We soon left for an active expedition in the direction of Little Rock, of which it is only necessary to say, here, that it lasted about a month, and brought the writer acquainted with some very unsatisfactory horses,—a fact which heightened his pleasure, on striking the White River bottom again, at finding that Ruby had been brought over the ferry to meet him. Tired as I was, I took a glorious brisk trot through the Canebrake Road, with a couple of leaps over fallen trees, that revived the old emotions and made a man of me again.
While we lay at Batesville we were unusually active in the matter of drill and reorganization; and this, with our engagements in the town, kept us too busy for much recreation; but Ludlow and I managed to work in a daily swim in the White River, with old saddles on our horses, and scant clothing on our persons. Talk of aquatic sports! there is no royal bath without a plucky horse to assist; and a swim across the swift current at Batesville, with a horse like Ruby snorting and straining at every stroke, belittled even the leaping at Lebanon.
From Batesville we commenced our memorable march to join the fleet that had just passed Memphis, following down the left bank of the river to Augusta, and then striking across the cotton country to Helena,—a march on which we enjoyed the rarest picturesqueness of plantation life, and suffered enough from heat and hunger and thirst, and stifling, golden dust to more than pay for it.
Helena was a pestiferous swamp, worth more than an active campaign to our enemies, filling our hospitals, and furrowing the levee bank with graves. It was too hot for much drilling, and we kept our better horses in order by daybreak races. With the local fever feeling its way into my veins, I was too listless to care much for any diversion; but Ike came to me one evening to say that he “reckoned” Ruby was as good a horse as anybody had in the “camps,” and he might as well take a hand in the games. I told him I had no objection to his being run, if he could find a suitable boy, but that both he and I were too heavy for race-riding.
“I don’t weigh only about a hundred and a half,” said the ambitious man.
“Well, suppose you don’t, that is ten pounds too much.”
“I reckon a man can ride ten pound lighter ’n he is if he knows how to ride; anyhow, if Rube can’t skin anything around here, I don’t know nothin’ about horses.”
“Ike, did you ever run that horse?”
“Well, Colonel, now you ask me, I did jest give Dwight’s darkey a little brush once.”
Conquering my indignation and my scruples, I went over, just for the honor of the establishment, and made up a race for the next day.