Sporting Society Volume Ii Part 22

"'Let 'em get over before you start, bless you all! Come back there, you man on the grey! What the saintly St Ursula are you doing? All right, now you can go, and be past-participled to you all!'

"And away we went as if His Satanic Majesty had a.s.sisted us with the toe of his boot! Swis.h.!.+ and the first fence, long looked at and much disliked, is a thing of the past; horses pull and bore to get their heads as we sail down a stiffish hill and over a broad ditch at the bottom. My horse drops one hind leg in, and loses a couple of lengths by the performance. Up a slight slope we stand in our stirrups--to ease our horses, _bien entendu_--not to look at the forbidding obstacle in front of us, oh dear no! a post and rails, with no top bar broken anywhere, and what I hear a groom behind me calling a 'na.r.s.etty' great ditch on the landing side. Our gallant first Whip crams his horse at it, and but for the animal's forgetfulness in leaving both hind legs the wrong side, would have led over in great style; but 'tis an ill wind which blows n.o.body any good, and those legs break the top rail for us. Did I follow the Whip over a bit close? Well, I hope not; verdict, 'not guilty, but don't do it again.' Two flights of hurdles and a ploughed field bring us to the main road. We jump into, and out of, this, leaving two of our number as 'bookmakers'--_i.e._, 'laying on the field.' On we go again over about three miles of pretty hunting country, with nice, plain-sailing fences; then comes a stile, at which one refusal and two 'downers' still further reduces the field; and, with another flight of hurdles surmounted, we come to a check. Oh, the shaking of tails and blowing of nostrils! the 'soaping' of reins and the sweat on the foam-flecked bodies of the poor gees!

"'Horses seem to have had about enough of it, don't you think so?' said a man who had pulled up just alongside of me.

"I turned in my saddle to answer, when, without the slightest warning, and giving vent to a groan which I seem to hear still, my horse suddenly fell to the ground. A dozen men slipped off their horses to lend a hand. We quickly unbuckled the girths and pulled the saddle off, but, even as we did so, I saw the glazing eye, which told unmistakably that the poor old chap had done his last gallop and jumped his last fence. He was as dead as Julius Caesar!

"'By Jove, and it's one of the Queen's, too!' exclaimed an impetuous Subaltern.

"'Shut up, you young a.s.s!' quickly rejoined his Major in low tones, and the good youth incontinently closed the floodgates of his eloquence just as an enormous man, Colonel de Boots, in command of the Cavalry depot, who had driven out to see the fun, pushed his way through the little crowd a.s.sembled round the 'stiff un' in order to tender his advice.

"It was a tight place for those concerned, but the tension was quickly relaxed when, instead of looking at the horse, he turned to me and said, 'Deuced sorry _for your loss_, really--most annoying. My wife will be delighted to give you a seat in her carriage. My servant shall look after your horse until----'

"'Not for worlds, sir,' I replied hastily, 'that is all arranged for.

But if you will really be so good as to take me to Mrs de Boots'

carriage, and if she would not mind my entering it in this very muddy condition----?'

"'Delighted; come along with me!' We walked off, and the situation was saved.

"Only temporarily, though. I blandly received Colonel and Mrs de Boots'

condolences on the loss of _my_ horse all the way home to Barracks, and I heard afterwards that they thought I 'took it in very good part.' The moment I was released from their carriage, after thanking them warmly for picking me up as they had done, I took to my heels and ran down to Major Laughton's quarters.

"'Here's a pretty mess, my boy!' he exclaimed; 'there'll have to be a Board to "sit on" the departed, to-morrow, and report in what way he came to his "frightful end," as the newspaper Johnnies call it. Which _is_ his "frightful end," by the way?' he added in meditative tones.

"'Give it up; ask me another,' I rejoined, with a grin. 'But, seriously, will there be an awful row when it comes out that we were hunting one of Her Majesty's?'

"'Well, naturally, a Paternal Government doesn't provide hunters for "all and sundry." Come along with me: we'll see the Vet., and find out what can be done.'

"Away we went to the Vet.'s office, and fortunately found him in.

Laughton related the whole affair to him, and wound up by saying, 'I don't want you to do anything that isn't strictly right, you know; but if you can see a way of helping us out of the difficulty, I shall be awfully obliged. The worst of it is that it's a young horse--Bradford.'

"'Bradford? Oh, no; I saw Bradford in his stall not ten minutes ago.'

"'Are you sure of that?'

"'Oh, perfectly.'

"'How strange! I sent a man down to the stables this morning to tell them to send Bradford up--but I'll ask him at once: he's just in the yard there,' and the next minute we were eagerly questioning the 'Tommy' as he stood rigidly at attention.

"'Did you tell them I wanted Bradford?'

"'Yessir.'

"'What did they say?'

"'Said there was no such 'orse as Radford.'

"'Bradford, I said.'

"'Beg pardon, sir. Understood the name was Radford, and the Sergeant----'

"'Yes, the Sergeant, what did he say then?'

"'Said I was a ha.s.s, sir----'

"'Quite right, go on,' said the Major, encouragingly.

"'And that I must mean Radnor, and Radnor was the 'orse as was sent up, sir.'

"The Major turned on his heel without a word, and walked again into the Vet.'s office, followed by me. The 'Tommy' remained at 'attention,' and may be in the same att.i.tude now, as far as I know.

"'This is a relief, anyhow,' said Laughton, 'Radnor would have been "cast" very soon, and so his sudden death won't be so surprising to the Board.'

"Up to this point the Vet. had been silent; now a smile hovered over his face as he said, 'Leave the whole business to me, Major. Where's the defunct?'

"The Major described the place, and the interview ended, and we walked back to Laughton's quarters."

"The Board a.s.sembled, and briefly, the result of their deliberations was to find that the bay gelding Radnor was discovered dead in his stall, the certified cause of death being fatty degeneration of the heart."

"Yes, that's all very fine and large, but how the----? what the----?

when the----!!!" broke in a Babel of voices.

"Hold on, boys, and you shall know one or two things which the Board didn't know. Picture a scene in the barrack yard like this: a dark night, moon only showing in fitful gleams now and then; a trolly with a couple of horses; four stalwart Tommies and a sergeant-major seated on the trolly; it rattles out of the barrack square and over some five miles or so of road to the heath where the hero of the day breathed his last. The trolly is drawn up on to the gra.s.s, and after a few minutes'

search the Sergeant-Major discovers the _corpus delicti_; with much exertion it is hauled up on to the trolly, and the return journey commences.

"Just before the witching hour of midnight 'when sentries yawn and Colonels go to bed'--Shakespeare freely transposed, boys, this--enter the trolly to the stable yard again. The dead horse is hoisted out, put in its stall, and the head-collar most carefully adjusted ('in case he should get loose,' observed one Tommy to another, with an unholy grin).

"All the actors in the little drama retire to imbibe liquid sustenance 'stood' by an invisible donor--peace reigns again all around the barrack square, and----and that's the end. Waiter, bring me a whiskey and soda, and some matches."

TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.