This man was in a little too much of a
hurry; he shot too soon and missed the tree, which scared his horse, and
he turned and ran in an opposite direction, and the rider had all he
could do to attend to him so he did not fire his pistol at all. When he
came back the boys had a laugh on him.
He said, "All right, see that the balance of you does better."
They all gave it a trial, and out of the ten men only three hit the mark
with either rifle or pistol. Before we got through practicing, there
must have been as many as a hundred men from the camp watching the
performance. After each man had tried singly, I formed them in squads of
three, and they were more successful that way than they were alone from
the fact that their horses were getting used to the report of the guns.
The reader will understand that the drilling was done more for the
benefit of the horses than it was for the men, for many times if the
horses were unmanageable when in a fight with the Indians, the rider was
in a great deal more danger of being killed than he would have if he
could manage his horse.
As it was getting near noon I called it off until after dinner. When we
were near the corral going back to camp, I pointed to a large log that
was laying on the ground and told the boys to meet me there on foot,
and I would put them through another kind of a drill, which was more
essential for them to know than the one we had been practicing.
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