I
SOLDIER BOY—PRIVATELY TO HIMSELF
I AM Buffalo Bill’s horse. I have spent my life under his saddle—with
him in it, too, and he is good for two hundred pounds, without his
clothes; and there is no telling how much he does weigh when he is out on
the war-path and has his batteries belted on. He is over six feet, is
young, hasn’t an ounce of waste flesh, is straight, graceful, springy in
his motions, quick as a cat, and has a handsome face, and black hair
dangling down on his shoulders, and is beautiful to look at; and nobody
is braver than he is, and nobody is stronger, except myself. Yes, a
person that doubts that he is fine to see should see him in his beaded
buck-skins, on my back and his rifle peeping above his shoulder, chasing
a hostile trail, with me going like the wind and his hair streaming out
behind from the shelter of his broad slouch. Yes, he is a sight to look
at then—and I’m part of it myself.
I am his favorite horse, out of dozens. Big as he is, I have carried him
eighty-one miles between nightfall and sunrise on the scout; and I am
good for fifty, day in and day out, and all the time. I am not large,
but I am built on a business basis. I have carried him thousands and
thousands of miles on scout duty for the army, and there’s not a gorge,
nor a pass, nor a valley, nor a fort, nor a trading post, nor a
buffalo-range in the whole sweep of the Rocky Mountains and the Great
Plains that we don’t know as well as we know the bugle-calls. He is
Chief of Scouts to the Army of the Frontier, and it makes us very
important. In such a position as I hold in the military service one
needs to be of good family and possess an education much above the common
to be worthy of the place. I am the best-educated horse outside of the
hippodrome, everybody says, and the best-mannered. It may be so, it is
not for me to say; modesty is the best policy, I think. Buffalo Bill
taught me the most of what I know, my mother taught me much, and I taught
myself the rest. Lay a row of moccasins before me—Pawnee, Sioux,
Shoshone, Cheyenne, Blackfoot, and as many other tribes as you please—and
I can name the tribe every moccasin belongs to by the make of it. Name
it in horse-talk, and could do it in American if I had speech.
I know some of the Indian signs—the signs they make with their hands, and
by signal-fires at night and columns of smoke by day. Buffalo Bill
taught me how to drag wounded soldiers out of the line of fire with my
teeth; and I’ve done it, too; at least I’ve dragged _him_ out of the
battle when he was wounded. And not just once, but twice. Yes, I know a
lot of things. I remember forms, and gaits, and faces; and you can’t
disguise a person that’s done me a kindness so that I won’t know him
thereafter wherever I find him. I know the art of searching for a trail,
and I know the stale track from the fresh. I can keep a trail all by
myself, with Buffalo Bill asleep in the saddle; ask him—he will tell you
so. Many a time, when he has ridden all night, he has said to me at
dawn, “Take the watch, Boy; if the trail freshens, call me.” Then he
goes to sleep. He knows he can trust me, because I have a reputation. A
scout horse that has a reputation does not play with it.
My mother was all American—no alkali-spider about _her_, I can tell you;
she was of the best blood of Kentucky, the bluest Blue-grass aristocracy,
very proud and acrimonious—or maybe it is ceremonious. I don’t know
which it is. But it is no matter; size is the main thing about a word,
and that one’s up to standard. She spent her military life as colonel of
the Tenth Dragoons, and saw a deal of rough service—distinguished service
it was, too. I mean, she _carried_ the Colonel; but it’s all the same.
Where would he be without his horse? He wouldn’t arrive. It takes two
to make a colonel of dragoons. She was a fine dragoon horse, but never
got above that. She was strong enough for the scout service, and had the
endurance, too, but she couldn’t quite come up to the speed required; a
scout horse has to have steel in his muscle and lightning in his blood.
My father was a bronco. Nothing as to lineage—that is, nothing as to
recent lineage—but plenty good enough when you go a good way back. When
Professor Marsh was out here hunting bones for the chapel of Yale
University he found skeletons of horses no bigger than a fox, bedded in
the rocks, and he said they were ancestors of my father. My mother heard
him say it; and he said those skeletons were two million years old, which
astonished her and made her Kentucky pretensions look small and pretty
antiphonal, not to say oblique. Let me see. . . . I used to know the
meaning of those words, but . . . well, it was years ago, and ’tisn’t as
vivid now as it was when they were fresh. That sort of words doesn’t
keep, in the kind of climate we have out here. Professor Marsh said
those skeletons were fossils. So that makes me part blue grass and part
fossil; if there is any older or better stock, you will have to look for
it among the Four Hundred, I reckon. I am satisfied with it. And am a
happy horse, too, though born out of wedlock.
And now we are back at Fort Paxton once more, after a forty-day scout,
away up as far as the Big Horn. Everything quiet. Crows and Blackfeet
squabbling—as usual—but no outbreaks, and settlers feeling fairly easy.
The Seventh Cavalry still in garrison, here; also the Ninth Dragoons, two
artillery companies, and some infantry. All glad to see me, including
General Alison, commandant. The officers’ ladies and children well, and
called upon me—with sugar. Colonel Drake, Seventh Cavalry, said some
pleasant things; Mrs. Drake was very complimentary; also Captain and Mrs.
Marsh, Company B, Seventh Cavalry; also the Chaplain, who is always kind
and pleasant to me, because I kicked the lungs out of a trader once. It
was Tommy Drake and Fanny Marsh that furnished the sugar—nice children,
the nicest at the post, I think.
That poor orphan child is on her way from France—everybody is full of the
subject. Her father was General Alison’s brother; married a beautiful
young Spanish lady ten years ago, and has never been in America since.
They lived in Spain a year or two, then went to France. Both died some
months ago. This little girl that is coming is the only child. General
Alison is glad to have her. He has never seen her. He is a very nice
old bachelor, but is an old bachelor just the same and isn’t more than
about a year this side of retirement by age limit; and so what does he
know about taking care of a little maid nine years old? If I could have
her it would be another matter, for I know all about children, and they
adore me. Buffalo Bill will tell you so himself.
I have some of this news from over-hearing the garrison-gossip, the rest
of it I got from Potter, the General’s dog. Potter is the great Dane.
He is privileged, all over the post, like Shekels, the Seventh Cavalry’s
dog, and visits everybody’s quarters and picks up everything that is
going, in the way of news. Potter has no imagination, and no great deal
of culture, perhaps, but he has a historical mind and a good memory, and
so he is the person I depend upon mainly to post me up when I get back
from a scout. That is, if Shekels is out on depredation and I can’t get
hold of him.
II
LETTER FROM ROUEN—TO GENERAL ALISON
_MY dear Brother-in-Law_,—Please let me write again in Spanish, I cannot
trust my English, and I am aware, from what your brother used to say,
that army officers educated at the Military Academy of the United States
are taught our tongue. It is as I told you in my other letter: both my
poor sister and her husband, when they found they could not recover,
expressed the wish that you should have their little Catherine—as knowing
that you would presently be retired from the army—rather than that she
should remain with me, who am broken in health, or go to your mother in
California, whose health is also frail.
You do not know the child, therefore I must tell you something about her.
You will not be ashamed of her looks, for she is a copy in little of her
beautiful mother—and it is that Andalusian beauty which is not
surpassable, even in your country. She has her mother’s charm and grace
and good heart and sense of justice, and she has her father’s vivacity
and cheerfulness and pluck and spirit of enterprise, with the
affectionate disposition and sincerity of both parents.
My sister pined for her Spanish home all these years of exile; she was
always talking of Spain to the child, and tending and nourishing the love
of Spain in the little thing’s heart as a precious flower; and she died
happy in the knowledge that the fruitage of her patriotic labors was as
rich as even she could desire.
Cathy is a sufficiently good little scholar, for her nine years; her
mother taught her Spanish herself, and kept it always fresh upon her ear
and her tongue by hardly ever speaking with her in any other tongue; her
father was her English teacher, and talked with her in that language
almost exclusively; French has been her everyday speech for more than
seven years among her playmates here; she has a good working use of
governess—German and Italian. It is true that there is always a faint
foreign fragrance about her speech, no matter what language she is
talking, but it is only just noticeable, nothing more, and is rather a
charm than a mar, I think. In the ordinary child-studies Cathy is
neither before nor behind the average child of nine, I should say. But I
can say this for her: in love for her friends and in high-mindedness and
good-heartedness she has not many equals, and in my opinion no superiors.
And I beg of you, let her have her way with the dumb animals—they are her
worship. It is an inheritance from her mother. She knows but little of
cruelties and oppressions—keep them from her sight if you can. She would
flare up at them and make trouble, in her small but quite decided and
resolute way; for she has a character of her own, and lacks neither
promptness nor initiative. Sometimes her judgment is at fault, but I
think her intentions are always right. Once when she was a little
creature of three or four years she suddenly brought her tiny foot down
upon the floor in an apparent outbreak of indignation, then fetched it a
backward wipe, and stooped down to examine the result. Her mother said:
“Why, what is it, child? What has stirred you so?”
“Mamma, the big ant was trying to kill the little one.”
“And so you protected the little one.”
“Yes, mamma, because he had no friend, and I wouldn’t let the big one
kill him.”
“But you have killed them both.”
Cathy was distressed, and her lip trembled. She picked up the remains
and laid them upon her palm, and said:
“Poor little anty, I’m so sorry; and I didn’t mean to kill you, but there
wasn’t any other way to save you, it was such a hurry.”
She is a dear and sweet little lady, and when she goes it will give me a
sore heart. But she will be happy with you, and if your heart is old and
tired, give it into her keeping; she will make it young again, she will
refresh it, she will make it sing. Be good to her, for all our sakes!
My exile will soon be over now. As soon as I am a little stronger I
shall see my Spain again; and that will make me young again!