A Horse's Tale E-Book

Mark Twain

• Herausgeber: Publisher s11838
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

A Horse's Tale written by Mark Twain who was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer.  This book was published in 1907. And now republish in ebook format. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy reading this book.

Leseprobe

A Horse's Tale

By

Mark Twain

Illustrated by

Lucius Hitchcock

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Part I

I. SOLDIER BOY—PRIVATELY TO HIMSELF

II. LETTER FROM ROUEN—TO GENERAL ALISON

III. GENERAL ALISON TO HIS MOTHER

IV. CATHY TO HER AUNT MERCEDES

V. GENERAL ALISON TO MERCEDES

VI. SOLDIER BOY AND THE MEXICAN PLUG

VII. SOLDIER BOY AND SHEKELS

VIII. THE SCOUT-START. BB AND LIEUTENANT-GENERAL ALISON

IX. SOLDIER BOY AND SHEKELS AGAIN

X. GENERAL ALISON AND DORCAS

XI. SEVERAL MONTHS LATER. ANTONIO AND THORNDIKE

XII. MONGREL AND THE OTHER HORSE

Part II. IN SPAIN

XIII. GENERAL ALISON TO HIS MOTHER

XIV. SOLDIER BOY—TO HIMSELF

XV. GENERAL ALISON TO MRS. DRAKE, THE COLONEL’S WIFE

Acknowledgements

Although I have had several opportunities to see a bull-fight, I have never seen one; but I needed a bull-fight in this book, and a trustworthy one will be found in it.  I got it out of John Hay’s Castilian Days, reducing and condensing it to fit the requirements of this small story.  Mr. Hay and I were friends from early times, and if he were still with us he would not rebuke me for the liberty I have taken.

The knowledge of military minutiæ exhibited in this book will be found to be correct, but it is not mine; I took it from Army Regulations, ed. 1904; Hardy’s Tactics—Cavalry, revised ed., 1861; and Jomini’s Handbook of Military Etiquette, West Point ed., 1905.

It would not be honest in me to encourage by silence the inference that I composed the Horse’s private bugle-call, for I did not.  I lifted it, as Aristotle says.  It is the opening strain in The Pizzicato in Sylvia, by Delibes.  When that master was composing it he did not know it was a bugle-call, it was I that found it out.

Along through the book I have distributed a few anachronisms and unborn historical incidents and such things, so as to help the tale over the difficult places.  This idea is not original with me; I got it out of Herodotus.  Herodotus says, “Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects.”

The cats in the chair do not belong to me, but to another.

These are all the exceptions.  What is left of the book is mine.

MARK TWAIN.

Lone Tree Hill, Dublin,New Hampshire, October, 1905.

Part I.

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 kindness so that I won’t know him thereafter wherever I find him.  I know the art of searching for a trail, and I know the stale track from the fresh.  I can keep a trail all by myself, with Buffalo Bill asleep in the saddle; ask him—he will tell you so.  Many a time, when he has ridden all night, he has said to me at dawn, “Take the watch, Boy; if the trail freshens, call me.”  Then he goes to sleep.  He knows he can trust me, because I have a reputation.  A scout horse that has a reputation does not play with it.