Tom saluted and walked away, to find Horace Porter, whom he found to be a very nice fellow indeed. One of the first things the nice fellow did for him was to get him a good horse. There was no lack of horses at headquarters. The difficulty was not to find one, but to choose the best of many good ones. Tom, who had a good eye for a horse, found one that exactly suited him except as to color. He was of a mottled gray. The boy did not much care for such a color, but he knew it had its advantages. It does not advertise its presence. Where a black, a white or a bay horse would stand out and make a mark for hostile sharpshooters, a mottled gray might well elude their view. And the horse, apart from this, was just what he wanted. He paced fast, he galloped fast, and he walked fast, which is a rare and precious accomplishment in a horse. The average horse walks, as a rule, slower than the average man. In an hour, he covers a quarter-of-a-mile less ground. One question remained to be settled.
"Can he jump?" asked Tom.
"Jump, is it?" answered the soldier-groom. "Shure, the cow that jumped over the moon couldn't lift a leg to him."
"You bet your life he can jump," said Horace Porter. "General Grant has ridden him twice and I saw him put Bob over a fence or two."
BOB
Not long afterwards Tom did bet his life on Bob's jumping. He was named Bob before the United States took him. He had been captured the month before and had come across the lines with his name embroidered by some woman's hand on his saddle-blanket and with his late owner's blood upon his saddle. He was a tall, leggy animal who showed a trace of Arabian blood and who needed to be gentled a bit to get his best work out of him. His mouth was appreciative of sugar and his eyes were appreciative of kindness.
Both dogs and horses talk with their eyes.
"I like my new master," was what Bob's eyes said to Tom.
It was through a chance suggestion of Colonel Porter that the boy saw most of what he did see of the final fight for freedom. Porter had presented Tom to Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, who was then at City Point, receiving Grant's final instructions for the twelve-day campaign that ended in the fall of Richmond and the surrender of Lee's brave army. Sheridan was a stocky, red-faced young Irishman, a graduate of West Point, and a born leader of men, especially of cavalrymen. He liked the clear-eyed lad who stood respectfully before him. He had done too much in his own youth to think Tom was useless because he was so young. Porter saw that the boy had made a good impression. He ventured a suggestion.