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Back of the crowd also rose the gray figures of the mounted police; at their sides, holding their hands on their sabers, marched the policemen on foot, and everywhere were the sharp eyes of the spies, familiar to the mother, carefully scanning the faces of the people. "Good-by, comrade, good-by!" plaintively sang two beautiful voices. "Don't!" a shout was heard.
With my belief as to the identity of Palus I marvelled that a man whose life was dominated by the dread of assassination, who feared poison in his wine and food, who hedged himself about with guards and then feared the guards themselves, who distrusted everybody, who dreaded every outing, who was uneasy even inside his Palace, felt perfectly at ease and serenely safe in the arena with no defence but two sabers, and he between two hulking ruffians, as fond of life as any men, and knowing that they must kill him or be killed by him.
Listen to that crash. I fancy that about a thousand were fired together, and they weren't fired for nothing." "No," said Dalton, "but the Yankees don't give way. You can see by their line of fire that they're still coming. Look there! A powerful body of horse is charging!" It was unusual to see cavalry attack at night, and the spectacle was remarkable, as the moonlight fell on the raised sabers.
Their chargers hit and tore at each other's manes; they were twined in together there as if they were but one man and one beast; they shook and they swayed and they rocked; the sabers played about their heads so quick that it was like lightning, as they flashed and twirled in the sun; the hoofs trampled up the sand till a yellow cloud hid their struggle, and out of it all you could see was the head of a horse tossing up and spouting with foam, or a sword-blade lifted to strike.
They listened to the distant beat of many hoofs on the river road and the far, faint clink of sabers on the riders' thighs; and when the sounds were lost to the listeners at last, the notes of a bugle came whispering back to them, floating, dipping, even as the swallow dipped across the unfurrowed fields. But still the two stood lingering in the doorway, hand in hand.
Six long-bodied, strong-limbed horses, their hides reeking with sweat, and their nostrils distended with intense effort, tore past, snatching after them, as if it were a toy, a gleaming brass cannon, surrounded by galloping cannoneers, who goaded the draft horses on with blows with the flats of their drawn sabers.
The women were not afraid to tell the Yankees what they thought of them, and in this war which was never a war on women the troopers merely laughed, or, if they felt anger, they hid it. On they went through night and day, and now they drew near to Sheridan. Scouts in blue met them and the gallant column shook their sabers and saluted.
The lad was nearly swept from his horse by a bough, but he recovered himself in time to see the figures of men on foot fleeing rapidly through the dusk. Bullets pattered on bark and leaves, and the angry horsemen, after discharging their carbines, swept forward with circling sabers.
Fifteen hundred sabers such as theirs were not to be valued lightly, and Sheridan knew well the worth of three such colonels as Hertford, Winchester and Bedford, with all three of whom he was acquainted personally, and with whose records he was familiar.
There on a slight elevation, in the wheatfield of June, sitting on his white horse, with his triangular hat lifted in silent salutation, surrounded by the princes and marshals of his Empire, sits the sardonic somnambulist, while before him on the left the Cuirassiers of the Guard, on their tremendous horses gathered out of Normandy, plunging at full gallop, bearing down through the broken wheat, with buglers in the van and sabers flashing high and bearded mouths wide open with yellings that resound through the world till now, charge wildly, irresistibly onward against the unseen enemy, reckless alike of life and death, but choosing rather death if only the marble face but smile!
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