214 ADVENTURES IN THE WILDERNESS. 



choicest gift to the woman he loved, and yet one 

 which that woman, wife or lady-love, would give 

 him to ride when honor and life depended on bot- 

 tom and speed.' 



"All that afternoon the beautiful mare stood 

 over me, wliile away to the right of us the hoarse 

 tide of battle flowed and ebbed. AVhat charm, 

 what delusion of memory, held her there ? Was 

 my face to her as the face of her dead master, 

 sleeping a sleep from which not even the wildest 

 roar of battle, no, nor her cheerful neigh at morn- 

 ing, would ever wake him ? Or is there in animals 

 some instinct, answering to our intuition, only 

 more potent, which tells them whom to trust and 

 whom to avoid ? I know not, and yet some such 

 sense they may have, they must have; or else 

 why should this mare so fearlessly attach her- 

 seK to me ? By what process of reason or in- 

 stinct I know not, but there she chose me for her 

 master ; for when some of my men at dusk came 

 searching, and found me, and, laying me on a 

 stretcher, started toward our lines, the mare, un- 

 compelled, of her own free will, follow^ed at my 

 side ; and all through that stormy night of wind 

 and rain, as my men struggled along through the 

 mud and mire toward Harrison's Landing, the mare . 

 followed, and ever after, until she died, was with 

 me, and was mine, and I, so far as man might be, 

 was hers. I named her Gulnaxe. 



