To return, now, to where I was, and tell you the rest. We shall
never know how she came to be there; there is no way to account for
it. She was always watching for black and shiny and spirited horses—watching,
hoping, despairing, hoping again; always giving chase and sounding her
call, upon the meagrest chance of a response, and breaking her heart
over the disappointment; always inquiring, always interested in sales-stables
and horse accumulations in general. How she got there must remain
a mystery.
At the point which I had reached in a preceding paragraph of this
account, the situation was as follows: two horses lay dying; the bull
had scattered his persecutors for the moment, and stood raging, panting,
pawing the dust in clouds over his back, when the man that had been
wounded returned to the ring on a remount, a poor blindfolded wreck
that yet had something ironically military about his bearing—and
the next moment the bull had ripped him open and his bowls were dragging
upon the ground: and the bull was charging his swarm of pests again.
Then came pealing through the air a bugle-call that froze my blood—“It
is I, Soldier—come!” I turned; Cathy was flying
down through the massed people; she cleared the parapet at a bound,
and sped towards that riderless horse, who staggered forward towards
the remembered sound; but his strength failed, and he fell at her feet,
she lavishing kisses upon him and sobbing, the house rising with one
impulse, and white with horror! Before help could reach her the
bull was back again—
She was never conscious again in life. We bore her home, all
mangled and drenched in blood, and knelt by her and listened to her
broken and wandering words, and prayed for her passing spirit, and there
was no comfort—nor ever will be, I think. But she was happy,
for she was far away under another sky, and comrading again with her
Rangers, and her animal friends, and the soldiers. Their names
fell softly and caressingly from her lips, one by one, with pauses between.
She was not in pain, but lay with closed eyes, vacantly murmuring, as
one who dreams. Sometimes she smiled, saying nothing; sometimes
she smiled when she uttered a name—such as Shekels, or BB, or
Potter. Sometimes she was at her fort, issuing commands; sometimes
she was careering over the plain at the head of her men; sometimes she
was training her horse; once she said, reprovingly, “You are giving
me the wrong foot; give me the left—don’t you know it is
good-bye?”
After this, she lay silent some time; the end was near. By-and-by
she murmured, “Tired . . . sleepy . . . take Cathy, mamma.”
Then, “Kiss me, Soldier.” For a little time, she lay
so still that we were doubtful if she breathed. Then she put out
her hand and began to feel gropingly about; then said, “I cannot
find it; blow ‘taps.’” It was the end.
