A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car | Page 3

small
bony head, over neck and shoulders, yea, over the whole body and
clean down to the hoofs, the veins stood out as if the skin were but
tissue-paper against which the warm blood pressed, and which it might
at any moment burst asunder. 'A perfect animal,' I said to myself as I
lay looking her over--'an animal which might have been born from the
wind and the sunshine, so cheerful and so swift she seems; an animal
which a man would present as his choicest gift to the woman he loved,
and yet one which that woman, wife or lady-love, would give him to
ride when honor and life depended on bottom and speed.'
"All that afternoon the beautiful mare stood over me, while away to the
right of us the hoarse tide of battle flowed and ebbed. What charm,
what delusion of memory held her there? Was my face to her as the
face of her dead master, sleeping a sleep from which not even the
wildest roar of battle, no, nor her cheerful neigh at morning, would ever
wake him? Or is there in animals some instinct, answering to our
intuition, only more potent, which tells them whom to trust and whom
to avoid? I know not, and yet some such sense they may have, they
must have; or else why should this mare so fearlessly attach herself to
me? By what process of reason or instinct I know not, but there she
chose me for her mastery for when some of my men at dusk came
searching, and found me, and, laying me on a stretcher, started toward
our lines, the mare, uncompelled, of her own free will, followed at my
side; and all through that stormy night of wind and rain, as my men
struggled along through the mud and mire toward Harrison's Landing,
the mare followed, and ever after, until she died, was with me, and was
mine, and I, so far as man might be, was hers. I named her Gulnare.
"As quickly as my wound permitted, I was transported to Washington,
whither I took the mare with me. Her fondness for me grew daily, and
soon became so marked as to cause universal comment. I had her

boarded while in Washington at the corner of ------ Street and ------
Avenue. The groom had instructions to lead her around to the window
against which was my bed, at the hospital, twice every day, so that by
opening the sash I might reach out my hand and pet her. But the second
day, no sooner had she reached the street, than she broke suddenly from
the groom and dashed away at full speed. I was lying, bolstered up in
bed, reading, when I heard the rush of flying feet, and in an instant,
with a loud, joyful neigh, she checked herself in front of my window.
And when the nurse lifted the sash, the beautiful creature thrust her
head through the aperture, and rubbed her nose against my shoulder
like a dog. I am not ashamed to say that I put both my arms around her
neck, and, burying my face in her silken mane, kissed her again and
again. Wounded, weak, and away from home, with only strangers to
wait upon me, and scant service at that, the affection of this lovely
creature for me, so tender and touching, seemed almost human, and my
heart went out to her beyond any power of expression, as to the only
being, of all the thousands around me, who thought of me and loved me.
Shortly after her appearance at my window, the groom, who had
divined where he should find her, came into the yard. But she would
not allow him to come near her, much less touch her. If he tried to
approach she would lash out at him with her heels most spitefully, and
then, laying back her ears and opening her mouth savagely, would
make a short dash at him, and, as the terrified African disappeared
around the corner of the hospital, she would wheel, and, with a face
bright as a happy child's, come trotting to the window for me to pet her.
I shouted to the groom to go back to the stable, for I had no doubt but
that she would return to her stall when I closed the window. Rejoiced at
the permission, he departed. After some thirty minutes, the last ten of
which she was standing with her slim, delicate head in my lap, while I
braided her foretop and combed out her silken mane, I lifted her head,
and, patting her softly on either cheek, told her that she must 'go.' I
gently pushed her head out of the window and closed it, and then,
holding up