“Oh, mastah!” he whispered, “dey say Private Smith going to die.”
Chapter Nine.
Private Smith did not die, but he had a month in hospital for his punishment, while mine was confined to a severe reprimand.
I was not happy at Rambagh, for though the other officers were pleasant enough with me, Barton always seemed to be sneering at my efforts, and was ready to utter some disparaging remark. There was one consolation, however: the others did not seem to like him, so that it did not look as if it were all my fault. I noticed one thing, though, and it was this: Barton was always ready to say disparaging things about Brace; but the latter never retaliated, and always refrained from mentioning, save in the most general way, his brother-officer’s name.
I was getting on fast, I suppose, for I felt less nervous and more at home with the troop. The various words of command had ceased to be a puzzle, and when I had orders to give, I was beginning to be able to use my voice in a penetrating, decisive way, and did not feel ashamed of it when I heard my words ring out clearly, and not as if they were jerked or bumped out by the motion of my horse.
Then, too, I had got on so far that I did not mind standing close to the brass field-pieces when they were fired, and the discharge had ceased to make my ears ring for hours after, and feel deaf. At the first shots I heard, I could not help wondering whether the piece I stood by would burst, and kill or wound us with a jagged fragment of brass. While now the dashing gallop, with the guns leaping and bounding over the plain, and the men on the limbers holding on with both hands to keep from being jerked off, had grown exhilarating and full of excitement. There was always the feeling that one must have a bad fall, and sometimes a horse would go down, and a man be hurt more or less seriously; but somehow I always escaped. And one morning I went back to breakfast after a heavy gallop, tired, but prouder than I had ever before felt in my life, for I had heard one of the men whisper to another as we drew up into line after a fierce gallop—
“How the young beggar can ride!”
And, to make matters better, Brace came alongside of me, and uttered the one word, “Capital,” as he passed.