It was hard work, too—wild galloping over rough ground, with the guns and limbers behind their teams, bumping and leaping as the troop tore along, with the horses literally racing to some point of vantage. Then the bugle would ring out, the horses would stop pretty well all together, the men leap from the saddles, and the gunners dismount from their horses, which were held by their companions; then with amazing celerity the gun-trails would be unhooked, swung round in this direction or in that, to go into action, loaded and fired—with blank-cartridge, of course. Then the trumpet sounded, the trails were hooked on again, the men leaped back to their places, the trumpet rang out once more, and away they went, raising a cloud of dust as they dashed along, the wonder to Dick being that so few accidents occurred, for the officers, as a rule, made a point in practice of riding for the roughest ground.
“Nothing like it, Dicky,” said Wyatt one day when, after a long series of dashes here and there, a halt was called, and the men sat at ease wiping their streaming faces. “We’ve got to be prepared for everything and to go anywhere.”
“That we can,” said Dick, who had been wildly excited by the gallop.
“That we can!” said Wyatt, his face assuming an air of disgust. “There’s a pretty sort of a fellow! Our troop would go anywhere.”
“That it could,” said Dick shortly.
“Well!” ejaculated Wyatt—and again, “Well! this is a smack in the face. I shall have to tell Hulton. Here have I been priding myself on our having broken you in to our ways, and made a gunner of you that we could be proud of, and you talk like that.”
“I don’t see anything wrong in what I said,” said Dick wonderingly.
“Don’t you? Then I do. It’s very evident that you have not half learned your duty yet. Look here, my lad. We are emergency men, expected to go wherever our general orders, and we do it.”
Dick laughed.
“Worse and worse! Here, I give you up, Dick.”