A Horse's Tale Page 4

  “Four miles on the trail to Fort Clayton.”

  “Glad am I, dear! What’s the idea of it?”

  “Guard of honor for you and Thorndike.”

  “Bless—your—heart! I’d rather have it from you than from the Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the United States, you incomparable little soldier!—and I don’t need to take any oath to that, for you to believe it.”

  “I thought you’d like it, BB.”

  “Like it? Well, I should say so! Now then—all ready—sound the advance, and away we go!”

  CHAPTER IX

  SOLDIER BOY AND SHEKELS AGAIN

  “Well, this is the way it happened. We did the escort duty; then we came back and struck for the plain and put the Rangers through a rousing drill—oh, for hours! Then we sent them home under Brigadier-General Fanny Marsh; then the Lieutenant-General and I went off on a gallop over the plains for about three hours, and were lazying along home in the middle of the afternoon, when we met Jimmy Slade, the drummer-boy, and he saluted and asked the Lieutenant-General if she had heard the news, and she said no, and he said:

  “‘Buffalo Bill has been ambushed and badly shot this side of Clayton, and Thorndike the scout, too; Bill couldn’t travel, but Thorndike could, and he brought the news, and Sergeant Wilkes and six men of Company B are gone, two hours ago, hotfoot, to get Bill. And they say—’

  “‘Go!’ she shouts to me—and I went.”

  “Fast?”

  “Don’t ask foolish questions. It was an awful pace. For four hours nothing happened, and not a word said, except that now and then she said, ‘Keep it up, Boy, keep it up, sweetheart; we’ll save him!’ I kept it up. Well, when the dark shut down, in the rugged hills, that poor little chap had been tearing around in the saddle all day, and I noticed by the slack knee-pressure that she was tired and tottery, and I got dreadfully afraid; but every time I tried to slow down and let her go to sleep, so I could stop, she hurried me up again; and so, sure enough, at last over she went!

  “Ah, that was a fix to be in I for she lay there and didn’t stir, and what was I to do? I couldn’t leave her to fetch help, on account of the wolves. There was nothing to do but stand by. It was dreadful. I was afraid she was killed, poor little thing! But she wasn’t. She came to, by-and-by, and said, ‘Kiss me, Soldier,’ and those were blessed words. I kissed her—often; I am used to that, and we like it. But she didn’t get up, and I was worried. She fondled my nose with her hand, and talked to me, and called me endearing names—which is her way—but she caressed with the same hand all the time. The other arm was broken, you see, but I didn’t know it, and she didn’t mention it. She didn’t want to distress me, you know.

  “Soon the big gray wolves came, and hung around, and you could hear them snarl, and snap at each other, but you couldn’t see anything of them except their eyes, which shone in the dark like sparks and stars. The Lieutenant-General said, ‘If I had the Rocky Mountain Rangers here, we would make those creatures climb a tree.’ Then she made believe that the Rangers were in hearing, and put up her bugle and blew the ‘assembly’; and then, ‘boots and saddles’; then the ‘trot’; ‘gallop’; ‘charge!’ Then she blew the ‘retreat,’ and said, ‘That’s for you, you rebels; the Rangers don’t ever retreat!’

  “The music frightened them away, but they were hungry, and kept coming back. And of course they got bolder and bolder, which is their way. It went on for an hour, then the tired child went to sleep, and it was pitiful to hear her moan and nestle, and I couldn’t do anything for her. All the time I was laying for the wolves. They are in my line; I have had experience. At last the boldest one ventured within my lines, and I landed him among his friends with some of his skull still on him, and they did the rest. In the next hour I got a couple more, and they went the way of the first one, down the throats of the detachment. That satisfied the survivors, and they went away and left us in peace.

  “We hadn’t any more adventures, though I kept awake all night and was ready. From midnight on the child got very restless, and out of her head, and moaned, and said, ‘Water, water—thirsty’; and now and then, ‘Kiss me, Soldier’; and sometimes she was in her fort and giving orders to her garrison; and once she was in Spain, and thought her mother was with her. People say a horse can’t cry; but they don’t know, because we cry inside.

  “It was an hour after sunup that I heard the boys coming, and recognized the hoof-beats of Pomp and Caesar and Jerry, old mates of mine; and a welcomer sound there couldn’t ever be.

  Buffalo Bill was in a horse-litter, with his leg broken by a bullet, and Mongrel and Blake Haskins’s horse were doing the work. Buffalo Bill and Thorndike had lolled both of those toughs.

  “When they got to us, and Buffalo Bill saw the child lying there so white, he said, ‘My God!’ and the sound of his voice brought her to herself, and she gave a little cry of pleasure and struggled to get up, but couldn’t, and the soldiers gathered her up like the tenderest women, and their eyes were wet and they were not ashamed, when they saw her arm dangling; and so were Buffalo Bill’s, and when they laid her in his arms he said, ‘My darling, how does this come?’ and she said, ‘We came to save you, but I was tired, and couldn’t keep awake, and fell off and hurt myself, and couldn’t get on again.’ ‘You came to save me, you dear little rat? It was too lovely of you!’ ‘Yes, and Soldier stood by me, which you know he would, and protected me from the wolves; and if he got a chance he kicked the life out of some of them—for you know he would, BB.’ The sergeant said, ‘He laid out three of them, sir, and here’s the bones to show for it.’ ‘He’s a grand horse,’ said BB; ‘he’s the grandest horse that ever was! and has saved your life, Lieutenant-General Alison, and shall protect it the rest of his life—he’s yours for a kiss!’ He got it, along with a passion of delight, and he said, ‘You are feeling better now, little Spaniard—do you think you could blow the advance?’ She put up the bugle to do it, but he said wait a minute first. Then he and the sergeant set her arm and put it in splints, she wincing but not whimpering; then we took up the march for home, and that’s the end of the tale; and I’m her horse. Isn’t she a brick, Shekels?

  “Brick? She’s more than a brick, more than a thousand bricks—she’s a reptile!”

  “It’s a compliment out of your heart, Shekels. God bless you for it!”

  CHAPTER X

  GENERAL ALISON AND DORCAS

  “Too much company for her, Marse Tom. Betwixt you, and Shekels, the Colonel’s wife, and the Cid—”

  “The Cid? Oh, I remember—the raven.”

  “—and Mrs. Captain Marsh and Famine and Pestilence the baby coyotes, and Sour-Mash and her pups, and Sardanapalus and her kittens—hang these names she gives the creatures, they warp my jaw—and Potter: you—all sitting around in the house, and Soldier Boy at the window the entire time, it’s a wonder to me she comes along as well as she does. She—”

  “You want her all to yourself, you stingy old thing!”

  “Marse Tom, you know better. It’s too much company. And then the idea of her receiving reports all the time from her officers, and acting upon them, and giving orders, the same as if she was well! It ain’t good for her, and the surgeon don’t like it, and tried to persuade her not to and couldn’t; and when he ordered her, she was that outraged and indignant, and was very severe on him, and accused him of insubordination, and said it didn’t become him to give orders to an officer of her rank. Well, he saw he had excited her more and done more harm than all the rest put together, so he was vexed at himself and wished he had kept still. Doctors don’t know much, and that’s a fact. She’s too much interested in things—she ought to rest more. She’s all the time sending messages to BB, and to soldiers and Injuns and whatnot, and to the animals.”

  “To the animals?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who carries them?”

  “Sometimes Potter, but mostly it’s Shekels.”

  “Now come! who can find fault with such pretty ma
ke-believe as that?”

  “But it ain’t make-believe, Marse Tom. She does send them.”

  “Yes, I don’t doubt that part of it.”

  “Do you doubt they get them, sir?”

  “Certainly. Don’t you?”

  “No, sir. Animals talk to one another. I know it perfectly well, Marse Tom, and I ain’t saying it by guess.”

  “What a curious superstition!”

  “It ain’t a superstition, Marse Tom. Look at that Shekels—look at him, now. Is he listening, or ain’t he? Now you see! he’s turned his head away. It’s because he was caught—caught in the act. I’ll ask you—could a Christian look any more ashamed than what he looks now?—lay down! You see? he was going to sneak out. Don’t tell me, Marse Tom! If animals don’t talk, I miss my guess. And Shekels is the worst. He goes and tells the animals everything that happens in the officers’ quarters; and if he’s short of facts, he invents them. He hasn’t any more principle than a blue jay; and as for morals, he’s empty. Look at him now; look at him grovel. He knows what I am saying, and he knows it’s the truth. You see, yourself, that he can feel shame; it’s the only virtue he’s got. It’s wonderful how they find out everything that’s going on—the animals. They—”

  “Do you really believe they do, Dorcas?”

  “I don’t only just believe it, Marse Tom, I know it. Day before yesterday they knew something was going to happen. They were that excited, and whispering around together; why, anybody could see that they— But my! I must get back to her, and I haven’t got to my errand yet.”

  “What is it, Dorcas?”

  “Well, it’s two or three things. One is, the doctor don’t salute when he comes . . . Now, Marse Tom, it ain’t anything to laugh at, and so—”

  “Well, then, forgive me; I didn’t mean to laugh—I got caught unprepared.”

  “You see, she don’t want to hurt the doctor’s feelings, so she don’t say anything to him about it; but she is always polite, herself, and it hurts that kind for people to be rude to them.”

  “I’ll have that doctor hanged.”

  “Marse Tom, she don’t want him hanged. She—”

  “Well, then, I’ll have him boiled in oil.”

  “But she don’t want him boiled. I—”

  “Oh, very well, very well, I only want to please her; I’ll have him skinned.”

  “Why, she don’t want him skinned; it would break her heart. Now—”

  “Woman, this is perfectly unreasonable. What in the nation does she want?”

  “Marse Tom, if you would only be a little patient, and not fly off the handle at the least little thing. Why, she only wants you to speak to him.”

  “Speak to him! Well, upon my word! All this unseemly rage and row about such a—a— Dorcas, I never saw you carry on like this before. You have alarmed the sentry; he thinks I am being assassinated; he thinks there’s a mutiny, a revolt, an insurrection; he—”

  “Marse Tom, you are just putting on; you know it perfectly well; I don’t know what makes you act like that—but you always did, even when you was little, and you can’t get over it, I reckon. Are you over it now, Marse Tom?”

  “Oh, well, yes; but it would try anybody to be doing the best he could, offering every kindness he could think of, only to have it rejected with contumely and . . . Oh, well, let it go; it’s no matter—I’ll talk to the doctor. Is that satisfactory, or are you going to break out again?”

  “Yes, sir, it is; and it’s only right to talk to him, too, because it’s just as she says; she’s trying to keep up discipline in the Rangers, and this insubordination of his is a bad example for them—now ain’t it so, Marse Tom?”

  “Well, there is reason in it, I can’t deny it; so I will speak to him, though at bottom I think hanging would be more lasting. What is the rest of your errand, Dorcas?”

  “Of course her room is Ranger headquarters now, Marse Tom, while she’s sick. Well, soldiers of the cavalry and the dragoons that are off duty come and get her sentries to let them relieve them and serve in their place. It’s only out of affection, sir, and because they know military honors please her, and please the children too, for her sake; and they don’t bring their muskets; and so—”

  “I’ve noticed them there, but didn’t twig the idea. They are standing guard, are they?”

  “Yes, sir, and she is afraid you will reprove them and hurt their feelings, if you see them there; so she begs, if—if you don’t mind coming in the back way—”

  “Bear me up, Dorcas; don’t let me faint.”

  “There—sit up and behave, Marse Tom. You are not going to faint; you are only pretending—you used to act just so when you was little; it does seem a long time for you to get grown up.”

  “Dorcas, the way the child is progressing, I shall be out of my job before long—she’ll have the whole post in her hands. I must make a stand, I must not go down without a struggle. These encroachments. . . . Dorcas, what do you think she will think of next?”

  “Marse Tom, she don’t mean any harm.”

  “Are you sure of it?”

  “Yes, Marse Tom.”

  “You feel sure she has no ulterior designs?”

  “I don’t know what that is, Marse Tom, but I know she hasn’t.”

  “Very well, then, for the present I am satisfied. What else have you come about?”

  “I reckon I better tell you the whole thing first, Marse Tom, then tell you what she wants. There’s been an emeute, as she calls it. It was before she got back with BB. The officer of the day reported it to her this morning. It happened at her fort. There was a fuss betwixt Major-General Tommy Drake and Lieutenant-Colonel Agnes Frisbie, and he snatched her doll away, which is made of white kid stuffed with sawdust, and tore every rag of its clothes off, right before them all, and is under arrest, and the charge is conduct un—”

  “Yes, I know—conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman—a plain case, too, it seems to me. This is a serious matter. Well, what is her pleasure?”

  “Well, Marse Tom, she has summoned a court-martial, but the doctor don’t think she is well enough to preside over it, and she says there ain’t anybody competent but her, because there’s a major-general concerned; and so she—she—well, she says, would you preside over it for her? . . . Marse Tom, sit up! You ain’t any more going to faint than Shekels is.”

  “Look here, Dorcas, go along back, and be tactful. Be persuasive; don’t fret her; tell her it’s all right, the matter is in my hands, but it isn’t good form to hurry so grave a matter as this. Explain to her that we have to go by precedents, and that I believe this one to be new. In fact, you can say I know that nothing just like it has happened in our army, therefore I must be guided by European precedents, and must go cautiously and examine them carefully. Tell her not to be impatient, it will take me several days, but it will all come out right, and I will come over and report progress as I go along. Do you get the idea, Dorcas?”

  “I don’t know as I do, sir.”

  “Well, it’s this. You see, it won’t ever do for me, a brigadier in the regular army, to preside over that infant court-martial—there isn’t any precedent for it, don’t you see. Very well. I will go on examining authorities and reporting progress until she is well enough to get me out of this scrape by presiding herself. Do you get it now?”

  “Oh, yes, sir, I get it, and it’s good, I’ll go and fix it with her. Lay down! and stay where you are.”

  “Why, what harm is he doing?”

  “Oh, it ain’t any harm, but it just vexes me to see him act so.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Can’t you see, and him in such a sweat? He was starting out to spread it all over the post. Now I reckon you won’t deny, any more, that they go and tell everything they hear, now that you’ve seen it with yo’ own eyes.”

  “Well, I don’t like to acknowledge it, Dorcas, but I don’t see how I can consistently stick to my doubts in the face of such overwhelming proof as this do
g is furnishing.”

  “There, now, you’ve got in yo’ right mind at last! I wonder you can be so stubborn, Marse Tom. But you always was, even when you was little. I’m going now.”

  “Look here; tell her that in view of the delay, it is my judgment that she ought to enlarge the accused on his parole.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll tell her. Marse Tom?”

  “Well?”

  “She can’t get to Soldier Boy, and he stands there all the time, down in the mouth and lonesome; and she says will you shake hands with him and comfort him? Everybody does.”

  “It’s a curious kind of lonesomeness; but, all right, I will.”

  CHAPTER XI

  SEVERAL MONTHS LATER. ANTONIO AND THORNDIKE

  “Thorndike, isn’t that Plug you’re riding an assert of the scrap you and Buffalo Bill had with the late Blake Haskins and his pal a few months back?”

  “Yes, this is Mongrel—and not a half-bad horse, either.”

  “I’ve noticed he keeps up his lick first-rate. Say—isn’t it a gaudy morning?”

  “Right you are!”

  “Thorndike, it’s Andalusian! and when that’s said, all’s said.”

  “Andalusian and Oregonian, Antonio! Put it that way, and you have my vote. Being a native up there, I know. You being Andalusian-born—”

  “Can speak with authority for that patch of paradise? Well, I can. Like the Don! like Sancho! This is the correct Andalusian dawn now—crisp, fresh, dewy, fragrant, pungent—”

  “‘What though the spicy breezes

  Blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle—’

  —git up, you old cow! stumbling like that when we’ve just been praising you! out on a scout and can’t live up to the honor any better than that? Antonio, how long have you been out here in the Plains and the Rockies?”