rse
shot if there was any more of it.

The horse kept quiet until we had got to the cemetery, and returned to
town. As we got into a wide street there was an old circus ring, partly
grown up with weeds, near where the division quartermaster had a large
tent inside a picket fence, filled with quartermaster stores. If I had
known anything, I would have kept the horse's head turned away from the
circus ring, and the tent, but I thought there would be no more trouble.
Just as we got opposite the ring, the band, which had heretofore played
dead marches, struck up a regular ripety-rap-rap-boom-boom circus tune,
and I felt the horse tremble all over. Before I could think twice, the
confounded horse had tried to jump through the bass drum, had knocked
the drummer down, and jumped into the circus ring. I sawed on the bit
and tried to stop him, and dug into his ribs with the spurs, but he
galloped around the circus ring three or four times, and stopped still,
as though expecting a clown would come up and say, "What will the little
lady have now?" O, if I could have had one more hand to use, I would
have drawn my revolver and put a bullet through the brain of the
wretched horse, who was making me the laughing stock of the whole army,
and the citizens.

The procession moved on towards camp, the colonel seeming relieved to
have me out of sight, with my spotted horse, and a crowd of citizens,
boys and niggers collected around the ring, yelling and laughing. I made
one desperate effort and reined the horse out of the ring, and just
then he caught sight of the quartermaster's tent across the road, and
evidently thinking it was the dressing-room of the circus, he started
for it on a run, jumped the picket fence as though it was a circus
hurdle, and rushed in the door of the tent where a dozen clerks were
weighing out commissary stores, stopped suddenly, and I went over his
head, into a barrel of ground, coffee. The clerks picked me out of the
coffee, and laid me on a pile of corn sacks, and then the horse began to
lay back his ears and chase the clerks out of the tent, and it was awful
the way the animal acted. After I had recovered from the effects of my
fall into the coffee barrel, I got up and took the horse by the bridle,
and led him out of the gate, and up the street to headquarters, with
the brigade flag in my hand. I finally got to headquarters and left
the flag, and the colonel told me he never wanted me around brigade
headqua