“Brave?” said the hapless General of Brigade who had them under his hands. “Brave? If we gave ’em the order, they would charge an army with their bare hands, sir--and they might as well.” He fluttered a sheet of paper in his hard, hairy fist. The sheet showed 25,353 organized militia enrolled as “trained men armed with the rifle.” Of these 15,927 men had qualified sufficiently to be fit for firing in battle. There were a thousand men in that command whose records showed that they had not fired their rifles a single time in a year: and the General had reason to believe that many of these never had used weapons except as instruments of parade.[16] _State Artillerymen That Have Never Qualified as Gunners._ A mile away, in the artillery encampment, a field artillery battery of regulars from Fort Sill swept their guns at top speed through passages so tight that it seemed impossible for the flying wheels to clear them. Sharply they wheeled and came to position, just as a militia battery arrived. The militia guns were hauled by horses that their State had hastily hired or bought. The brutes had hauled trucks in a city; and in trying to wheel, one of them straddled the gun. In a moment the gun-team was around and over the guns in a confusion of chains and leather. “Do you stable your mounts on top of your guns in the milish?” shouted a regular, gleefully. But he and his fellows helped good-naturedly enough. “We never had horses till now,” growled one of the militiamen, who was stooping to tug at a trace-chain. It made his face fiery red. “State wouldn’t give us any, and we didn’t have stables, anyway, in our armory. So we couldn’t break in any mounts.” “Nor you couldn’t break yourselves in, chum, I guess,” spoke another regular. “How the devil did you get gunnery practice? Haul your little gun out by hand to the firing ground?” The militiamen fumbled at the trace again. “Didn’t fire it,” he said, without looking up. “All right, milish!” shouted the regular. “Shake! You’re game, all right, you boys! Willing, by gum, to face the Hell that you’re going to get, and not a gunner in your battery. Fine leather-headed citizens you must have, back home.” “They didn’t think much of artillery at home,” grinned the militiaman. “Thought that infantry was all they needed. They sort of thought we just had a little toy to play with.” “You ain’t going to be lonely, milish,” grunted the regular, sauntering off. “Tie a necktie around your horses and then go over yonder. You’ll find three other batteries from three other States that never had no horses, never had no mounted drills, and never qualified as gunners.”[17] _Cavalry Without Horses and Undrilled_