and I soon found he had a history. Like other histories, it may have
been a mere codification of lies; but the men of the Fifth were ready to
answer for its authenticity, and Van fully looked the character they
gave him. He was now in his prime. He had passed the age of tell-tale
teeth and was going on between eight and nine, said the knowing ones,
but he looked younger and felt younger. He was at heart as full of fun
and frolic as any colt, but the responsibilities of his position weighed
upon him at times and lent to his elastic step the grave dignity that
should mark the movements of the first horse of the regiment.

And then Van was a born aristocrat. He was not impressive in point of
size; he was rather small, in fact; but there was that in his bearing
and demeanor that attracted instant attention. He was beautifully
built,--lithe, sinewy, muscular, with powerful shoulders and solid
haunches; his legs were what Oscar Wilde might have called poems, and
with better reason than when he applied the epithet to those of Henry
Irving: they were straight, slender, and destitute of those heterodox
developments at the joints that render equine legs as hideous
deformities as knee-sprung trousers of the present mode. His feet and
pasterns were shapely and dainty as those of the _senoritas_ (only for
pastern read ankle) who so admired him on _festa_ days at Tucson, and
who won such stores of _dulces_ from the scowling gallants who had with
genuine Mexican pluck backed the Sonora horses at the races. His color
was a deep, dark chocolate-brown; a most unusual tint, but Van was proud
of its oddity, and his long, lean head, his pretty little pointed ears,
his bright, flashing eye and sensitive nostril, one and all spoke of
spirit and intelligence. A glance at that horse would tell the veriest
greenhorn that speed, bottom, and pluck were all to be found right
there; and he had not been in the regiment a month before the knowing
ones were hanging about the Mexican sports and looking out for a chance
for a match; and Mexicans, like Indians, are consummate horse-racers.

Not with the "greasers" alone had tact and diplomacy to be brought into
play. Van, though invoiced as a troop-horse sick, had attracted the
attention of the colonel from the very start, and the colonel had
speedily caused him to be transferred to his own stable, where,
carefully tended, fed, groomed, and regularly exercised, he speedily
gave evidence of the good there