If he had been a political wire-puller, many of our misfortunes might have been averted.
But then, while I half envied the wives of the wire-pullers, I took a sort of pride in the blind obedience shown by my own particular soldier to the orders he received.
After that week's experience, I held another colloquy with myself, and decided that wives should not follow their husbands in the army, and that if I ever got back East again, I would stay: I simply could not go on enduring these unmitigated and unreasonable hardships.
The Florence man staid over at the post a day or so to rest his ponies.
I bade him good-bye and told him to take care of those brave little beasts, which had travelled seventy miles without rest, to bring us to our destination.

He nodded pleasantly and drove away.

"A queer customer," I observed to Jack.
"Yes," answered he, "they told me in Florence that he was a 'road agent' and desperado, but there did not seem to be anyone else, and my orders were peremptory, so I took him.

I knew the ponies could pull us through, by the looks of them; and road agents are all right with army officers, they know they wouldn't get anything if they held 'em up." "How much did he charge you for the trip ?" I asked.
"Sixteen dollars," was the reply.

And so ended the episode.