ate he would be fit for a finish. One day on
the Yellowstone I had come suddenly upon a quartermaster who had a peck
of oats on his boat. Oats were worth their weight in greenbacks, but so
was plug tobacco. He gave me half a sack for all the tobacco in my
saddle-bags, and, filling my old campaign hat with the precious grain, I
sat me down on a big log by the flowing Yellowstone and told poor old
"Donnybrook" to pitch in. "Donnybrook" was a "spare horse" when we
started on the campaign, and had been handed over to me after the fight
on the War Bonnet, where Merritt turned their own tactics on the
Cheyennes. He was sparer still by this time; and later, when we got to
the muddy banks of the "Heecha Wapka," there was nothing to spare of
him. The head-quarters party had dined on him the previous day, and only
groaned when that Mark Tapley of a surgeon remarked that if this was
Donnybrook Fare it was tougher than all the stories ever told of it.
Poor old Donnybrook! He had recked not of the coming woe that blissful
hour by the side of the rippling Yellowstone. His head was deep in my
lap, his muzzle buried in oats; he took no thought for the morrow,--he
would eat, drink, and be merry, and ask no questions as to what was to
happen; and so absorbed were we in our occupation--he in his happiness,
I in the contemplation thereof--that neither of us noticed the rapid
approach of a third party until a whinny of astonishment sounded close
beside us, and Van, trailing his lariat and picket-pin after him, came
trotting up, took in the situation at a glance, and, unhesitatingly
ranging alongside his comrade of coarser mould and thrusting his velvet
muzzle into my lap, looked wistfully into my face with his great soft
brown eyes and plead for his share. Another minute, and, despite the
churlish snappings and threatening heels of Donnybrook, Van was supplied
with a portion as big as little Benjamin's, and, stretching myself
beside him on the sandy shore, I lay and watched his enjoyment. From
that hour he seemed to take me into his confidence, and his was a
friendship worth having. Time and again on the march to the Little
Missouri and southward to the Hills he indulged me with some slight but
unmistakable proof that he held me in esteem and grateful remembrance.
It may have been only a bid for more oats, but he kept it up long after
he knew there was not an oat in Dakota,--that part of it, at least. But
Van was awfully pulled down by the ti