“Ah, mother, mother! little knowest thou the fiend you would introduce to your home, and cherish as your child.”
Chapter Fifty Eight.
Old Hickman.
The morning after, I went as usual to the recruiting quarters. Gallagher was along with me, as upon this day the volunteers were to be “mustered into service,” (Note 1) and our presence was necessary at the administering of the oath.
A goodly company was collected, forming a troop more respectable in numbers than appearance. They were “mounted volunteers;” but as each individual had been his own quartermaster, no two were either armed or mounted alike. Nearly all carried rifles, though there were a few who shouldered the old family musket—a relic of revolutionary times—and were simply armed with single or double barrelled shot-guns. These, however, loaded with heavy buck-shot, would be no contemptible weapons in a skirmish with Indians. There were pistols of many sorts—from the huge brass-butted holsters to small pocket-pistols—single and double barrelled—but no revolvers, for as yet the celebrated “Colt” (Note 2) had not made its appearance in frontier warfare. Every volunteer carried his knife—some, dagger-shaped with ornamented hafts; while the greater number were long, keen blades, similar to those in use among butchers. In the belts of many were stuck small hatchets, an imitation of the Indian tomahawk. These were to serve the double purpose of cutting a way through the brushwood, or breaking in the skull of a savage, as opportunity might offer.
The equipments consisted of powder-horns, bullet-pouches, and shot-belts—in short, the ordinary sporting gear of the frontiersman or amateur hunter when out upon the “still-hunt,” of the fallow deer.
The “mount” of the troop was as varied as the arms and accoutrements: horses from thirteen hands to seventeen; the tall, raw-boned steed; the plump, cob-shaped roadster; the tight, wiry native of the soil, of Andalusian race (Note 3); the lean, worn-out “critter,” that carried on his back the half-ragged squatter, side by side with the splendid Arabian charger, the fancy of some dashing young planter who bestrode him, with no slight conceit in the grace and grandeur of his display. Not a few were mounted upon mules, both of American and Spanish origin; and these, when well trained to the saddle, though they may not equal the horse in the charge, are quite equal to him in a campaign against an Indian foe. Amid thickets—through forests of heavy timber, where the ground is a marsh, or strewn with logs, fallen branches, and matted with protrate parasites, the hybrid will make way safely, when the horse will sink or stumble. Some of the most experienced backwoods hunters, while following the chase, prefer a mule to the high-mettled steed of Arabia.
Motley were the dresses of the troop. There were uniforms, or half-uniforms, worn by some of the officers; but among the men no two were dressed in like fashion. Blanket-coats of red, blue, and green; linsey woolseys of coarse texture, grey or copper-coloured; red flannel shirts; jackets of brown linen, or white—some of yellow nankin cotton—a native fabric; some of sky-blue cottonade; hunting-shirts of dressed deer-skin, with moccasins and leggins; boots of horse or alligator hide, high-lows, brogans—in short, every variety of chaussure known throughout the States.