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Soldier Boy – Privately To Himself
I am Buffalo Bill’s horse. I have spent my life under his saddle—with him in it, too, and he is good for two hundred pounds.
Without his clothes; there is no telling how much he does weigh when he is out on the warpath and has his batteries belted on.
He is over six feet, is young, hasn’t an ounce of waste flesh, is straight, graceful, springy in his motions, quick as a cat.
Has a handsome face, and black hair dangling down on his shoulders and is beautiful to look at, and nobody is braver than he is, and nobody is stronger, except me.
Yes, a person that doubts that he is fine to see should see him in his beaded buck-skins, on my back and his rifle peeping above his shoulder, chasing a hostile trail.
With me going like the wind and his hair streaming out behind from the shelter of his broad slouch. Yes, he is a sight to look at then—and I’m part of it myself.
I am his favorite horse, out of dozens.
Big as he is, I have carried him eighty-one miles between nightfall and sunrise on the scout; and I am good for fifty, day in and day out, and all the time.
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 a good family and possess an education much above the common to be worthy of the place.
I am the best-educated horse outside of the hippodrome, everybody says, and the best-mannered.
It may be so, it is not for me to say; modesty is the best policy, I think.
Buffalo Bill taught me the most of what I know, my mother taught me much, and I taught myself the rest.
Lay a row of moccasins before me—Pawnee, Sioux, Shoshone, Cheyenne, Blackfoot, and as many other tribes as you please—and I can name the tribe every moccasin belongs to by the make of it.
Name it in horse-talk, and could do it in American if I had speech.
I know some of the Indian signs—the signs they make with their hands, and by signal fires at night and columns of smoke by day.
Buffalo Bill taught me how to drag wounded soldiers out of the line of fire with my teeth; and I’ve done it, too; at least I’ve dragged him out of the battle when he was wounded.
And not just once, but twice. Yes, I know a lot of things.
I remember forms, and gaits, and faces, and you can’t disguise a person that’s done me a kindness so that I won’t know him thereafter wherever I find him.
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.
I mean, she carried the Colonel; but it’s all the same. Where would he be without his horse? He wouldn’t arrive. It takes two to make a colonel of dragoons.
| Author | Mark Twain |
| Language | English |
| No. of Pages | 186 |
| PDF Size | 4.3 MB |
| Category | Novel |
| Source/Credits | archive.org |
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