“Very well, General, that is the animal; he keeps his strings loose when he is not at his work.”
“No, I have seen you riding a far better horse than that; I am too old a cavalryman to be caught by such chaff.”
To the great glee of the Hun, whose faith in Ruby was unbounded, Davidson’s whole staff turned the laugh on me for trying to deceive the General just because he had been dining.
I mounted, and started off with one of Ruby’s enormous lifts, that brought the whole company to their feet. It was the supreme moment with him. Full of consciousness, as though he knew the opportunity would never come again, and quivering in anticipation of his triumph, he was yet true to his training, and held himself subject to my least impulse.
We had lain in our camp for more than a week, and there was not a vestige left of the recently substantial fences,—only the suggestive and conspicuous gateways that stood to mark the march of our armies from the Chesapeake to the Indian Nation. But Ruby built fences in his imagination higher than any he had ever faced, and cleared them without a scratch, landing close as though the Helena ditch were still to be taken.
It would take long to tell all he did and how perfectly he did it; he went back at last to his canvas blanket, loaded with adulation, and as happy as it is given a horse to be.
In his leaping he had started a shoe, and Ike took him in the morning to the smith (who had taken possession of an actual forge), to have it reset. A moment later, the Hun cried, “My God, Colonel, look at Ruby!”
Hobbling along with one hind foot drawn up with pain, he was making his last mournful march, and we laid him that day to rest,—as true a friend and as faithful a fellow as ever wore a chestnut coat.
He had reared in the shop, parted his halter, and fallen under a bench, breaking his thigh far up above the stifle.