When both living equations are young, full of oats and bacon, imbued with military ideas, and trained to the hour, it always seems to me that the ghost of a tragedy stalks at their side. This is why the polo-player does not qualify sentimentally. But what is one man beside two troops which come shortly in two solid chunks, with horses snorting and sending the dry landscape in a dusty pall for a quarter of a mile in the rear? It is good—ah! it is worth any one's while; but stop and think, what if we could magnify that? Tut, tut! as I said before, that only happens once in a generation. Adobe doesn't dream; it simply does its morning's work.
The rear-guard have popped at our advance, which exchanges with them. Their fire grows slack, and from our vantage we can see them mount quickly and flee.
After two hours of this we shake hands with the hostiles and trot home to breakfast.
These active, hard-riding, straight-shooting, open-order men are doing real work, and are not being stupefied by drill-ground routine, or rendered listless by file-closer prompting or sleepy reiteration.
By the time the command dismounts in front of stables we turn longingly to the thoughts of breakfast. Every one has completely forgiven the Colonel, though I have no doubt he will be equally unpopular to-morrow morning.
But what do I see—am I faint? No; it has happened again. It looks as though I saw a soldier jump over a horse. I moved on him.
“Did I see you—” I began.
“Oh yes, sir—you see,” returned a little soldier, who ran with the mincing steps of an athlete towards his horse, and landed standing uip on his hind quarters, whereupon he settled down quietly into his saddle.
Others began to gyrate over and under their horses in a dizzy way. Some had taken their saddles off and now sat on their horses' bellies, while the big dog-like animals lay on their backs, with their feet in the air. It was circus business, or what they call “short and long horse” work—some not understandable phrase. Every one does it. While I am not unaccustomed to looking at cavalry, I am being perpetually surprised by the lengths to which our cavalry is carrying thus Cossack drill. It is beginning to be nothing short of marvellous.