All being ready, the hold would be slackened and the team started. The
first motion was generally five mules in the air at one time, backs
bowed, hind feet extended to the rear. After repeating this movement a
few times the leaders would start to run. This would bring the
breeching tight against the mules at the wheels, which these last seemed
to regard as a most unwarrantable attempt at coercion and would resist
by taking a seat, sometimes going so far as to lie down. In time all
were broken in to do their duty submissively if not cheerfully, but
there never was a time during the war when it was safe to let a Mexican
mule get entirely loose. Their drivers were all teamsters by the time
they got through.

I recollect one case of a mule that had worked in a team under the
saddle, not only for some time at Corpus Christi, where he was broken,
but all the way to the point opposite Matamoras, then to Camargo, where
he got loose from his fastenings during the night. He did not run away
at first, but staid in the neighborhood for a day or two, coming up
sometimes to the feed trough even; but on the approach of the teamster
he always got out of the way. At last, growing tired of the constant
effort to catch him, he disappeared altogether. Nothing short of a
Mexican with his lasso could have caught him. Regulations would not
have warranted the expenditure of a dollar in hiring a man with a lasso
to catch that mule; but they did allow the expenditure "of the mule," on
a certificate that he had run away without any fault of the
quartermaster on whose returns he was borne, and also the purchase of
another to take his place. I am a competent witness, for I was
regimental quartermaster at the time.

While at Corpus Christi all the officers who had a fancy for riding kept
horses. The animals cost but little in the first instance, and when