by day in
single file over miles of mere game-trails, up hill and down dale
through the wildest and most dolefully-picturesque scenery he "at least"
had ever beheld, under frowning cliffs and beetling crags, through dense
forests of pine and juniper, through mountain-torrents swollen with the
melting snows of the crests so far above them, through canyons, deep,
dark, and gloomy, searching ever for traces of the foe they were ordered
to find and fight forthwith, Mr. Billings and his men, having no
responsibility upon their shoulders, were happy and healthy as possible,
and consequently in small sympathy with their irate leader.

Every afternoon when they halted beside some one of the hundreds of
mountain-brooks that came tumbling down from the gorges of the Black
Mesa, the men were required to look carefully at the horses' backs and
feet, for mountain Arizona is terrible on shoes, equine or human. This
had to be done before the herds were turned out to graze with their
guard around them; and often some of the men would get a wisp of straw
or a suitable wipe of some kind, and thoroughly rub down their steeds.
Strolling about among them, as he always did at this time, our
lieutenant had noticed a slim but trimly-built young Irishman whose care
of and devotion to his horse it did him good to see. No matter how long
the march, how severe the fatigue, that horse was always looked after,
his grazing-ground pre-empted by a deftly-thrown picket-pin and lariat
which secured to him all the real estate that could be surveyed within
the circle of which the pin was the centre and the lariat the
radius-vector.

Between horse and master the closest comradeship seemed to exist; the
trooper had a way of softly singing or talking to his friend as he
rubbed him down, and Mr. Billings was struck with the expression and
taste with which the little soldier--for he was only five feet
five--would render "Molly Bawn" and "Kitty Tyrrell." Except when thus
singing or exchanging confidences with his steed, he was strangely
silent and reserved; he ate his rations among the other men, yet rarely
spoke with them, and he would ride all day through country marvellous
for wild beauty and be the only man in the command who did not allow
himself to give vent to some expression of astonishment or delight.

"What is that man's name?" asked Mr. Billings of the first sergeant one
evening.

"O'Grady, sir," replied the sergeant, with his soldierly salute; an