over, and he has stampeded."

"Go catch your own horse," said I with lofty dignity, "and steal your
own chickens. I am serving on the start of the commanding officer, sir.
I am the colonel's orderly."

I thought that would break the chaplain all up, but it didn't. "The
devil you say," remarked the chaplain, as he went off in the darkness,
whistling for his horse. Gentle reader, did you ever ride on horseback
fifty miles in one night, on an empty stomach, after having ridden
thirty miles during the day? If you never have accomplished such a feat,
you don't know anything about suffering. O, to this day I can feel my
stomach freeze itself to my backbone. We started soon after orders were
given on a gallop, and if we walked our horses a minute during the whole
night, I did not know it. We marched by "fours," but I had the whole
road to myself, as I rode behind the colonel. I wanted to know where we
were going and what for, and once, when the colonel fell back to where
I was, while he was taking a drink out of a canteen, I said, "This is
a little sudden, ain't it?" My idea was to draw him out, and get him to
tell me all about the destination of the expedition, and its object.
The colonel got through drinking, and as he knocked the cork into the
canteen, he said, "Yes, this _is_ a little spry." That was all he said,
and evidently he wanted me to draw my own inference, which I did.
Pretty soon the orderly sergeant of the company that was on the advance,
directly behind the colonel, rode up to me and asked me if I had any
idea where we were going. He said he had seen me talking with the
colonel, and thought maybe he had told me the programme. He added that
he thought it was a shame that men couldn't be allowed a little rest. I
told him that I had just been talking with the colonel about it, but I
had no authority to communicate what he said. However, I would assure
the orderly that we were going to have the liveliest ride he ever
experienced. I knew I was safe in saying that, and the orderly remarked
that he had about come to that conclusion himself, and he left me. I
had never expected to rise, on pure merit, to that proud position of
colonel's orderly, and I made up my mind if that night's ride did not
founder me, or drive my spine up into the top of my hat, or glue the two
sides of my empty stomach together, so they would never come apart, that
I would try to conduct myself so that the commanding officers would all
cry for