for
me, and when the three men of our four dismounted and handed the bridle
reins to me, I was about the happiest man in the army. I did not want
the boys to think I was anxious to keep away from the front, so I said,
"Say, cap, don't I go too?" He said I could if I wanted to, as one of
the other boys would hold the horses if I was spoiling to be a corpse,
but I told him I guessed, seeing that I was already on the horse, I
would stay, and the boys went off laughing, leaving about twenty-five of
us "number fours" holding horses. Now, you may talk all you please about
safe places in a fight, but sitting on a horse in plain sight, holding
three other prancing, kicking, squalling horses, while the rest of the
boys are behind trees, or behind logs, popping at the enemy, is no soft
thing. The bullets seemed to pass right over our fellows on foot, and
came right among the horses, who twisted around and got tangled up, and
made things unpleasant. I was trying to get a stallion I was holding to
quit biting my legs, when I saw my little Irishman, who had steered me
on to the soft snap, dodge down behind his horse's head, to escape a
bullet that killed one of the horses he was holding, and I said, "This
is a fine arrangement you have got me into. This is worse than being in
front." He said he believed it was, as he backed his other horses away
from the dying horse, but he said as long as they killed horses we
had no cause to complain. There was a sergeant in charge of us "number
fours," and he was as cool as any fellow I ever saw. The sergeant was a
nice man, but he was no musician. He was an Irishman, also, and when any
bugle-call and when any bugle-call sounded he had to ask some one what
it was. There was a great deal of uncertainty about bugle-calls, I
noticed, among officers as well as men.

Of course it could not be expected that every man in a cavalry regiment
would be a music teacher, and the calls sounded so much alike to the
uncultivated ear, that it was no wonder that everybody got the calls
mixed. In camp we got so we could tell "assembly," and "surgeon's call,"
and "tattoo," and quite a number of others, but the calls of battle
were Greek to us. The bugle sounded down in the woods, and the sergeant
turned to me and asked, "Fhat the divil is that I dunno?" I was
satisfied it was "To horse," but when I saw our fellows come rushing
back towards the horses it looked as though the order was to fall
back, and I suggested a