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Updated: June 7, 2025
Amid the blare of the band and the riders and chargers almost upon the struggling horse and motionless girl, lying on the tanbark, Broussard, coolly, as if he were on the parade ground, lifted Gamechick by the bridle, gave him a touch of the spur, and the next moment cleared both mare and girl, with twenty inches between Gamechick's iron-shod hind hoofs and Anita's beautiful blonde head.
Colonel Fortescue was not the man to buy a good horse for a song of any man, least of all one of his own subalterns. When Broussard got the Colonel's note containing an offer for Gamechick, he laughed with pleasure, although he was not in a laughing mood.
But when it was to be sealed Anita's insurgent heart cried out to be heard, and she added a little postscript, which read: "Gamechick is very well and sends his love. I ride him nearly every day." Anita would not trust her precious letter to the mail orderly, or even Sergeant McGillicuddy or Kettle, but throwing her crimson mantle around her, she slipped out, in the cold mist, to the letter box.
The game chickens, the beloved of Broussard's heart, he presented to another officer, whose wife objected seriously to cock-fighting. The chaplain, seeing the grand piano was about to be thrown away on anybody who could take it, managed to secure it for the men's reading-room. The thing which perplexed Broussard most was, what to do with Gamechick.
Fortescue's glance; her face was pale and so was Anita's, but the eyes of both were undaunted. Gamechick trotted ahead, sometimes faltering and going around in a circle, the escort waiting patiently until he once more found his own tracks.
The officers were resplendent, while the girls, in their daring imitation of the uniform and with cavalry caps upon their pretty heads, looked like young Amazons riding to war. Broussard and Anita, who led the cavalcade, were the best riders where all were good. Pretty Maid and Gamechick seemed on the best of terms and their stride fitted perfectly.
Gamechick, walking wearily in advance over the frozen snow, suddenly lifted his head and gave a loud whinnying of joy, and at the same moment his tired legs seemed to gain new strength, and he started off in a brisk trot. "He has caught the trail, Mrs. Fortescue," called back Major Harlow, turning his head and meeting Mrs.
Major Harlow raised a ringing cheer in which Sergeant McGillicuddy and the officers and troopers joined. An answering cheer came back. It was unnecessary then for Gamechick to show the way by galloping ahead. Within five minutes the pass was full of cavalrymen. Mrs. Fortescue, down on her knees in the snow, was examining Colonel Fortescue's broken ankle.
At that moment the great doors of the Commandant's house opened, and Anita, with a long crimson cloak around her and a hood over her head, ran down the broad stone steps to where Gamechick was standing like a bronze horse, the best-trained and best-mannered and best-bred cavalry charger at Fort Blizzard.
Broussard felt sure that Anita would ride Gamechick and there was much solid comfort in that, for an officer's charger, which carries him in life and is led behind his coffin in death, is near and dear to him. So, Broussard lost not a moment in accepting the Colonel's offer for Gamechick.
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