“They’re off! They’re off!” called Holley, thrillingly.
Bostil uttered a deep and booming yell, which rose above the shouts of the men round him and was heard even in the din of Indian cries. Then as quickly as the yells had risen they ceased.
Holley stood up on the rock with leveled glass.
“Mac’s dropped the flag. It’s a sure go. Now! . . . Van’s out there front—inside. The King’s got his stride. Boss, the King’s stretchin’ out! . . . Look! Look! See that red hoss leap! . . . Bostil, he’s runnin’ down the King! I knowed it. He’s like lightnin’. He’s pushin’ the King over—off the course! See him plunge! Lord! Lucy sticks like a burr. Good, Lucy! Hang on! . . . My Gawd, Bostil, the King’s thrown! He’s down! . . . He comes up, off the course. The others flash by. . . . Van’s out of the race! . . . An’, Bostil—an’, gentlemen, there ain’t anything more to this race than a red hoss!”
Bostil’s heart gave a great leap and then seemed to stand still. He was half cold, half hot.
What a horrible, sickening disappointment. Bostil rolled out a cursing query. Holley’s answer was short and sharp. The King was out! Bostil raved. He could not see. He could not believe. After all the weeks of preparation, of excitement, of suspense—only this! There was no race. The King was out! The thing did not seem possible. A thousand thoughts flitted through Bostil’s mind. Rage, impotent rage, possessed him. He cursed Van, he swore he would kill that red stallion. And someone shook him hard. Someone’s incisive words cut into his thick, throbbing ears: “Luck of the game! The King ain’t beat! He’s only out!”
Then the rider’s habit of mind asserted itself and Bostil began to recover. For the King to fall was hard luck. But he had not lost the race! Anguish and pride battled for mastery over him. Even if the King were out it was a Bostil who would win the great race.
“He ain’t beat!” muttered Bostil. “It ain’t fair! He’s run off the track by a wild stallion!”
His dimmed sight grew clear and sharp. And with a gasp he saw the moving, dark line take shape as horses. A bright horse was in the lead. Brighter and larger he grew. Swiftly and more swiftly he came on. The bright color changed to red. Bostil heard Holley calling and Cordts calling—and other voices. But he did not distinguish what was said. The line of horses began to bob, to bunch. The race looked close, despite what Holley had said. The Indians were beginning to lean forward, here and there uttering a short, sharp yell. Everything within Bostil grew together in one great throbbing, tingling mass. His rider’s eye, keen once more, caught a gleam of gold above the red, and that gold was Lucy’s hair. Bostil forgot the King.
Then Holley bawled into his ear, “They’re half-way!”
The race was beautiful. Bostil strained his eyes. He gloried in what he saw—Lucy low over the neck of that red stallion. He could see plainer now. They were coming closer. How swiftly! What a splendid race! But it was too swift—it would not last. The Indians began to yell, drowning the hoarse shouts of the riders. Out of the tail of his eye Bostil saw Cordts and Sears and Hutchinson. They were acting like crazy men. Strange that horse thieves should care! The million thrills within Bostil coalesced into one great shudder of rapture. He grew wet with sweat. His stentorian voice took up the call for Lucy to win.
“Three-quarters!” bawled Holley into Bostil’s ear. “An’ Lucy’s give that wild hoss free rein! Look, Bostil! You never in your life seen a hoss run like that!”
Bostil never had. His heart swelled. Something shook him. Was that his girl—that tight little gray burr half hidden in the huge stallion’s flaming mane? The distance had been close between Lucy and the bunched riders.
But it lengthened. How it widened! That flame of a horse was running away from the others. And now they were close—coming into the home stretch. A deafening roar from the onlookers engulfed all other sounds. A straining, stamping, arm-flinging horde surrounded Bostil.
Bostil saw Lucy’s golden hair whipping out from the flame-streaked mane. And then he could only see that red brute of a horse. Wildfire before the wind! Bostil thought of leaping prairie flame, storm-driven.
On came the red stallion—on—on! What a tremendous stride! What a marvelous recovery! What ease! What savage action!
He flashed past, low, pointed, long, going faster every magnificent stride—winner by a dozen lengths.
Lucy Bostil and Lin Slone have little time to savor their victory. Lucy is kidnapped and held for ransom by the Creeches, who ask Bostil for Sage King in return for his daughter. But Cordts is also after Sage King, so Slone and Wildfire hit the trail to save Lucy from all three. They succeed, but Wildfire does not survive a desperate race against a grass fire. Lucy and Slone return to Bostil’s Ford aboard Sage King and a grateful Bostil gives them permission to marry. They begin their life together with fond memories of the wild red stallion.
IV
Military Horses
9
His Love for His Old Gray Horse
by Laura Spencer Portor and Charles Marshall Graves
Laura Spencer Portor was a prolific contributor to women’s magazines, a professional journalist who wrote on subjects ranging from Shakespeare to mice-infested old houses. She wrote ghost stories and science fiction novels and stories for children. Charles Marshall Graves, also a journalist, was an expert on Edgar Allan Poe.
They were an unlikely combination to put together a short biography of the great Confederate warhorse Traveller, the mount of General Robert E. Lee. But Graves was, early in his career, an editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and had corresponded with many former Confederates. By time this story was published, he was an editor and executive at the New York Times and would have been considered more than qualified to write about Lee and his famous horse. This 1908 article remains one of the most important sources of information about Traveller.
In that part of Virginia now known as West Virginia, and in the meadows of one of the most lovely parts of Greenbrier County, near the White Sulphur Springs, there was grazing, in the summer days of 1859, a two-year-old colt named “Jeff Davis.” He was a handsome gray, with dark points; was well proportioned and muscular, with deep chest and short back, strong haunches, flat legs, small head, broad forehead, delicate ears, quick eye, small feet, and full mane and tail.
There were other horses, too, raised with him, who had many of his good points, and who, when he or they were ridden or driven that summer to the fair at Lewisburg, stood almost as good a chance as he of winning honors for their owner. Yet, after the judges had stood about fanning themselves in the hot sun, comparing and discussing and examining all the colts entered in “Jeff Davis’s” class, it was to “Jeff Davis” that the little group returned oftenest; and that evening as the horses came home over the mountain roads it was “Jeff Davis” who picked his way, perhaps, with the proudest and most springing gait; for it fluttered at one side of his high head the honor that it would seem a horse would be likely most to covet—two short streamers of blue ribbon. This was the colt’s first taste of distinction.
The following summer, when the stream of dusty country vehicles again went creaking by on the road to the Lewisburg Fair, the gray colt and a few of his comrades were again called out from the others one morning and their heads again turned toward Lewisburg.
Once more there was the lazy hubbub of the fair, the judges fanning themselves in the hot sun, and everything as it had been the year before. Once more, returning home, it was the gray colt from whose bridle fluttered the honorable blue ribbon.
But by the time another year had come around County Fairs had begun to seem little things indeed compared with the big national events and interests and the rumors of war that were stirring the country. Stable boys and farm hands, masters and chance guests, talked of little else. If the gray colt were to see more of the world it was likely indeed now to be more than the Lewisburg Fair. Instead of dusty vehicles creaking
on their slow way, he might have cantered any day to the meadow bars to look at troops of soldiers riding past, or at an occasional messenger in military garb galloping on in haste.
One day one of these messengers stopped. He was a quartermaster of the Third Regiment of Infantry of the Wise legion, then camped at and near Big Sewell Mountain; and he came in search of a horse of the Greenbrier stock for the use, during the war, of his brother, a major in the same regiment.
The best horses in the stables and meadow were shown him. He considered them all carefully; then he considered the gray colt a little more carefully, put a few questions, stroked him and considered again. Finally, the others were led back by the stable boys. Some gold was counted out by the soldier, and saddle and bridle were put on “Jeff Davis.”
As the gray colt and the soldier rode away, as the road turned and the mountains folded in, shutting the home lands from view, they were shutting in at the same time all the treasures of peace, of home meadow and the quiet, dewy mornings and the cool, untroubled evenings. But the gray colt did not look back. His gait was rapid, his head high; he sniffed from side to side in eager contentment. “Jeff Davis” himself was off to the war. If he had been heretofore a companion to peaceful days and stable boys, here was indeed a new outlook.
When the quartermaster drew rein and dismounted, “Jeff Davis” found himself in the midst of a camp. Those about him were soldiers, all of them. Groups of Confederates admired his fine points, his easy gait, and asked where he came from. In time he became known among them by the name of his home county, “Greenbrier.” Scarcely a day went by when someone did not have a word of praise or admiration for him.
One autumn day General Lee arrived in camp. The gray colt had never seen the commander, although there had been plenty of talk about him among men and officers. When he did see him he saw a man of gentle but soldierly bearing, who looked at him not critically, as had the quartermaster and the judges at the county fair; not so critically as kindly, and with a sort of gentle comradeship; and who stroked him and said to “Greenbrier’s” master: “Major, I shall need that horse before the war is over.”
After that they met often. The General always had a kind word to say to “my colt,” as he called the proud stepping gray. But this was not to last long as General Lee soon left camp to take up his command in South Carolina. Several months later, however, the Third Regiment was also ordered to that state.
It was the quartermaster who rode the gray colt now, for the major, ill of a fever, had remained in Virginia. One day, near Pocotaligo, General Lee chanced to see the major’s horse again. There was the usual greeting and praise. The general’s liking for “Greenbrier” was by this time so well known that the quartermaster ventured to offer the colt as a gift. This the commander declined; but if the major would be willing to sell the horse—in that case General Lee would like to use him for a week to become acquainted with his qualities. The following day “Greenbrier” was led to the stables of General Lee.
At the end of the week he was returned to the quartermaster with the message that he suited entirely, but that General Lee could not use so valuable a horse in such times of peril unless he were his own.
Upon this the major, who was still in Virginia, was consulted. He wrote at once for the quartermaster to say that if General Lee would not accept the horse as a gift, the quartermaster might let him have “Greenbrier” for the amount originally paid. So the matter was closed. The gray colt was led once more to the commander’s stable, and was renamed by his new master “Traveller.”
No one has ever set down authentically what the ambitions of a high-spirited horse might be, but it seems reasonable to suppose that of all the praise and distinction that had come to the gray colt this was by all odds the best: to carry up and down the ranks, himself a “Confederate Gray,” the most noted and honored man of the Confederate Army—the best-loved man in the South.
When the army returned to Virginia, “Traveller” accompanied as one of General Lee’s warhorses. At first he merely relieved the other horses ridden by General Lee; but as his endurance was more and more proven, and his fidelity more and more tried, he came oftener into requisition. In time the several other horses failed or sank under the duties of war, at once so cruel and so exacting. But the spirited gray seemed never to waver from fear, nor stumble from fatigue; so at last it was he, and he alone, who carried his beloved master. Where his master went, he too went; they were indeed from this time on never separated.
What lay ahead of him only they knew who followed in those days the actual fortunes of war. We can at best just guess at such things. Again and again he saw the blue lines meet the gray, and one or the other break pitifully. Again and again he saw bloody banners rally and lead on the broken forces, reformed into superhuman bravery and courage. Battle followed battle. Event crowded on event. There were days and nights when the saddle was scarcely off his back.
He was learning life in no mean school. Manassas, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Rappahannock—these were teaching him, as they taught thousands at home and on the battlefields, the big and awful truths of war.
Yet the strain and misery could not have been altogether unsoftened to one so beloved. There was time for many a sympathetic word from the general he carried. He did not now bear him so often in front of even and untouched ranks, lined up in proud review; it was oftener in front of broken ones, war-stained, smoke-grimed; or it was often the wounded and dying now who remembered, and lifted their heads, or attempted a cheer as he went past, bearing his loved master and theirs.
Men and officers who have together faced death, who have shared victory or bitter defeat, are bound by no slight bonds. Wherever the gray horse went bearing General Lee a shout went up. Or when those of another section heard wild cheering, but could not see either horse or rider, there, too, affection kindled, and a smile went over the war-grimed faces:
“There goes Marse Robert on ‘Old Traveller’!” they said, with renewed courage.
The days were long and full, and unlike enough to the old, quiet Greenbrier days. But there was even more to be borne; days of still greater stress ahead, and need of still greater bravery.
The campaign of ’64, which commenced at Orange, led the brave horse through the fearful fire of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg. The fortunes of war were utterly changing now. The master whom he had carried through many victories he bore now through much defeat. The gay and gallant and sanguine soldiers that he had known in ’61 were worn and hunger-stricken. The proud ranks were for the most part torn and decimated. The men who cheered now as he passed had faces furrowed with hunger and suffering; many of them staggered from weakness; their clothes were tattered and the feet of many were bare and bleeding. Their cause was already a lost cause. Yet for another winter still the brilliant fight continued. Along the lines of defenses from the Chickahominy, north of Richmond, to Hatcher’s Run, south of the Appomattox, “Traveller” was to be seen daily. Heavy odds were closing in. The war was nearing its end. The stricken South could hold her own but little longer. One day the last stand was taken; the last struggle made; the last smoke of battle cleared away. Defense was no longer possible. The cause which had led so many must be abandoned.
The story of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox need not be retold. If “Traveller” himself could have told it we should have heard most, no doubt, of the few brief words of farewell which his master spoke to his tattered soldiers; and of how the ragged men crowded, sobbing, to touch their General’s hand, or his uniform, or just to lay hands on good old “Traveller.”
From that day on there was no more war, but only the memory of war, for the “Confederate Gray.” From Appomattox “Traveller” carried his beloved master, now a prisoner of war on parole, to Richmond. As the well-known horse and rider came unexpected through the streets, Southern citizens and Northern soldiers, recognizing them, rai
sed their hats in silent respect or emotion as the two passed by. At East Franklin Street, where General Lee dismounted and made his way to his waiting family, sympathetic crowds gathered around the gray horse who had carried him so well and so long, and some put their arms about “Traveller’s” neck and sobbed there and kissed him.
After the war, when General Lee took up his duties at Lexington, “Traveller” was still his master’s beloved friend and companion. When work for the day was finished “Traveller” would be brought from the stable and his master would ride in paths now of memory and quietness. Or in the summer “Traveller” would sometimes carry General Lee to the mountains of the White Sulphur in Greenbrier. There the gray horse saw once more his old haunts of quiet and peace; once more he took his way along the very mountain roads where, as a proud young colt, he had in former years returned from the Lewisburg Fair with the blue ribbon, his first honor, fluttering from his bridle knot.
There were honors in plenty for him now. His master often rode him on visits to friends and relatives on the plantations throughout Virginia. Everywhere he was welcomed royally. As war had taught him courage, so peace taught him now the gentler virtues and softer honors of life. He learned to know the loving touch of women’s hands, the glad welcome and caresses of little children, and all the quiet, daily lovelinesses that still bloomed in a land so lately visited by war.
So quiet pleasure followed on quiet pleasure until 1870. In the autumn of that year his master lay stricken and on his deathbed. The physicians, making an effort to rouse him, reminded him that he must make haste to get well, for old “Traveller” had been standing in the stable and needed exercise. But General Lee, knowing that his end was near, shook his head. “Traveller” still waited. And the kind hand and gentle voice did not come to him again. From then on he was to miss the familiar touch on his bridle.
Great American Horse Stories Page 9