But I was chief ruler of the little world that lay encamped on the beautiful banks of the Roubie d’Eaux; and probably life was easier to all under me when I was satisfied and happy. I am not conscious of having been mean and crabbed, or of favoring those who favored me to the disadvantage of those who did not. I cannot recall an instance of taking a bribe, even in the form of a pleasant smile. It was probably easier, in the long run, to be fair than to be unfair, and therefore the laziest private ever ordered on extra duty could not lay his hand on his heart and say he thinks it was done because he was not diligent in foraging for turkeys and hens for my private mess. I had very early in life been impressed with the consciousness that the way of the transgressor is not easy; and as I wanted my way to be easy, I fell into the way of not transgressing.
This may not have been a very worthy motive to actuate the conduct of a military commander; but perhaps it was as good as the average in our Department of the Southwest, where, if the truth must be told, virtue did not have it all its own way,—we were different from troops farther east; and although it made me sometimes wince to have my conduct ascribed to a noble uprightness of purpose, and showed that it would really have been more honest not to have been quite so good, yet one should perhaps be satisfied with having carried out one’s intention of treating every man in the command, officer or soldier, as nearly as he should be treated as the interests of the public service, the good of the individual himself, and one’s own personal convenience would allow.
Therefore, I say, I am not conscious of having favored those who favored me, to the disadvantage of those who did not; neither do I think that (at this stage of our acquaintance) the Grafs and Barons and simple Mister Vons, of whom the command was so largely composed, entertained the hope of personal benefit when they laid their kindnesses at my accustomed feet, and tried to smooth my way of life.
The headquarters' mess was generally well supplied,—and no questions asked. My relations with most of the command were kindly, and it apparently came to be understood—for German cavalrymen are not without intelligence—that the happiness of the individual members of the regiment depended rather on the happiness of its colonel than on any direct bids for his favor. Be this as it may, I am not conscious of having received such direct appeals, and I am entirely conscious of the fullest measure of happiness that my circumstances would allow; not an ecstasy of delight,—far from that,—but a comfortable sense of such well-fed, well-paid, well-encamped, and pleasantly occupied virtue as had left nothing undone that my subordinates could be made to do, and did nothing that my conditions rendered difficult. My own good-humor was equalled by that of the regiment at large, and the beetling sides of the Ozark valleys nowhere sheltered a happier campful of jolly good fellows than the Vierte Missouri Cavalry.
We lay on the marvellous Roubie d’Eaux, at its source; no such babbling brook as trickles from the hillside springs of New England, but a roaring torrent, breaking at once from a fathomless vent in the mountain. The processes of formation with these South Missouri rivers are all hidden from sight, but, far away in the topmost caves of the Ozark hills, the little streamlets trickle, and unite for a larger and ever larger flow, gorging at last the huge caverns of the limestone rock and bursting upon the world a full-grown river. Within our camp this wonderful spring broke forth, and close at hand was a large grist-mill that it drove. We were a self-sustaining community,—in this, that we foraged our own corn and ground our own meal. With similar industry we provided ourselves with fish, flesh, and fowl.
The trees were bare with the November frosts, but the Indian summer had come, and, day after day, it bathed every twig and spray with its amber breath, warming all nature to a second life, and floating the remoter hills far away into a hazy dreamland.
But personally, notwithstanding all this, I was not content: I was practically a dismounted cavalryman. Indeed, it would even have been a pity to see a colonel of infantry riding such brutes as fell to my lot, for good weight-carriers were rare in that section. I had paid a very high price for a young thoroughbred stallion (afterwards, happily, sold for a large advance), only to find him a year too young for his work, and the regiment had been scoured in vain for an available mount. I would have gone any reasonable length, even in injustice, to secure such an animal as was needed. It was not easy to make up one’s mind to order a soldier to give up a horse he was fond of, and some soldier had an especial fondness for all but the worthless brutes. My reluctance to do this was perhaps not lessened by the fact that it was forbidden for officers to ride United States horses. It finally became evident that the chances were very small of ever finding a suitable animal, and I even went out, on one shooting excursion, mounted on a mule.
Up to this time the regiment had been all that could be asked, but now it seemed to contain a thousand ill-tempered, sore-headed men. The whole camp was awry. Some of the officers intimated that this was all the fault of the adjutant; that the orders from headquarters had lately been unusually harsh. This officer, when remonstrated with, insisted that he had only transmitted the exact orders given him, and I knew that my own action had always been reasonable,—on principle so. Sometimes one almost wished himself back in civil life, away from such constant annoyances.
We had in the regiment one Captain Graf von Gluckmansklegge, who was in many respects the most accomplished and skilful officer of us all. His life had been passed in the profession, and he had only left his position of major in a Bavarian Uhlan regiment to draw his sabre in defence of “die Freiheit,” in America, as senior captain of the Fourth Missouri Cavalry. He was an officer of Asboth’s selection, and had many of that veteran’s qualities. Tall, thin, of elegant figure, as perfect a horseman as good natural advantages and good training could make, and near-sighted, as a German cavalry officer must be, he was as natty a fellow as ever wore an eye-glass and a blond mustache. He was, at the same time, a man of keen worldly shrewdness and of quick judgment,—qualities which, in his case, may have been sharpened by long practice at those games of chance with which it has not been unusual for European officers to preface their coming to draw their sabres in defence of “die Freiheit” in America.
With Gluckmansklegge I had always been on friendly terms. Among the many lessons of his life he had learned none more thoroughly than the best way to treat his commanding officer; and there was in his manner an air of friendly deference and of cordial submission to rank, accompanied by a degree of personal dignity, that elevated the colonel rather than lowered the captain,—a manner that probably makes its way with a newly fledged officer more surely than any other form of appeal to his vanity. One sometimes saw a brand-new second-lieutenant made happier than a king by this same touch of skill from an old soldier in his company, whom he knew to be far his superior in all matters of service. To be quite frank, if I have an element of snobbishness in my own organization, it has been more nurtured into life by the military deference of better soldiers than myself under my command than by all other influences combined; thus modified do the best of us become in the presence of unmerited praise.
One evening Gluckmansklegge came to my tent door: “Escoose, Col-o-nel, may I come?” And then, flinging out his eye-glass with a toss of the head, he went on, with his imperfect English, to tell me he had just learned from his lieutenant that I could find no horse to suit me; that he had a good one strong enough for my weight, and, he thought, even good enough for my needs. He had bought him in St. Louis from the quartermaster, and would I oblige him by trying him? He was quite at my service, at the government price, for he, being lighter, could easily replace him. Did I remember his horse,—his “Fuchs”? “He is good, nice, strong horse, an he yoomp!—yei!!”
I did remember his horse, and I had seen him “yoomp.” It had long been a subject of regret to think that such an animal should be in the regiment, yet not on my own picket-line. It was well known that great prices had been offered for him, only to make Gluckmansklegge fling his eye-glass loose, and grin in derision. “Fuchs is—how you call?—‘heelty,’ an gesund; wenn you like, your Ike will go to my company to bring him.” I did like, and I had no scruples against buying him for one hundred and twenty-five dollars. Ike, a handsome contraband, went early the next morning with a halter for the Fuchs, and I was up bright and betimes to try him.
I had only