RED AND WHITE ON THE BORDER 



109 



notifying the Secretary of War that we were at the service of the Govern- 

 ment, and being- promised every assistance by our excellent chief execu- 

 tive of the Territory, Governor Pierce. Of course the cowboys were all 

 eager for war, they did not much care with whom ; they were very 

 patriotic,* they were fond of adventure, and, to tell the truth, they were b)- 

 no means averse to the prospect of plunder. News from the outside world 

 came to us very irregularly, and often in distorted form, so that we began 

 to think we might get involved in a conflict not only with Mexico, but 

 with England also. One evening at my ranch the men began talking over 

 the English soldiers, so I got down " Napier " and read them several extracts 

 from his descriptions of the fighting in the Spanish peninsula, also 

 recounting as well as I could the great deeds of the British cavalry from 

 Waterloo to Balaklava, and finishing up by describing from memory the 

 fine appearance, the magnificent equipment, and the superb horses of the 

 Household cavalry and of a regiment of hussars I had once seen. 



All of this produced much the same effect on my listeners that the 

 sight of Marmion's cavalcade produced in the minds of the Scotch moss- 

 troopers on the eve of Flodden ; and at the end, one of them, who had been 

 looking into the fire and rubbing his hands together, said with regretful 

 emphasis, " Oh, how I luoiild like to kill one of them ! " 



* The day that the Anarchists were hung in Chicago, my men joined with the rest of the 

 neighborhood in burning them in effigy. 



ONE OF THE BOVS. 



