a little homesick, but it sure is a comfort to
travel with an outfit that knows how to handle mules like this one
does."

The supply company completed loading, and the homesick horse doctor
boarded the last car as the train moved down the track. Our battery took
possession of the platform. A train of empties was shunted into position
and we began loading guns and wagons on the flat cars and putting the
animals into the box cars.

Considerable confusion accompanied this operation. The horses seemed to
have decided scruples against entering the cars. It was dark and the
rain came down miserably. The men swore. There was considerable kicking
on the part of the men as well as the animals.

I noticed one group that was gathered around a plunging team of horses.
The group represented an entanglement of rope, harness, horses and men.
I heard a clang of metal and saw the flash of two steel-shod hoofs. A
little corporal, holding his head up with both hands, backed out of the
group,--backed clear across the platform and sat down on a bale of hay.

I went to his assistance. Blood was trickling through his fingers. I
washed his two scalp wounds with water from a canteen and applied first
aid bandages.

"Just my luck," I heard my patient mumbling as I swathed his head in
white strips and imparted to him the appearance of a first-class front
line casualty.

"You're lucky," I told him truthfully. "Not many men get kicked in the
head by a horse and escape without a fractured skull."

"That isn't it," he said; "you see for the last week I've been wearing
that steel helmet--that cast-iron sombrero that weighs so much it almost
breaks your neck, and two minutes before that long-legged baby kicked
me, the tin hat fell off my head."

By the time our battery had been loaded, another battery was waiting to
move on to the platform. Our captain went down the length of the train
examining the halter straps in the horse cars and assuring himself of
the correct apportionment of men in each car. Then we moved out on what
developed to be a wild night ride.

The horse has been described as man's friend and no one questions that a
horse and a man, if placed out in any large open space, are capable of
getting along to their mutual comfort. But when army regulations and the
requirements of military transportation place eight horses and four men
in the same toy French box car and then pat all twelve of them
figuratively on the neck and tell t