ound, and soon Pasha could
scent coffee boiling and bacon frying. Black boys began moving about
among the horses with hay and oats and water. One of them rubbed Pasha
hurriedly with a wisp of straw. It was little like the currying and
rubbing with brush and comb and flannel to which he was accustomed and
which he needed just then, oh, how sadly. His strained muscles had
stiffened so much that every movement gave him pain. So matted was his
coat with sweat and foam and mud that it seemed as if half the pores of
his skin were choked.

He had cooled his parched throat with a long draught of somewhat muddy
water, but he had eaten only half of the armful of hay when again the
bugles sounded and "Mars" Clayton appeared. Tightening the girths, until
they almost cut into Pasha's tender skin, he jumped into the saddle and
rode off to where a lot of big black horses were being reined into line.
In front of this line Pasha was wheeled. He heard the bugles sound once
more, heard his rider shout something to the men behind, felt the wicked
little knives in his sides, and then, in spite of aching legs, was
forced into a sharp gallop. Although he knew it not, Pasha had joined
the Black Horse Cavalry.

The months that followed were to Pasha one long, ugly dream. Not that he
minded the hard riding by day and night. In time he became used to all
that. He could even endure the irregular feeding, the sleeping in the
open during all kinds of weather, and the lack of proper grooming. But
the vicious jerks on the torture-provoking cavalry bit, the flat sabre
blows on the flank which he not infrequently got from his ill-tempered
master, and, above all, the cruel digs of the spur-wheels--these things
he could not understand. Such treatment he was sure he did not merit.
"Mars" Clayton he came to hate more and more. Some day, Pasha told
himself, he would take vengeance with teeth and heels, even if he died
for it.

In the meantime he had learned the cavalry drill. He came to know the
meaning of each varying bugle-call, from reveille, when one began to paw
and stamp for breakfast, to mournful taps, when lights went out, and the
tents became dark and silent. Also, one learned to slow from a gallop
into a walk; when to wheel to the right or to the left, and when to
start on the jump as the first notes of a charge were sounded. It was
better to learn the bugle-calls, he found, than to wait for a jerk on
the bits or a prod from the spurs.

No mor