CAST.
The auctioneer glanced at his book. "Number 29," he said, "black mare, aged, blind in near eye, otherwise sound."
The cold rain and the biting north-east wind did not add to the appearance of Number 29, as she stood, dejected, listless, with head drooping, in the centre of the farmers and horse-dealers who were attending the sale of cast Army horses. She looked as though she realised that her day had waned, and that the bright steel work, the soft well-greased leather, the snowy head-rope and the shining curb were to be put aside for less noble trappings.
She had a curiously shaped white blaze, and I think it was that, added to the description of her blindness, which stirred my memory within me. I closed my eyes for a second and it all came back to me, the gun stuck in the mud, the men straining at the wheels, the shells bursting, the reek of high explosive, the two leaders lying dead on the road, and, above all, two gallant horses doing the work of four and pulling till you'd think their hearts would burst.
I stepped forward and, looking closer at the mare's neck, found what I had expected, a great scar. That settled it. I approached the auctioneer and asked permission to speak to the crowd for a few moments.
"Well," said he, "I'm supposed to do the talking here, you know."
"It won't do you any harm," I pleaded, "and it will give me a chance to pay off a big debt."
"Right," he said, smiling; "carry on."
"Gentlemen," I said, "about this time a year ago I was commanding a battery in France. It was during the bad days, and we were falling back with the Hun pressing hard upon us. My guns had been firing all the morning from a sunken road, when we got orders to limber up and get back to a rear position. We hadn't had a bad time till then, a few odd shells, but nothing that was meant especially for our benefit. And then, just as we were getting away, they spotted us, and a battery opened on us good and strong. By a mixture of good luck and great effort we'd got all the guns away but one, when a shell landed just in front of the leaders and knocked them both out with their driver; at the same time the gun was jerked off the road into a muddy ditch. Almost simultaneously another shell killed one of the wheelers, and there we were with one horse left to get the gun out of the ditch and along a road that was almost as bad as the ditch itself.
"It looked hopeless, and it was on the tip of my tongue to give orders to abandon the gun, when suddenly out of the blue there appeared on the bank above us a horse, looking unconcernedly down at us.
"In those days loose horses were straying all over the country, and I took this to be one from another battery which had come to us for company.
"I turned to one of the men. 'Catch that mare quick.'
"In a few minutes we had the harness off the dead wheeler and on the new-comer. Pull? Gentlemen, if you could have seen those two horses pull!
"We'd just got a move on the gun when another shell came and seemed to burst right on top of the strange mare. I heard a terrified squeal, and through the smoke I saw her stagger and with a mighty effort recover herself. I ran round and saw she'd been badly hit over the eye and had a great tearing gash in the neck. We never thought she could go on, but she pulled away just the same, with the blood pouring off her, till finally we got the gun out and down the road to safety.
"I got knocked out a few minutes later, and from that day to this I've often wondered what had happened to the mare that had served us so gallantly. I know now. There she stands before you. I'd know her out of a thousand by the white blaze; and if there was a doubt there's her blind eye and the scar on her neck.
"That's all, gentlemen; but I'm going to ask the man who buys her to remember her story and to see that her last days are not too hard."
She fell at a good price to a splendid type of West Country farmer, and the auctioneer whispered to me, "I'm glad old Carey's got her. There's not a man in the county keeps his horses better."
"Old Carey" came up to me as we were moving off. "I had a son in France," he said, "in the gunners, too, but he hadn't the luck of the old mare"—he hesitated a moment and his old eyes looked steadily into mine—"for he'll never come back. The mare'll be all right, Sir," he went on as he walked off, "easy work and full rations. I reckon she's earned them."
"The bride was given away by her grandfather who was dressed in Liberty satin in empire style, with hanging sleeves of chiffon."—Provincial Paper.
He must have looked a sweet old dear.
