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Updated: June 12, 2025
You may as well take another pair of holsters with pistols."
Coming fresh from some large city probably, as soon as he arrived at his station he was placed on the back of an animal of whose habits he knew as little as he did of the differential calculus; loaded down with a carbine, the muzzle of which he could hardly distinguish from the breech; a sabre buckled around his waist; a couple of enormous pistols stuck in his holsters; his blankets strapped to the cantle of his saddle, and, to complete the hopelessness of his condition in a possible encounter with a savage enemy who was ever on the alert, he was often handicapped by a camp-kettle or two, a frying-pan, and ten days' rations.
I gave mine host whatever he demanded for the loan of his steed, transferred my pistols to an immense pair of holsters, which adorned a high demi-pique saddle, wherewith he obliged me, and, within an hour from the date of the accident, recommenced my journey. The evening closed, as I became aware of the presence of a fellow-traveller. He was, like myself, on horseback.
It turned me sick, and I was all in a tremor till Dick and Hiram had the men bound fast. Then Jim dropped the long, blue guns into the holsters on his belt. "Ken, I shore am glad to see you," said he. The soft, drawling voice, the sleepy smile, the careless good-will all came back, utterly transforming the man. This was the Jim Williams I had come to love. With a wrench I recovered myself.
It was rapidly growing dark, and one man lit a lanthorn, while the other clapped the bit between the teeth of a handsome black horse, turned the docile creature in its stall, and then slipped on a heavy military saddle with its high-peak holsters and curb-bit. Five minutes after they were mounted and making for Charing Cross.
He plucked a second revolver from his holsters "Right off to the right, Cap! Quick!" called the lieutenant, sharply. It was an appeal. To the front end scrambled Captain Booth. An Indian was just loosing an arrow at Hallowell; the captain let loose at the Indian; both missed the arrow stuck in the side of the wagon, and the Indian himself veered away in a hurry, frightened if not hurt.
In an hour or more the force of the wind somewhat abated, but the sky seemed to dissolve into a massy flood. The rain rushed down, not in drops, but in sheets, and in spite of his cloak, he was wet to the skin. For half an hour he was obliged to halt in the wood between Old Kennett and Chadd's Ford, and here he made the discovery that with all his care the holsters were nearly full of water.
He carried a brace of pistols in his holsters, a sword by his side, and a valise strapped on behind the saddle. John Platt rode with an arquebuss hanging at his back, a good pistol in one holster, and a broadsword which had done duty in the Civil War.
And there, covering the space almost from curb to curb, a squadron of regular cavalry came sweeping down the avenue, the guidons fluttering over the uniforms of dusty blue, the drab campaign hats shading the stern, soldierly faces, the grim cartridge-belts bulging with copper and lead, the ugly little brown barkers of carbines and revolvers peeping from their holsters.
I happened to be the last of our party, and was the only one who perceived this new disposition of the enemy. Anxious to be the first in the melee, I allowed my friends to gallop off, and dashed myself through the wood directly in pursuit of the herd. Thinking there was no time to lose, I waited not for my gun, but resolved to trust to the pistols in my holsters.
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