From Headquarters: Odd Tales Picked up in the Volunteer Service

by James A. Frye

"It seems to have been acknowledged that you were the best rider in your regiment," suggested one of the visitors.

"Oh, I hardly should care to claim so much as that," replied Bones, with a glance at his brother officers, "but I've been nine years in the service without falling off my horse—and that's a pretty fair record for a staff officer of volunteers. Well, as I've said, I was elected without a dissenting voice—except my own—and the ill-concealed joy of Wilder, our assistant surgeon, was something worth seeing. He's looking for promotion, you know, and a casual broken neck on my part would have given it to him."

"Pardon the interruption," interposed the colonel, blandly, "but there will be a vacancy for Wilder, and very soon, too, if you cast any more reflections upon the horsemanship of my military family."

"Gracious! did I?" asked Bones, hastily. "Impossible! Why, we all ride, and ride well; all except the adjutant. He can't!"

"Pardon me again, doctor," said the colonel, sighing wearily, "but the adjutant can ride, too. I've seen him."

"If you say so, I suppose I'm not to dispute it," rejoined the surgeon, meekly. "But, if he's such a good rider, don't you think it was just a little rough on him to take him up four flights of stairs, as you did only last week, and introduce him to the wooden vaulting-horse in the regimental gymnasium?" The colonel laughed at this recital of the latest headquarters' joke, and Bones continued, "Well, even if the adjutant is rather amateurish in his riding, he at least is entitled to some of the credit for winning the cup, for he furnished my mount.

"You see, Charley had a horse, last camp, that suited him 'way down to the ground. His walking gait was the poetry of motion; in fact, it was hard to get him to move at any faster pace. But somehow, by slapping him with the reins and clucking to him, like a woman calling hens, Charley sometimes managed to get him into a lope that was just about as easy as a rocking-chair, and didn't seem to cover ground much more rapidly than a rocking-chair could. We used to suggest that spurring would be a more military method of getting the beast under way, but Charley always replied that spurs were unnecessarily cruel things, and that he hadn't the heart to do anything to interrupt the entente cordiale existing between him and his charger."

"Wasn't it a ratty-looking beast, though!" put in Langforth, setting down his mug and laughing aloud. "We christened him 'Acme,' he was such a perfect skate."

"'Handsome is as handsome does,'" quoted Bones, sententiously. "His performances were remarkable, but he wasn't much on beauty, especially at that point of his anatomy where about a square foot of hide and hair was lacking. However, we got around that blemish by borrowing some axle grease from one of the battery drivers and painting the bare spot so thoroughly that the rest of his hide looked dingy by contrast.