Home > Authors Index > George W. Peck > How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion > This page
How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion, a fiction by George W. Peck |
||
Chapter 22 |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XXII The Spotted Horse--His Shameful Behaviour at a Funeral--I was Tempted to Have My Horse Shot--But I Traded Him to the Chaplain. It seemed to me that my luck was the worst of any man's in the army, and I was constantly getting into situations that caused, my conduct to be talked about. When we raided the church, mentioned last week, for horses, I saw a nice white horse with red spots on him, with a saddle, and being the commander of the squad of horse-thieves, it was no more than right for me to take my choice first, so I chose the spotted horse, and thought I had the showiest horse in the army. The animal was a sort of Arabian, and before I had rode him a mile I was in love with him. then I got to Montgomery a man told me that horse used to belong to a circus that closed up there the first year of the war, and was sold to a planter. He said the horse was considered one of the finest ever seen in the South. I felt much elated over my capture, and refused several offers to trade. I thought no horse was too good for me, and for two or three days I did nothing but feed and groom my spotted horse, until his coat shone like satin, and he felt so kitteny that I was almost afraid to get on his back. One morning an order was issued for the regiment to turn out in a body to attend the funeral of a major of one of the regiments, who had died, and I was sent for to carry the brigade colors, a position I had been relieved from after we arrived at Montgomery. The boys all dressed up in their best, and I looked about as slick as any of them, and with my spotted horse, I felt as though I would attract about as much attention as any of the officers in the procession. At the proper time I mounted my horse and rode over to brigade headquarters, not without some difficulty, for my horse saw the crowd on the streets, and evidently thought it was circus day, for he pranced and snorted, and walked with one fore-foot at a time, pawing as you have seen a horse in a circus, trained to walk that way. As I rode up to brigade headquarters and stopped, I must have touched my horse with my foot somewhere, for he got down on his knees, and as I got off, the horse laid down right in front of the colonel's tent, just as he would in a circus. Even then I did not realize that the confounded brute was a circus trick-horse. He had been taught to lay down, evidently, at a certain signal. And he laid there, looking up at me with his cunning eyes, waiting for me to give the signal for him to get up, but I "did not know the combination," and he wouldn't get up for kicking, so I stood there like a fool waiting to see what he would do next. The colonel commanding the brigade, the nice old man who had helped me out of my difficulty with my other horse, on the march when he got on a tantrum, come out of his tent and said he guessed my horse was sick, and he told an orderly to go to the cook house and get a little red pepper and let the horse take a snuff of it. In the meantime my horse got up on his fore feet and sat on his haunches, like a dog, just as circus horses always do, reached up his neck and took a nice white silk handkerchief out of the breast of the colonel's coat, and held it in his mouth. It was a circus trick, and I knew it, but the colonel said, "Poor horse, he is sick," and as the orderly come with the red pepper the colonel held it to the horse's nose. The horse got up, and I mounted, and it must have been about that time that the red pepper began its work, for my horse stood on his fore feet and kicked up, then got on his hind feet and reared up, and snorted, and come down on the colonel's tent, and crushed it to the-ground, and broke the colonel's camp cot, got tangled in the guy ropes, and tore everything loose and jumped out in the street, and began to paw and snort. I suppose there was a thousand people around by that time, soldiers and citizens, and I sat there on that horse and wished I was dead, and I guess the colonel did so too. Finally it was time to move, and the colonel sent out the brigade colors to me, and the start started up street towards the funeral. My horse started with them, and seemed proud of the flag, and I guess he would have gone along all right, only a band down the street began to play a waltz. Do you know, that spotted horse began to waltz around just as though he was in a circus, and I couldn't keep him straight to save me. The colonel seemed mortified, as we were approaching the place where the services were to be held, and it was necessary to appear solemn. Finally we began to get out of hearing of the band, and my horse stopped waltzing, but he kept up a-dancing, and snorting from the red pepper, until I could have killed him. When the colonel and his staff, including myself and the circus-horse, arrived at the place where the funeral was, another band was playing a very solemn sort of a funeral tune, and for a wonder my horse did not act up at all. He seemed to stand and think, as though trying to make out what kind of music it was. He had evidently never heard such music in the circus and did not know what to do. When the body was brought out of the house, and the procession started down the street for the grave, a drum major, with a staff in his hand, came along by me, and I have always thought my horse took the drum major for the ring master of a circus, for he reared up and walked on his hind feet, and pawed the air, and made a spectacle of me that made me so ashamed that I wanted to be killed. I had the brigade colors in one hand, and had only one hand and two feet to cling on the horse by, and I must have looked like a cat climbing the roof of a whitewashed barn. The drum major got scared at my horse walking towards him in that way, and he lost his bear-skin cap off and fell over it, and rolled in the sand, and the horse, thinking that was a part of the circus turned and kicked at the drum major with both his hind feet, until the poor assistant musician got up and climbed over a fence. The horse got quiet then, only he began to nibble his fore leg, as though trying to untie a handkerchief that the clown had tied on, as they do in the circus. The colonel rode up to me, and with a good deal of indignation, asked me what I. meant by causing ourselves to become a spectacle for gods and men on so solemn an occasion. He said he was tempted to have my horse shot, and me placed in the guard-house. I told him I hoped to die if I could help it. I said the horse seemed to be possessed to do some circus business wherever he went. I confided to the colonel that the horse had been a circus-horse before the war, and the music and tinsel, and crowd that he saw, had turned his head and made him think that he was again with his beloved circus, where he had spent the best years of his life. The colonel said I ought to have known better than to bring a circus horse to a funeral. Well, when the drum major got out of sight the horse acted better, and we went along all right, the solemn music of the march to the grave seeming to take the circus out of him. He didn't do anything out of the way on the march, except to put out his fore-feet stiff, and keep time to the music, like a trained circus horse, which attracted a good deal of attention among the citizens on the street, who seemed to know the horse. Just as we got out at che edge of town he _did_ make one raw break. There was a colored drayman, with his dray backed up towards the procession, and when my circus horse saw the dray, before I could prevent him, he whirled around and put his fore feet upon the hind end of the dray, put one foot on the top of a stake on the dray, and stood there for a minute, like a horse statute, until I jerked him down off of there. O, I was so mortified that my teeth fairly ached, and the perspiration stood out on me in great beads. A staff officer of the general commanding, came along to the colonel, presented the compliments of the general, and asked if he could not do something to prevent that redheaded clown on the spotted horse from doing any more circus acts until after the last sad rites had been performed. The colonel said it should be stopped, and told the start officer to present his compliments to the general and say that he was humiliated beyond endurance by the performance of the horse, but that the young man riding the horse was not to blame, as he had done all in his power to keep the circus tendencies of the horse down, but he added that he would have the horse shot if there was any more of it. The horse kept quiet until we had got to the cemetery, and returned to town. As we got into a wide street there was an old circus ring, partly grown up with weeds, near where the division quartermaster had a large tent inside a picket fence, filled with quartermaster stores. If I had known anything, I would have kept the horse's head turned away from the circus ring, and the tent, but I thought there would be no more trouble. Just as we got opposite the ring, the band, which had heretofore played dead marches, struck up a regular ripety-rap-rap-boom-boom circus tune, and I felt the horse tremble all over. Before I could think twice, the confounded horse had tried to jump through the bass drum, had knocked the drummer down, and jumped into the circus ring. I sawed on the bit and tried to stop him, and dug into his ribs with the spurs, but he galloped around the circus ring three or four times, and stopped still, as though expecting a clown would come up and say, "What will the little lady have now?" O, if I could have had one more hand to use, I would have drawn my revolver and put a bullet through the brain of the wretched horse, who was making me the laughing stock of the whole army, and the citizens. The procession moved on towards camp, the colonel seeming relieved to have me out of sight, with my spotted horse, and a crowd of citizens, boys and niggers collected around the ring, yelling and laughing. I made one desperate effort and reined the horse out of the ring, and just then he caught sight of the quartermaster's tent across the road, and evidently thinking it was the dressing-room of the circus, he started for it on a run, jumped the picket fence as though it was a circus hurdle, and rushed in the door of the tent where a dozen clerks were weighing out commissary stores, stopped suddenly, and I went over his head, into a barrel of ground, coffee. The clerks picked me out of the coffee, and laid me on a pile of corn sacks, and then the horse began to lay back his ears and chase the clerks out of the tent, and it was awful the way the animal acted. After I had recovered from the effects of my fall into the coffee barrel, I got up and took the horse by the bridle, and led him out of the gate, and up the street to headquarters, with the brigade flag in my hand. I finally got to headquarters and left the flag, and the colonel told me he never wanted me around brigade headquarters again. He said I was a regular Jonah, that brought bad luck. I apologized the best I could, told him I would never bother him again, and led my horse back to my regiment. The chaplain of my regiment, who had not been to the funeral with us, and knew nothing about the circus, met me, and, as usual, bantered me to trade horses. I felt as though if I could saw that horse off on to the chaplain, and fix him so he could engage in the circus business, life would yet have some charms for me, so after some bantering we got down to business. The chaplain asked me if I thought it would cause any remark if he should ride a spotted horse, and I told him I did not know why it should, if the chaplain behaved himself. He said he didn't know but the boys might think that a spotted horse was too gay for a chaplain. I told him I didn't know why a spotted horse couldn't be just as solemn as any horse. He asked me if the horse had any tricks, and if he was sound. I told him I had not had him long, but it seemed to me if the horse had any tricks I should have found it out by this time, and I knew he was sound, because I jumped a fence with him not an hour ago, and he took the fence just as though he had jumped fences all his life. I asked ten dollars to boot, and the chaplain said if I would warrant the horse not to have any tricks he would take him. I told him I couldn't warrant the horse not to have any tricks, but that the colonel commanding the brigade wanted my horse, and he certainly would not want a horse that had tricks. What the colonel wanted was a horse noted for its strict attention to business. Then the chaplain said he would trade, and we changed saddles, and the chaplain led the spotted horse away, and I was revenged for many things the chaplain had done me. When the chaplain led the spotted horse to his tent, and all the boys in the regiment saw that I had traded the brute off, and they thought what a pic-nic they would have the first time the chaplain rode the horse down town, there was a laugh all through the regiment, but nobody squealed, or told the chaplain what a prize package he had secured. I cannot account for it, how I could have coolly traded that dastardly horse off on to the chaplain, but I was young then. Now, after arriving at a ripe old age, I would not play such a trick on a chaplain. The next day there was to be a review, and when the regiment was notified, I got sick and could not go. I felt as though I did not want to be a witness of the chaplain's attempt to exhibit a solemn demeanor, on that circus horse. I thought I should probably die right in my tracks if the horse acted with him as he did with me, so I remained in my tent with a wet towel on my head, and saw the regiment ride out to review, the chaplain on the spotted horse beside the colonel, not dreaming that it was going to be the most eventful day of his life. _ |
||