reckon.”
+
+“What do you know about it?”
+
+“I saw you when you came.  I recognized your master.  He is a bad sort.
+Trap-robber, horse-thief, squaw-man, renegado—Hank Butters—I know him
+very well.  Stole you, didn’t he?”
+
+“Well, it amounted to that.”
+
+“I thought so.  Where is his pard?”
+
+“He stopped at White Cloud’s camp.”
+
+“He is another of the same stripe, is Blake Haskins.”  (_Aside_.)  They
+are laying for Buffalo Bill again, I guess.  (_Aloud_.)  “What is your
+name?”
+
+“Which one?”
+
+“Have you got more than one?”
+
+“I get a new one every time I’m stolen.  I used to have an honest name,
+but that was early; I’ve forgotten it.  Since then I’ve had thirteen
+_aliases_.”
+
+“Aliases?  What is alias?”
+
+“A false name.”
+
+“Alias.  It’s a fine large word, and is in my line; it has quite a
+learned and cerebrospinal incandescent sound.  Are you educated?”
+
+“Well, no, I can’t claim it.  I can take down bars, I can distinguish
+oats from shoe-pegs, I can blaspheme a saddle-boil with the college-bred,
+and I know a few other things—not many; I have had no chance, I have
+always had to work; besides, I am of low birth and no family.  You speak
+my dialect like a native, but you are not a Mexican Plug, you are a
+gentleman, I can see that; and educated, of course.”
+
+“Yes, I am of old family, and not illiterate.  I am a fossil.”
+
+“A which?”
+
+“Fossil.  The first horses were fossils.  They date back two million
+years.”
+
+“Gr-eat sand and sage-brush! do you mean it?”
+
+“Yes, it is true.  The bones of my ancestors are held in reverence and
+worship, even by men.  They do not leave them exposed to the weather when
+they find them, but carry them three thousand miles and enshrine them in
+their temples of learning, and worship them.”
+
+“It is wonderful!  I knew you must be a person of distinction, by your
+fine presence and courtly address, and by the fact that you are not
+subjected to the indignity of hobbles, like myself and the rest.  Would
+you tell me your name?”
+
+“You have probably heard of it—Soldier Boy.”
+
+“What!—the renowned, the illustrious?”
+
+“Even so.”
+
+“It takes my breath!  Little did I dream that ever I should stand face to
+face with the possessor of that great name.  Buffalo Bill’s horse!  Known
+from the Canadian border to the deserts of Arizona, and from the eastern
+marches of the Great Plains to the foot-hills of the Sierra!  Truly this
+is a memorable day.  You still serve the celebrated Chief of Scouts?”
+
+“I am still his property, but he has lent me, for a time, to the most
+noble, the most gracious, the most excellent, her Excellency Catherine,
+Corporal-General Seventh Cavalry and Flag-Lieutenant Ninth Dragoons,
+U.S.A.,—on whom be peace!”
+
+“Amen.  Did you say _her_ Excellency?”
+
+“The same.  A Spanish lady, sweet blossom of a ducal house.  And truly a
+wonder; knowing everything, capable of everything; speaking all the
+languages, master of all sciences, a mind without horizons, a heart of
+gold, the glory of her race!  On whom be peace!”
+
+“Amen.  It is marvellous!”
+
+“Verily.  I knew many things, she has taught me others.  I am educated.
+I will tell you about her.”
+
+“I listen—I am enchanted.”
+
+“I will tell a plain tale, calmly, without excitement, without eloquence.
+When she had been here four or five weeks she was already erudite in
+military things, and they made her an officer—a double officer.  She rode
+the drill every day, like any soldier; and she could take the bugle and
+direct the evolutions herself.  Then, on a day, there was a grand race,
+for prizes—none to enter but the children.  Seventeen children entered,
+and she was the youngest.  Three girls, fourteen boys—good riders all.
+It was a steeplechase, with four hurdles, all pretty high.  The first
+prize was a most cunning half-grown silver bugle, and mighty pretty, with
+red silk cord and tassels.  Buffalo Bill was very anxious; for he had
+taught her to ride, and he did most dearly want her to win that race, for
+the glory of it.  So he wanted her to ride me, but she wouldn’t; and she
+reproached him, and said it was unfair and unright, and taking advantage;
+for what horse in this post or any other could stand a chance against me?
+and she was very severe with him, and said, ‘You ought to be ashamed—you
+are proposing to me conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.’  So
+he just tossed her up in the air about thirty feet and caught her as she
+came down, and said he was ashamed; and put up his handkerchief and
+pretended to cry, which nearly broke her heart, and she petted him, and
+begged him to forgive her, and said she would do anything in the world he
+could ask but that; but he said he ought to go hang himself, and he
+_must_, if he could get a rope; it was nothing but right he should, for
+he never, never could forgive himself; and then _she_ began to cry, and
+they both sobbed, the way you could hear him a mile, and she clinging
+around his neck and pleading, till at last he was comforted a little, and
+gave his solemn promise he wouldn’t hang himself till after the race; and
+wouldn’t do it at all if she won it, which made her happy, and she said
+she would win it or die in the saddle; so then everything was pleasant
+again and both of them content.  He can’t help playing jokes on her, he
+is so fond of her and she is so innocent and unsuspecting; and when she
+finds it out she cuffs him and is in a fury, but presently forgives him
+because it’s him; and maybe the very next day she’s caught with another
+joke; you see she can’t learn any better, because she hasn’t any deceit
+in her, and that kind aren’t ever expecting it in another person.
+
+“It was a grand race.  The whole post was there, and there was such
+another whooping and shouting when the seventeen kids came flying down
+the turf and sailing over the hurdles—oh, beautiful to see!  Half-way
+down, it was kind of neck and neck, and anybody’s race and nobody’s.
+Then, what should happen but a cow steps out and puts her head down to
+munch grass, with her broadside to the battalion, and they a-coming like
+the wind; they split apart to flank her, but _she_?—why, she drove the
+spurs home and soared over that cow like a bird! and on she went, and
+cleared the last hurdle solitary and alone, the army letting loose the
+grand yell, and she skipped from the horse the same as if he had been
+standing still, and made her bow, and everybody crowded around to
+congratulate, and they gave her the bugle, and she put it to her lips and
+blew ‘boots and saddles’ to see how it would go, and BB was as proud as
+you can’t think!  And he said, ‘Take Soldier Boy, and don’t pass him back
+till I ask for him!’ and I can tell you he wouldn’t have said that to any
+other person on this planet.  That was two months and more ago, and
+nobody has been on my back since but the Corporal-General Seventh Cavalry
+and Flag-Lieutenant of the Ninth Dragoons, U.S.A.,—on whom be peace!”
+
+     [Picture: Every morning they go clattering down into the plain]
+
+“Amen.  I listen—tell me more.”
+
+“She set to work and organized the Sixteen, and called it the First
+Battalion Rocky Mountain Rangers, U.S.A., and she wanted to be bugler,
+but they elected her Lieutenant-General and Bugler.  So she ranks her
+uncle the commandant, who is only a Brigadier.  And doesn’t she train
+those little people!  Ask the Indians, ask the traders, ask the soldiers;
+they’ll tell you.  She has been at it from the first day.  Every morning
+they go clattering down into the plain, and there she sits on my back
+with her bugle at her mouth and sounds the orders and puts them through
+the evolutions for an hour or more; and it is too beautiful for anything
+to see those ponies dissolve from one formation into another, and waltz
+about, and break, and scatter, and form again, always moving, always
+graceful, now trotting, now galloping, and so on, sometimes near by,
+sometimes in the distance, all just like a state ball, you know, and
+sometimes she can’t hold herself any longer, but sounds the ‘charge,’ and
+turns me loose! and you can take my word for it, if the battalion hasn’t
+too much of a start we catch up and go over the breastworks with the
+front line.
+
+“Yes, they are soldiers, those little people; and healthy, too, not
+ailing any more, the way they used to be sometimes.  It’s because of her
+drill.  She’s got a fort, now—Fort Fanny Marsh.  Major-General Tommy
+Drake planned it out, and the Seventh and Dragoons built it.  Tommy is
+the Colonel’s son, and is fifteen and the oldest in the Battalion; Fanny
+Marsh is Brigadier-General, and is next oldest—over thirteen.  She is
+daughter of Captain Marsh, Company B, Seventh Cavalry.
+Lieutenant-General Alison is the youngest by considerable; I think she is
+about nine and a half or three-quarters.  Her military rig, as
+Lieutenant-General, isn’t for business, it’s for dress parade, because
+the ladies made it.  They say they got it out of the Middle Ages—out of a
+book—and it is all red and blue and white silks and satins and velvets;
+tights, trunks, sword, doublet with slashed sleeves, short cape, cap with
+just one feather in it; I’ve heard them name these things; they got them
+out of the book; she’s dressed like a page, of old times, they say.  It’s
+the daintiest outfit that ever was—you will say so, when you see it.
+She’s lovely in it—oh, just a dream!  In some ways she is just her age,
+but in others she’s as old as her uncle, I think.  She is very learned.
+She teaches her uncle his book.  I have seen her sitting by with the book
+and reciting to him what is in it, so that he can learn to do it himself.
+
+“Every Saturday she hires little Injuns to garrison her fort; then she
+lays siege to it, and makes military approaches by make-believe trenches
+in make-believe night, and finally at make-believe dawn she draws her
+sword and sounds the assault and takes it by storm.  It is for practice.
+And she has invented a bugle-call all by herself, out of her own head,
+and it’s a stirring one, and the prettiest in the service.  It’s to call
+_me_—it’s never used for anything else.  She taught it to me, and told me
+what it says: ‘_It is I_, _Soldier—come_!’ and when those thrilling notes
+come floating down the distance I hear them without fail, even if I am
+two miles away; and then—oh, then you should see my heels get down to
+business!
+
+“And she has taught me how to say good-morning and good-night to her,
+which is by lifting my right hoof for her to shake; and also how to say
+good-bye; I do that with my left foot—but only for practice, because
+there hasn’t been any but make-believe good-byeing yet, and I hope there
+won’t ever be.  It would make me cry if I ever had to put up my left foot
+in earnest.  She has taught me how to salute, and I can do it as well as
+a soldier.  I bow my head low, and lay my right hoof against my cheek.
+She taught me that because I got into disgrace once, through ignorance.
+I am privileged, because I am known to be honorable and trustworthy, and
+because I have a distinguished record in the service; so they don’t
+hobble me nor tie me to stakes or shut me tight in stables, but let me
+wander around to suit myself.  Well, trooping the colors is a very solemn
+ceremony, and everybody must stand uncovered when the flag goes by, the
+commandant and all; and once I was there, and ignorantly walked across
+right in front of the band, which was an awful disgrace: Ah, the
+Lieutenant-General was so ashamed, and so distressed that I should have
+done such a thing before all the world, that she couldn’t keep the tears
+back; and then she taught me the salute, so that if I ever did any other
+unmilitary act through ignorance I could do my salute and she believed
+everybody would think it was apology enough and would not press the
+matter.  It is very nice and distinguished; no other horse can do it;
+often the men salute me, and I return it.  I am privileged to be present
+when the Rocky Mountain Rangers troop the colors and I stand solemn, like
+the children, and I salute when the flag goes by.  Of course when she
+goes to her fort her sentries sing out ‘Turn out the guard!’ and then . . .
+do you catch that refreshing early-morning whiff from the
+mountain-pines and the wild flowers?  The night is far spent; we’ll hear
+the bugles before long.  Dorcas, the black woman, is very good and nice;
+she takes care of the Lieutenant-General, and is Brigadier-General
+Alison’s mother, which makes her mother-in-law to the Lieutenant-General.
+That is what Shekels says.  At least it is what I think he says, though I
+never can understand him quite clearly. He—”
+
+“Who is Shekels?”
+
+“The Seventh Cavalry dog.  I mean, if he _is_ a dog.  His father was a
+coyote and his mother was a wild-cat.  It doesn’t really make a dog out
+of him, does it?”
+
+“Not a real dog, I should think.  Only a kind of a general dog, at most,
+I reckon.  Though this is a matter of ichthyology, I suppose; and if it
+is, it is out of my depth, and so my opinion is not valuable, and I don’t
+claim much consideration for it.”
+
+“It isn’t ichthyology; it is dogmatics, which is still more difficult and
+tangled up.  Dogmatics always are.”
+
+“Dogmatics is quite beyond me, quite; so I am not competing.  But on
+general principles it is my opinion that a colt out of a coyote and a
+wild-cat is no square dog, but doubtful.  That is my hand, and I stand
+pat.”
+
+“Well, it is as far as I can go myself, and be fair and conscientious.  I
+have always regarded him as a doubtful dog, and so has Potter.  Potter is
+the great Dane.  Potter says he is no dog, and not even poultry—though I
+do not go quite so far as that.
+
+“And I wouldn’t, myself.  Poultry is one of those things which no person
+can get to the bottom of, there is so much of it and such variety.  It is
+just wings, and wings, and wings, till you are weary: turkeys, and geese,
+and bats, and butterflies, and angels, and grasshoppers, and flying-fish,
+and—well, there is really no end to the tribe; it gives me the heaves
+just to think of it.  But this one hasn’t any wings, has he?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Well, then, in my belief he is more likely to be dog than poultry.  I
+have not heard of poultry that hadn’t wings.  Wings is the _sign_ of
+poultry; it is what you tell poultry by.  Look at the mosquito.”
+
+“What do you reckon he is, then?  He must be something.”
+
+“Why, he could be a reptile; anything that hasn’t wings is a reptile.”
+
+“Who told you that?”
+
+“Nobody told me, but I overheard it.”
+
+“Where did you overhear it?”
+
+“Years ago.  I was with the Philadelphia Institute expedition in the Bad
+Lands under Professor Cope, hunting mastodon bones, and I overheard him
+say, his own self, that any plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium
+that hadn’t wings and was uncertain was a reptile.  Well, then, has this
+dog any wings?  No.  Is he a plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium?
+Maybe so, maybe not; but without ever having seen him, and judging only
+by his illegal and spectacular parentage, I will bet the odds of a bale
+of hay to a bran mash that he looks it.  Finally, is he uncertain?  That
+is the point—is he uncertain?  I will leave it to you if you have ever
+heard of a more uncertainer dog than what this one is?”
+
+“No, I never have.”
+
+“Well, then, he’s a reptile.  That’s settled.”
+
+“Why, look here, whatsyourname—”
+
+“Last alias, Mongrel.”
+
+“A good one, too.  I was going to say, you are better educated than you
+have been pretending to be.  I like cultured society, and I shall
+cultivate your acquaintance.  Now as to Shekels, whenever you want to
+know about any private thing that is going on at this post or in White
+Cloud’s camp or Thunder-Bird’s, he can tell you; and if you make friends
+with him he’ll be glad to, for he is a born gossip, and picks up all the
+tittle-tattle.  Being the whole Seventh Cavalry’s reptile, he doesn’t
+belong to anybody in particular, and hasn’t any military duties; so he
+comes and goes as he pleases, and is popular with all the house cats and
+other authentic sources of private information.  He understands all the
+languages, and talks them all, too.  With an accent like gritting your
+teeth, it is true, and with a grammar that is no improvement on
+blasphemy—still, with practice you get at the meat of what he says, and
+it serves. . . Hark!  That’s the reveille. . . .
+
+               [Picture: Music score for The Reveille] {80}
+
+“Faint and far, but isn’t it clear, isn’t it sweet?  There’s no music
+like the bugle to stir the blood, in the still solemnity of the morning
+twilight, with the dim plain stretching away to nothing and the spectral
+mountains slumbering against the sky.  You’ll hear another note in a
+minute—faint and far and clear, like the other one, and sweeter still,
+you’ll notice.  Wait . . . listen.  There it goes!  It says, ‘_It is I_,
+_Soldier—come_!’ . . .
+
+            [Picture: Soldier Boy’s Bugle Call [music score]]
+
+. . . Now then, watch me leave a blue streak behind!”
+
+
+
+VII
+SOLDIER BOY AND SHEKELS
+
+
+“DID you do as I told you?  Did you look up the Mexican Plug?”
+
+“Yes, I made his acquaintance before night and got his friendship.”
+
+“I liked him.  Did you?”
+
+“Not at first.  He took me for a reptile, and it troubled me, because I
+didn’t know whether it was a compliment or not.  I couldn’t ask him,
+because it would look ignorant.  So I didn’t say anything, and soon liked
+him very well indeed.  Was it a compliment, do you think?”
+
+“Yes, that is what it was.  They are very rare, the reptiles; very few
+left, now-a-days.”
+
+“Is that so?  What is a reptile?”
+
+“It is a plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium that hasn’t any
+wings and is uncertain.”
+
+“Well, it—it sounds fine, it surely does.”
+
+“And it _is_ fine.  You may be thankful you are one.”
+
+“I am.  It seems wonderfully grand and elegant for a person that is so
+humble as I am; but I am thankful, I am indeed, and will try to live up
+to it.  It is hard to remember.  Will you say it again, please, and say
+it slow?”
+
+“Plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium that hasn’t any wings and is
+uncertain.”
+
+“It is beautiful, anybody must grant it; beautiful, and of a noble sound.
+I hope it will not make me proud and stuck-up—I should not like to be
+that.  It is much more distinguished and honorable to be a reptile than a
+dog, don’t you think, Soldier?”
+
+“Why, there’s no comparison.  It is awfully aristocratic.  Often a duke
+is called a reptile; it is set down so, in history.”
+
+“Isn’t that grand!  Potter wouldn’t ever associate with me, but I reckon
+he’ll be glad to when he finds out what I am.”
+
+“You can depend upon it.”
+
+“I will thank Mongrel for this. He is a very good sort, for a Mexican
+Plug.  Don’t you think he is?”
+
+“It is my opinion of him; and as for his birth, he cannot help that.  We
+cannot all be reptiles, we cannot all be fossils; we have to take what
+comes and be thankful it is no worse.  It is the true philosophy.”
+
+“For those others?”
+
+“Stick to the subject, please.  Did it turn out that my suspicions were
+right?”
+
+“Yes, perfectly right.  Mongrel has heard them planning.  They are after
+BB’s life, for running them out of Medicine Bow and taking their stolen
+horses away from them.”
+
+“Well, they’ll get him yet, for sure.”
+
+“Not if he keeps a sharp look-out.”
+
+“_He_ keep a sharp lookout!  He never does; he despises them, and all
+their kind.  His life is always being threatened, and so it has come to
+be monotonous.”
+
+“Does he know they are here?”
+
+“Oh yes, he knows it.  He is always the earliest to know who comes and
+who goes.  But he cares nothing for them and their threats; he only
+laughs when people warn him.  They’ll shoot him from behind a tree the
+first he knows.  Did Mongrel tell you their plans?”
+
+“Yes.  They have found out that he starts for Fort Clayton day after
+to-morrow, with one of his scouts; so they will leave to-morrow, letting
+on to go south, but they will fetch around north all in good time.”
+
+“Shekels, I don’t like the look of it.”
+
+
+
+VIII
+THE SCOUT-START.  BB AND LIEUTENANT-GENERAL ALISON
+
+
+BB (_saluting_).  “Good! handsomely done!  The Seventh couldn’t beat it!
+You do certainly handle your Rangers like an expert, General.  And where
+are you bound?”
+
+“Four miles on the trail to Fort Clayton.”
+
+“Glad am I, dear!  What’s the idea of it?”
+
+“Guard of honor for you and Thorndike.”
+
+“Bless—your—_heart_!  I’d rather have it from you than from the
+Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the United States, you incomparable
+little soldier!—and I don’t need to take any oath to that, for you to
+believe it.”
+
+“I _thought_ you’d like it, BB.”
+
+“_Like_ it?  Well, I should say so!  Now then—all ready—sound the
+advance, and away we go!”
+
+
+
+IX
+SOLDIER BOY AND SHEKELS AGAIN
+
+
+“WELL, this is the way it happened.  We did the escort duty; then we came
+back and struck for the plain and put the Rangers through a rousing
+drill—oh, for hours!  Then we sent them home under Brigadier-General
+Fanny Marsh; then the Lieutenant-General and I went off on a gallop over
+the plains for about three hours, and were lazying along home in the
+middle of the afternoon, when we met Jimmy Slade, the drummer-boy, and he
+saluted and asked the Lieutenant-General if she had heard the news, and
+she said no, and he said:
+
+“‘Buffalo Bill has been ambushed and badly shot this side of Clayton, and
+Thorndike the scout, too; Bill couldn’t travel, but Thorndike could, and
+he brought the news, and Sergeant Wilkes and six men of Company B are
+gone, two hours ago, hotfoot, to get Bill.  And they say—’
+
+“‘_Go_!’ she shouts to me—and I went.”
+
+“Fast?”
+
+“Don’t ask foolish questions.  It was an awful pace.  For four hours
+nothing happened, and not a word said, except that now and then she said,
+‘Keep it up, Boy, keep it up, sweetheart; we’ll save him!’  I kept it up.
+Well, when the dark shut down, in the rugged hills, that poor little chap
+had been tearing around in the saddle all day, and I noticed by the slack
+knee-pressure that she was tired and tottery, and I got dreadfully
+afraid; but every time I tried to slow down and let her go to sleep, so I
+could stop, she hurried me up again; and so, sure enough, at last over
+she went!
+
+            [Picture: “There was nothing to do but stand by”]
+
+“Ah, that was a fix to be in I for she lay there and didn’t stir, and
+what was I to do?  I couldn’t leave her to fetch help, on account of the
+wolves.  There was nothing to do but stand by.  It was dreadful.  I was
+afraid she was killed, poor little thing!  But she wasn’t.  She came to,
+by-and-by, and said, ‘Kiss me, Soldier,’ and those were blessed words.  I
+kissed her—often; I am used to that, and we like it.  But she didn’t get
+up, and I was worried.  She fondled my nose with her hand, and talked to
+me, and called me endearing names—which is her way—but she caressed with
+the same hand all the time.  The other arm was broken, you see, but I
+didn’t know it, and she didn’t mention it.  She didn’t want to distress
+me, you know.
+
+“Soon the big gray wolves came, and hung around, and you could hear them
+snarl, and snap at each other, but you couldn’t see anything of them
+except their eyes, which shone in the dark like sparks and stars.  The
+Lieutenant-General said, ‘If I had the Rocky Mountain Rangers here, we
+would make those creatures climb a tree.’  Then she made believe that the
+Rangers were in hearing, and put up her bugle and blew the ‘assembly’;
+and then, ‘boots and saddles’; then the ‘trot’; ‘gallop’; ‘charge!’  Then
+she blew the ‘retreat,’ and said, ‘That’s for you, you rebels; the
+Rangers don’t ever retreat!’
+
+“The music frightened them away, but they were hungry, and kept coming
+back.  And of course they got bolder and bolder, which is their way.  It
+went on for an hour, then the tired child went to sleep, and it was
+pitiful to hear her moan and nestle, and I couldn’t do anything for her.
+All the time I was laying for the wolves.  They are in my line; I have
+had experience.  At last the boldest one ventured within my lines, and I
+landed him among his friends with some of his skull still on him, and
+they did the rest.  In the next hour I got a couple more, and they went
+the way of the first one, down the throats of the detachment.  That
+satisfied the survivors, and they went away and left us in peace.
+
+“We hadn’t any more adventures, though I kept awake all night and was
+ready.  From midnight on the child got very restless, and out of her
+head, and moaned, and said, ‘Water, water—thirsty’; and now and then,
+‘Kiss me, Soldier’; and sometimes she was in her fort and giving orders
+to her garrison; and once she was in Spain, and thought her mother was
+with her.  People say a horse can’t cry; but they don’t know, because we
+cry inside.
+
+“It was an hour after sunup that I heard the boys coming, and recognized
+the hoof-beats of Pomp and Cæsar and Jerry, old mates of mine; and a
+welcomer sound there couldn’t ever be.
+
+Buffalo Bill was in a horse-litter, with his leg broken by a bullet, and
+Mongrel and Blake Haskins’s horse were doing the work.  Buffalo Bill and
+Thorndike had lolled both of those toughs.
+
+“When they got to us, and Buffalo Bill saw the child lying there so
+white, he said, ‘My God!’ and the sound of his voice brought her to
+herself, and she gave a little cry of pleasure and struggled to get up,
+but couldn’t, and the soldiers gathered her up like the tenderest women,
+and their eyes were wet and they were not ashamed, when they saw her arm
+dangling; and so were Buffalo Bill’s, and when they laid her in his arms
+he said, ‘My darling, how does this come?’ and she said, ‘We came to save
+you, but I was tired, and couldn’t keep awake, and fell off and hurt
+myself, and couldn’t get on again.’  ‘You came to save me, you dear
+little rat?  It was too lovely of you!’  ‘Yes, and Soldier stood by me,
+which you know he would, and protected me from the wolves; and if he got
+a chance he kicked the life out of some of them—for you know he would,
+BB.’  The sergeant said, ‘He laid out three of them, sir, and here’s the
+bones to show for it.’  ‘He’s a grand horse,’ said BB; ‘he’s the grandest
+horse that ever was! and has saved your life, Lieutenant-General Alison,
+and shall protect it the rest of his life—he’s yours for a kiss!’  He got
+it, along with a passion of delight, and he said, ‘You are feeling better
+now, little Spaniard—do you think you could blow the advance?’  She put
+up the bugle to do it, but he said wait a minute first.  Then he and the
+sergeant set her arm and put it in splints, she wincing but not
+whimpering; then we took up the march for home, and that’s the end of the
+tale; and I’m her horse.  Isn’t she a brick, Shekels?
+
+“Brick?  She’s more than a brick, more than a thousand bricks—she’s a
+reptile!”
+
+“It’s a compliment out of your heart, Shekels.  God bless you for it!”
+
+
+
+X
+GENERAL ALISON AND DORCAS
+
+
+“TOO much company for her, Marse Tom.  Betwixt you, and Shekels, the
+Colonel’s wife, and the Cid—”
+
+“The Cid?  Oh, I remember—the raven.”
+
+“—and Mrs. Captain Marsh and Famine and Pestilence the baby _coyotes_,
+and Sour-Mash and her pups, and Sardanapalus and her kittens—hang these
+names she gives the creatures, they warp my jaw—and Potter: you—all
+sitting around in the house, and Soldier Boy at the window the entire
+time, it’s a wonder to me she comes along as well as she does.  She—”
+
+“You want her all to yourself, you stingy old thing!”
+
+“Marse Tom, you know better.  It’s too much company.  And then the idea
+of her receiving reports all the time from her officers, and acting upon
+them, and giving orders, the same as if she was well!  It ain’t good for
+her, and the surgeon don’t like it, and tried to persuade her not to and
+couldn’t; and when he _ordered_ her, she was that outraged and indignant,
+and was very severe on him, and accused him of insubordination, and said
+it didn’t become him to give orders to an officer of her rank.  Well, he
+saw he had excited her more and done more harm than all the rest put
+together, so he was vexed at himself and wished he had kept still.
+Doctors _don’t_ know much, and that’s a fact.  She’s too much interested
+in things—she ought to rest more.  She’s all the time sending messages to
+BB, and to soldiers and Injuns and whatnot, and to the animals.”
+
+“To the animals?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Who carries them?”
+
+“Sometimes Potter, but mostly it’s Shekels.”
+
+“Now come! who can find fault with such pretty make-believe as that?”
+
+“But it ain’t make-believe, Marse Tom.  She does send them.”
+
+“Yes, I don’t doubt that part of it.”
+
+“Do you doubt they get them, sir?”
+
+“Certainly.  Don’t you?”
+
+“No, sir.  Animals talk to one another.  I know it perfectly well, Marse
+Tom, and I ain’t saying it by guess.”
+
+“What a curious superstition!”
+
+“It ain’t a superstition, Marse Tom.  Look at that Shekels—look at him,
+_now_.  Is he listening, or ain’t he?  _Now_ you see! he’s turned his
+head away.  It’s because he was caught—caught in the act.  I’ll ask
+you—could a Christian look any more ashamed than what he looks now?—_lay
+down_!  You see? he was going to sneak out.  Don’t tell _me_, Marse Tom!
+If animals don’t talk, I miss _my_ guess.  And Shekels is the worst.  He
+goes and tells the animals everything that happens in the officers’
+quarters; and if he’s short of facts, he invents them.  He hasn’t any
+more principle than a blue jay; and as for morals, he’s empty.  Look at
+him now; look at him grovel.  He knows what I am saying, and he knows
+it’s the truth.  You see, yourself, that he can feel shame; it’s the only
+virtue he’s got.  It’s wonderful how they find out everything that’s
+going on—the animals.  They—”
+
+“Do you really believe they do, Dorcas?”
+
+“I don’t only just believe it, Marse Tom, I know it.  Day before
+yesterday they knew something was going to happen.  They were that
+excited, and whispering around together; why, anybody could see that
+they— But my! I must get back to her, and I haven’t got to my errand
+yet.”
+
+“What is it, Dorcas?”
+
+“Well, it’s two or three things.  One is, the doctor don’t salute when he
+comes . . . Now, Marse Tom, it ain’t anything to laugh at, and so—”
+
+“Well, then, forgive me; I didn’t mean to laugh—I got caught unprepared.”
+
+“You see, she don’t want to hurt the doctor’s feelings, so she don’t say
+anything to him about it; but she is always polite, herself, and it hurts
+that kind for people to be rude to them.”
+
+“I’ll have that doctor hanged.”
+
+“Marse Tom, she don’t _want_ him hanged.  She—”
+
+“Well, then, I’ll have him boiled in oil.”
+
+“But she don’t _want_ him boiled.  I—”
+
+“Oh, very well, very well, I only want to please her; I’ll have him
+skinned.”
+
+“Why, _she_ don’t want him skinned; it would break her heart.  Now—”
+
+“Woman, this is perfectly unreasonable.  What in the nation _does_ she
+want?”
+
+“Marse Tom, if you would only be a little patient, and not fly off the
+handle at the least little thing.  Why, she only wants you to speak to
+him.”
+
+“Speak to him!  Well, upon my word!  All this unseemly rage and row about
+such a—a— Dorcas, I never saw you carry on like this before.  You have
+alarmed the sentry; he thinks I am being assassinated; he thinks there’s
+a mutiny, a revolt, an insurrection; he—”
+
+“Marse Tom, you are just putting on; you know it perfectly well; I don’t
+know what makes you act like that—but you always did, even when you was
+little, and you can’t get over it, I reckon.  Are you over it now, Marse
+Tom?”
+
+“Oh, well, yes; but it would try anybody to be doing the best he could,
+offering every kindness he could think of, only to have it rejected with
+contumely and . . . Oh, well, let it go; it’s no matter—I’ll talk to the
+doctor.  Is that satisfactory, or are you going to break out again?”
+
+“Yes, sir, it is; and it’s only right to talk to him, too, because it’s
+just as she says; she’s trying to keep up discipline in the Rangers, and
+this insubordination of his is a bad example for them—now ain’t it so,
+Marse Tom?”
+
+“Well, there _is_ reason in it, I can’t deny it; so I will speak to him,
+though at bottom I think hanging would be more lasting.  What is the rest
+of your errand, Dorcas?”
+
+“Of course her room is Ranger headquarters now, Marse Tom, while she’s
+sick.  Well, soldiers of the cavalry and the dragoons that are off duty
+come and get her sentries to let them relieve them and serve in their
+place.  It’s only out of affection, sir, and because they know military
+honors please her, and please the children too, for her sake; and they
+don’t bring their muskets; and so—”
+
+“I’ve noticed them there, but didn’t twig the idea.  They are standing
+guard, are they?”
+
+“Yes, sir, and she is afraid you will reprove them and hurt their
+feelings, if you see them there; so she begs, if—if you don’t mind coming
+in the back way—”
+
+“Bear me up, Dorcas; don’t let me faint.”
+
+“There—sit up and behave, Marse Tom.  You are not going to faint; you are
+only pretending—you used to act just so when you was little; it does seem
+a long time for you to get grown up.”
+
+“Dorcas, the way the child is progressing, I shall be out of my job
+before long—she’ll have the whole post in her hands.  I must make a
+stand, I must not go down without a struggle.  These encroachments. . . .
+Dorcas, what do you think she will think of next?”
+
+“Marse Tom, she don’t mean any harm.”
+
+“Are you sure of it?”
+
+“Yes, Marse Tom.”
+
+“You feel sure she has no ulterior designs?”
+
+“I don’t know what that is, Marse Tom, but I know she hasn’t.”
+
+“Very well, then, for the present I am satisfied.  What else have you
+come about?”
+
+“I reckon I better tell you the whole thing first, Marse Tom, then tell
+you what she wants.  There’s been an emeute, as she calls it.  It was
+before she got back with BB.  The officer of the day reported it to her
+this morning.  It happened at her fort.  There was a fuss betwixt
+Major-General Tommy Drake and Lieutenant-Colonel Agnes Frisbie, and he
+snatched her doll away, which is made of white kid stuffed with sawdust,
+and tore every rag of its clothes off, right before them all, and is
+under arrest, and the charge is conduct un—”
+
+“Yes, I know—conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman—a plain case,
+too, it seems to me.  This is a serious matter.  Well, what is her
+pleasure?”
+
+“Well, Marse Tom, she has summoned a court-martial, but the doctor don’t
+think she is well enough to preside over it, and she says there ain’t
+anybody competent but her, because there’s a major-general concerned; and
+so she—she—well, she says, would you preside over it for her? . . . Marse
+Tom, _sit_ up!  You ain’t any more going to faint than Shekels is.”
+
+“Look here, Dorcas, go along back, and be tactful.  Be persuasive; don’t
+fret her; tell her it’s all right, the matter is in my hands, but it
+isn’t good form to hurry so grave a matter as this.  Explain to her that
+we have to go by precedents, and that I believe this one to be new.  In
+fact, you can say I know that nothing just like it has happened in our
+army, therefore I must be guided by European precedents, and must go
+cautiously and examine them carefully.  Tell her not to be impatient, it
+will take me several days, but it will all come out right, and I will
+come over and report progress as I go along.  Do you get the idea,
+Dorcas?”
+
+“I don’t know as I do, sir.”
+
+“Well, it’s this.  You see, it won’t ever do for me, a brigadier in the
+regular army, to preside over that infant court-martial—there isn’t any
+precedent for it, don’t you see.  Very well.  I will go on examining
+authorities and reporting progress until she is well enough to get me out
+of this scrape by presiding herself.  Do you get it now?”
+
+“Oh, yes, sir, I get it, and it’s good, I’ll go and fix it with her.
+_Lay down_! and stay where you are.”
+
+“Why, what harm is he doing?”
+
+“Oh, it ain’t any harm, but it just vexes me to see him act so.”
+
+“What was he doing?”
+
+“Can’t you see, and him in such a sweat?  He was starting out to spread
+it all over the post.  _Now_ I reckon you won’t deny, any more, that they
+go and tell everything they hear, now that you’ve seen it with yo’ own
+eyes.”
+
+“Well, I don’t like to acknowledge it, Dorcas, but I don’t see how I can
+consistently stick to my doubts in the face of such overwhelming proof as
+this dog is furnishing.”
+
+“There, now, you’ve got in yo’ right mind at last!  I wonder you can be
+so stubborn, Marse Tom.  But you always was, even when you was little.
+I’m going now.”
+
+“Look here; tell her that in view of the delay, it is my judgment that
+she ought to enlarge the accused on his parole.”
+
+“Yes, sir, I’ll tell her.  Marse Tom?”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“She can’t get to Soldier Boy, and he stands there all the time, down in
+the mouth and lonesome; and she says will you shake hands with him and
+comfort him?  Everybody does.”
+
+“It’s a curious kind of lonesomeness; but, all right, I will.”
+
+
+
+XI
+SEVERAL MONTHS LATER.  ANTONIO AND THORNDIKE
+
+
+“THORNDIKE, isn’t that Plug you’re riding an asset of the scrap you and
+Buffalo Bill had with the late Blake Haskins and his pal a few months
+back?”
+
+“Yes, this is Mongrel—and not a half-bad horse, either.”
+
+“I’ve noticed he keeps up his lick first-rate.  Say—isn’t it a gaudy
+morning?”
+
+“Right you are!”
+
+“Thorndike, it’s Andalusian! and when that’s said, all’s said.”
+
+“Andalusian _and_ Oregonian, Antonio!  Put it that way, and you have my
+vote.  Being a native up there, I know.  You being Andalusian-born—”
+
+“Can speak with authority for that patch of paradise?  Well, I can.  Like
+the Don! like Sancho!  This is the correct Andalusian dawn now—crisp,
+fresh, dewy, fragrant, pungent—”
+
+    “‘What though the spicy breezes
+    Blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle—’
+
+—_git_ up, you old cow! stumbling like that when we’ve just been praising
+you! out on a scout and can’t live up to the honor any better than that?
+Antonio, how long have you been out here in the Plains and the Rockies?”
+
+“More than thirteen years.”
+
+“It’s a long time.  Don’t you ever get homesick?”
+
+“Not till now.”
+
+“Why _now_?—after such a long cure.”
+
+“These preparations of the retiring commandant’s have started it up.”
+
+“Of course.  It’s natural.”
+
+“It keeps me thinking about Spain.  I know the region where the Seventh’s
+child’s aunt lives; I know all the lovely country for miles around; I’ll
+bet I’ve seen her aunt’s villa many a time; I’ll bet I’ve been in it in
+those pleasant old times when I was a Spanish gentleman.”
+
+“They say the child is wild to see Spain.”
+
+“It’s so; I know it from what I hear.”
+
+“Haven’t you talked with her about it?”
+
+“No.  I’ve avoided it.  I should soon be as wild as she is.  That would
+not be comfortable.”
+
+“I wish I was going, Antonio.  There’s two things I’d give a lot to see.
+One’s a railroad.”
+
+“She’ll see one when she strikes Missouri.”
+
+“The other’s a bull-fight.”
+
+“I’ve seen lots of them; I wish I could see another.”
+
+“I don’t know anything about it, except in a mixed-up, foggy way,
+Antonio, but I know enough to know it’s grand sport.”
+
+“The grandest in the world!  There’s no other sport that begins with it.
+I’ll tell you what I’ve seen, then you can judge.  It was my first, and
+it’s as vivid to me now as it was when I saw it.  It was a Sunday
+afternoon, and beautiful weather, and my uncle, the priest, took me as a
+reward for being a good boy and because of my own accord and without
+anybody asking me I had bankrupted my savings-box and given the money to
+a mission that was civilizing the Chinese and sweetening their lives and
+softening their hearts with the gentle teachings of our religion, and I
+wish you could have seen what we saw that day, Thorndike.
+
+“The amphitheatre was packed, from the bull-ring to the highest
+row—twelve thousand people in one circling mass, one slanting, solid
+mass—royalties, nobles, clergy, ladies, gentlemen, state officials,
+generals, admirals, soldiers, sailors, lawyers, thieves, merchants,
+brokers, cooks, housemaids, scullery-maids, doubtful women, dudes,
+gamblers, beggars, loafers, tramps, American ladies, gentlemen,
+preachers, English ladies, gentlemen, preachers, German ditto, French
+ditto, and so on and so on, all the world represented: Spaniards to
+admire and praise, foreigners to enjoy and go home and find fault—there
+they were, one solid, sloping, circling sweep of rippling and flashing
+color under the downpour of the summer sun—just a garden, a gaudy,
+gorgeous flower-garden!  Children munching oranges, six thousand fans
+fluttering and glimmering, everybody happy, everybody chatting gayly with
+their intimates, lovely girl-faces smiling recognition and salutation to
+other lovely girl-faces, gray old ladies and gentlemen dealing in the
+like exchanges with each other—ah, such a picture of cheery contentment
+and glad anticipation! not a mean spirit, nor a sordid soul, nor a sad
+heart there—ah, Thorndike, I wish I could see it again.
+
+“Suddenly, the martial note of a bugle cleaves the hum and murmur—clear
+the ring!
+
+“They clear it.  The great gate is flung open, and the procession marches
+in, splendidly costumed and glittering: the marshals of the day, then the
+picadores on horseback, then the matadores on foot, each surrounded by
+his quadrille of _chulos_.  They march to the box of the city fathers,
+and formally salute.  The key is thrown, the bull-gate is unlocked.
+Another bugle blast—the gate flies open, the bull plunges in, furious,
+trembling, blinking in the blinding light, and stands there, a
+magnificent creature, centre of those multitudinous and admiring eyes,
+brave, ready for battle, his attitude a challenge.  He sees his enemy:
+horsemen sitting motionless, with long spears in rest, upon blindfolded
+broken-down nags, lean and starved, fit only for sport and sacrifice,
+then the carrion-heap.
+
+“The bull makes a rush, with murder in his eye, but a picador meets him
+with a spear-thrust in the shoulder.  He flinches with the pain, and the
+picador skips out of danger.  A burst of applause for the picador, hisses
+for the bull.  Some shout ‘Cow!’ at the bull, and call him offensive
+names.  But he is not listening to them, he is there for business; he is
+not minding the cloak-bearers that come fluttering around to confuse him;
+he chases this way, he chases that way, and hither and yon, scattering
+the nimble banderillos in every direction like a spray, and receiving
+their maddening darts in his neck as they dodge and fly—oh, but it’s a
+lively spectacle, and brings down the house!  Ah, you should hear the
+thundering roar that goes up when the game is at its wildest and
+brilliant things are done!
+
+“Oh, that first bull, that day, was great!  From the moment the spirit of
+war rose to flood-tide in him and he got down to his work, he began to do
+wonders.  He tore his way through his persecutors, flinging one of them
+clear over the parapet; he bowled a horse and his rider down, and plunged
+straight for the next, got home with his horns, wounding both horse and
+man; on again, here and there and this way and that; and one after
+another he tore the bowels out of two horses so that they gushed to the
+ground, and ripped a third one so badly that although they rushed him to
+cover and shoved his bowels back and stuffed the rents with tow and rode
+him against the bull again, he couldn’t make the trip; he tried to
+gallop, under the spur, but soon reeled and tottered and fell, all in a
+heap.  For a while, that bull-ring was the most thrilling and glorious
+and inspiring sight that ever was seen.  The bull absolutely cleared it,
+and stood there alone! monarch of the place.  The people went mad for
+pride in him, and joy and delight, and you couldn’t hear yourself think,
+for the roar and boom and crash of applause.”
+
+“Antonio, it carries me clear out of myself just to hear you tell it; it
+must have been perfectly splendid.  If I live, I’ll see a bull-fight yet
+before I die.  Did they kill him?”
+
+“Oh yes; that is what the bull is for.  They tired him out, and got him
+at last.  He kept rushing the matador, who always slipped smartly and
+gracefully aside in time, waiting for a sure chance; and at last it came;
+the bull made a deadly plunge for him—was avoided neatly, and as he sped
+by, the long sword glided silently into him, between left shoulder and
+spine—in and in, to the hilt.  He crumpled down, dying.”
+
+“Ah, Antonio, it _is_ the noblest sport that ever was.  I would give a
+year of my life to see it.  Is the bull always killed?”
+
+“Yes.  Sometimes a bull is timid, finding himself in so strange a place,
+and he stands trembling, or tries to retreat.  Then everybody despises
+him for his cowardice and wants him punished and made ridiculous; so they
+hough him from behind, and it is the funniest thing in the world to see
+him hobbling around on his severed legs; the whole vast house goes into
+hurricanes of laughter over it; I have laughed till the tears ran down my
+cheeks to see it.  When he has furnished all the sport he can, he is not
+any longer useful, and is killed.”
+
+“Well, it is perfectly grand, Antonio, perfectly beautiful.  Burning a
+nigger don’t begin.”
+
+
+
+XII
+MONGREL AND THE OTHER HORSE
+
+
+“SAGE-BRUSH, you have been listening?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Isn’t it strange?”
+
+“Well, no, Mongrel, I don’t know that it is.”
+
+“Why don’t you?”
+
+“I’ve seen a good many human beings in my time.  They are created as they
+are; they cannot help it.  They are only brutal because that is their
+make; brutes would be brutal if it was _their_ make.”
+
+“To me, Sage-Brush, man is most strange and unaccountable.  Why should he
+treat dumb animals that way when they are not doing any harm?”
+
+“Man is not always like that, Mongrel; he is kind enough when he is not
+excited by religion.”
+
+“Is the bull-fight a religious service?”
+
+“I think so.  I have heard so.  It is held on Sunday.”
+
+(_A reflective pause_, _lasting some moments_.)  Then:
+
+“When we die, Sage-Brush, do we go to heaven and dwell with man?”
+
+“My father thought not.  He believed we do not have to go there unless we
+deserve it.”
+
+
+
+
+Part II
+IN SPAIN
+
+
+XIII
+GENERAL ALISON TO HIS MOTHER
+
+
+IT was a prodigious trip, but delightful, of course, through the Rockies
+and the Black Hills and the mighty sweep of the Great Plains to
+civilization and the Missouri border—where the railroading began and the
+delightfulness ended.  But no one is the worse for the journey; certainly
+not Cathy, nor Dorcas, nor Soldier Boy; and as for me, I am not
+complaining.
+
+Spain is all that Cathy had pictured it—and more, she says.  She is in a
+fury of delight, the maddest little animal that ever was, and all for
+joy.  She thinks she remembers Spain, but that is not very likely, I
+suppose.  The two—Mercedes and Cathy—devour each other.  It is a rapture
+of love, and beautiful to see.  It is Spanish; that describes it.  Will
+this be a short visit?
+
+No.  It will be permanent.  Cathy has elected to abide with Spain and her
+aunt.  Dorcas says she (Dorcas) foresaw that this would happen; and also
+says that she wanted it to happen, and says the child’s own country is
+the right place for her, and that she ought not to have been sent to me,
+I ought to have gone to her.  I thought it insane to take Soldier Boy to
+Spain, but it was well that I yielded to Cathy’s pleadings; if he had
+been left behind, half of her heart would have remained with him, and she
+would not have been contented.  As it is, everything has fallen out for
+the best, and we are all satisfied and comfortable.  It may be that
+Dorcas and I will see America again some day; but also it is a case of
+maybe not.
+
+We left the post in the early morning.  It was an affecting time.  The
+women cried over Cathy, so did even those stern warriors, the Rocky
+Mountain Rangers; Shekels was there, and the Cid, and Sardanapalus, and
+Potter, and Mongrel, and Sour-Mash, Famine, and Pestilence, and Cathy
+kissed them all and wept; details of the several arms of the garrison
+were present to represent the rest, and say good-bye and God bless you
+for all the soldiery; and there was a special squad from the Seventh,
+with the oldest veteran at its head, to speed the Seventh’s Child with
+grand honors and impressive ceremonies; and the veteran had a touching
+speech by heart, and put up his hand in salute and tried to say it, but
+his lips trembled and his voice broke, but Cathy bent down from the
+saddle and kissed him on the mouth and turned his defeat to victory, and
+a cheer went up.
+
+The next act closed the ceremonies, and was a moving surprise.  It may be
+that you have discovered, before this, that the rigors of military law
+and custom melt insensibly away and disappear when a soldier or a
+regiment or the garrison wants to do something that will please Cathy.
+The bands conceived the idea of stirring her soldierly heart with a
+farewell which would remain in her memory always, beautiful and unfading,
+and bring back the past and its love for her whenever she should think of
+it; so they got their project placed before General Burnaby, my
+successor, who is Cathy’s newest slave, and in spite of poverty of
+precedents they got his permission.  The bands knew the child’s favorite
+military airs.  By this hint you know what is coming, but Cathy didn’t.
+She was asked to sound the “reveille,” which she did.
+
+                    [Picture: Reveille [music score]]
+
+With the last note the bands burst out with a crash: and woke the
+mountains with the “Star-Spangled Banner” in a way to make a body’s heart
+swell and thump and his hair rise!  It was enough to break a person all
+up, to see Cathy’s radiant face shining out through her gladness and
+tears.  By request she blew the “assembly,” now. . . .
+
+                  [Picture: The Assembly [music score]]
+
+. . . Then the bands thundered in, with “Rally round the flag, boys,
+rally once again!”  Next, she blew another call (“to the Standard”) . . .
+
+                 [Picture: To the Standard [music score]]
+
+. . . and the bands responded with “When we were marching through
+Georgia.”  Straightway she sounded “boots and saddles,” that thrilling
+and most expediting call. . . .
+
+                [Picture: Boots and Saddles [music score]]
+
+and the bands could hardly hold in for the final note; then they turned
+their whole strength loose on “Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are
+marching,” and everybody’s excitement rose to blood-heat.
+
+Now an impressive pause—then the bugle sang “TAPS”—translatable, this
+time, into “Good-bye, and God keep us all!” for taps is the soldier’s
+nightly release from duty, and farewell: plaintive, sweet, pathetic, for
+the morning is never sure, for him; always it is possible that he is
+hearing it for the last time. . . .
+
+                      [Picture: Taps [music score]]
+
+. . . Then the bands turned their instruments towards Cathy and burst in
+with that rollicking frenzy of a tune, “Oh, we’ll all get blind drunk
+when Johnny comes marching home—yes, we’ll all get blind drunk when
+Johnny comes marching home!” and followed it instantly with “Dixie,” that
+antidote for melancholy, merriest and gladdest of all military music on
+any side of the ocean—and that was the end.  And so—farewell!
+
+I wish you could have been there to see it all, hear it all, and feel it:
+and get yourself blown away with the hurricane huzza that swept the place
+as a finish.
+
+When we rode away, our main body had already been on the road an hour or
+two—I speak of our camp equipage; but we didn’t move off alone: when
+Cathy blew the “advance” the Rangers cantered out in column of fours, and
+gave us escort, and were joined by White Cloud and Thunder-Bird in all
+their gaudy bravery, and by Buffalo Bill and four subordinate scouts.
+Three miles away, in the Plains, the Lieutenant-General halted, sat her
+horse like a military statue, the bugle at her lips, and put the Rangers
+through the evolutions for half an hour; and finally, when she blew the
+“charge,” she led it herself.  “Not for the last time,” she said, and got
+a cheer, and we said good-bye all around, and faced eastward and rode
+away.
+
+_Postscript_.  _A Day Later_.  Soldier Boy was stolen last night.  Cathy
+is almost beside herself, and we cannot comfort her.  Mercedes and I are
+not much alarmed about the horse, although this part of Spain is in
+something of a turmoil, politically, at present, and there is a good deal
+of lawlessness.  In ordinary times the thief and the horse would soon be
+captured.  We shall have them before long, I think.
+
+
+
+XIV
+SOLDIER BOY—TO HIMSELF
+
+
+IT is five months.  Or is it six?  My troubles have clouded my memory.  I
+have been all over this land, from end to end, and now I am back again
+since day before yesterday, to that city which we passed through, that
+last day of our long journey, and which is near her country home.  I am a
+tottering ruin and my eyes are dim, but I recognized it.  If she could
+see me she would know me and sound my call.  I wish I could hear it once
+more; it would revive me, it would bring back her face and the mountains
+and the free life, and I would come—if I were dying I would come!  She
+would not know _me_, looking as I do, but she would know me by my star.
+But she will never see me, for they do not let me out of this shabby
+stable—a foul and miserable place, with most two wrecks like myself for
+company.
+
+How many times have I changed hands?  I think it is twelve times—I cannot
+remember; and each time it was down a step lower, and each time I got a
+harder master.  They have been cruel, every one; they have worked me
+night and day in degraded employments, and beaten me; they have fed me
+ill, and some days not at all.  And so I am but bones, now, with a rough
+and frowsy skin humped and cornered upon my shrunken body—that skin which
+was once so glossy, that skin which she loved to stroke with her hand.  I
+was the pride of the mountains and the Great Plains; now I am a scarecrow
+and despised.  These piteous wrecks that are my comrades here say we have
+reached the bottom of the scale, the final humiliation; they say that
+when a horse is no longer worth the weeds and discarded rubbish they feed
+to him, they sell him to the bull-ring for a glass of brandy, to make
+sport for the people and perish for their pleasure.
+
+To die—that does not disturb me; we of the service never care for death.
+But if I could see her once more! if I could hear her bugle sing again
+and say, “It is I, Soldier—come!”
+
+
+
+XV
+GENERAL ALISON TO MRS. DRAKE, THE COLONEL’S WIFE
+
+
+TO return, now, to where I was, and tell you the rest.  We shall never
+know how she came to be there; there is no way to account for it.  She
+was always watching for black and shiny and spirited horses—watching,
+hoping, despairing, hoping again; always giving chase and sounding her
+call, upon the meagrest chance of a response, and breaking her heart over
+the disappointment; always inquiring, always interested in sales-stables
+and horse accumulations in general.  How she got there must remain a
+mystery.
+
+At the point which I had reached in a preceding paragraph of this
+account, the situation was as follows: two horses lay dying; the bull had
+scattered his persecutors for the moment, and stood raging, panting,
+pawing the dust in clouds over his back, when the man that had been
+wounded returned to the ring on a remount, a poor blindfolded wreck that
+yet had something ironically military about his bearing—and the next
+moment the bull had ripped him open and his bowls were dragging upon the
+ground: and the bull was charging his swarm of pests again.  Then came
+pealing through the air a bugle-call that froze my blood—“_It is I_,
+_Soldier—come_!”  I turned; Cathy was flying down through the massed
+people; she cleared the parapet at a bound, and sped towards that
+riderless horse, who staggered forward towards the remembered sound; but
+his strength failed, and he fell at her feet, she lavishing kisses upon
+him and sobbing, the house rising with one impulse, and white with
+horror!  Before help could reach her the bull was back again—
+
+         [Picture: His strength failed, and he fell at her feet]
+
+She was never conscious again in life.  We bore her home, all mangled and
+drenched in blood, and knelt by her and listened to her broken and
+wandering words, and prayed for her passing spirit, and there was no
+comfort—nor ever will be, I think.  But she was happy, for she was far
+away under another sky, and comrading again with her Rangers, and her
+animal friends, and the soldiers.  Their names fell softly and
+caressingly from her lips, one by one, with pauses between.  She was not
+in pain, but lay with closed eyes, vacantly murmuring, as one who dreams.
+Sometimes she smiled, saying nothing; sometimes she smiled when she
+uttered a name—such as Shekels, or BB, or Potter.  Sometimes she was at
+her fort, issuing commands; sometimes she was careering over the plain at
+the head of her men; sometimes she was training her horse; once she said,
+reprovingly, “You are giving me the wrong foot; give me the left—don’t
+you know it is good-bye?”
+
+After this, she lay silent some time; the end was near.  By-and-by she
+murmured, “Tired . . . sleepy . . . take Cathy, mamma.”  Then, “Kiss me,
+Soldier.”  For a little time, she lay so still that we were doubtful if
+she breathed.  Then she put out her hand and began to feel gropingly
+about; then said, “I cannot find it; blow ‘taps.’”  It was the end.
+
+                      [Picture: Taps [music score]]
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+
+{80}  At West Point the bugle is supposed to be saying:
+
+    “I can’t get ’em up,
+    I can’t get ’em up,
+    I can’t get ’em up in the morning!”
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1086 ***