"Pshaw! You were nearly a length ahead when we reached the soapweed, and I almost made it up. Bronc can beat Puss any time when they start even."
"I should say so!" with great disdain. "How about that day when you got off a length and a half ahead, and I led you half a neck at the Cottonwood?"
"You mean the day Bronc got a stone in his shoe? Of course he couldn't run then."
The two young soldiers rode on at an easy canter, warmly disputing, for the hundredth time, over the merits of their well-matched animals.
Redmond Carter was the fifer, as Edward Maloney was the drummer, of the infantry company. The latter, the son of a laundress, was a graceful and soldierly boy, dark-complexioned, with black eyes and hair, who bestrode his mule with easy confidence, riding like a Cossack. The other boy, a blond-haired, blue-eyed lad of the same age, quite as tall, but more delicately built, showed less reckless activity in the saddle, but he was a fine and graceful equestrian nevertheless. He had enlisted a year before, in Philadelphia, naming that city as his residence; but certain peculiarities of speech led Captain Bartlett to believe him a New-Englander. He used better language than his fellows, and it seemed he had received good school advantages before entering the army.
For instance, one day when it was Carter's turn to be office orderly, while sitting at the door he overheard Captain Bartlett, who was writing a private letter, ask the Adjutant, "How does that Latin quotation run, Dayton—'Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,' or 'Danaos timeo et dona ferentes'?'"
"Blest if I know. We don't waste time on dead languages at the Point, as you college men do. I can give you the equation of a parabola if you want it."
Captain Bartlett did not ask for the equation, or explain his reason for wanting the proper order of the Latin sentence, but, the morning's office work concluded, and the orderly having departed, as he and the Adjutant were passing out of the doorway the latter noticed a leaf of a memorandum-pad lodged against the leg of the bench just vacated. A drawing on its surface attracting his attention, he picked it up. It was a very creditable sketch of a huge wooden horse standing within the wall of an ancient city, and a party of Grecian soldiers in the act of descending by a ladder from an opening in its side. Beneath the drawing was written "Quicquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.—Æneid, II., 49."
"Here, Captain," said Mr. Dayton, handing the paper to the post commander; "here's the answer to your question."
"What—that boy Carter? How does a boy like that come to be a musician in the army?"