"Keep in line! Don't crowd!" the corporal shouts. They are doing well, he thinks. Over they all go; and the ladies breathe again, and say to each other how much finer this sport is because it is work, and has a purpose in it.
Now the guidon comes, riding alone, and the whole troop is proud of him. The signal flag flashes erect from the trooper's stirrup; the horse is new to it, and fears it as if it were something pursuing him; but in the face of horse and man is the same fixed expression, the sober recklessness that goes straight to the finish. If these do not go over, it will not be for want of the spur in the blood.
Next comes a pale young cavalryman just out of the hospital. He has had a fall at the hurdle week before and strained his back. His captain sees that he is nervous and not yet fit for the work, yet cannot spare him openly. He invents an order, and sends him off to another part of the field where the other squads are manœuvring.
If it is not in the man to go over, it will not be in his horse, though a poor horse may put a good rider to shame; but the measure of every man and every horse is taken by those who have watched them day by day.
The ladies are much concerned for the man who fails,—"so sorry" they are for him, as his horse blunders over the hurdle, and slackens when he ought to go free; and of course he jibs at the wide ditch, and the rider saws on his mouth.
"Give him his head! Where are your spurs, man?" the corporal shouts, and adds something under his breath which cannot be said in the presence of his captain. In they go, floundering, on their knees and noses, horse and man, and the ladies cannot see, for the dust, which of them is on top; but they come to the surface panting, and the man, whose uniform is of the color of the ditch, climbs on again, and the corporal's disgust is heard in his voice as he calls, "Ne-aaxt!"
It need not be said that no corporal ever asked Henniker where were his spurs. To-day the fret in his temper fretted his horse, a young, nervous animal who did not need to know where his rider's heels were quite so often as Henniker's informed him.
"Is that a non-commissioned officer who is off, and his horse scouring away over the plain? What a dire mortification," the ladies say, "and what a consolation to the bunglers!"
No, it is the trumpeter. He was taking the hurdle in a rush of the whole squad; his check-strap broke, and his horse went wild, and slammed himself into another man's horse, and ground his rider's knee against his comrade's carbine. It is Henniker who is down in the dust, cursing the carbine, and cursing his knee, and cursing the mischief generally.
The ladies strolled home through the heat, and said how glorious it was and how awfully real, and how one man got badly hurt; and they described in detail the sight of Henniker limping bareheaded in the sun, holding on to a comrade's shoulder; how his face was a "ghastly brown white," and his eyes were bloodshot, and his black head dun with dust.