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Updated: May 6, 2025
"Those that lost on Lucretia are swearing the mare was pulled." "And they're right," blurted out Porter. "I know what the mare can do; she can make hacks of that bunch. She was stopped, and interfered with, and given all the worst of it from start to finish; but my money was burnt up with the public's. I never pulled a horse in my life, and I'm too old to begin now."
Days together in the saddle, the risks and small adventures of the field, and by no means least those long hacks home at evening, not seldom in the dark, over the Downs, a great wind blowing gustily under clear stars, did their sure, unconscious work. Up to Christmas the young man visited Putnam's regularly. Then he missed two successive week-ends. When he came again there was a cloud over him.
"Then, in heaven's name, why didn't you join the cavalry?" inquired Baker. Dan looked at him a moment, and then threw the apple core at a water bucket that stood upside down upon the grass. "Well, I couldn't go on my own horse, you see," he replied, "and I wouldn't go on the Government's. I don't ride hacks." "So you came into the infantry to get court-martialled," remarked Bland.
In a few minutes, the generous fellow leaped into the post-chaise, with a heart as light as many a bridegroom when flying on the wings of love and behind the tails of four broken-winded hacks to some wilderness, where "transport and security entwine" the anticipated scene of a delicious honeymoon.
But the hacks were all engaged as sleeping berths by men who could not get accommodations in any of the houses of the overcrowded city. So he set off to walk, and almost immediately came face to face with old Scythia, the friend of his childhood. "Old Scythia!" exclaimed Corona, interrupting the narrative. "Yes, dear; the old seeress of Raven Roost, as they used to call her.
I started to run, but tripped over one that was fast in my calf, and went down. The woolly-heads made a run for me, each with a long-handled, fantail tomahawk with which to hack off my head. They were so eager for the prize that they got in one another's way. In the confusion, I avoided several hacks by throwing myself right and left on the sand. Then Otoo arrived Otoo the manhandler.
"But this need not prevent thee, worthy Captain, from pouring out an asking in our behalf, while we are in the saddle," he concluded, "for ourselves, there remaineth much of thy previously-bestowed pious aliment to be digested; though we doubt not, that should thy voice be raised in our behalf, while journeying along the first few leagues of the forest, the tread of the hacks would not be heavier, and, it is certainty, that we ourselves should be none the worse for the favor."
On the way up, these were superseded in his regard by some hip-roof structures on the Ninth Avenue, which he thought more Dutch-looking. The perspectives of the cross-streets toward the river were very lively, with their turmoil of trucks and cars and carts and hacks and foot passengers, ending in the chimneys and masts of shipping, and final gleams of dancing water.
The departure of the troops took place in the dead of night. Valentine rode beside his faithful Simplex, who not only had to blow the field-trumpet but also to beat the kettle-drums, which hung down on both sides of his saddle. His horse was naturally the sorriest of hacks, for all the others were much too spirited to patiently endure the roll of kettle-drums close behind their ears.
A few hacks could be seen, but with very different occupants than those which they ordinarily contained. The iron shutters were closed on the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and a stack of arms stood in the hall-way. Crowds of respectable citizens, not on duty, were making all haste toward railroad depots and steamboat landings.
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