. It is different
from Meyer, with its traps full of Congressmen and girls, both of whom
are much on the minds of cavalrymen.

In due course I was bedded down at Adobe by my old friend the Captain,
and then lay thinking of this cavalry business. It is a subject which
thought does not simplify, but, like other great things, makes it
complicate and recede from its votaries. To know essential details from
unessential details is the study in all arts. Details there must be;
they are the small things that make the big things. To apply this
general order of things to this arm of the service kept me awake. There
is first the riding--simple enough if they catch you young. There are
bits, saddles, and cavalry packs. I know men who have not spoken to each
other in years because they disagree about these. There are the sore
backs and colics--that is a profession in itself. There are judgment of
pace, the battle tactics, the use of three very different weapons; there
is a world of history in this, in forty languages. Then an ever-varying
_terrain_ tops all. There are other things not confined to cavalry, but
regarded by all soldiers. The crowning peculiarity of cavalry is the
rapidity of its movement, whereby a commander can lose the carefully
built up reputation of years in about the time it takes a school-boy to
eat a marsh-mallow. After all, it is surely a hard profession--a very
blind trail to fame. I am glad I am not a cavalryman; still, it is the
happiest kind of fun to look on when you are not responsible; but it
needs some cultivation to understand and appreciate.

I remember a dear friend who had a taste for out-of-doors. He penetrated
deeply into the interior not long since to see these same troopers do a
line of heroics, with a band of Bannocks to support the role. The
Indians could not finally be got on the centre of the stage, but made
hot-foot for the agency. My friend could not see any good in all this,
nor was he satisfied with the first act even. He must needs have a
climax, and that not forthcoming, he loaded his disgust into a trunk
line and brought it back to his club corner here in New York. He there
narrated the failure of his first night; said the soldiers were not even
dusty as advertised; damned the Indians keenly, and swore at the West by
all his gods.

There was a time when I, too, regarded not the sketches in this art, but
yearned for the finished product. That, however, is not exhibited
generally ove