His interrogator looked at him questioningly, and the sergeant, in whom we can no longer fail to recognize our friend, Bob Slocum, said: “I was raised down on Cape Cod, and by the meanest old duck that ever gave a boy cuffs for his breakfast, knocks for dinner, and a kick for his supper. Don’t remember my parents. Sonny here was the colt of one of his mares; and a beauty she was, too. But when she got too old to work he would have let her starve if Squire Davis hadn’t bought her. The squire took pity on her and let her stay in his barn and took care of her till she died. “When Sonny was two years old Wheeler undertook to break him; but he came nearer killing him instead, for Sonny was nervous and high-spirited, and old Wheeler had a temper like a very devil. It makes my blood boil to think of the way he handled that colt; I wonder he didn’t ruin him, and I believe he would have, if it hadn’t been for me. But after they’d had one of their shindies and Sonny was all done up, and old Wheeler was madder than a hornet and had gone up to the house to take out his spunk on his wife, I’d sneak into the pasture, and Sonny would just put for me. He seemed to try to tell me his troubles, and I’d comfort and pet him till he’d get quieted down a bit. I was only fourteen years old then, and he and I stood it a year longer, and then one dark night we took French leave and lit out. I don’t know how we ever escaped being caught, or kept from starving, but we did both. “Sonny lived on grass and I on what I could beg. I knew the country for miles around, and I managed to keep well hidden during the daytime. We came mighty near being caught lots of times, and had no end of close shaves, I can tell you. But in time I managed to get into New York State, and then we got on pretty well. I could do anything with Sonny, and at last we struck the towpaths. I gave the towmen lifts for my board and a feed for Sonny, and they didn’t bother to ask where we had come from or where we were going, so long as we could make ourselves useful. “By-and-by we found ourselves out in western New York, and it wasn’t much further to Ohio; so on we went till the next thing we knew we were clear out in Colorado. Then I got a notion I’d like to go soldiering, and Sonny and I enlisted with the regulars. We’ve been with them ever since. I was only fifteen, but everyone thought I was seventeen, for I was nearly as tall as I am now, and had been obliged to shift for myself so long that there wasn’t much of the boy left in me, I can tell you. Sonny had got to be a beauty, and I could have sold him a dozen times over, but, you see, he wasn’t mine to sell, even if I’d wanted to, which I didn’t.