ch did the
sharpshooter pay any heed. The brass band accomplished what nothing
else could. Blatantly it came around the corner, keeping time to its
own noisy drums, and Stiffleg pricked up his ears. In his youth he had
marched to battle and, at that moment, his youth was renewed. He
reared his drooping head, a thrill ran through his languid veins, and,
though still without advance motion, his hoofs began to beat a swift
tattoo, till the towering plumes of the drum major came alongside
his own now gleaming eyes. Then, he wheeled suddenly and--forward!

"Ho! the old war-horse! That's a pretty sight," shouted somebody.

Alas! for Ephraim. The unexpected movement of the balking animal did
for him what was rare indeed--unseated him. By the time that it was
"right front" for Stiffleg his master was on the ground, feeling
that an untoward fate had overtaken him and that his leg, if not his
heart, was broken. Music had charms, in truth, for the rejuvenated
beast, and one of the sharpshooter's pet theories was thereby proved
false. Had anybody at Sobrante told him that anything could entice his
"faithful" horse away from him he would have denied the statement
angrily. He would have declared, with equal conviction, that, in case
of accident like this, the intelligent creature would have stayed beside
and tried to tend him.

Now, lying forsaken both by Jessica and Stiffleg, he uttered his shame
and misery in a prolonged howl, as he attempted to rise and could not.

"O! Ough! Oh! My leg's broke! My leg's broke all to smash, I tell you.
Somebody pick me up and carry me--yonder--to the Yankee Blade. If Tom
Jefferts keeps it still, he'll play my friend. Oh! Ah!"

Some in the now pitying throng exchanged glances, and one man bent over
the prostrate Ephraim, saying, kindly:

"Why, Tom Jefferts hasn't been in this town these three years. He went
to 'Frisco and set up there. If there's anybody else you'd like to
notify I'll telephone----"

"He gone, too! Then let me lie. What do I care what becomes of me now?
Oh! my leg!"

The bravest men are cowards before physical suffering, sometimes. Ephraim
would have faced death for Jessica without flinching, but that gathering
agony of pain made him indifferent, for the moment, even to her welfare.
This calamity had fallen upon him like lightning from a clear sky and
benumbed him, so to speak. But it had not benumbed those about him.
Within five minutes the clang of an ambulance gong was h