The Complete Novels of Mark Twain and the Complete Biography of Mark Twain (361 page)

“No.”

“Well, then, in my belief he is more likely to be dog than poultry.  I have not heard of poultry that hadn’t wings.  Wings is the
sign
of poultry; it is what you tell poultry by.  Look at the mosquito.”

“What do you reckon he is, then?  He must be something.”

“Why, he could be a reptile; anything that hasn’t wings is a reptile.”

“Who told you that?”

“Nobody told me, but I overheard it.”

“Where did you overhear it?”

“Years ago.  I was with the Philadelphia Institute expedition in the Bad Lands under Professor Cope, hunting mastodon bones, and I overheard him say, his own self, that any plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium that hadn’t wings and was uncertain was a reptile.  Well, then, has this dog any wings?  No.  Is he a plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium?  Maybe so, maybe not; but without ever having seen him, and judging only by his illegal and spectacular parentage, I will bet the odds of a bale of hay to a bran mash that he looks it.  Finally, is he uncertain?  That is the point—is he uncertain?  I will leave it to you if you have ever heard of a more uncertainer dog than what this one is?”

“No, I never have.”

“Well, then, he’s a reptile.  That’s settled.”

“Why, look here, whatsyourname”

“Last alias, Mongrel.”

“A good one, too.  I was going to say, you are better educated than you have been pretending to be.  I like cultured society, and I shall cultivate your acquaintance.  Now as to Shekels, whenever you want to know about any private thing that is going on at this post or in White Cloud’s camp or Thunder-Bird’s, he can tell you; and if you make friends with him he’ll be glad to, for he is a born gossip, and picks up all the tittle-tattle.  Being the whole Seventh Cavalry’s reptile, he doesn’t belong to anybody in particular, and hasn’t any military duties; so he comes and goes as he pleases, and is popular with all the house cats and other authentic sources of private information.  He understands all the languages, and talks them all, too.  With an accent like gritting your teeth, it is true, and with a grammar that is no improvement on blasphemy—still, with practice you get at the meat of what he says, and it serves. . . Hark!  That’s the reveille. . . .

[THE REVEILLE]

“Faint and far, but isn’t it clear, isn’t it sweet?  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
!’ . . .

[SOLDIER BOY’S BUGLE CALL]

. . . Now then, watch me leave a blue streak behind!”

“Did you do as I told you?  Did you look up the Mexican Plug?”

“Yes, I made his acquaintance before night and got his friendship.”

“I liked him.  Did you?”

“Not at first.  He took me for a reptile, and it troubled me, because I didn’t know whether it was a compliment or not.  I couldn’t ask him, because it would look ignorant.  So I didn’t say anything, and soon liked him very well indeed.  Was it a compliment, do you think?”

“Yes, that is what it was.  They are very rare, the reptiles; very few left, now-a-days.”

“Is that so?  What is a reptile?”

“It is a plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium that hasn’t any wings and is uncertain.”

“Well, it—it sounds fine, it surely does.”

“And it
is
fine.  You may be thankful you are one.”

“I am.  It seems wonderfully grand and elegant for a person that is so humble as I am; but I am thankful, I am indeed, and will try to live up to it.  It is hard to remember.  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.”

“Isn’t that grand!  Potter wouldn’t ever associate with me, but I reckon he’ll be glad to when he finds out what I am.”

“You can depend upon it.”

“I will thank Mongrel for this. He is a very good sort, for a Mexican Plug.  Don’t you think he is?”

“It is my opinion of him; and as for his birth, he cannot help that.  We cannot all be reptiles, we cannot all be fossils; we have to take what comes and be thankful it is no worse.  It is the true philosophy.”

“For those others?”

“Stick to the subject, please.  Did it turn out that my suspicions were right?”

“Yes, perfectly right.  Mongrel has heard them planning.  They are after BB’s life, for running them out of Medicine Bow and taking their stolen horses away from them.”

“Well, they’ll get him yet, for sure.”

“Not if he keeps a sharp look-out.”

“
He
keep a sharp lookout!  He never does; he despises them, and all their kind.  His life is always being threatened, and so it has come to be monotonous.”

“Does he know they are here?”

“Oh yes, he knows it.  He is always the earliest to know who comes and who goes.  But he cares nothing for them and their threats; he only laughs when people warn him.  They’ll shoot him from behind a tree the first he knows.  Did Mongrel tell you their plans?”

“Yes.  They have found out that he starts for Fort Clayton day after to-morrow, with one of his scouts; so they will leave to-morrow, letting on to go south, but they will fetch around north all in good time.”

“Shekels, I don’t like the look of it.”

BB (
saluting
).  “Good! handsomely done!  The Seventh couldn’t beat it!  You do certainly handle your Rangers like an expert, General.  And where are you bound?”

“Four miles on the trail to Fort Clayton.”

“Glad am I, dear!  What’s the idea of it?”

“Guard of honor for you and Thorndike.”

“Bless—your—
heart
!  I’d rather have it from you than from the Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the United States, you incomparable little soldier!—and I don’t need to take any oath to that, for you to believe it.”

“I
thought
you’d like it, BB.”

“Like
it?  Well, I should say so!  Now then—all ready—sound the advance, and away we go!”

“Well, this is the way it happened.  We did the escort duty; then we came back and struck for the plain and put the Rangers through a rousing drill—oh, for hours!  Then we sent them home under Brigadier-General Fanny Marsh; then the Lieutenant-General and I went off on a gallop over the plains for about three hours, and were lazying along home in the middle of the afternoon, when we met Jimmy Slade, the drummer-boy, and he saluted and asked the Lieutenant-General if she had heard the news, and she said no, and he said:

“‘Buffalo Bill has been ambushed and badly shot this side of Clayton, and Thorndike the scout, too; Bill couldn’t travel, but Thorndike could, and he brought the news, and Sergeant Wilkes and six men of Company B are gone, two hours ago, hotfoot, to get Bill.  And they say—’

“‘
Go
!’ she shouts to me—and I went.”

“Fast?”

“Don’t ask foolish questions.  It was an awful pace.  For four hours nothing happened, and not a word said, except that now and then she said, ‘Keep it up, Boy, keep it up, sweetheart; we’ll save him!’  I kept it up.  Well, when the dark shut down, in the rugged hills, that poor little chap had been tearing around in the saddle all day, and I noticed by the slack knee-pressure that she was tired and tottery, and I got dreadfully afraid; but every time I tried to slow down and let her go to sleep, so I could stop, she hurried me up again; and so, sure enough, at last over she went!

“Ah, that was a fix to be in I for she lay there and didn’t stir, and what was I to do?  I couldn’t leave her to fetch help, on account of the wolves.  There was nothing to do but stand by.  It was dreadful.  I was afraid she was killed, poor little thing!  But she wasn’t.  She came to, by-and-by, and said, ‘Kiss me, Soldier,’ and those were blessed words.  I kissed her—often; I am used to that, and we like it.  But she didn’t get up, and I was worried.  She fondled my nose with her hand, and talked to me, and called me endearing names—which is her way—but she caressed with the same hand all the time.  The other arm was broken, you see, but I didn’t know it, and she didn’t mention it.  She didn’t want to distress me, you know.

“Soon the big gray wolves came, and hung around, and you could hear them snarl, and snap at each other, but you couldn’t see anything of them except their eyes, which shone in the dark like sparks and stars.  The Lieutenant-General said, ‘If I had the Rocky Mountain Rangers here, we would make those creatures climb a tree.’  Then she made believe that the Rangers were in hearing, and put up her bugle and blew the ‘assembly’; and then, ‘boots and saddles’; then the ‘trot’; ‘gallop’; ‘charge!’  Then she blew the ‘retreat,’ and said, ‘That’s for you, you rebels; the Rangers don’t ever retreat!’

“The music frightened them away, but they were hungry, and kept coming back.  And of course they got bolder and bolder, which is their way.  It went on for an hour, then the tired child went to sleep, and it was pitiful to hear her moan and nestle, and I couldn’t do anything for her.  All the time I was laying for the wolves.  They are in my line; I have had experience.  At last the boldest one ventured within my lines, and I landed him among his friends with some of his skull still on him, and they did the rest.  In the next hour I got a couple more, and they went the way of the first one, down the throats of the detachment.  That satisfied the survivors, and they went away and left us in peace.

“We hadn’t any more adventures, though I kept awake all night and was ready.  From midnight on the child got very restless, and out of her head, and moaned, and said, ‘Water, water—thirsty’; and now and then, ‘Kiss me, Soldier’; and sometimes she was in her fort and giving orders to her garrison; and once she was in Spain, and thought her mother was with her.  People say a horse can’t cry; but they don’t know, because we cry inside.

“It was an hour after sunup that I heard the boys coming, and recognized the hoof-beats of Pomp and Caesar and Jerry, old mates of mine; and a welcomer sound there couldn’t ever be.

Buffalo Bill was in a horse-litter, with his leg broken by a bullet, and Mongrel and Blake Haskins’s horse were doing the work.  Buffalo Bill and Thorndike had lolled both of those toughs.

“When they got to us, and Buffalo Bill saw the child lying there so white, he said, ‘My God!’ and the sound of his voice brought her to herself, and she gave a little cry of pleasure and struggled to get up, but couldn’t, and the soldiers gathered her up like the tenderest women, and their eyes were wet and they were not ashamed, when they saw her arm dangling; and so were Buffalo Bill’s, and when they laid her in his arms he said, ‘My darling, how does this come?’ and she said, ‘We came to save you, but I was tired, and couldn’t keep awake, and fell off and hurt myself, and couldn’t get on again.’  ‘You came to save me, you dear little rat?  It was too lovely of you!’  ‘Yes, and Soldier stood by me, which you know he would, and protected me from the wolves; and if he got a chance he kicked the life out of some of them—for you know he would, BB.’  The sergeant said, ‘He laid out three of them, sir, and here’s the bones to show for it.’  ‘He’s a grand horse,’ said BB; ‘he’s the grandest horse that ever was! and has saved your life, Lieutenant-General Alison, and shall protect it the rest of his life—he’s yours for a kiss!’  He got it, along with a passion of delight, and he said, ‘You are feeling better now, little Spaniard—do you think you could blow the advance?’  She put up the bugle to do it, but he said wait a minute first.  Then he and the sergeant set her arm and put it in splints, she wincing but not whimpering; then we took up the march for home, and that’s the end of the tale; and I’m her horse.  Isn’t she a brick, Shekels?

“Brick?  She’s more than a brick, more than a thousand bricks—she’s a reptile!”

“It’s a compliment out of your heart, Shekels.  God bless you for it!”

“Too much company for her, Marse Tom.  Betwixt you, and Shekels, the Colonel’s wife, and the Cid—”