How many times have I changed hands? I think it is twelve times--I
cannot remember; and each time it was down a step lower, and each
time I got a harder master. They have been cruel, every one; they
have worked me night and day in degraded employments, and beaten
me; they have fed me ill, and some days not at all. And so I am
but bones, now, with a rough and frowsy skin humped and cornered
upon my shrunken body--that skin which was once so glossy, that
skin which she loved to stroke with her hand. I was the pride of
the mountains and the Great Plains; now I am a scarecrow and
despised. These piteous wrecks that are my comrades here say we
have reached the bottom of the scale, the final humiliation; they
say that when a horse is no longer worth the weeds and discarded
rubbish they feed to him, they sell him to the bull-ring for a
glass of brandy, to make sport for the people and perish for their
pleasure.

To die--that does not disturb me; we of the service never care for
death. But if I could see her once more! if I could hear her bugle
sing again and say, "It is I, Soldier--come!"



CHAPTER XV--GENERAL ALISON TO MRS. DRAKE, THE COLONEL'S WIFE



To return, now, to where I was, and tell you the rest. We shall
never know how she came to be there; there is no way to account for
it. She was always watching for black and shiny and spirited