the essential
commands and the essential movements we learned without any
difficulty, and the men performed them with great dash. When we put
them on horseback, there was, of course, trouble with the horses; but
the horsemanship of the riders was consummate. In fact, the men were
immensely interested in making their horses perform each evolution
with the utmost speed and accuracy, and in forcing each unquiet,
vicious brute to get into line and stay in line, whether he would or
not. The guidon-bearers held their plunging steeds true to the line,
no matter what they tried to do; and each wild rider brought his wild
horse into his proper place with a dash and ease which showed the
natural cavalryman.

In short, from the very beginning the horseback drills were good fun,
and everyone enjoyed them. We marched out through the adjoining
country to drill wherever we found open ground, practising all the
different column formations as we went. On the open ground we threw
out the line to one side or the other, and in one position and the
other, sometimes at the trot, sometimes at the gallop. As the men grew
accustomed to the simple evolutions, we tried them more and more in
skirmish drills, practising them so that they might get accustomed to
advance in open order and to skirmish in any country, while the horses
were held in the rear.

Our arms were the regular cavalry carbine, the "Krag," a splendid
weapon, and the revolver. A few carried their favorite Winchesters,
using, of course, the new model, which took the Government cartridge.
We felt very strongly that it would be worse than a waste of time to
try to train our men to use the sabre--a weapon utterly alien to them;
but with the rifle and revolver they were already thoroughly familiar.
Many of my cavalry friends in the past had insisted to me that the
revolver was a better weapon than the sword--among them Basil Duke, the
noted Confederate cavalry leader, and Captain Frank Edwards, whom I
had met when elk-hunting on the head-waters of the Yellowstone and the
Snake. Personally, I knew too little to decide as to the comparative
merits of the two arms; but I did know that it was a great deal better
to use the arm with which our men were already proficient. They were
therefore armed with what might be called their natural weapon, the
revolver.

As it turned out, we were not used mounted at all, so that our
preparations on this point came to nothing. In a way, I have always