Certainly no cricket ever dropped blither music from his legs than did
my beautiful horse that glorious morning as we clattered in perfect
rhythm on the hard clean road of the wide pine forest. Ah! the forest is
not there now; the lumbermen--
For an hour or so the world seemed to have taken me for its center as
smoothly as a sleeping top. Only after a good seven miles did my
meditations begin to reveal any bitter in the sweet; but it was in
recalling for the twentieth time the last sight of Camille, that I
heard myself say, I know not whether softly or loudly,
"Oh, hang the uniform!"
The morning was almost sultry. As I halted in the clear ripples of a
gravelly "branch" to let my horse drink, I heard no great way off the
Harpers' train shrieking at cattle on the track, and looking up I
noticed just behind me an unfrequented by-road carefully masked with
brush, according to a new habit of the "citizens". The next moment my
horse threw up his head to listen. Then I heard hoofs and voices, and
presently there came trotting through the oak bushes and around the mask
of brush two horsemen unusually well mounted, clad and armed. Their very
dark gray uniforms were so trim and so nearly blue that my heart came
into my throat; but then I noticed they carried neither carbines nor
sabres, but repeaters only, a brace to each. They splashed lightly to
either side of me, and the three horses drank together.
"Good-morning," we said. One of the men was a sergeant. He scanned my
animal, and then me, with a dawning smile. "That's a fightin'-cock of a
horse you've got, sonny."
"Yes, bub," I replied. The two men laughed so explosively that my horse
lifted his head austerely.
"Jim," said the younger, "I don't believe all the conscripts we've
caught these three days are worth the powder they've cost!"
"No," replied Sergeant Jim, "I doubt if the most of 'em are." I turned
to him and drew down my under eyelid. "Will you kindly tell me, sir, if
you see any unnatural discoloration in there?"