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It had happened in a country well known to the enemy and but little known to him, and he had been attacked in overwhelming force by the rough-riding Forrest, who was long to be a terror to the Union divisions. But he had achieved the task on which he had been sent, and he was thanked by his commander.
And Maurice, although strongly opposed to the truce, and confident in his opinions at this crisis, was not a desperado. He saw at once the necessity of dismounting from the high horse upon which, it must be confessed, he had been inclined for more rough-riding of late than the situation warranted. Peace was unattainable, war was impossible, truce was inevitable; Barneveld was master of the field.
Bumped, banged, bucketed, thrown, sore from head to foot, raw-kneed, laughed at, lashed by the Rough-Riding Sergeant-Major's cruel tongue, blind and sick with dust and pain and rage, he had at last turned his horse inward from his place in the ride to the centre of the School, and dismounted.
As I used to do the rough-riding for my husband on his horse-breaking tours in various countries, I have had to sit a good many buck-jumpers, and, am thankful to say, I never got thrown, because, from what I have seen of men being catapulted and placed on the flat of their backs on the ground, this kind of fall must be, as Jorrocks would say, "a hawful thing."
Fancy looking forward to being "branded with a blasted worsted spur," and, as a Rough-Riding Corporal, receiving a forfeit tip from each young officer who knocks off his cap with his lance in Riding-School.... Well!
How he had pitied some of the other recruits, making their first acquaintance with the Trooper's "long-faced chum" under the auspices of a pitiless, bitter-tongued Rough-Riding Sergeant-Major! Rough! What a character the fellow was! Never an oath, never a foul word, but what a vocabulary and gift of invective, sarcasm and cruel stinging reproof! A well-educated man if not a gentleman.
I am rough-riding every day, and expect to be passed as fit for regular duty soon, when I shall be draughted off to the Indies, where our head-quarters are. I should be very comfortable if it was not for thinking about home, so much.
The sheep had come to stay. The worst that he and his had to expect was a certain coldness toward himself on the part of the cattle aristocracy, and a measure of contempt and dislike toward his "Basco" herders on the part of the rough-riding and gentle-speaking cow hands. These things troubled him little. He had no near neighbors.
Well, I'm leaving a sleeping-powder for the patient in case he needs it in an hour or two. In the morning I'll drop round again," the doctor said. He did, and found Dave much improved. The clean outdoors of the rough-riding West builds blood that is red. A city man might have kept his bed a week, but Dave was up and ready to say good-bye within forty-eight hours.
In the end Irish, discovering that Andy had for the time being forsworn the shelter of the Flying U tents, stuck by him loyally and forswore it also, and went with Andy to share the doubtful comfort of the obscure lodging house. For Irish was all or nothing, and to find the Happy Family publicly opposed or at most neutral to a Flying U man in a rough-riding contest like this, incensed him much.
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