As a rule, our company commanders are not thorough horsemen, and too little attention is devoted to the instruction of our cavalry officers in the subject--but Montgomery is a noteworthy exception. I don't know which class will be the more inclined to think me in error in the following statement, but as a result of not a little observation it is my opinion that, while the best riders in the cavalry service come from West Point, the best horsemen are from the ranks. But for our anxiety about our horses, the most enjoyable days of the campaign were probably contained in the first two weeks of October. We were the roughest-looking set of men on the face of the globe; but with abundant rations and rousing big fires along the valley of French Creek, with glad letters from home, and finally the arrival of our wagons with the forgotten luxuries of tents and buffalo robes, we began taking a new interest in life. The weather was superb, the sun brilliant, the air keen and bracing, the nights frostily cold. Wonderful appetites we had in those days, and after supper the men would gather in crowds around the camp-fires and sing their songs and smoke their pipes in placid contentment. The officers, too, had their reunions, though vocalists were scarce among them, and the proportions of "youngsters" who keep the fun alive was far too small. The year before, those irrepressible humorists, Harrigan and Hart, of the New York stage, had sung at their "Théâtre Comique" a witty but by no means flattering ditty, which they called "The Regular Army, O." One of its verses, slightly modified to suit the hearers, was particularly applicable to and popular in the Fifth Cavalry, and their adjutant, when he could be made to sing "_pro bono publico_," was always called upon for the song and sure of applause at the close of this verse. It ran: "We were sent to Arizona, for to fight the Indians there; We were almost snatched bald-headed, but they didn't get our hair. We lay among the cañons and the dirty yellow mud, But we seldom saw an onion, or a turnip, or a spud, Till we were taken prisoners and brought forninst the chief; Says he, "We'll have an Irish stew"--the dirty Indian thief. On Price's telegraphic wire we slid to Mexico, And we blessed the day we skipped away from the Regular Army, O." Now General Crook received his promotion to brigadier-generalship in Arizona, after a stirring and victorious campaign with the Apaches, and the Fifth Cavalry used to boast at times that his "star" was won for him by them. Soldiers are quick to attach some expressive nickname to their officers, but I never learned that our general had won this questionable distinction until we joined him at Goose Creek, when we found that in the command already there he was known as "Rosebud George."