A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car | Page 4

my hand, with the palm turned toward her, charged her,
making the appropriate motion, to 'go away right straight back to her
stable.' For a moment she stood looking steadily at me, with an
indescribable expression of hesitation and surprise in her clear, liquid
eyes, and then, turning lingeringly, walked slowly out of the yard.

"Twice a day for nearly a month, while I lay in the hospital, did
Gulnare visit me. At the appointed hour the groom would slip her
headstall, and, without a word of command, she would dart out of the
stable, and, with her long, leopardlike lope, go sweeping down the
street and come dashing into the hospital yard, checking herself with
the same glad neigh at my window; nor did she ever once fail, at the
closing of the sash, to return directly to her stall. The groom informed
me that every morning and evening, when the hour of her visit drew
near, she would begin to chafe and worry, and, by pawing and pulling
at the halter, advertise him that it was time for her to be released.
"But of all exhibitions of happiness, either by beast or man, hers was
the most positive on that afternoon when, racing into the yard, she
found me leaning on a crutch outside the hospital building, The whole
corps of nurses came to the doors, and all the poor fellows that could
move themselves--for Gulnare had become a universal favorite, and the
boys looked for her daily visits nearly, if not quite, as ardently as I
did--crawled to the windows to see her. What gladness was expressed
in every movement! She would come prancing toward me, head and
tail erect, and pausing, rub her head against my shoulder, while I patted
her glossy neck; then suddenly, with a sidewise spring, she would
break away, and with her long tail elevated until her magnificent brush,
fine and silken as the golden hair of a blonde, fell in a great spray on
either flank, and, her head curved to its proudest arch, pace around me
with that high action and springing step peculiar to the thoroughbred.
Then like a flash, dropping her brush and laying back her ears and
stretching her nose straight out, she would speed away with that quick,
nervous, low-lying action which marks the rush of racers, when side by
side and nose to nose lapping each other, with the roar of cheers on
either hand and along the seats above them, they come straining up the
home stretch. Returning from one of these arrowy flights, she would
come curvetting back, now pacing side-wise as on parade, now dashing
her hind feet high into the air, and anon vaulting up and springing
through the air, with legs well under her, as if in the act of taking a
five-barred gate, and finally would approach and stand happy in her
reward--my caress.

"The war, at last, was over. Gulnare and I were in at the death with
Sheridan at the Five Forks. Together we had shared the pageant at
Richmond and Washington, and never had I seen her in better spirits
than on that day at the capital. It was a sight indeed to see her as she
came down Pennsylvania Avenue. If the triumphant procession had
been all in her honor and mine, she could not have moved with greater
grace and pride. With dilating eye and tremulous ear, ceaselessly
champing her bit, her heated blood bringing out the magnificent
lacework of veins over her entire body, now and then pausing, and with
a snort gathering herself back upon her haunches as for a mighty leap,
while she shook the froth from her bits, she moved with a high,
prancing step down the magnificent street, the admired of all beholders.
Cheer after cheer was given, huzza after huzza rang out over her head
from roofs and balcony, bouquet after bouquet was launched by fair
and enthusiastic admirers before her; and yet, amid the crash and swell
of music, the cheering and tumult, so gentle and manageable was she,
that, though I could feel her frame creep and tremble under me as she
moved through that whirlwind of excitement, no check or curb was
needed, and the bridle-lines--the same she wore when she came to me
at Malvern Hill--lay unlifted on the pommel of the saddle. Never before
had I seen her so grandly herself. Never before had the fire and energy,
the grace and gentleness, of her blood so revealed themselves. This was
the day and the event she needed. And all the royalty of her ancestral
breed--a race of equine kings--flowing as without taint or cross from
him that was the pride and wealth of the whole tribe of desert rangers,
expressed itself in her. I need