Mark Twain

“ I know the art of searching for a trail, and I know the stale track from the fresh. I can keep a trail all by myself, with Buffalo Bill asleep in the saddle; ask him—he will tell you so. Many a time, when he has ridden all night, he has said to me at dawn, “Take the watch, Boy; if the trail freshens, call me.” Then he goes to sleep. He knows he can trust me, because I have a reputation. A scout horse that has a reputation does not play with it. ”

“ Another bugle blast—the gate flies open, the bull plunges in, furious, trembling, blinking in the blinding light, and stands there, a magnificent creature, centre of those multitudinous and admiring eyes, brave, ready for battle, his attitude a challenge. He sees his enemy: horsemen sitting motionless, with long spears in rest, upon blindfolded broken-down nags, lean and starved, fit only for sport and sacrifice, then the carrion-heap. ”

“ Now an impressive pause—then the bugle sang “Taps”—translatable, this time, into “Good-bye, and God keep us all!” for taps is the soldier’s nightly release from duty, and farewell: plaintive, sweet, pathetic, for the morning is never sure, for him; always it is possible that he is hearing it for the last time. . . .
. . . Then the bands turned their instruments towards Cathy and burst in with that rollicking frenzy of a tune, “Oh, we’ll all get blind drunk when Johnny comes marching home—yes, we’ll all get blind drunk when Johnny comes marching home!” ”

“ At last the surgeon was so full of admiration that he said, ‘Well, you are a brave little thing!’ and she said, just as ca’m and simple as if she was talking about the weather, ‘There isn’t anybody braver but the Cid!’ You see? it was the boy-twin that the surgeon was a-dealing with.
“Who is the Cid?”
“I don’t know, sir—at least only what she says. She’s always talking about him, and says he was the bravest hero Spain ever had, or any other country. They have it up and down, the children do, she standing up for the Cid, and they working George Washington for all he is worth.” ”

“ I am privileged to be present when the Rocky Mountain Rangers troop the colors and I stand solemn, like the children, and I salute when the flag goes by. Of course when she goes to her fort her sentries sing out ‘Turn out the guard!’ and then . . . do you catch that refreshing early-morning whiff from the mountain-pines and the wild flowers? The night is far spent; we’ll hear the bugles before long. Dorcas, the black woman, is very good and nice; she takes care of the Lieutenant-General, and is Brigadier-General Alison’s mother, which makes her mother-in-law to the Lieutenant-General. ”

“ The children are devoted to Cathy, for she has turned their dull frontier life into a sort of continuous festival; also they know her for a stanch and steady friend, a friend who can always be depended upon, and does not change with the weather.
She has become a rather extraordinary rider, under the tutorship of a more than extraordinary teacher—BB, which is her pet name for Buffalo Bill. She pronounces it beeby. He has not only taught her seventeen ways of breaking her neck, but twenty-two ways of avoiding it. He has infused into her the best and surest protection of a horseman—confidence. ”

“ Cathy thinks Dorcas is the best Catholic in America except herself. She could not pay any one a higher compliment than that, and Dorcas could not receive one that would please her better. Dorcas is satisfied that there has never been a more wonderful child than Cathy. She has conceived the curious idea that Cathy is twins, and that one of them is a boy-twin and failed to get segregated—got submerged, is the idea. To argue with her that this is nonsense is a waste of breath—her mind is made up, and arguments do not affect it. ”

“ Sometimes a bull is timid, finding himself in so strange a place, and he stands trembling, or tries to retreat. Then everybody despises him for his cowardice and wants him punished and made ridiculous; so they hough him from behind, and it is the funniest thing in the world to see him hobbling around on his severed legs; the whole vast house goes into hurricanes of laughter over it; I have laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks to see it. When he has furnished all the sport he can, he is not any longer useful, and is killed.”
“Well, it is perfectly grand, Antonio, perfectly beautiful. ”

“ I am not large, but I am built on a business basis. I have carried him thousands and thousands of miles on scout duty for the army, and there’s not a gorge, nor a pass, nor a valley, nor a fort, nor a trading post, nor a buffalo-range in the whole sweep of the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains that we don’t know as well as we know the bugle-calls. He is Chief of Scouts to the Army of the Frontier, and it makes us very important. In such a position as I hold in the military service one needs to be of good family and possess an education much above the common to be worthy of the place. ”

“ It is true that there is always a faint foreign fragrance about her speech, no matter what language she is talking, but it is only just noticeable, nothing more, and is rather a charm than a mar, I think. In the ordinary child-studies Cathy is neither before nor behind the average child of nine, I should say. But I can say this for her: in love for her friends and in high-mindedness and good-heartedness she has not many equals, and in my opinion no superiors. ”

“ I will tell a plain tale, calmly, without excitement, without eloquence. When she had been here four or five weeks she was already erudite in military things, and they made her an officer—a double officer. She rode the drill every day, like any soldier; and she could take the bugle and direct the evolutions herself. ”

“ There can’t anybody spoil her. She’s the king bee of this post, and everybody pets her and is her slave, and yet, as you know, your own self, she ain’t the least little bit spoiled.” Then she eased her mind with this retort: “Marse Tom, she makes you do anything she wants to, and you can’t deny it; so if she could be spoilt, she’d been spoilt long ago, because you are the very worst! Look at that pile of cats in your chair, and you sitting on a candle-box, just as patient; it’s because they’re her cats.”
If Dorcas were a soldier, I could punish her for such large frankness as that. ”

“ You will not be ashamed of her looks, for she is a copy in little of her beautiful mother—and it is that Andalusian beauty which is not surpassable, even in your country. She has her mother’s charm and grace and good heart and sense of justice, and she has her father’s vivacity and cheerfulness and pluck and spirit of enterprise, with the affectionate disposition and sincerity of both parents. ”

“ It would distress the garrison to suspect that you think they can’t take care of her. They think they can. They would tell you so themselves. You see, the Seventh Cavalry has never had a child of its very own before, and neither has the Ninth Dragoons; and so they are like all new mothers, they think there is no other child like theirs, no other child so wonderful, none that is so worthy to be faithfully and tenderly looked after and protected. ”

“ Well, you know, she’s a nuisance herself, Miss Cathy is, she is so busy, and into everything, like that bird. It’s all just as innocent, you know, and she don’t mean any harm, and is so good and dear; and it ain’t her fault, it’s her nature; her interest is always a-working and always red-hot, and she can’t keep quiet. Well, yesterday it was ‘Please, Miss Cathy, don’t do that’; and, ‘Please, Miss Cathy, let that alone’; and, ‘Please, Miss Cathy, don’t make so much noise’; and so on and so on, till I reckon I had found fault fourteen times in fifteen minutes ”

“ Buffalo Bill will tell you so himself.
I have some of this news from over-hearing the garrison-gossip, the rest of it I got from Potter, the General’s dog. Potter is the great Dane. He is privileged, all over the post, like Shekels, the Seventh Cavalry’s dog, and visits everybody’s quarters and picks up everything that is going, in the way of news. Potter has no imagination, and no great deal of culture, perhaps, but he has a historical mind and a good memory, and so he is the person I depend upon mainly to post me up when I get back from a scout. ”

“ Spaniards to admire and praise, foreigners to enjoy and go home and find fault—there they were, one solid, sloping, circling sweep of rippling and flashing color under the downpour of the summer sun—just a garden, a gaudy, gorgeous flower-garden! ”

“ For a while, that bull-ring was the most thrilling and glorious and inspiring sight that ever was seen. The bull absolutely cleared it, and stood there alone! monarch of the place. The people went mad for pride in him, and joy and delight, and you couldn’t hear yourself think, for the roar and boom and crash of applause.”
“Antonio, it carries me clear out of myself just to hear you tell it; it must have been perfectly splendid. If I live, I’ll see a bull-fight yet before I die. ”

“ It takes two to make a colonel of dragoons. She was a fine dragoon horse, but never got above that. She was strong enough for the scout service, and had the endurance, too, but she couldn’t quite come up to the speed required; a scout horse has to have steel in his muscle and lightning in his blood. ”

“ But no one is the worse for the journey; certainly not Cathy, nor Dorcas, nor Soldier Boy; and as for me, I am not complaining.
Spain is all that Cathy had pictured it—and more, she says. She is in a fury of delight, the maddest little animal that ever was, and all for joy. She thinks she remembers Spain, but that is not very likely, I suppose. The two—Mercedes and Cathy—devour each other. It is a rapture of love, and beautiful to see. It is Spanish ”

“ There’s no music like the bugle to stir the blood, in the still solemnity of the morning twilight, with the dim plain stretching away to nothing and the spectral mountains slumbering against the sky. You’ll hear another note in a minute—faint and far and clear, like the other one, and sweeter still, you’ll notice. Wait . . . listen. There it goes! It says, ‘It is I, Soldier—come!’ . . .
. . . Now then, watch me leave a blue streak behind!”
VII
SOLDIER BOY AND SHEKELS
“Did you do as I told you? Did you look up the Mexican Plug?” ”

“ In two days she had him so stuck after her that she—well, you know how he follows her everywhere, and sets on her shoulder often when she rides her breakneck rampages—all of which is the girl-twin to the front, you see—and he does what he pleases, and is up to all kinds of devilment, and is a perfect nuisance in the kitchen. Well, they all stand it, but they wouldn’t if it was another person’s bird. ”

“ Don’t tell me, Marse Tom! If animals don’t talk, I miss my guess. And Shekels is the worst. He goes and tells the animals everything that happens in the officers’ quarters; and if he’s short of facts, he invents them. He hasn’t any more principle than a blue jay; and as for morals, he’s empty. Look at him now; look at him grovel. He knows what I am saying, and he knows it’s the truth. You see, yourself, that he can feel shame; it’s the only virtue he’s got. It’s wonderful how they find out everything that’s going on—the animals. They—”
“Do you really believe they do, Dorcas?” ”

“ But on general principles it is my opinion that a colt out of a coyote and a wild-cat is no square dog, but doubtful. That is my hand, and I stand pat.”
“Well, it is as far as I can go myself, and be fair and conscientious. I have always regarded him as a doubtful dog, and so has Potter. Potter is the great Dane. Potter says he is no dog, and not even poultry—though I do not go quite so far as that.
“And I wouldn’t, myself. Poultry is one of those things which no person can get to the bottom of, there is so much of it and such variety. ”

“ Thunder-Bird put on his Sunday-best war outfit to let me see him, and he was splendid to look at, with his face painted red and bright and intense like a fire-coal and a valance of eagle feathers from the top of his head all down his back, and he had his tomahawk, too, and his pipe, which has a stem which is longer than my arm, and I never had such a good time in an Indian camp in my life, and I learned a lot of words of the language, and next day BB took me to the camp out on the Plains, four miles, and I had another good time and got acquainted with some more Indians and dogs ”

“ These impulsive natures are dramatic. George was dramatic, so is this Lightning-Bug, so is Buffalo Bill. When Cathy first arrived—it was in the forenoon—Buffalo Bill was away, carrying orders to Major Fuller, at Five Forks, up in the Clayton Hills. At mid-afternoon I was at my desk, trying to work, and this sprite had been making it impossible for half an hour. At last I said:
“Oh, you bewitching little scamp, can’t you be quiet just a minute or two, and let your poor old uncle attend to a part of his duties?”
“I’ll try, uncle; I will, indeed,” she said. ”

“ Will you say it again, please, and say it slow?”
“Plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium that hasn’t any wings and is uncertain.”
“It is beautiful, anybody must grant it; beautiful, and of a noble sound. I hope it will not make me proud and stuck-up—I should not like to be that. It is much more distinguished and honorable to be a reptile than a dog, don’t you think, Soldier?”
“Why, there’s no comparison. It is awfully aristocratic. Often a duke is called a reptile; it is set down so, in history.” ”