“It was a grand race.  The whole post was there, and there was such another whooping and shouting when the seventeen kids came flying down the turf and sailing over the hurdles—­oh, beautiful to see!  Half-way down, it was kind of neck and neck, and anybody’s race and nobody’s.  Then, what should happen but a cow steps out and puts her head down to munch grass, with her broadside to the battalion, and they a-coming like the wind; they split apart to flank her, but she?—­why, she drove the spurs home and soared over that cow like a bird! and on she went, and cleared the last hurdle solitary and alone, the army letting loose the grand yell, and she skipped from the horse the same as if he had been standing still, and made her bow, and everybody crowded around to congratulate, and they gave her the bugle, and she put it to her lips and blew ’boots and saddles’ to see how it would go, and BB was as proud as you can’t think!  And he said, ’Take Soldier Boy, and don’t pass him back till I ask for him!’ and I can tell you he wouldn’t have said that to any other person on this planet.  That was two months and more ago, and nobody has been on my back since but the Corporal-General Seventh Cavalry and Flag-Lieutenant of the Ninth Dragoons, U.S.A.,- -on whom be peace!”

“Amen.  I listen—­tell me more.”

“She set to work and organized the Sixteen, and called it the First Battalion Rocky Mountain Rangers, U.S.A., and she wanted to be bugler, but they elected her Lieutenant-General and Bugler.  So she ranks her uncle the commandant, who is only a Brigadier.  And doesn’t she train those little people!  Ask the Indians, ask the traders, ask the soldiers; they’ll tell you.  She has been at it from the first day.  Every morning they go clattering down into the plain, and there she sits on my back with her bugle at her mouth and sounds the orders and puts them through the evolutions for an hour or more; and it is too beautiful for anything to see those ponies dissolve from one formation into another, and waltz about, and break, and scatter, and form again, always moving, always graceful, now trotting, now galloping, and so on, sometimes near by, sometimes in the distance, all just like a state ball, you know, and sometimes she can’t hold herself any longer, but sounds the ‘charge,’ and turns me loose! and you can take my word for it, if the battalion hasn’t too much of a start we catch up and go over the breastworks with the front line.

“Yes, they are soldiers, those little people; and healthy, too, not ailing any more, the way they used to be sometimes.  It’s because of her drill.  She’s got a fort, now—­Fort Fanny Marsh.  Major-General Tommy Drake planned it out, and the Seventh and Dragoons built it.  Tommy is the Colonel’s son, and is fifteen and the oldest in the Battalion; Fanny Marsh is Brigadier-General, and is next oldest—­over thirteen.  She is daughter of Captain Marsh, Company B, Seventh Cavalry.  Lieutenant-General Alison is the youngest