Traveller Read online

  'Smell my hooves, Tom, can you, where they been singed? What's that? You wouldn't like to have hooves? Couldn't wash with 'em? Well, I guess they warn't meant for washing. Not for scratching, neither. Horses have got the lightest, strongest feet of any animal in the world, so old Monarch told me once't. Stand up to anything, go for miles. "You jest look after your hooves," he said, "and they'll look after you." Never knowed a horse yet that warn't extra careful to look after his feet. Anything that threatens a horse's feet threatens his life, 'cause the horse that can't run's a dead 'un, I don't like putting my feet down on anything I can't see it's straight-up. I don't like streams, I don't like marsh, I don't like them pontoon boat-bridges rocking round and booming under my feet; I don't like treading on anything that might crumble or move. What's that you say? A big animal like me, jest thinking how he can run away? A cat can climb a tree, Tom. A cat can scratch, too. We can't.

  I was telling you, warn't I, 'bout the fair and 'bout how Jim rode me into the drinking tent? It was nearly next spring after we got home from the fair that all the horses round the place--pretty well all--began to smell that things was somehow changing. There was something exciting the men--getting 'em roused up, like stallions get. They didn't fight, though. In fact, they seemed to be getting on better'n usual. Whatever 'twas, it was exciting them morning, noon and night. I believe us horses could tell it better'n they could theirselves. They smelt different, and they kind of acted different; they talked different, they walked about different. There was a sorta unrest all over the place, and they all talked and shouted more'n usual. 'Nother thing we noticed, they all seemed to have taken to shotguns. 'Course, I'd heared guns round the place before, now and then--fella shooting a rabbit, maybe, or a quail--and I warn't afraid of a gun going off at a distance, though sometimes it'd make me startle and gallop round a bit. But now there seemed to be guns out all the time, and the men kept taking 'em to pieces and cleaning 'em and showing 'em to each other and talking 'bout 'em.

  I 'member one mornin' I'd been out--Andy was riding me--and we was coming back up the lane and into the big yard in front of the house. Before we ever got in the gate, I could see the yard was full of people. The men was all standing in a knot and most of the women had come out of the house, too; and some of the black folks, they was stood over to one side. There was a quiet-looking sort of a horse--a cob--between the shafts of an open cart. He was a stranger. I'd never seed him before. He was hitched by the reins to the rails, and there was a man--quite an old man--in gray clothes and a white shirt, smelling very clean, all soap and no sweat--standing up on the back of this here cart and hollering away at our people. They liked him--you could tell that--even though he was talking as if he was real mad. He kept waving his arms, and now and then he'd shout an' go thump! bang! with his fist on the cart. And every so often, when he stopped as if he'd asked them something, our folks started in cheering and shouting "Yes! Yes! By golly we will!" and all sech things as that--much as I could understand, anyways.

  At first I thought he must have brung something to sell--we used to get folks like that sometimes--what they call peddlers, you know, Tom--and I figured old Andy'd soon be sending him 'bout his business pretty sharp. But he didn't. No, he got down off my back and hitched me to the rails right 'longside this horse of the stranger's, and then he jest stood and listened like the rest.

  I tried to make out from this old horse in the shafts what it was all about. Apparently he'd brung the man from town, and it seemed they'd been going quite a ways round the country, him talking like this everywhere they fetched up.

  "He's telling them to fight," says this horse.

  "Fight?" I said. "Fight who?"

  "I'll be durned if I know," says the horse. "But that's the way I reckon it. They've all got to go somewhere or other to fight, that's what he keeps saying. But what beats me is, 'parently they all want to. You can tell they want to, can't you? Jest look at 'em. They're all right in 'greement with him."

  After a while the man got through speechifying, and they all cheered even louder, and Andy and Jim and the ladies took him off with them into the big house. The way they was acting, they was going to treat him real sociable. The men was talking, too, among theirselves. I could understand some of it--mostly by the way they was behaving more'n anything else.

  "Durn it!" says one. "I'm going!" Another man was kind of dancing 'bout the yard, singing "Jine up! Jine up!" and slapping the others on their backs. After a time they told one of the black fellas to lead me away and unsaddle me, so I never seed what happened when the old town man left.

  Soon after that, there commenced a kind of a bustle bout the place. It was like when we was going off to the fair the summer before, only this time a whole lot more was going on. First off, a lot of our horses was sold--more'n I'd ever seed go at one time before. Usually, horses was sold in ones or twos, often to fellas who came regular. I'd got to know some of them by sight.

  But now, all sorts of strangers seemed to be coming from all over; and they warn't particular 'bout the horses they bought, neither. They didn't lean on the rails and take their time and talk and then try three or four horses and maybe go up to the house with Andy and Jim. No, none o' that. They seemed in a hurry. They'd buy a horse, any horse, 'fore they was all gone. My friend Ruffian went among the first lot. He'd growed up good-looking an' easygoing, and a fella who'd come in a buggy with his wife and a young lad--his son, I s'pose--bought him in no time at all. They'd brung a harness with 'em, and the young lad saddled Ruffian up right away and rode him off down the lane behind the buggy. He had a gun with him, too--he had it slung acrost his back. Another man wanted to buy Flora, my dam, but Andy wouldn't sell her. I s'pose he figured she was too valuable?--wanted to keep her for breeding. Before the redbud was out that spring, we was down to fewer horses and mares on the place than I'd ever knowed.

  "You'll be going now for sure, Jeff," old Monarch used to say to me every time another stranger came. "You're young--fourth summer, ain't you?--and one of the best geldings on the place. You're sure to go."

  "Go where?" I asked.

  "To this here War," he answered. "That's where they're all a-going."

  "Where is the War?" I said. "I never heared tell of it. What kind of a place is it?"

  "Well, I don't jest rightly know," said Monarch, "but by all I can make out, it's some place they're all set on going to, so it must be real good." What the town cob told me had got around, you see.

  "Is it far to the War?" I asked.

  "I don't know," said Monarch again, "and I don't even know if it's a town or a farm or what, but it's a special place they're all crazy to go to, and they need horses to go there."

  I felt excited. I couldn't wait to be off to this here War, wherever it was. It was the restlessness and activity in the air round the whole place: all the coming and going, and the strangers, and the feeling of everything being different--something you couldn't smell or see that had changed everything and was more important than anything else. I felt life'd gotten dull in the field and the stable. I had a stable by then, you see, and I often used to feel bored in there--lack of company. One time I even got to biting my crib for something to do, 'cause nowadays Jim seemed busy from morning till night--too busy to play with me. I figured wherever this here War was, where they was all going, it'd be a whole lot different there. Better'n one day same's another and Jim an' Andy having no time to ride me.

  What made everything still duller was that as summer wore on, the weather turned real nasty--no kind of weather at all. It rained near 'bout every day--morning to night, very often--and there was too much wind. That kind of thing interferes with a horse's way of life, you see, Tom. To stay in good condition we need to eat pretty steady, but you can't settle down to grazing if it keeps raining and blowing on and off all the time. You want to get out of the wind, and if you let yourself get wet through, you start shivering with cold. Sometimes there was thunder with it--building up, you know, close and oppressive--made me jumpy
and restless. I recollect one day, when I was in my stable, Jim came in to look me over and see how I was getting on, and while he was stroking me an' talking to me, my back jest started to crackle and spark, you'd 'a thought 'twas a fire in the grass.

  It was a few days after that when still another young stranger came riding in, looking to buy a horse. Weather was fine for once't, and old Monarch and me and one or two others was out in the field next to the stables. This young man was riding a young brown mare. I liked the look of her. She was excited with coming to a strange place, full of strange horses; you could see that from the way she was acting--pricked-up ears, arched neck and her tail up high. Andy and Jim had come out, real respectful, to meet the young fella, and as he dismounted and hitched her up she let out a nice, friendly sort of neigh to us. I warn't far off, so I answered her and jest strolled over to make acquaintance. She was groomed real pretty, her coat jest shining, and anyone could tell she was used to being understood by her man and being prop'ly ridden. She was wearing a new saddle, girth and stirrups, all real smart and smellin' of saddle soap.

  The young man was smart, too. He was about the same age and build as Jim, and I 'member thinking they looked like the same tree, one in summer and one in winter. Jim, you see, he used to wear a high-crowned hat with a big brim and a colored band round; and he'd have a red-and-blue handkerchief loose round his neck and a bright-colored shirt. This other fella had a low gray cap with a peak in front, and all his clothes was gray, too, with shiny yellow buttons--metal, they was. His belt and boots was shiny, too--as smart as the mare's tack.

  'Course, I know now that I was looking at a gray soldier--one of our soldiers--no different from thousands I was going to see later, 'ceptin' he looked so smart. But I'd never seed ary a soldier then, gray or blue, and that morning he seemed strange.

  There was nothing strange about his ways, though. You could tell at once that he knowed horses almost like Jim and Andy did. As I came up to put my nose agin his mare's and have a chat with her, he showed right away that he liked the looks of me.

  "That sure looks a good 'un," he says to Andy, and he began stroking my nose and talking to me. I could tell from his mare, as much as from him, that he was all right. Andy answered something about me not jest suiting everybody, but that I was one of the good 'uns he'd kept back for men who'd know how to use 'em right. And then Jim said, "D'you want to try him, Captain Broun?" So they saddled me up and this Captain Broun rode me round the field and up the lane a piece.

  Now, you know, Tom, it's not everyone likes riding me, as I've come to larn over the years. It takes a durned good man to ride me, and I've no use for any other sort. I've got a lot of go in me, and I jest can't abide hanging around. I will walk, mind you, if a man really wants it and insists, but I always keep it fast and springy. What I really like, though, is a sort of a short, high trot--what they call a buck-trot--and that always seems to go hard on a rider unless he's got a real good seat. Why, I've kept up that kind of a trot for thirty mile or more before now, and jest refused to walk. I've always reckoned a good horse has to put a proper value on hisself, or no one else will.

  Well, this Captain Broun, I trotted him up and down quite a ways, and then Andy took Monarch out with us for a few miles. After a while, though, I lit out--left 'em behind, and came back to meet them when Captain Broun turned me around. I'd put a lot of energy into that ride, 'cause the way I figured it, if I was going to this War place, wherever it was, I didn't want to go with a man who couldn't live up to me and go along with me doing things my way. But this Captain Broun, pretty soon I could tell that though he warn't nothing like the top-notchers Andy and Jim was, all the same he liked an energetic horse and he liked my style.

  "He'll be good," he said to Andy, patting my neck as we walked over the field and back to his own mare. (She'd been let graze, but she came up to him of her own accord--a good sign, I figured.) "What's his name?"

  "Jeff Davis," says Andy, grinning.

  "Then I guess he's got to be a winner," says Captain Broun, laughing back. He got off, took my bridle, stroked my nose and blowed into it.

  "Howdy, Jeff!" he says. "I'm Joe. Joe, see?" He talked to me some more--real friendly--and then one of the black folks, a groom called Zeb, took me away to unsaddle.

  "He's bought you right nuff," says Monarch later on, when we was side by side in our stalls and Zeb was cleaning the mud off us.

  "How do y'know that?" I asked.

  "I know the way they go 'bout it," he said. "They sort of spit, and clap their hands, and then there's some small, round, shining thing, and sometimes they stand and drink right where they are. Yeah, you'll be off--and, Jeff, I must say I'll be sorry to see you go. As good a four-year-old as ever I 'member to have seed. You'll do well--long as you stay in the right hands. 'Dare say you're heading for a nice, safe, peaceful life, same as I've had."

  After that I was jest waiting for this Joe to come in and take me away. 'Fact, I was waiting all day, but he didn't come. He didn't come the next day neither, and when we went out of stables I could tell the mare was gone. I s'posed he'd come back, or maybe send a black fella to collect me, but as the days went by and nothing happened it jest slipped my mind and I went on loafing around as usual--as best I could for the rain, that is.

  'Bout then Jim disappeared right off the place altogether. 'Course, he'd been gone before sometimes, a day or two here, a day or two there--buying and selling, I guess; but now he was gone the way we began to wonder if he was ever coming back. This bothered me 'cause, as I've told you, he'd been there all my life and I'd always thought of him as my man. 'Long as he was round, I could stand for him to be too busy to have time to play with me, but to have him real gone was jest to know how close, really, we'd always been. Made me fret--same as I'd fretted after Ruffian went. Zeb understood all right. "Aw, Jeff," he says one day when he was rubbing me down. "Horses is like black folks-- ain't got no say-so. Forever sayin' good-bye. But Marse Jim, he comin' back--he comin' back sure."

  I didn't feel so sure. What men say to horses is mostly jest what they reckon they'd like, you know, or what they can't say to anyone else. Even Marse Robert's no different there.

  And then, one wet afternoon in the first of the fall, Jim did come back! I was in my stable; I heared his voice outside and I started to whinnying and stamping all I could. He opened the half-door, he was laughing up a storm, and he came striding in and slapped me on the withers. Then he gave me half an apple and began making a real fuss 'bout me.

  "Hi, there, Jeff!" he keeps saying. "You ready? 'Cause you're off, boy, you're off to the War!"

  What I hadn't reckoned on was he'd turned hisself into a soldier, like Captain Joe. All his clothes was that same kinda gray, butternut color, and they didn't smell like any clothes I was used to. It made me sniff over his jacket and his sleeve. 'Course, he jest stood and laughed, all friendly-like. 'Twas the same old Jim--he made me sure 'nuff of that, playing some of our old tricks, making me stand still while he shouted "Boo!" in my ear, and all that. He'd brung me a new horse blanket, too, real smart, and he started in then and there trying it, folding it and getting it comfortable on my back. Then he give me a bit of an extra grooming hisself, and all the time he was jest quietly singing away between his teeth, "War-war-war, War-war-war."

  Now during these days while I was standing round the stable and waiting, Tom, I'd come to have quite an idea in my own head of what this here War place was gonna be like. First off, it must be a mighty fine place, a whole lot finer'n where we was living now. That stood to reason--why else would the men be so all-fired hankering to go there? I kinda visioned it as a real big house o' red bricks--I'd seed one or two when we was coming and going to the fairs, you know--and it was going to have a big stone doorway in the middle and stone steps going up from the lawn out front. Green shutters on the windows. Tall chimneys. A nice, friendly touch of wood smoke in the air, trees round 'bout the house, and all the leaves red in the fall, maple and beech and sechlike. Fine evenin
gs, the black folks'd be singing and dancing bit of a ways off, back o' the big house--near the stables, maybe, where I could hear 'em for company, evenings. The sun'd shine and the grass in the big meadows'd be jest right. Trees to scratch on, good spots for horses to dung in their proper ways--'cause that's important to us, Tom, you know; stallions, mares, geldings, we've all got our ways and places and got to do it right. Hay and oats. Warm in winter, not too hot in summer but plenty of shade when 'twas. Breezes at dawn and dusk so's you're a bit lively and playful. I could believe 'most anything 'bout it, but I jest couldn't believe there'd be no flies; that'd be asking altogether too much, but maybe they'd be fewer. 'Course, the men and the horses'd be the best of company. I knowed I was a good horse, and they must be picking the good horses to go to the War.

  'Bout Jim an' Joe, I jest couldn't figure it out. Would they both be there? Maybe Joe would take Andy's place, 'cause Andy warn't going. I knowed that. All summer I'd noticed that only young fellas went; the ones left now was the older men, an' black folks like Zeb. Well, at the War they'd have their own black folks, o' course, born and raised there.

  Next morning, Jim and me was off, all in the rain: first yellow leaves blowing down from the trees, wind tugging at the long grass in the big field and the raindrops dripping steady off the fence rails. Jest about everyone came out to see us go. I felt real proud. I arched my neck, tossed my head, held my tail up and nuzzled Andy's shoulder. What I couldn't really make a guess at was whether it would be far to the War--a short road or a long 'un. I still don't know the answer to that, Tom, cause o' course, as I'm gonna tell you, we never got there. We never did.