The troop of the Ninth executed a “left backward turn” with beautiful precision, and this difficult undertaking will serve to give one an idea of the training of the mounts.
Gymnastics of all sorts were indulged in, even to the extent of turning summersaults over four horses from a spring-board. A citizen near me, whose mind had probably wandered back to Barnum and Bailey, said:
THROWING A HORSE
“But what’s this got to do with soldiers; is it not highly flavored with circus?”
I could offer no excuse except the tradition that cavalrymen are supposed to ride well. All the men were young and in first-rate physical fix, and seemed to enjoy the thing—all except one old first sergeant, who had been time-expired these half-dozen times, whose skin was so full of bullet-holes that it wouldn’t hold blood, and who had entered this new régime with many protests:
“O’me nau circus ape; I can’t be leppin’ around afther the likes av thim!” whereat the powers arranged it so that the old veteran got a job looking after plug tobacco, tomato-cans, tinned beef, and other “commissaries,” upon which he viewed the situation more cheerfully.
The drill was tremendously entertaining to the ladies and gentlemen in the gallery, and they clapped their hands and went bustling into their traps and off down the road to the general’s house, where Madam the General gave a breakfast, and the women no doubt asked the second lieutenants deliciously foolish questions about their art. The gentlemen, some of whom are Congressmen and other exalted governmental functionaries, felt proud of the cavalry, and went home with a determination to combat any one hostile to cavalry legislation, if a bold front and firm purpose could stay the desecrating hand.
But all this work is primary and elementary. The second degree is administered in field-work, comprising experimental marches, and those who know General Henry by reputation will not forget his hundred-mile march with the Ninth Cavalry at Pine Ridge, and those who know him personally will become acquainted with his theory that a cavalry command in good condition, with proper feeds, should make fifty miles a day, with a maximum on the road of ten hours a day, moving at the rate of five miles an hour in cavalry halts, the gaits being walk, trot, and leading, with a day’s rest each week, to be continued indefinitely. And knowing all this, they will be sure that the model squadron wears out a good many horseshoes in a season.