From the broad,
black leather carbine sling, over each trooper's left shoulder, the
hard-shooting brown barrelled little Springfield hung suspended, its
muzzle thrust, as was the fashion of the day, into the crude socket
imposed so long upon our frontier fighters by officials who had never
seen the West, save, as did a certain writer of renown, from a car
window, thereby limiting their horizon. Ray despised that socket as he
did the Shoemaker bit, but believed, with President Grant, that the best
means to end obnoxious laws was their rigorous enforcement. Each man's
revolver, a trusty brown Colt, hung in its holster at the right hip.
Each man was girt with ammunition belt of webbing, the device of an
old-time Yankee cavalryman that has been copied round the world, the
dull-hued copper cartridges bristling from every loop. Each man wore, as
was prescribed, the heavy, cumbrous cavalry boot of the day and
generation, but had stowed in his saddle-bags light moccasins and
leggings with which to replace them when, farther afield, their
clear-headed commander should give the word. Each man, too, wore the
gauntlets of Indian-tanned buckskin, a special pattern that Ray had been
permitted to use experimentally.
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