d
to get on his back. One morning an order was issued for the regiment
to turn out in a body to attend the funeral of a major of one of the
regiments, who had died, and I was sent for to carry the brigade colors,
a position I had been relieved from after we arrived at Montgomery. The
boys all dressed up in their best, and I looked about as slick as any of
them, and with my spotted horse, I felt as though I would attract about
as much attention as any of the officers in the procession. At the
proper time I mounted my horse and rode over to brigade headquarters,
not without some difficulty, for my horse saw the crowd on the streets,
and evidently thought it was circus day, for he pranced and snorted, and
walked with one fore-foot at a time, pawing as you have seen a horse in
a circus, trained to walk that way. As I rode up to brigade headquarters
and stopped, I must have touched my horse with my foot somewhere, for
he got down on his knees, and as I got off, the horse laid down right in
front of the colonel's tent, just as he would in a circus. Even then I
did not realize that the confounded brute was a circus trick-horse. He
had been taught to lay down, evidently, at a certain signal. And he laid
there, looking up at me with his cunning eyes, waiting for me to give
the signal for him to get up, but I "did not know the combination," and
he wouldn't get up for kicking, so I stood there like a fool waiting to
see what he would do next. The colonel commanding the brigade, the nice
old man who had helped me out of my difficulty with my other horse, on
the march when he got on a tantrum, come out of his tent and said he
guessed my horse was sick, and he told an orderly to go to the cook
house and get a little red pepper and let the horse take a snuff of
it. In the meantime my horse got up on his fore feet and sat on his
haunches, like a dog, just as circus horses always do, reached up his
neck and took a nice white silk handkerchief out of the breast of the
colonel's coat, and held it in his mouth. It was a circus trick, and
I knew it, but the colonel said, "Poor horse, he is sick," and as the
orderly come with the red pepper the colonel held it to the horse's
nose. The horse got up, and I mounted, and it must have been about that
time that the red pepper began its work, for my horse stood on his
fore feet and kicked up, then got on his hind feet and reared up,
and snorted, and come down on the colonel's tent, and crushed it to