Tells How the Chaplain was Paralyzed by the Spotted Circus-
Horse--I am Court Martialed--I Plead my own Case, and am
Acquitted.
In the last chapter I told of trading my circus-horse to the chaplain,
and how the chaplain had rode away with the regiment for review, and I
remained in camp, pretending to be sick. The result of that scheme on my
part was not all my fancy painted it. I stood in front of my tent with
a wet towel around my head, and saw the regiment return from review, the
chaplain's spotted circus horse with no rider, being led by a colored
man, the horse looking as innocent as any horse I ever saw. Where was
the 'chaplain? Had he been killed? I noticed half the men were laughing
and it seemed to me they wouldn't laugh if the good chaplain was dead.
I also noticed that the colonel and his staff wore faces clouded with
anger, and that they seemed as though they would like to kill somebody.
Before the regiment had got fairly dismounted, a sergeant and three men
marched to my tent, and I was arrested, and was informed that I would be
tried at once, by court-martial, for conduct prejudicial to good order
and military discipline. I knew the sergeant, and tried to joke with
him, telling him to “go on with his old ark, as there wasn't going to be
much of a shower,” but he wouldn't have any funny business, and kindly
informed me that I had probably got to the end of my rope, and that
I would no doubt spend the remainder of my term of enlistment in the
military prison. I asked him what the row was about, and he said. I
would find out soon enough. One soldier got on each side of me, and one
behind with sabers drawn, to stick me with if I attempted to get away,
and we started for the colonel's tent. On the way there, the chaplain
came towards us, covered with red clay, and begged the sergeant to allow
him to kill me right there. He was the maddest truly good man I ever
saw. He fairly foamed at the mouth, and said, “O, sergeant, turn him
loose, and let me chew him up.” I said to the sergeant:
“Now, look-a-here, don't you let that savage get at me, or he will get
hurt. I don't want to have any trouble with the church, but if any
regularly ordained ministerial cannibal of a sky pilot attempts to chew
me, he will find a good deal more gristle than tender loin, and I will
italicise his nose so he will look so crossed-eyed that he can't draw
his pay.”
My thus showing that I was not afraid of a non-combatant, seemed to have
the desired effect, for he spit on his hands, jumped up and cracked
his heels together, said he would wipe the Southern Confederacy with my
remains, and he went to his tent to change his clothes, and get ready
for the court-martial. The guard took me to the colonel's tent, and I
walked right in where the colonel and major and several others were, and
I said Hello, and smiled, and extended my hand to the colonel. None of
them helloed, and none of them returned my smile, and the colonel did
not shake hands with me. He said, however, that I had brought disgrace
on the regiment, and broken the heart of a noble man, the chaplain. I
told him I didn't think the chaplain's heart was very badly broke, as he
had just ottered to whip me in several languages, and threatened to eat
me. The colonel had me sit down on a trunk and keep still, while the
court-martial convened. It was not many minutes before the officers had
arrived, and organized, the adjutant read the charges and specifications
against me. Not to go into the military-form of charges and
specifications, the substance of them was that I had with malice
aforethought, procured a trick-horse from a circus, with the intention
of inducing the chaplain to trade for it, with the purpose of causing
the aforesaid chaplain to become a spectacle for laughter. When the
charges were read I was asked what I had to say, and I told the Judge
Advocate it was a condemned lie. That made him mad, and he was going
to commence whipping me where the chaplain left off, when the colonel
smoothed matters over by asking me if I didn't mean to plead “not
guilty.” I said, “Certainly, not guilty. It is false. I did not secure
the horse for the purpose of sawing it off on the chaplain. I jayhawked
it, and when I found it was not the kind of a horse for a modest fellow
like me, who didn't want to make any display, I thought I would trade it
to some officer with gall, and the chaplain was the first man who struck
me for a trade, and he got it, and from his remarks to me, and from
these court-martial proceedings, I was satisfied the chaplain did not
like the horse.” The officers laughed then, and I suppose they were
thinking of something that happened to the chaplain on review. The
colonel asked me if I wanted anybody to defend me, and I told him I
had a printing office once next door to a lawyer's office, and I knew a
little about law, and would defend myself. The chaplain came soon, and
began to tell his story, but I insisted, that he be sworn, and then he
proceeded to tell his tale. He said that he was a God-fearing man, and
meant to do right, and was willing to take his chances in the lottery of
war, but when a man got him to ride a circus trick-horse, and bring
upon his sacred calling the ribald laughter of the wicked, he felt that
civilization was a failure. He said he traded for the spotted horse in
good faith, and that he was particular to ask me if the horse had any
tricks, and I said he had none, and he traded on that understanding,
that he rode the afore--said horse to the review, and as soon as the
aforesaid horse heard the band play, he waltzed out into the middle
of the street, whirled around more than fifty times, waltzed into
an infantry regiment, breaking the ranks of the soldiers just as the
reviewing officer come along, causing the reviewing officer to say, “get
out of the ranks, you d-d fool, and take that horse back to the circus,”
thus causing him, the chaplain, to be scandalized. He said he would have
stood that, but the horse carried him to a battery of artillery which
was in position, and began to jump over the guns, and that a gunner
took a swab with which he had been cleaning a gun, and punched him, the
chaplain, in the face, covering his face with burnt powder which smelled
badly.
Then the horse carried him out on the field in front of the reviewing
officers, got up on its hind feet and walked for half a block, making
the chaplain appear as though climbing up the horse's neck, and when
some of the general's staff came out to arrest him, the horse whirled
around and kicked, in every direction at once, and broke the saber of
one of the staff-officers. That the horse seemed to be possessed of the
devil. That he finally got the horse to go back to the regiment where he
belonged, but on the way he had to pass brigade headquarters, when the
horse stopped in front of the commanding officer and sat down like
a dog, on his hind parts, and tried to shake hands with the colonel
commanding, who was offended, and told the chaplain he was an ass, and
to go away with his museum, or he would have the chaplain put in the
guard house. That a colored man near the review ground had a ginger
bread stand, with a sheet tacked up to keep the sun off, and the spotted
horse attempted to jump through the sheet, evidently thinking it was a
paper hoop in a circus. And in conclusion, after making the chaplain so
mortified and ashamed that he wished he might die, the horse laid down
in the road and rolled over the aforsaid chaplain, leaving him in the
road covered with dirt, while the horse run across the street and walked
up a pair of stairs, outside a store, went into the rooms occupied by
some milliners and scared the women so they put their heads out of
the windows and yelled fire, and said a regiment of Yankee cavalry had
raided their homes. That the review was made a farce, the chaplain a
laughing stock, and that it took ten men to get the horse down stairs,
and half the regiment to console the milliners, and convince them that
no harm was intended. He said he demanded that I be sentenced to be
shot.
The colonel asked me if I had anything to say, and I asked permission
to cross-examine the witness. Permission being granted, I asked the
chaplain what his business was. He said he was a minister. I asked him
if he didn't consider trading horses one of the noblest professions
extant. He said he didn't know about that. Then I asked him if he didn't
take advantage of me when I came to the regiment, as a raw recruit,
and trade me a kicking mule, that made my life a burden. He said he
remembered that he traded me a mule. I asked him if he didn't know
the mule was balky, vicious, and spavined, that it would kick its best
friend, bite anybody, that it was so ugly that he had to put the saddle
on with a long pole, that he warranted the mule sound when he knew it
had all the diseases that were going.
He said he objected to being asked such questions, but the
judge-advocate said I had a right to bring out any previous transactions
in the horse-trade line, as it would have some effect in this case. Then
I asked him if he didn't know the horse he beat me out of was sound,
a splendid rider, and that the mule was the worst one in the army. He
admitted that he knew the animal was not a desirable animal, but he
thought a recruit could get along with a kicking mule better than a
chaplain. I had saved my best shot for the last, and I said, “knowing
the mule was unsound, a vicious animal, and that my horse was sound and
desirable, and worth more than a dozen such mules, did you consider
that you was pursuing your calling as a minister when you gained my
confidence, and not only sawed the mule off on to me, bereaved me of a
fine horse, but took twenty dollars of my hard-earned bounty money as
boot in the trade? In doing that to an innocent and fresh recruit who
had confidence in you, did you not pave the way for me to get even with
you on a horse trade, and haven't I got even, and do you blame me for
doing it?” The chaplain was perspiring while I was asking the questions,
and all the officers were looking at him as though he had caught a
tartar, but he blushed, choked, and finally answered that perhaps he did
wrong in trading me that mule, and he asked to be forgiven.
Then I turned to the officers and said, “Gentlemen, I admit that I
traded the spotted circus-horse to the chaplain. I did it on purpose
to show him that there is a God in Israel. When I came to the regiment,
right fresh from the people, I needed salting. The boys all salted me
whenever they got a chance, and I took it like a little man. In turning
to the chaplain for comfort, I did not expect that he would salt me
worse than all of the boys combined, but when I found that he had gone
through me, and taken advantage of my guileless innocence, and laughed
at my woe when I found the confounded mule was not all his fancy had
painted it, and that it laid awake nights to devise ways to kick my head
on, I took a blooded oath that before the cruel war was over I would
salt that chaplain on a horse trade, until he would own up the corn. I
leave it to you, gentlemen, if I have done it or not. When that spotted
horse fell to me, by the fortunes of war, I was not long in learning
that it was the relic of a circus. I rode the horse one day last week at
a funeral, and it acted in such a manner as to almost wake up the late
lamented. I was made the laughing stock of the brigade, and of the
town. It was government property, and I could not kill the horse, and I
thought the time had arrived for me to get even with my old friend. He
was mashed on my spotted horse, and bantered me for a trade. Finally we
traded, and I got ten dollars to boot. The result has been all that I
could desire. I have had the satisfaction of demonstrating to this
truly good man that all is not gold that glitters. I have shown him that
however spotted a man may be, if he rides a spotted circus horse, he
will get there. I will leave it to the chaplain, now, if I was not
justified in trading him that horse, after what he had done to me, and
will ask him if he was not served perfectly right, and if in trading me
that mule he did not do to others as he would have others do to him, and
if so, if he does not think the others did it to him in great shape. I
am done. I leave my life in your hands.”
When I quit they were all laughing except the chaplain, and there was
a quiet smile around his mouth, as he thought of his experience on the
spotted horse. The colonel asked the chaplain, if he had anything to
say, and he said he had just been thinking that he could go over to a
New Jersey regiment and trade that spotted horse to the chaplain of that
regiment, and if he could, he would be willing to drop the case. He
said that chaplain played a mean trick on him once, and he wanted to
get even. The court martial acquitted me, and while we were all taking
a drink with the colonel, the chaplain went out, and pretty soon we saw
his servant leading the spotted horse over towards the camp of the New
Jersey regiment, and later the chaplain sauntered off in that direction
on foot, as though there was some weighty subject on his mind. The
weighty subject was the spotted circus-horse.
I do not suppose any incident ever caused so much talk as did the
chaplain's circus. The boys were talking and laughing about it in every
company all that afternoon, and when it was found that I had not been
punished, for trading the horse to him, the boys were wild. They wanted
to show their appreciation of the fun I had given them, so a lot of them
got together to give me a sort of reception. They sent for me to come
over to Co. D., and when I got over there they grabbed me and carried me
off on their shoulders. I felt proud to see them so joyous and friendly,
until they put me in a blanket and tossed me up into the trees, and
caught me in the blanket as I came down. Of all the sensations I ever
experienced, that of being tossed up in a blanket was the worst. I tried
to laugh, at first, but it became serious, as I went into the air
twenty feet, let loose of the air and came down, expecting to be crushed
maimed, killed. My breath forsook me, I was dizzy, but I struck the
blanket easy, and after being sent up a dozen times they let me go, and
my reception was over.