Chapter 1

CHAPTER I - SOLDIER BOY - PRIVATELY TO HIMSELF

I am Buffalo Bill's horse. I have spent my life under his saddle -
with him in it, too, and he is good for two hundred pounds, without
his clothes; and there is no telling how much he does weigh when he
is out on the war-path and has his batteries belted on. He is over
six feet, is young, hasn't an ounce of waste flesh, is straight,
graceful, springy in his motions, quick as a cat, and has a
handsome face, and black hair dangling down on his shoulders, and
is beautiful to look at; and nobody is braver than he is, and
nobody is stronger, except myself. Yes, a person that doubts that
he is fine to see should see him in his beaded buck-skins, on my
back and his rifle peeping above his shoulder, chasing a hostile
trail, with me going like the wind and his hair streaming out
behind from the shelter of his broad slouch. Yes, he is a sight to
look at then - and I'm part of it myself.

I am his favorite horse, out of dozens. Big as he is, I have
carried him eighty-one miles between nightfall and sunrise on the
scout; and I am good for fifty, day in and day out, and all the
time. I am not large, but I am built on a business basis. I have
carried him thousands and thousands of miles on scout duty for the
army, and there's not a gorge, nor a pass, nor a valley, nor a
fort, nor a trading post, nor a buffalo-range in the whole sweep of
the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains that we don't know as well
as we know the bugle-calls. He is Chief of Scouts to the Army of
the Frontier, and it makes us very important. In such a position
as I hold in the military service one needs to be of good family
and possess an education much above the common to be worthy of the
place. I am the best-educated horse outside of the hippodrome,
everybody says, and the best-mannered. It may be so, it is not for
me to say; modesty is the best policy, I think. Buffalo Bill
taught me the most of what I know, my mother taught me much, and I
taught myself the rest. Lay a row of moccasins before me - Pawnee,
Sioux, Shoshone, Cheyenne, Blackfoot, and as many other tribes as
you please - and I can name the tribe every moccasin belongs to by
the make of it. Name it in horse-talk, and could do it in American
if I had speech.

I know some of the Indian signs - the signs they make with their
hands, and by signal-fires at night and columns of smoke by day.
Buffalo Bill taught me how to drag wounded soldiers out of the line
of fire with my teeth; and I've done it, too; at least I've dragged
HIM out of the battle when he was wounded. And not just once, but
twice. Yes, I know a lot of things. I remember forms, and gaits,
and faces; and you can't disguise a person that's done me a