his stable. It was a strange trick: it proved a
fatal one.

No other horse I ever rode had one just like it. Running at full speed,
his hoofs fairly flashing through the air and never seeming to touch the
ground, he would suddenly, as it were, "change step" and gallop
"disunited," as we cavalrymen would say. At first I thought it must be
that he struck some rolling stone, but soon I found that when bounding
over the soft turf it was just the same; and the men who knew him in the
days of his prime in Arizona had noted it there. Of course there was
nothing to do for it but make him change back as quick as possible on
the run, for Van was deaf to remonstrance and proof against the rebuke
of spur. Perhaps he could not control the fault; at all events he did
not, and the effect was not pleasant. The rider felt a sudden jar, as
though the horse had come down stiff-legged from a hurdle-leap; and
sometimes it would be so sharp as to shake loose the forage-cap upon his
rider's head. He sometimes did it when going at easy lope, but never
when his little girl-friend was on his back: then he went on springs of
air.

One bright May morning all the different "troops," as the
cavalry-companies are termed, were out at drill on the broad prairie.
The colonel was away, the officer of the day was out drilling his own
company, the adjutant was seated in his office hard at work over
regimental papers, when in came the sergeant of the guard, breathless
and excited.

"Lieutenant," he cried, "six general prisoners have escaped from the
guard-house. They have got away down the creek toward town."

In hurried question and answer the facts were speedily brought out. Six
hard customers, awaiting sentence after trial for larceny, burglary,
assault with intent to kill, and finally desertion, had been cooped up
together in an inner room of the ramshackle old wooden building that
served for a prison, had sawed their way through to open air, and,
timing their essay by the sound of the trumpets that told them the whole
garrison would be out at morning drill, had slipped through the gap at
the right moment, slid down the hill into the creek-bottom, and then
scurried off townward. A sentinel down near the stables had caught sight
of them, but they were out of view long before his shouts had summoned
the corporal of the guard.

No time was to be lost. They were malefactors and vagabonds of the worst
character. Two of their number had escaped before