Whip and Spur

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George Edwin Waring. Whip and Spur

VIX

RUBY

WETTSTEIN

CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX

HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT

TWO SCOUTS

IN THE GLOAMING

FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND

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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.

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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.

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