hem to lie down together and sleep
through an indefinite night's ride, it is not only probable, but it is
certain, that the legendary comradeship of the man and the horse ceases.
The described condition does not encompass the best understood relation
of the two as travelling companions.

On our military trains in France, the reservations of space for the
human and dumb occupants of the same car were something as follows: Four
horses occupied the forward half of the car. Four more horses occupied
the rear half of the car. Four men occupied the remaining space. The
eight four-footed animals are packed in lengthwise with their heads
towards the central space between the two side doors. The central space
is reserved for the four two-footed animals.

Then the train moves. If the movement is forward and sudden, as it
usually is, the four horses in the forward end of the car involuntarily
obey the rules of inertia and slide into the central space. If the
movement of the train is backward and equally sudden, the four horses in
the rear end of the car obey the same rule and plunge forward into the
central space. On the whole, night life for the men in the straw on the
floor of the central space is a lively existence, while "riding the
rattlers with a horse outfit."

Our battery found it so. I rode a number of miles that night sitting
with four artillerymen in the central space between the side doors which
had been closed upon orders. From the roof of the car, immediately above
our heads, an oil lantern swung and swayed with every jolt of the wheels
and cast a feeble light down upon our conference in the straw. We
occupied a small square area which we had attempted to particularise by
roping it off.

On either side were the blank surfaces of the closed doors. To either
end were the heads of four nervous animals, eight ponderous hulks of
steel-shod horseflesh, high strung and fidgety, verging almost on panic
under the unusual conditions they were enduring, and subject at any
minute to new fits of excitement.

We sat at their feet as we rattled along. I recalled the scene of the
loose cannon plunging about the crowded deck of a rolling vessel at sea
and related Hugo's thrilling description to my companions.

"Yeah," observed Shoemaker, driver of the "wheelers" on No. 4 piece,
"Yeah, but there ain't no mast to climb up on and get out of the way on
in this here boxcar."

"I'd rather take my chances with a cannon any day," sai