Old War Horses

1905

These old horses never forget the calls, no matter how long it has been since they last heard them.

One day some years ago, when I was passing an open lot in the outskirts of Chicago, I found a boy trying to play an old cornet, says a writer in Forest and Stream. While the boy and I were at work on the cornet, an old negro ash hauler came along driving an animal that had once been a good horse, but was now only a collection of skin and bones. The horse stopped when he heard us and stuck up his ears. I came to the conclusion that be had been a cavalry horse and asked the old negro where he had got him. "From a farmer," he said. I could not find a "U.S." on the horse; he had probably been discharged so long ago that his brand had been worn off. But taking the cornet I sounded the stable call, and the horse began to dance.

"Hold fast to your lines, now, uncle," I warned the old negro. "I am going to make that old horse do some of the fastest running he has ever done since he left the cavalry." Then, beginning with the call for the gallop, I next sounded the charge, and the old plug went plunging up the road at his fastest gait, dragging his wagon after him. I gave him the recall next, and he came down to a walk, much to the relief of the old negro. He said that this was the first time he had over seen the horse run. He had never been able to get him to go faster than a slow walk before. "You don't feed him well enough to get him to do much running," I told him. "That horse, when he did have to run, got his twelve pounds of corn and all the hay he could eat every day."