lling people, but I said that seemed to me to be the best
way, but a cold chill went over me as I thought of shooting anybody
through the head and the chaplain pushing him down the cliff into the
water. I was just going to ask him what the men had done, when he said:

"Ah, there they come."

I looked, and a lot of colored men were leading about forty old
back-number horses and mules, afflicted with glanders and other
diseases.

"Are the niggers to be killed?" I asked.

"Naw," said the chaplain. "The horses and mules."

I was never so relieved in all my life as I was when I found that my
excellent marksmanship was to be expended on animals instead of human
beings. But I did feel hurt, the idea of a brevet officer, a man
qualified to do deeds of daring, being detailed one day to drive mules
and the next-to shoot sick horses. But I decided to do whatever I had
to do, well, and so preparations were made for the executions. The
glandered horses were brought out first, and then the ones with sore
backs. Many of them were first-rate horses, their only fault being sores
made from the saddles, and as it would take months to cure them up, and
as the army was going to move soon, it had been decided to kill them
rather than leave them to fall into the enemy's hands, or take them
along to be cured on the march. I shot about a dozen glandered horses,
that being the largest game I had ever killed, and the bodies fell down
into the river. Then there was a mule that was ugly, and it occurred to
me I would have some fun with the chaplain.

We were outside the lines, and quite a number of men had gathered from
the plantations, on hearing the firing, to see what was up. I suggested
to the chaplain that it was a shame to kill so many good horses, when
they might be of use to some of the planters, but he said they were all
rebels, and it was not the policy of the government to set them up in
business, by giving them horses to use tilling crops. I argued that the
men had come home from the confederate army--this was in 1864--either
discharged for wounds or disability, or paroled prisoners, and they were
anxious to go to work, but that they hadn't a dollar, and our army had
skinned every horse and mule on their places, and the niggers had gone,
so that a horse would be a God-send to them. But the chaplain wouldn't
hear to it. The men, who had collected, were mostly too proud to ask for
a horse from a Yankee, but I could see that they did