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diff --git a/old/1086-h/1086-h.htm b/old/1086-h/1086-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6b1536e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/1086-h/1086-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3112 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Horse's Tale, by Mark Twain</title> +<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +.GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + +p.center {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.footnote {font-size: 90%; + text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +div.fig { display:block; + margin:0 auto; + text-align:center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em;} + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + + </style> +</head> +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Horse’s Tale, by Mark Twain</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: A Horse’s Tale</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Mark Twain</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Illustrator: Lucius Hitchcock</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: October 21, 1997 [eBook #1086]<br /> +[Most recently updated: August 26, 2021]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: David Price</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HORSE’S TALE ***</div> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<a href="images/coverb.jpg"> +<img alt="Book cover" +title="Book cover" + src="images/covers.jpg" /></a> +</div> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<a name="fpb" href="images/fpb.jpg"> +<img alt="“Buffalo Bill took me on Soldier Boy to +Thunder-Bird’s Camp”" +title="“Buffalo Bill took me on Soldier Boy to +Thunder-Bird’s Camp”" + src="images/fps.jpg" /></a> +</div> + +<h1>A Horse’s Tale</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break"> +<span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br /> +Mark Twain</h2> + +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">ILLUSTRATED +BY</span><br /> +<span class="GutSmall">LUCIUS HITCHCOCK</span></p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<a href="images/tpb.jpg"> +<img alt="Decorative graphic" +title="Decorative graphic" + src="images/tps.jpg" /></a> +</div> + +<p style="text-align: center">LONDON AND NEW YORK<br /> +HARPER & BROTHERS<br /> +PUBLISHERS .. MCMVII</p> + +<p class="center"><span +class="GutSmall">Copyright, 1906, by Harper & +Brothers.</span> +</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="GutSmall"><i>All +rights reserved</i></span></p> + +<p class="center"><span class="GutSmall">Published +October, 1907.</span></p> + +<p class="center"><i>Printed in United States of +America</i>.</p> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table summary="" style=""> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#page1">Chapter I. <span class="smcap">Soldier Boy—Privately to Himself</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#page12">Chapter II. <span class="smcap">Letter from Rouen—To General Alison</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#page19">Chapter III. <span class="smcap">General Alison to his Mother</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#page25">Chapter IV. <span class="smcap">Cathy to her Aunt Mercedes</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#page33">Chapter V. <span class="smcap">General Alison to Mercedes</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#page56">Chapter VI. <span class="smcap">Soldier Boy and the Mexican Plug</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#page82">Chapter VII. <span class="smcap">Soldier Boy and Shekels</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#page88">Chapter VIII. <span class="smcap">The Scout-start. BB and Lieutenant-General Alison</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#page90">Chapter IX. <span class="smcap">Soldier Boy and Shekels Again</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#page100">Chapter X. <span class="smcap">General Alison and Dorcas</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#page116">Chapter XI. <span class="smcap">Several Months Later. Antonio and Thorndike</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#page129">Chapter XII. <span class="smcap">Mongrel and the Other Horse</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#page133">Chapter XIII. <span class="smcap">General Alison to his Mother</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#page145">Chapter XIV. <span class="smcap">Soldier Boy—To Himself</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#page149">Chapter XV. <span class="smcap">General Alison to Mrs. Drake, the Colonel’s Wife</span></a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<h2>Illustrations</h2> + +<table summary="" style=""> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#fpb">“Buffalo Bill took me on Soldier Boy to Thunder-Bird’s Camp”</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#image48">“Look at that file of cats in your chair”</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#image66">“Every morning they go clattering down into the plain”</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#image92">“There was nothing to do but stand by”</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#image150">“His strength failed and he fell at her feet”</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>Acknowledgements</h2> + +<p>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 <i>Castilian Days</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>The knowledge of military minutiæ exhibited in this book +will be found to be correct, but it is not mine; I took it from +<i>Army Regulations</i>, ed. 1904; <i>Hardy’s +Tactics</i>—<i>Cavalry</i>, revised ed., 1861; and +<i>Jomini’s Handbook of Military Etiquette</i>, West Point +ed., 1905.</p> + +<p>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 <i>The Pizzicato</i> in <i>Sylvia</i>, by +Delibes. When that master was composing it he did not know +it was a bugle-call, it was I that found it out.</p> + +<p>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.”</p> + +<p>The cats in the chair do not belong to me, but to another.</p> + +<p>These are all the exceptions. What is left of the book +is mine.</p> + +<p style="text-align: right">MARK TWAIN.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Lone Tree Hill</span>, <span +class="smcap">Dublin</span>,<br /> +<span class="smcap">New Hampshire</span>, <i>October</i>, +1905.</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>Part I</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="page1"></a>I<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">SOLDIER BOY—PRIVATELY TO +HIMSELF</span></h2> + +<p>I <span class="smcap">am</span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>him</i> 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.</p> + +<p>My mother was all American—no alkali-spider about +<i>her</i>, 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 <i>carried</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="page12"></a>II<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">LETTER FROM ROUEN—TO GENERAL +ALISON</span></h2> + +<p><span class="smcap"><i>My</i></span><i> dear +Brother-in-Law</i>,—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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>“Why, what is it, child? What has stirred you +so?”</p> + +<p>“Mamma, the big ant was trying to kill the little +one.”</p> + +<p>“And so you protected the little one.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, mamma, because he had no friend, and I +wouldn’t let the big one kill him.”</p> + +<p>“But you have killed them both.”</p> + +<p>Cathy was distressed, and her lip trembled. She picked +up the remains and laid them upon her palm, and said:</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>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!</p> + +<p>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!</p> + +<p style="text-align: right"><span +class="smcap">Mercedes</span>.</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="page19"></a>III<br +/> +<span class="GutSmall">GENERAL ALISON TO HIS MOTHER</span></h2> + +<p>I <span class="smcap">am</span> glad to know that you are all +well, in San Bernardino.</p> + +<p>. . . 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:</p> + +<p>“’Times, ver’ quiet, ver’ soft, like +summer night, but when she mad she blaze.”</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>“Oh, you bewitching little scamp, <i>can’t</i> you +be quiet just a minute or two, and let your poor old uncle attend +to a part of his duties?”</p> + +<p>“I’ll try, uncle; I will, indeed,” she +said.</p> + +<p>“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!”</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>“Oh, you are so beautiful! Do you like +me?”</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="page25"></a>IV<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">CATHY TO HER AUNT MERCEDES</span></h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">Oh</span>, 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 <i>are</i> 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>I</i> don’t mind him, he’s lovely; and +oh, if you could hear the bugles: +<i>too—too—too-too—too—too</i>, and so +on—perfectly beautiful! Do you recognize that +one? It’s the first toots of the <i>reveille</i>; it +goes, dear me, <i>so</i> 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 <i>all</i> +that, just angels, as you may say.</p> + +<p>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 <i>that</i> 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 <i>just</i> 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 +<i>that’s</i> 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.</p> + +<p style="text-align: right"><span +class="smcap">Cathy</span>.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="page33"></a>>V<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">GENERAL ALISON TO MERCEDES</span></h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">She</span> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>salute</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>beeby</i>. 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—<i>confidence</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>twins</i>, 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:</p> + +<p>“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 <i>me</i> she’s only <i>one</i> 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.”</p> + +<p>Then Dorcas went on, in her simple and earnest way, to furnish +illustrations.</p> + +<p>“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 +<i>me</i> he ain’t in there. I’ve seen him with +my own eyes—and plenty of times, at that.”</p> + +<p>“Allegory? What is an allegory?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“What happened after she had converted the boy into an +allegory?”</p> + +<p>“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, <i>you</i> 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.”</p> + +<p>Here she began to chuckle comfortably, and presently she +said:</p> + +<p>“Well, you know, she’s a nuisance herself, Miss +Cathy is, she <i>is</i> 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,</p> + +<p>“’Please, mammy, make me a compliment.”</p> + +<p>“And of course you did it, you old fool?”</p> + +<p>“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!’”</p> + +<p>“Why, of course, of course—<i>I</i> knew +you’d spoil the child.”</p> + +<p>She brushed away her tears, and said with dignity:</p> + +<p>“Spoil the child? spoil <i>that</i> child, Marse +Tom? There can’t <i>anybody</i> 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 <i>worst</i>! 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.”</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<a name="image48" href="images/p48b.jpg"> +<img alt="“‘Look at that pile of cats in your +chair’”" +title="“‘Look at that pile of cats in your +chair’”" + src="images/p48s.jpg" /></a> +</div> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>“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 +<i>are</i> 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.</p> + +<p>“Who is the Cid?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“Do they quarrel?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>“What does the Czar govern?”</p> + +<p>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,</p> + +<p>“The dative case?”</p> + +<p>Here are a couple of her expositions which were delivered with +tranquil confidence:</p> + +<p>“<i>Chaplain</i>, diminutive of chap. <i>Lass</i> +is masculine, <i>lassie</i> is feminine.”</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>“Cathy dear, what is a cube?”</p> + +<p>“Why, a native of Cuba.”</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>“Oh, if I was permitted a vice it would be the +<i>gourmandise</i>!”</p> + +<p>Could I resist that? No. I gave her a +gooseberry.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="page56"></a>VI<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">SOLDIER BOY AND THE MEXICAN +PLUG</span></h2> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">When</span> did you +come?”</p> + +<p>“Arrived at sundown.”</p> + +<p>“Where from?”</p> + +<p>“Salt Lake.”</p> + +<p>“Are you in the service?”</p> + +<p>“No. Trade.”</p> + +<p>“Pirate trade, I reckon.”</p> + +<p>“What do you know about it?”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“Well, it amounted to that.”</p> + +<p>“I thought so. Where is his pard?”</p> + +<p>“He stopped at White Cloud’s camp.”</p> + +<p>“He is another of the same stripe, is Blake +Haskins.” (<i>Aside</i>.) They are laying for +Buffalo Bill again, I guess. (<i>Aloud</i>.) +“What is your name?”</p> + +<p>“Which one?”</p> + +<p>“Have you got more than one?”</p> + +<p>“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 +<i>aliases</i>.”</p> + +<p>“Aliases? What is alias?”</p> + +<p>“A false name.”</p> + +<p>“Alias. It’s a fine large word, and is in my +line; it has quite a learned and cerebrospinal incandescent +sound. Are you educated?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, I am of old family, and not illiterate. I am +a fossil.”</p> + +<p>“A which?”</p> + +<p>“Fossil. The first horses were fossils. They +date back two million years.”</p> + +<p>“Gr-eat sand and sage-brush! do you mean it?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“You have probably heard of it—Soldier +Boy.”</p> + +<p>“What!—the renowned, the illustrious?”</p> + +<p>“Even so.”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“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!”</p> + +<p>“Amen. Did you say <i>her</i> +Excellency?”</p> + +<p>“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!”</p> + +<p>“Amen. It is marvellous!”</p> + +<p>“Verily. I knew many things, she has taught me +others. I am educated. I will tell you about +her.”</p> + +<p>“I listen—I am enchanted.”</p> + +<p>“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 <i>must</i>, if he could get +a rope; it was nothing but right he should, for he never, never +could forgive himself; and then <i>she</i> 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.</p> + +<p>“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 <i>she</i>?—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!”</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<a name="image66" href="images/p66b.jpg"> +<img alt="Every morning they go clattering down into the plain" +title="Every morning they go clattering down into the plain" + src="images/p66s.jpg" /></a> +</div> + +<p>“Amen. I listen—tell me more.”</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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 <i>me</i>—it’s +never used for anything else. She taught it to me, and told +me what it says: ‘<i>It is I</i>, +<i>Soldier—come</i>!’ 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!</p> + +<p>“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—”</p> + +<p>“Who is Shekels?”</p> + +<p>“The Seventh Cavalry dog. I mean, if he <i>is</i> +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?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“It isn’t ichthyology; it is dogmatics, which is +still more difficult and tangled up. Dogmatics always +are.”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“No.”</p> + +<p>“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 <i>sign</i> of poultry; it is what you +tell poultry by. Look at the mosquito.”</p> + +<p>“What do you reckon he is, then? He must be +something.”</p> + +<p>“Why, he could be a reptile; anything that hasn’t +wings is a reptile.”</p> + +<p>“Who told you that?”</p> + +<p>“Nobody told me, but I overheard it.”</p> + +<p>“Where did you overhear it?”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“No, I never have.”</p> + +<p>“Well, then, he’s a reptile. That’s +settled.”</p> + +<p>“Why, look here, whatsyourname—”</p> + +<p>“Last alias, Mongrel.”</p> + +<p>“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. . . .</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<a href="images/p80b.jpg"> +<img alt="Music score for The Reveille" +title="Music score for The Reveille" + src="images/p80s.jpg" /></a> +<a name="citation80"></a><a href="#footnote80" +class="citation">[80]</a> +</div> + +<p>“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, ‘<i>It is +I</i>, <i>Soldier—come</i>!’ . . .</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<a href="images/p81b.jpg"> +<img alt="Soldier Boy’s Bugle Call [music score]" +title="Soldier Boy’s Bugle Call [music score]" + src="images/p81s.jpg" /></a> +</div> + +<p>. . . Now then, watch me leave a blue streak +behind!”</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="page82"></a>VII<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">SOLDIER BOY AND SHEKELS</span></h2> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">Did</span> you do as I told +you? Did you look up the Mexican Plug?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, I made his acquaintance before night and got his +friendship.”</p> + +<p>“I liked him. Did you?”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, that is what it was. They are very rare, the +reptiles; very few left, now-a-days.”</p> + +<p>“Is that so? What is a reptile?”</p> + +<p>“It is a plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium +that hasn’t any wings and is uncertain.”</p> + +<p>“Well, it—it sounds fine, it surely +does.”</p> + +<p>“And it <i>is</i> fine. You may be thankful you +are one.”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“Plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium that +hasn’t any wings and is uncertain.”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“Why, there’s no comparison. It is awfully +aristocratic. Often a duke is called a reptile; it is set +down so, in history.”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“You can depend upon it.”</p> + +<p>“I will thank Mongrel for this. He is a very good sort, +for a Mexican Plug. Don’t you think he is?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“For those others?”</p> + +<p>“Stick to the subject, please. Did it turn out +that my suspicions were right?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“Well, they’ll get him yet, for sure.”</p> + +<p>“Not if he keeps a sharp look-out.”</p> + +<p>“<i>He</i> 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.”</p> + +<p>“Does he know they are here?”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“Shekels, I don’t like the look of it.”</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="page88"></a>VIII<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">THE SCOUT-START. BB AND +LIEUTENANT-GENERAL ALISON</span></h2> + +<p>BB (<i>saluting</i>). “Good! handsomely +done! The Seventh couldn’t beat it! You do +certainly handle your Rangers like an expert, General. And +where are you bound?”</p> + +<p>“Four miles on the trail to Fort Clayton.”</p> + +<p>“Glad am I, dear! What’s the idea of +it?”</p> + +<p>“Guard of honor for you and Thorndike.”</p> + +<p>“Bless—your—<i>heart</i>! 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.”</p> + +<p>“I <i>thought</i> you’d like it, BB.”</p> + +<p>“<i>Like</i> it? Well, I should say so! Now +then—all ready—sound the advance, and away we +go!”</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="page90"></a>IX<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">SOLDIER BOY AND SHEKELS AGAIN</span></h2> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">Well</span>, 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:</p> + +<p>“‘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—’</p> + +<p>“‘<i>Go</i>!’ she shouts to me—and I +went.”</p> + +<p>“Fast?”</p> + +<p>“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!</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<a name="image92" href="images/p92b.jpg"> +<img alt="“There was nothing to do but stand by”" +title="“There was nothing to do but stand by”" + src="images/p92s.jpg" /></a> +</div> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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!’</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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?</p> + +<p>“Brick? She’s more than a brick, more than a +thousand bricks—she’s a reptile!”</p> + +<p>“It’s a compliment out of your heart, +Shekels. God bless you for it!”</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="page100"></a>X<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">GENERAL ALISON AND DORCAS</span></h2> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">Too</span> much company for her, +Marse Tom. Betwixt you, and Shekels, the Colonel’s +wife, and the Cid—”</p> + +<p>“The Cid? Oh, I remember—the +raven.”</p> + +<p>“—and Mrs. Captain Marsh and Famine and Pestilence +the baby <i>coyotes</i>, 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—”</p> + +<p>“You want her all to yourself, you stingy old +thing!”</p> + +<p>“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 <i>ordered</i> 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 <i>don’t</i> 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.”</p> + +<p>“To the animals?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, sir.”</p> + +<p>“Who carries them?”</p> + +<p>“Sometimes Potter, but mostly it’s +Shekels.”</p> + +<p>“Now come! who can find fault with such pretty +make-believe as that?”</p> + +<p>“But it ain’t make-believe, Marse Tom. She +does send them.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, I don’t doubt that part of it.”</p> + +<p>“Do you doubt they get them, sir?”</p> + +<p>“Certainly. Don’t you?”</p> + +<p>“No, sir. Animals talk to one another. I +know it perfectly well, Marse Tom, and I ain’t saying it by +guess.”</p> + +<p>“What a curious superstition!”</p> + +<p>“It ain’t a superstition, Marse Tom. Look at +that Shekels—look at him, <i>now</i>. Is he +listening, or ain’t he? <i>Now</i> 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?—<i>lay down</i>! You see? he was going to +sneak out. Don’t tell <i>me</i>, Marse Tom! If +animals don’t talk, I miss <i>my</i> 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—”</p> + +<p>“Do you really believe they do, Dorcas?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“What is it, Dorcas?”</p> + +<p>“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—”</p> + +<p>“Well, then, forgive me; I didn’t mean to +laugh—I got caught unprepared.”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“I’ll have that doctor hanged.”</p> + +<p>“Marse Tom, she don’t <i>want</i> him +hanged. She—”</p> + +<p>“Well, then, I’ll have him boiled in +oil.”</p> + +<p>“But she don’t <i>want</i> him boiled. +I—”</p> + +<p>“Oh, very well, very well, I only want to please her; +I’ll have him skinned.”</p> + +<p>“Why, <i>she</i> don’t want him skinned; it would +break her heart. Now—”</p> + +<p>“Woman, this is perfectly unreasonable. What in +the nation <i>does</i> she want?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“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—”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“Well, there <i>is</i> 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?”</p> + +<p>“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—”</p> + +<p>“I’ve noticed them there, but didn’t twig +the idea. They are standing guard, are they?”</p> + +<p>“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—”</p> + +<p>“Bear me up, Dorcas; don’t let me +faint.”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“Marse Tom, she don’t mean any harm.”</p> + +<p>“Are you sure of it?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, Marse Tom.”</p> + +<p>“You feel sure she has no ulterior designs?”</p> + +<p>“I don’t know what that is, Marse Tom, but I know +she hasn’t.”</p> + +<p>“Very well, then, for the present I am satisfied. +What else have you come about?”</p> + +<p>“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—”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“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, <i>sit</i> up! You ain’t any +more going to faint than Shekels is.”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“I don’t know as I do, sir.”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, yes, sir, I get it, and it’s good, I’ll +go and fix it with her. <i>Lay down</i>! and stay where you +are.”</p> + +<p>“Why, what harm is he doing?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, it ain’t any harm, but it just vexes me to +see him act so.”</p> + +<p>“What was he doing?”</p> + +<p>“Can’t you see, and him in such a sweat? He +was starting out to spread it all over the post. <i>Now</i> +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.”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“Look here; tell her that in view of the delay, it is my +judgment that she ought to enlarge the accused on his +parole.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, sir, I’ll tell her. Marse +Tom?”</p> + +<p>“Well?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“It’s a curious kind of lonesomeness; but, all +right, I will.”</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="page116"></a>XI<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">SEVERAL MONTHS LATER. ANTONIO AND +THORNDIKE</span></h2> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">Thorndike</span>, 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?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, this is Mongrel—and not a half-bad horse, +either.”</p> + +<p>“I’ve noticed he keeps up his lick +first-rate. Say—isn’t it a gaudy +morning?”</p> + +<p>“Right you are!”</p> + +<p>“Thorndike, it’s Andalusian! and when that’s +said, all’s said.”</p> + +<p>“Andalusian <i>and</i> Oregonian, Antonio! Put it +that way, and you have my vote. Being a native up there, I +know. You being Andalusian-born—”</p> + +<p>“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—”</p> +<blockquote><p>“‘What though the spicy breezes<br /> +Blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle—’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>—<i>git</i> 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?”</p> + +<p>“More than thirteen years.”</p> + +<p>“It’s a long time. Don’t you ever get +homesick?”</p> + +<p>“Not till now.”</p> + +<p>“Why <i>now</i>?—after such a long +cure.”</p> + +<p>“These preparations of the retiring commandant’s +have started it up.”</p> + +<p>“Of course. It’s natural.”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“They say the child is wild to see Spain.”</p> + +<p>“It’s so; I know it from what I hear.”</p> + +<p>“Haven’t you talked with her about it?”</p> + +<p>“No. I’ve avoided it. I should soon be +as wild as she is. That would not be +comfortable.”</p> + +<p>“I wish I was going, Antonio. There’s two +things I’d give a lot to see. One’s a +railroad.”</p> + +<p>“She’ll see one when she strikes +Missouri.”</p> + +<p>“The other’s a bull-fight.”</p> + +<p>“I’ve seen lots of them; I wish I could see +another.”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“Suddenly, the martial note of a bugle cleaves the hum +and murmur—clear the ring!</p> + +<p>“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 +<i>chulos</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>“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!</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“Ah, Antonio, it <i>is</i> the noblest sport that ever +was. I would give a year of my life to see it. Is the +bull always killed?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“Well, it is perfectly grand, Antonio, perfectly +beautiful. Burning a nigger don’t begin.”</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="page129"></a>XII<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">MONGREL AND THE OTHER HORSE</span></h2> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">Sage-Brush</span>, you have been +listening?”</p> + +<p>“Yes.”</p> + +<p>“Isn’t it strange?”</p> + +<p>“Well, no, Mongrel, I don’t know that it +is.”</p> + +<p>“Why don’t you?”</p> + +<p>“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 <i>their</i> make.”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“Man is not always like that, Mongrel; he is kind enough +when he is not excited by religion.”</p> + +<p>“Is the bull-fight a religious service?”</p> + +<p>“I think so. I have heard so. It is held on +Sunday.”</p> + +<p>(<i>A reflective pause</i>, <i>lasting some +moments</i>.) Then:</p> + +<p>“When we die, Sage-Brush, do we go to heaven and dwell +with man?”</p> + +<p>“My father thought not. He believed we do not have +to go there unless we deserve it.”</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>Part II<br /> +IN SPAIN</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="page133"></a>XIII<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">GENERAL ALISON TO HIS MOTHER</span></h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">It</span> 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.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<a href="images/p138b.jpg"> +<img alt="Reveille [music score]" +title="Reveille [music score]" + src="images/p138s.jpg" /></a> +</div> + +<p>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. +. . .</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<a href="images/p139ab.jpg"> +<img alt="The Assembly [music score]" +title="The Assembly [music score]" + src="images/p139as.jpg" /></a> +</div> + +<p>. . . Then the bands thundered in, with “Rally round the +flag, boys, rally once again!” Next, she blew another +call (“to the Standard”) . . .</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<a href="images/p139bb.jpg"> +<img alt="To the Standard [music score]" +title="To the Standard [music score]" + src="images/p139bs.jpg" /></a> +</div> + +<p>. . . and the bands responded with “When we were +marching through Georgia.” Straightway she sounded +“boots and saddles,” that thrilling and most +expediting call. . . .</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<a href="images/p140b.jpg"> +<img alt="Boots and Saddles [music score]" +title="Boots and Saddles [music score]" + src="images/p140s.jpg" /></a> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Now an impressive pause—then the bugle sang “<span +class="smcap">Taps</span>”—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. . . .</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<a href="images/p141b.jpg"> +<img alt="Taps [music score]" +title="Taps [music score]" + src="images/p141s.jpg" /></a> +</div> + +<p>. . . 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!</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><i>Postscript</i>. <i>A Day Later</i>. 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.</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="page145"></a>XIV<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">SOLDIER BOY—TO HIMSELF</span></h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">It</span> 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 <i>me</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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!”</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="page149"></a>XV<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">GENERAL ALISON TO MRS. DRAKE, THE +COLONEL’S WIFE</span></h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">To</span> 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.</p> + +<p>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—“<i>It is I</i>, +<i>Soldier—come</i>!” 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—</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<a name="image150" href="images/p150b.jpg"> +<img alt="His strength failed, and he fell at her feet" +title="His strength failed, and he fell at her feet" + src="images/p150s.jpg" /></a> +</div> + +<p>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?”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<a href="images/p153b.jpg"> +<img alt="Taps [music score]" +title="Taps [music score]" + src="images/p153s.jpg" /></a> +</div> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="footnote80"></a><a href="#citation80">[80]</a> At West Point the bugle +is supposed to be saying:</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“I can’t get ’em up,<br /> +I can’t get ’em up,<br /> +I can’t get ’em up in the morning!” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HORSE’S TALE ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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