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Nearly every day brought out the name of some one she had known, a few of them quite well. There were the gallant young Belgians who had come over for the horse- shows, and the polo-players she had known in England, and the gay young noblemen,—their names brought the war nearer home and sickened her.
It comprised cow-punchers, ranchmen, hunters, professional gamblers and rascals of the Border, sports men, mingled with the society sports, former football players and oarsmen, polo-players and lovers of adventure from the great Eastern cities. They all had one quality in common courage and they were all bound together by one common bond, devotion to Theodore Roosevelt.
"But such fun and such a rum crowd you never saw! Why, there are cowboys, ranchers, prospectors, coppers, ex-sheriffs, sailors, mine-owners, men from every college in the country, tennis champions, football-players, rowing-men, polo-players, planters, African explorers, big-game hunters, ex-revenue-officers, and Indian-fighters, besides any number of others who have led the wildest kinds of life, all chock-full of stories, and ready to fire 'em off at a touch of the trigger.
But the game is getting interesting. Surely Jim's side are having the best of it now?" And Miss Bloxam, turning half-round in her seat, devoted her attention to the polo-players with laudable persistency.
Crack shots and polo-players and four-in-hand experts were all very well, but he had his living to earn, and he feared that the problem was going to prove complicated. So he was glad when chance brought him and young Vandam together, and Siegfried Harvey introduced them. And then Montague got the biggest shock which New York had given him yet.
The polo-players are once more in the full tide of battle. The gaily-coloured jerseys are now here, now there, in pursuit of the ever-flying sphere, for the temporary possession of which each player seems as covetous as Atalanta was of the golden apple.
It was having, apparently, the time of its life; and really the place was enchanting, with its close-cropped, daisy-starred lawns, and the gay figures of polo-players coming home from a distant field in the pale dusk of a brilliant day of early June.
It is a picturesque and novel sight to see the squaws, dressed in costumes in which the garb of savagery and civilization is strangely mingled and the many colors of the rainbow are promiscuously blended, flitting about the field with the agility of a team of professional polo-players; while the bucks and old squaws, with their pappooses, sit around and watch the game with unmistakable enthusiasm.
Most of the men in it came from Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and the Indian Territory, but it had members from nearly every State. Many Eastern college men were in it, including some famous foot-ball players, polo-players, tennis champions and oarsmen. The regiment trained at San Antonio, and landed in Cuba for the attack on Santiago on June 22.
It was probably for this very reason that Beryl liked him better than most of the men in Kundaghat, was less distant with him, and usually granted the very little that he asked of her. She turned to him at once with a random remark about the polo-players, wondering if they would be able to hold their own against a native team with whom a match had been arranged for the following week.
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