United States or Turks and Caicos Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
All night long the ears of the alert cavalrymen could catch the indistinct murmur of troops moving with their impediments which, coming from both front and rear, bespoke the grand tactics of both commanders and presaged a great battle on the morrow.
Besides, it makes the snaffle a little tighter than the curb, and that is held to be a good thing in England. An English soldier is prone to accuse American cavalrymen of riding too much on the curb, and by the way, I have heard English soldiers assert that they were taught the second method, but it was a riding master formerly in the Queen's service who told me that the third was preferred.
He was mounted on a raw-backed but sure-footed Cuban pony, and escorted by half a dozen ragged cavalrymen. They had barely started before he was thankful that he had not attempted to make the journey unguided; nor had they gone a mile before he knew that he could never have accomplished it alone.
He saw a number of cavalrymen sweeping down upon him, and started to run in an opposite direction. Before he had proceeded a long distance he stumbled across the corpse of a Red Cross physician which lay partly concealed under tall grass. In a moment Donnelly had exchanged his own papers and credentials for those in the physician's pockets, and a minute later the cavalrymen were upon him.
28. ¶ The same Marcellus when he perceived that one of the Lucanian cavalrymen was in love with a woman permitted him to keep her in the camp, because he was a most excellent fighter: this in spite of the fact that he had forbidden any women to enter the ramparts.
As soon as this duty had been accomplished, and Lieutenant Sterling was thus in condition to handle the prisoners, Deck ordered the cavalrymen and the riflemen to return to the road, mount their horses, and form in the usual order, in column, under the command of Sergeant Knox.
I do remember, however, that, whereas the soldiers from whom I had run had been on foot, my first fears were of a pursuit by cavalrymen, and therefore it seems likely that some sound of horses' trampling must have set them in train: but, though I strained my ears, they detected nothing of the sort only a subdued murmur, as of human voices, down by the water's edge, and now and again the cautious crunch of a footstep upon shingle.
I can assure you that in addition to the great need for such men when the troops are out skirmishing, or otherwise detached in small parties, I felt that their appearance on parade was greatly marred by the fact that the non-commissioned officers did not know their proper places or their proper work, which neither Bull nor Macwitty, nor indeed the company officers, could instruct them in, all being cavalrymen."
And now the Cheyenne could well gloat over the failure of the army after all it had endured; for spring was not very far away, the barren Staked Plains, in which the soldier could but perish, were between them and the arm of the Government, and our cavalrymen were now mere undisciplined foot-soldiers.
For a week the trio was the butt of all the wits at Fort Warrener. And yet the entire commissioned force felt that they were being kept at the grindstone because of the frivolity of these few youngsters, and they did not like it. All the same the cavalrymen stuck up for their colonel, and the infantrymen respected him, and the matinées were business-like and profitable.
Word Of The Day