RUBY
I was a colonel commanding a regiment of German cavalrymen in South Missouri, and must have a horse; it was desirable to be conspicuously well mounted, and so it must be a showy horse; being a heavy weight and a rough rider, it must be a good horse. With less rank, I might have been compelled to take a very ordinary mount and be content: my vanity would not have availed me, and my rough riding must have ceased.
But I was chief ruler of the little world that lay encamped on the beautiful banks of the Roubie d’Eaux; and probably life was easier to all under me when I was satisfied and happy. I am not conscious of having been mean and crabbed, or of favoring those who favored me to the disadvantage of those who did not. I cannot recall an instance of taking a bribe, even in the form of a pleasant smile. It was probably easier, in the long run, to be fair than to be unfair, and therefore the laziest private ever ordered on extra duty could not lay his hand on his heart and say he thinks it was done because he was not diligent in foraging for turkeys and hens for my private mess. I had very early in life been impressed with the consciousness that the way of the transgressor is not easy; and as I wanted my way to be easy, I fell into the way of not transgressing.
This may not have been a very worthy motive to actuate the conduct of a military commander; but perhaps it was as good as the average in our Department of the Southwest, where, if the truth must be told, virtue did not have it all its own way,—we were different from troops farther east; and although it made me sometimes wince to have my conduct ascribed to a noble uprightness of purpose, and showed that it would really have been more honest not to have been quite so good, yet one should perhaps be satisfied with having carried out one’s intention of treating every man in the command, officer or soldier, as nearly as he should be treated as the interests of the public service, the good of the individual himself, and one’s own personal convenience would allow.
Therefore, I say, I am not conscious of having favored those who favored me, to the disadvantage of those who did not; neither do I think that (at this stage of our acquaintance) the Grafs and Barons and simple Mister Vons, of whom the command was so largely composed, entertained the hope of personal benefit when they laid their kindnesses at my accustomed feet, and tried to smooth my way of life.
The headquarters' mess was generally well supplied,—and no questions asked. My relations with most of the command were kindly, and it apparently came to be understood—for German cavalrymen are not without intelligence—that the happiness of the individual members of the regiment depended rather on the happiness of its colonel than on any direct bids for his favor. Be this as it may, I am not conscious of having received such direct appeals, and I am entirely conscious of the fullest measure of happiness that my circumstances would allow; not an ecstasy of delight,—far from that,—but a comfortable sense of such well-fed, well-paid, well-encamped, and pleasantly occupied virtue as had left nothing undone that my subordinates could be made to do, and did nothing that my conditions rendered difficult. My own good-humor was equalled by that of the regiment at large, and the beetling sides of the Ozark valleys nowhere sheltered a happier campful of jolly good fellows than the Vierte Missouri Cavalry.
We lay on the marvellous Roubie d’Eaux, at its source; no such babbling brook as trickles from the hillside springs of New England, but a roaring torrent, breaking at once from a fathomless vent in the mountain. The processes of formation with these South Missouri rivers are all hidden from sight, but, far away in the topmost caves of the Ozark hills, the little streamlets trickle, and unite for a larger and ever larger flow, gorging at last the huge caverns of the limestone rock and bursting upon the world a full-grown river. Within our camp this wonderful spring broke forth, and close at hand was a large grist-mill that it drove. We were a self-sustaining community,—in this, that we foraged our own corn and ground our own meal. With similar industry we provided ourselves with fish, flesh, and fowl.
The trees were bare with the November frosts, but the Indian summer had come, and, day after day, it bathed every twig and spray with its amber breath, warming all nature to a second life, and floating the remoter hills far away into a hazy dreamland.
But personally, notwithstanding all this, I was not content: I was practically a dismounted cavalryman. Indeed, it would even have been a pity to see a colonel of infantry riding such brutes as fell to my lot, for good weight-carriers were rare in that section. I had paid a very high price for a young thoroughbred stallion (afterwards, happily, sold for a large advance), only to find him a year too young for his work, and the regiment had been scoured in vain for an available mount. I would have gone any reasonable length, even in injustice, to secure such an animal as was needed. It was not easy to make up one’s mind to order a soldier to give up a horse he was fond of, and some soldier had an especial fondness for all but the worthless brutes. My reluctance to do this was perhaps not lessened by the fact that it was forbidden for officers to ride United States horses. It finally became evident that the chances were very small of ever finding a suitable animal, and I even went out, on one shooting excursion, mounted on a mule.
Up to this time the regiment had been all that could be asked, but now it seemed to contain a thousand ill-tempered, sore-headed men. The whole camp was awry. Some of the officers intimated that this was all the fault of the adjutant; that the orders from headquarters had lately been unusually harsh. This officer, when remonstrated with, insisted that he had only transmitted the exact orders given him, and I knew that my own action had always been reasonable,—on principle so. Sometimes one almost wished himself back in civil life, away from such constant annoyances.
We had in the regiment one Captain Graf von Gluckmansklegge, who was in many respects the most accomplished and skilful officer of us all. His life had been passed in the profession, and he had only left his position of major in a Bavarian Uhlan regiment to draw his sabre in defence of “die Freiheit,” in America, as senior captain of the Fourth Missouri Cavalry. He was an officer of Asboth’s selection, and had many of that veteran’s qualities. Tall, thin, of elegant figure, as perfect a horseman as good natural advantages and good training could make, and near-sighted, as a German cavalry officer must be, he was as natty a fellow as ever wore an eye-glass and a blond mustache. He was, at the same time, a man of keen worldly shrewdness and of quick judgment,—qualities which, in his case, may have been sharpened by long practice at those games of chance with which it has not been unusual for European officers to preface their coming to draw their sabres in defence of “die Freiheit” in America.
With Gluckmansklegge I had always been on friendly terms. Among the many lessons of his life he had learned none more thoroughly than the best way to treat his commanding officer; and there was in his manner an air of friendly deference and of cordial submission to rank, accompanied by a degree of personal dignity, that elevated the colonel rather than lowered the captain,—a manner that probably makes its way with a newly fledged officer more surely than any other form of appeal to his vanity. One sometimes saw a brand-new second-lieutenant made happier than a king by this same touch of skill from an old soldier in his company, whom he knew to be far his superior in all matters of service. To be quite frank, if I have an element of snobbishness in my own organization, it has been more nurtured into life by the military deference of better soldiers than myself under my command than by all other influences combined; thus modified do the best of us become in the presence of unmerited praise.
One evening Gluckmansklegge came to my tent door: “Escoose, Col-o-nel, may I come?” And then, flinging out his eye-glass with a toss of the head, he went on, with his imperfect English, to tell me he had just learned from his lieutenant that I could find no horse to suit me; that he had a good one strong enough for my weight, and, he thought, even good enough for my needs. He had bought him in St. Louis from the quartermaster, and would I oblige him by trying him? He was quite at my service, at the government price, for he, being lighter, could easily replace him. Did I remember his horse,—his “Fuchs”? “He is good, nice, strong horse, an he yoomp!—yei!!”
I did remember his horse, and I had seen him “yoomp.” It had long been a subject of regret to think that such an animal should be in the regiment, yet not on my own picket-line. It was well known that great prices had been offered for him, only to make Gluckmansklegge fling his eye-glass loose, and grin in derision. “Fuchs is—how you call?—‘heelty,’ an gesund; wenn you like, your Ike will go to my company to bring him.” I did like, and I had no scruples against buying him for one hundred and twenty-five dollars. Ike, a handsome contraband, went early the next morning with a halter for the Fuchs, and I was up bright and betimes to try him.
I had only seen the horse before under the saddle, perfectly equipped, perfectly bitted, and perfectly ridden, an almost ideal charger. There was a great firebrand scar on the flat of each shoulder, where he had been fired for a cough,—so said Gluckmansklegge;—others intimated that this effaced a U. S. brand; but, except this, not a sign of a blemish. In form, action, style, color (chestnut), and training he was unexceptionably good, and might well excite the envy of all good horsemen who saw him under the saddle. Knowing him so well, I went rather eagerly to the picket-line to refresh myself with the added sensation that the actual ownership of such a horse must give.
There stood the new purchase,—a picture of the most abject misery; his hind legs drawn under him; the immense muscles of his hips lying flabby, like a cart-horse’s; his head hanging to the level of his knees, and his under-lip drooping; his eyes half shut, and his long ears falling out sidewise like a sleepy mule’s. I had bought him for a safe price, and he would probably do to carry Ike and the saddle-bags; but I felt as far as ever from a mount for myself, and went back to my tent wiser and no happier than before.
Presently Ike appeared with the coffee, and asked how I liked the new horse.
“Not at all.”
“Don’t ye? well now, I reckon he’s a consid’able of a hoss.”
I sent him to look at him again, and he came back with a very thoughtful air,—evidently he had been impressed. At last he said, “Well now, Colonel, I don’t reckon you bought that hoss to look at him on the picket-line, did ye?”
“No, Ike, or he should be sold out very cheap; but he is not the kind of horse I supposed he was; he ought to work in a mule-team.”
“Well now, Colonel, mebbe he is; but you can’t never tell nothin’ about a hoss till you get him between ye; and I reckon he’s a consid’able of a hoss, I reckon he is.”
Ike was wise, in his way, and his way was a very horsy one,—so my hopes revived a little; and when Gluckmansklegge came up on a capital little beast he had been handling (secretly to replace the Fuchs), I had the new venture saddled and brought round. He came blundering along, head and ears and tail down, and stood like a leathern horse for me to mount, Gluckmansklegge dropping his eye-glass and grinning. It was as well to find out first as last whether he had anything in him or not, and I gathered up the curb-rein, which brought his head into superb position and settled him well back upon his haunches; but, as the movement had been made with dignity, I gave him both heels, firmly,—when we went sailing!—how high I don’t know, probably not fifteen feet, but it seemed that, and covering a good stretch to the front. It was the most enormous lift I had ever had, and (after an appreciable time in the air), when he landed square on all four feet, it was to strike a spanking, even trot, the bit playing loose in his mouth, his head swaying easily with his step, and his tail flying. I had never been more amazed in my life than by the wonderful grace and agility of this splendid brute. As he trotted along with his high, strong, and perfectly cadenced step, he showed in the swing of his head all the satisfaction of an athlete turning, conscious, lightly away from the footlights, after his especial tour de force.
As Gluckmansklegge rode up, he said, “Well, Col-o-nel, how you like? Nice pretty strong horse, what?”
And then, his English failing him, he fell, through an attempt at French, into German, in which his tongue was far more ready than my ear. Still it was easy to gather enough to understand some of the processes by which the animal’s natural qualifications for his work had been developed into such unusual accomplishments; and then he glided into the complimentary assertion that no one but the colonel of his regiment could ever have hoped to buy him at any price,—and of course he did not consider it a sale. His original outlay, which he could not afford to lose, had been reimbursed; but the true value of the horse, his education, he was only too glad to give me. And then, the pleasure of seeing his colonel suitably mounted, and the satisfaction of seeing the horse properly ridden, really threw the obligation on his side. Then, with his inimitable naïveté, he not only expressed, but demonstrated, in every look and gesture, more delight in watching our movements than he had felt in his own riding. “Praise a horseman for his horsemanship, and he will ride to the Devil.” Gluckmansklegge (I did not suspect him of a desire for promotion) pointed to a strong rail-fence near by, and suggested that the combination of man and horse for that sort of thing was unusual. Whether it was a banter or a compliment, it would have been impossible for any man who properly esteemed himself and his riding to stop to consider. Turned toward the fence, the Fuchs, checking his speed, seemed to creep toward it, as a cat would, making it very uncertain what he proposed; but as he came nearer to it, that willingness to leap that an accustomed rider will always recognize communicated itself to me, and, with perfect judgment, but with a force and spirit I had never hoped to meet in a horse of this world, he carried me over the enormous height, and landed like a deer, among the stumps and brush on the other side, and trotted gayly away, athlete-like again, happier and prouder than ever horse was before.
Sitting that evening at my tent door, opposite the spring, bragging, as the custom is, over the new purchase, it occurred to me that that stream of water and that bit of horse-flesh had some qualities alike; so I christened the latter “Roubie d’Eaux,” which was soon translated and shortened to “Ruby,”—a name henceforth familiar throughout the regiment.
To become my property was the only thing needed to make him perfect, for Ike was born in a racing stud in Kentucky, and had practised all the arts of the craft, up to the time when, being both jockey and “the stakes” in a race he rode, he was lost to a Missouri gentleman of fortune, and became a body-servant. He was once confidential:—
“Well, now, Colonel, you see, this is how it was: I hadn’t nothin’ ag’in my master,—he was a right nice man; but then, you see, he drinked, and I didn’t know what might become of me some time. Then, you see, I knowed this man was stiddy, an’ he’d jess done bought a yallar gal I kinder had a notion for, an’ so,—don’t ye see why?—well, the hoss could have won the race fast enough, but then, you see, my master,—well, he was a drinkin’ kind of a man, an’ I thought I might as well fix it. I knowed I was up for stakes, an’ that’s how I come to Missouri; I ain’t no Missouri man born, but that’s how it was.”
He had become a good body-servant without forgetting his stable training, and his horses bore testimony to his skill and fidelity. After going through the routine of a well-regulated stable, he gave each horse a half-hour’s stroking with the flat of his hands, brisk and invigorating; and the result was a more blooming condition and more vigorous health than is often seen in horses on a campaign. The best substitute that could be secured for a stable was a very heavy canvas blanket, covering the horse from his ears to his tail and down to his knees, water-proof and wind-proof. It was a standing entertainment with the less dignified members of the mess to invite attention to Ruby as he stood moping under this hideous housing. Certainly I never saw him thus without thinking that his time had at last come, and that he surely would never again be able to carry me creditably. Yet, as Ike’s devotion continued, he grew better and better, commanding daily more of the respect and admiration of all who knew him, and attaching himself to me more and more as we learned each other’s ways.
One never loves but one horse entirely, and so Ruby never quite filled Vixen’s place; but as a serviceable friend, he was all that could be desired. The unsupplied want of my life, that had made me restless and discontented, was now satisfied, and my duties became easy, and my pastimes (the principal times of South Missouri warfare) entirely agreeable.
It was no slight addition to these sources of contentment to feel that the command had at last awakened to a sense of its dereliction, and was fast reforming its ways. I had hardly owned Ruby for a fortnight before the old cheerfulness and alacrity returned to the regiment, and by the time we broke up our camp on the Roubie d’Eaux and went over to Lebanon for the shooting season, the entire organization was in a most satisfactory condition.
Our life in Lebanon was an episode of the war that we shall not soon forget. To the best of my knowledge and belief, after Price had retreated from Pea Ridge, the only organized forces of armed Rebels to be found north of the White River were local bands of jay-hawkers, whose rebellion was mainly directed against the laws of property, and the actuating motive of whose military movements was “nags.” The stealing of horses, with the consequent application of Lynch law, was all that the native male population had to keep them out of mischief, for weeks and weeks together. There was just enough of this sort of armed lawlessness to furnish us with a semblance of duty; not enough seriously to interrupt our more regular avocations.
Lebanon is on the high table-land of the Ozarks, in the heart of a country flowing with prairie-hens and wild turkeys, and bountifully productive of the more humdrum necessaries of life. Thanks to the fleeing of Rebel families, we found comfortable quarters without too severely oppressing those who had remained. What with moving the court-house away from the public square, leaving the space free for a parade, and substituting a garrison flag-staff for the town pump, we kept our men from rusting; and when, after a time, we had established a comfortable post-hospital and a commodious military prison, Lebanon was as complete and well-ordered a station as could be found in South Missouri. I had the questionable honor and the unquestionable comfort of holding its command from the end of January to the end of April,—three dreamy months, that seem now to have been passed in a shooting-lodge, under favorable auspices.
As a legacy of the “Hundred Days,” when the “Fourth Missouri” was the “Frémont Hussars,” we had an able-bodied and extremely well-selected regimental band, that soothed our over-tasked senses when we came in from our work in the fields, gathering where our enemies had sown, and (under the suspended game-laws of the State) shooting grouse and quail in the early spring.
Naturally, most of my official duties were such as could be performed by an extremely well-regulated adjutant; and I usually passed his busy half-hour (in private) with Ruby. There had been an impetuosity about the horse at the outset which it was desirable to quell, and I rode him regularly in a nicely fenced kitchen-garden, where, after he learned that fences are not always intended for leaping-bars, he fell slowly into the routine of the training-school, and easily acquired a perfect self-command and aplomb that enabled him, under all circumstances, to await his rider’s instructions.
I wish that less account had been made, in the writings of those whose horse-stories have preceded mine, of the specified feats of their animals. The rôle of a horse’s performances is necessarily limited, and it is probably impossible for a well-constituted mind to recite the simple story of his deeds without seeming to draw largely on the imagination. Consequently, an unexaggerated account of what Ruby actually did (and I cannot bring my mind to an embellishment of the truth) would hardly interest a public whose fancy has been thus pampered and spoiled. But for this, these pages could be filled with instances of his strength and agility that would almost tax belief. Suffice it to say that while, like most good high leapers, he would cover but a moderate breadth of water, he would get over anything reasonable in the shape of a fence that could be found about the town.
I was a heavy weight,—riding nearly two hundred pounds,—and necessarily rode with judgment. If there was a low place in a fence, we never chose a high one; but, at the same time, if there were no low places, we took the best we could find. Ruby seemed to know that the two of us were solid enough to break through any ordinary pile of rails, and what we could not jump over we jumped at. More than once did he carry away the top rail of a snake fence with his knees, and land fair and square on the other side; but it was a very high leap that made this necessary.
He would jump on to the porch of the quartermaster’s office (approached from the ground by four steps), and then jump over the hand-rail and land on the ground below again, almost wagging his tail with delight at the feat.
His ear was quicker than mine for the peeping of quail and for the drumming of grouse, and, in the absence of a good dog, there is no doubt that my pot (for which alone I have been said to hunt) was better filled by reason of his intelligence in the field, and because he would allow one to shoot from the saddle. The birds never mistook me for a sportsman until I was quite in among them, blazing away.
In coming home from the prairie, we generally rode round by the way of a certain sunken garden that stood a couple of feet below the level of the road. A five-foot picket-fence that stood at the roadside had fallen over toward the garden, so that its top was hardly four feet higher than the road. This made the most satisfactory leap we ever took,—the long, sailing descent, and the safe landing on sandy loam, satisfied so completely one’s prudent love of danger.
I think I missed this leap more than anything at Lebanon when, finally, we set out for Arkansas.
We made our first considerable halt early in May, at Batesville, on the White River,—a lovely, rose-grown village, carrying, in the neatly kept home of its New England secessionists, evidence that they remembered their native land, where, in their day, before the age of railroads, the “village” flourished in all its freshness and simplicity. It had now acquired the picturesque dilapidation, in the manner of fences and gates and defective window-panes, that marked the Southern domicile during the war. Ruby had strained himself quite seriously during the march, and had been left to come on slowly with the quartermaster’s train. This left me quite free for the social life, such as it was, to which we—the only available men that had been seen there since Price gathered his forces at Springfield—were welcomed with a reserved cordiality. Our facilities for forming a correct opinion of society were not especially good, but I fancied I should have passed my time to as good advantage in the saddle.
We soon left for an active expedition in the direction of Little Rock, of which it is only necessary to say, here, that it lasted about a month, and brought the writer acquainted with some very unsatisfactory horses,—a fact which heightened his pleasure, on striking the White River bottom again, at finding that Ruby had been brought over the ferry to meet him. Tired as I was, I took a glorious brisk trot through the Canebrake Road, with a couple of leaps over fallen trees, that revived the old emotions and made a man of me again.
While we lay at Batesville we were unusually active in the matter of drill and reorganization; and this, with our engagements in the town, kept us too busy for much recreation; but Ludlow and I managed to work in a daily swim in the White River, with old saddles on our horses, and scant clothing on our persons. Talk of aquatic sports! there is no royal bath without a plucky horse to assist; and a swim across the swift current at Batesville, with a horse like Ruby snorting and straining at every stroke, belittled even the leaping at Lebanon.
From Batesville we commenced our memorable march to join the fleet that had just passed Memphis, following down the left bank of the river to Augusta, and then striking across the cotton country to Helena,—a march on which we enjoyed the rarest picturesqueness of plantation life, and suffered enough from heat and hunger and thirst, and stifling, golden dust to more than pay for it.
Helena was a pestiferous swamp, worth more than an active campaign to our enemies, filling our hospitals, and furrowing the levee bank with graves. It was too hot for much drilling, and we kept our better horses in order by daybreak races. With the local fever feeling its way into my veins, I was too listless to care much for any diversion; but Ike came to me one evening to say that he “reckoned” Ruby was as good a horse as anybody had in the “camps,” and he might as well take a hand in the games. I told him I had no objection to his being run, if he could find a suitable boy, but that both he and I were too heavy for race-riding.
“I don’t weigh only about a hundred and a half,” said the ambitious man.
“Well, suppose you don’t, that is ten pounds too much.”
“I reckon a man can ride ten pound lighter ’n he is if he knows how to ride; anyhow, if Rube can’t skin anything around here, I don’t know nothin’ about horses.”
“Ike, did you ever run that horse?”
“Well, Colonel, now you ask me, I did jest give Dwight’s darkey a little brush once.”
Conquering my indignation and my scruples, I went over, just for the honor of the establishment, and made up a race for the next day.
I have seen crack race-horses in my time, but I never saw more artistic riding nor more capital running than that summer morning on the River Road at Helena, just as the sun began to gild the muddy Mississippi. The satisfaction of this conquest, and the activity with which new engagements were offered by ambitious lieutenants, who little knew the stuff my man and horse were made of, kept off my fever for some weeks; but I steadily declined all opportunity of racing with horses outside of our command, for I had been reared in a school of Puritan severity, and had never quite overcome my convictions against the public turf. A corporal of an “Injeanny regement” took occasion to crow lustily—so I heard—because “one of them French coveys” was afraid to run him a quarter for five dollars. It appeared that a cleanly European was always supposed by this gentry to be French; and in the army at large I was better known by the company I kept than by my New England characteristics.
Naturally, Ike thought that, while Ruby was engaged in this more legitimate occupation, he ought not to be ridden for mere pleasure; and it was only when a visitor was to be entertained, or when I went out on plea of duty, that I could steal an opportunity to leap him; but he took one fence that fairly did him credit. It was a snake fence measuring four feet and two inches, with a deep ditch on each side cut close to the projecting angles of the rails. Ruby carried me over the first ditch into the angle between the rails, then over the fence into the narrow space on the other side, and then over the second ditch into the field. It was the most perfect combination of skill, strength, and judgment that was possible to horse-flesh; and I think Gluckmansklegge, who was with me and had suggested the venture, despaired of ever getting his promotion by any fair means, when we rejoined him by the return leap and rode safely to camp.
Unhappily, even entire satisfaction with one’s horse is powerless to ward off such malaria as that of the camp at Helena, and in due time I fell ill with the fever. The horse was turned over to the care of the quartermaster, and Ike and I came wearily home on sick-leave.
Late in the autumn we returned to St. Louis, where one of the German officers told me that the regiment had joined Davidson’s army at “Pilot K-nopp”; and after the Hun, our new adjutant, arrived from the East, we set out for headquarters, and took command of the cavalry brigade of Davidson’s army.
From November until January we were tossed about from post to post, wearing out our horses, wearying our men, and accomplishing absolutely nothing of value beyond the destruction of an enormous amount of the rough forage, which would otherwise have been used to feed “nags,”—stolen or to be stolen,—and would have thus tended to foster the prevailing vice of the region.
At last we settled down in a pleasant camp at Thomasville,—a good twelve miles away from Davidson,—and were at rest; it was only those near him who suffered from his fitful caprices, and he was now encamped with the infantry.