t
placid Sunday morning, and the sporting sergeants were well-nigh crazed.
Not an instant was to be lost. Jeff rushed to the stable, and in five
minutes had Van's near fore foot enveloped in a huge poultice, much to
Van's amaze and disgust, and when the colonel came down,

Booted and spurred and prepared for a ride,

there stood Jeff in martial solemnity, holding the colonel's other
horse, and looking, as did the horse, the picture of dejection.

"What'd you bring me that infernal old hearse-horse for?" said the
colonel. "Where's Van?"

"In the stable, dead lame, general," said Jeff, with face of woe, but
with diplomatic use of the brevet. "Can't put his nigh fore foot to the
ground, sir. I've got it poulticed, sir, and he'll be all right in a day
or two----"

"Sure it ain't a nail?" broke in the colonel, to whom nails in the foot
were sources of perennial dread.

"Perfectly sure, general," gasped Jeff. "D--d sure!" he added, in a tone
of infinite relief, as the colonel rode out on the broad parade.
"'Twould 'a' been nails in the coffins of half the Fifth Cavalry if it
_had_ been."

But that afternoon, while the colonel was taking his siesta, half the
populace of the good old Spanish town of Tucson was making the air blue
with _carambas_ when Van came galloping under the string an easy winner
over half a score of Mexican steeds. The "dark horse" became a
notoriety, and for once in its history head-quarters of the Fifth
Cavalry felt the forthcoming visit of the paymaster to be an object of
indifference.

Van won other races in Arizona. No more betting could be got against him
around Tucson; but the colonel went off on leave, and he was borrowed
down at Camp Bowie awhile, and then transferred to Crittenden,--only
temporarily, of course, for no one at head-quarters would part with him
for good. Then, when the regiment made its homeward march across the
continent in 1875, Van somehow turned up at the _festa_ races at
Albuquerque and Santa Fe, though the latter was off the line of march by
many miles. Then he distinguished himself at Pueblo by winning a
handicap sweepstakes where the odds were heavy against him. And so it
was that when I met Van at Fort Hays in May, 1876, he was a celebrity.
Even then they were talking of getting him down to Dodge City to run
against some horses on the Arkansaw; but other and graver matters turned
up. Van had run his last race.

Early that spring, or rather late in the winte