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She often saw them creeping along at this silent and dusky hour waggon after waggon, bearing green bastions of cabbages nodding to their fall, yet never falling, walls of baskets enclosing masses of beans and peas, pyramids of snow-white turnips, swaying howdahs of mixed produce creeping along behind aged night-horses, who seemed ever patiently wondering between their hollow coughs why they had always to work at that still hour when all other sentient creatures were privileged to rest.
Halting only long enough to advise my brother of the escape of Tolleston and his joining the common enemy, I asked him to throw any pursuit off our trail, as I proposed breaking camp that evening. Seay and myself put behind us the few miles between the two wagons, and dashed up to mine just as the outfit were corralling the remuda for night-horses.
We watered late in the afternoon, grazing thence until time to bed the herd. When the first and second guards were relieved to go in and catch night-horses and get their supper, my employer remained behind with the cattle. While feeding during the evening, we allowed the herd to scatter over a thousand acres.
The repast barely concluded in time for the wranglers and first guard from Forrest's and my outfit to reach camp, catch night-horses, bed the cattle, and excuse the herders, as supper was served only at the one wagon. The relieved ones, like eleventh-hour guests, came tearing in after darkness, and the tempting spread soon absorbed them.
Get up, everybody!" we were almost thrown into a panic. Many of the boys ran for their night-horses, but Clay Zilligan and I fell on the cook and shook the statement out of him that the cattle had left their beds. This simplified the situation, but before I could recall the men, several of them had reached the bed-ground.
"Nay, but come as a white man come as a young man whom we know and love; for, as thou alone knowest, we are a weak people. If we again saw thy thy horse " They were picking up their courage. "I have no horse. I came on foot with Bukta, yonder. What is this?" "Thou knowest the thing that thou hast chosen for a night-horse." The little men squirmed in fear and awe. "Night-horses?
"Nay, but come as a white man come as a young man whom we know and love; for, as thou alone knowest, we are a weak people. If we again saw thy thy horse " They were picking up their courage. "I have no horse. I came on foot with Bukta, yonder. What is this?""Thou knowest the thing that thou hast chosen for a night-horse." The little men squirmed in fear and awe. "Night-horses?
There is a little by-play of grunting and clearing of nostrils, then the slap of skirts and strings and stirrup-leathers a man never forgets or mistakes the sound of it, if he has ever slept in a round-up camp with a dozen restless night-horses saddled and tied to a wagon twenty feet from his bed. But it made us jump, welling up out of the dark so unexpectedly and so near.
It sloped to the northwest, was covered with old dry grass, and would catch any vagrant breeze except an eastern one. The wagon was ordered into camp, and the first and second guards were relieved just long enough to secure their night-horses.
Before I left the soldier camp, Sanders arrived, and as we started away together, I sent him back to tell the officers to let me know any time they could use half a beef. On reaching our wagon, the boys were just corralling the saddle stock for their night-horses, when Sanders begged me to sell him two which had caught his fancy.
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