o all-important qualifications for a cavalryman,
are riding and shooting--the modern cavalryman being so often used
dismounted, as an infantryman. The average recruit requires a couple
of years before he becomes proficient in horsemanship and
marksmanship; but my men were already good shots and first-class
riders when they came into the regiment. The difference as regards
officers and non-commissioned officers, between regulars and
volunteers, is usually very great; but in my regiment (keeping in view
the material we had to handle), it was easy to develop
non-commissioned officers out of men who had been round-up foremen,
ranch foremen, mining bosses, and the like. These men were intelligent
and resolute; they knew they had a great deal to learn, and they set
to work to learn it; while they were already accustomed to managing
considerable interests, to obeying orders, and to taking care of
others as well as themselves.

As for the officers, the great point in our favor was the anxiety
they showed to learn from those among their number who, like Capron,
had already served in the regular army; and the fact that we had
chosen a regular army man as Colonel. If a volunteer organization
consists of good material, and is eager to learn, it can readily do so
if it has one or two first-class regular officers to teach it.
Moreover, most of our captains and lieutenants were men who had seen
much of wild life, who were accustomed to handling and commanding
other men, and who had usually already been under fire as sheriffs,
marshals, and the like. As for the second in command, myself, I had
served three years as captain in the National Guard; I had been deputy
sheriff in the cow country, where the position was not a sinecure; I
was accustomed to big game hunting and to work on a cow ranch, so that
I was thoroughly familiar with the use both of horse and rifle, and
knew how to handle cowboys, hunters, and miners; finally, I had
studied much in the literature of war, and especially the literature
of the great modern wars, like our own Civil War, the Franco-German
War, the Turco-Russian War; and I was especially familiar with the
deeds, the successes and failures alike, of the frontier horse
riflemen who had fought at King's Mountain and the Thames, and on the
Mexican border. Finally, and most important of all, officers and men
alike were eager for fighting, and resolute to do well and behave
properly, to encounter hardship and privat