Traveller Page 4

  IV

  Been riding out to that there Rockbridge today, Tom, to see the old lady. Marse Robert brung her right up to me, too, in that rolling chair of her'n, and she stroked my nose and talked to me a piece. Too bad she can't walk. She's been at Rockbridge a while now, you know, and we ride over pretty reg'lar.

  It's real nice in summer--'bout 'leven mile of road an' plenty of shade, sun through the leaves, creek winding in and out through the rocks down below. Maybe stop for a mouthful of grass now and then. Lotsa hills, too, and that's what I like. Y'see, me and Marse Robert, we don't need all that much in the way of signals from me and orders from him. I don't think 'bout him on my back no more'n I think 'bout the shoes on my feet. He's jest natcherly there and he don't aim to go holding me in. I can't abide holding in; I'm a big horse--big man, big horse--I mean big in our spirits, Tom; an' if I ain't ridden hard I get real fretful, like a dog chained in a barrel--'ceptin' I don't howl none. When we get to a hill, I aim to have what Marse Robert calls a breather--we jest light out and go galloping hard up them long hills. 'Makes you feel real good to beat 'em--feel 'em falling away under your hooves, trees going by, dust a-kicking up. S'afternoon, when we was galloping lickety-split, we overtook two fellas riding along, easy-like, gentlemen who live here and help Marse Robert with his commanding. So he pulls me up and gives a howdy to 'em. "I thought a little run would be good for Traveller," he says. One of their horses blows out of his nose at me, "Hrrrrmph," friendly-like, 'much as to say "A little run, hunh?" I'd like to see him try a full gallop up that there hill. Guess he'd soon be hollering 'nuff.

  Early fall, 1861. A bleak, rolling, precipitous wilderness, disclosing itself in glimpses between drifting rain clouds, stretching northward into an infinity of mist and wooded solitude: the Allegheny Mountains of western Virginia. Between the cliffs and chasms, the desolate uplands are covered not only with virgin forest but also, in many places, with thick undergrowths of laurel, so dense and interlocked as to be almost impenetrable. These are now heavy with water, millions of gallons of rain held in suspension among the branches and foliage, so that anyone trying to push through even a few yards is instantly soaked to the skin. Daily, for weeks past, it has rained; it is still raining. The more open uplands are quagmires in which advancing men sink suddenly to their knees, cursing and calling for help. Every small creek coursing down these westward-facing slopes has covered its rocks, burst its banks. Many are impassable; turbid brown torrents, chattering and growling. From time to time the bleak wind, which stirs but never disperses the low clouds, creeps lower to swirl the mists hanging in the chasms, veiling and half-revealing the sheer drops, intensifying their naturally sinister aspect.

  In this fastness, a terrain where any kind of coordinated movement has become virtually impossible, where both motion and immobility are alike misery, where the few dirt tracks are morasses and a man without a compass can become lost and disoriented within minutes, two tiny armies--each numbering fewer than ten thousand--are engaged upon an almost mutual sequence of blunders, dissensions and suffering that for want of a better term must still be called a campaign. It is to neither's advantage to move. The side attempting an attack will be defeated; or else, not improbably, never succeed in reaching the enemy at all, as has already happened at Cheat Mountain, in the wilds between Monterey and Huttonsville.

  This place of torment is made of rain. Men breathe the rain, sleep in it, are soaked in it, die in it. Tentless and shelterless, the young farmhands, counter clerks and smallholders' sons who comprise the disjointed Confederate forces opposed to Cox and Rosecrans stand, sit or lie shivering in the chill air, their original fervor of enlistment leaking away through sodden, rotting boots. A large proportion have gone sick with scurvy, dysentery, pneumonia. A plague of measles has swept through the camps.

  The local people evince no friendliness. The army might as well be in enemy country. Their doings, their every movement are reported to the Federals. General Garnett has been killed in action. Generals Floyd and Wise have been on bad terms, refusing to cooperate with each other, though both have been equally resentful of the command of General Robert E. Lee, appointed by President Davis to reconcile their differences and reorganize the army--such as it is. General Wise has been relieved of his command.

  As the approach of winter makes itself daily more evident, General Lee, who has with difficulty withdrawn southward from Cheat Mountain down the Greenbrier valley, has all he can do even to get food through to the soldiers and horses. The enemy, on Great Sewell Mountain, are in sight, but upon them, as upon the Southerners, the mountains and the weather have clamped an immobility like that of a dream. Troops and horses live only from day to day, drenched, suffering, irresolute and down at heart.

  Well, like I was telling you, Tom, we come along in the rain: quite a piece, and past that there town where I went to the fair. I seed plenty of chaps in gray clothes like Jim's: one bunch was all marching along together in the rain, and every one of 'em carrying guns. Some of 'em called out and waved as we went by, and Jim waved back. Raining? It was raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock!

  Well, o' course, I didn't know where in heck we was going, nor how far. But pretty soon after that, we turned onto a dirt road and started up into the mountains. You better believe it, Tom, when I tell you that I'd never seed anything like that sort of country before. I wondered where on earth we'd come to--yeah, and where we'd be finishing up, too. Made me real jumpy--I was startling at jest about everything. It was all strange. A lot of the time there was trees all round, close together, and the red and yellow fall leaves still on 'em so thick you couldn't see more'n a few yards any which way. They warn't big old trees like the ones back home by the pond, neither. They was little, thin, spindly things, all a-crowding close to each other--what they call a mountain wilderness. The track was like bran mash, too, an' deep, so's I was going in over my fetlocks and afraid for my hooves every time one of 'em turned on a rock I couldn't see. And on top o' that, time and again a gray soldier would step out suddenly from the trees, asking who we was or had Jim got any tobacco or sechlike. I went along 'cause I trusted Jim. And even at that I was fidgeting; I wouldn't have done it for no other rider. It was a durned sight worse'n the drink tent at the fair, 'cause the men--all of 'em--was in a bad mood--troubled with a feeling of jitters and gloominess.

  Evening time, we fetched up somewheres we was 'parently s'posed to be. But there was no house, no fields, no stables, no black folks around--jest a nasty, wet clearing in them hills, a patch no different from any other. There was a whole passel of gray soldiers, all looking 'bout as cheerful as treed coons. They was keeping fires going--best as they could in the rain--and trying to get dry. They all looked mighty down in the mouth--thin, pinched faces, lot of 'em shivering and fixing to be sick, so I figured. And my ears! Didn't the whole place smell bad? I'd smelt nary place like that, not in my whole life.

  They had a few horses--not many; jest tethered among the trees. They was half-starved--ribs showing, most of 'em. I nickered to 'em, but hardly a one nickered back. They was all feeling too lowdown. Well, I thought, I b'lieve I'm jest going to take agin this place, more'n any place I ever seed. I jest hope we'll light out tomorrow and get to the War.

  Jim, he got off my back an' spoke very respectful to some man who seemed to be the boss. This man stroked my nose and I could tell he was praising me, but then he shook his head and said something to Jim 'bout how they was in a bad way and there was precious little for the horses to eat; he'd have to make out best he could.

  All the same, Jim did manage to find me some hay, and some oats, too. Goodness only knows how he did it--'cepting I've larned since then that a good soldier's like a good cat: he's gotta be a good thief, too. You should jest 'a knowed General Red Shirt's Sergeant Tucker, Tom. Still, never mind 'bout him for now. All through those next days, like I say, somehow or other Jim always found some way to keep me fed. Even if it warn't 'nuff, I didn't never starve. He kept me well groomed, too, and
he slept right 'longside o' me, so no one could steal my blanket.

  But we didn't keep on. I couldn't make it out. We moved about in them dad-burn mountains until I got to knowing miles of the place and hating it more an' more every day. 'Fact, I'd jest as soon stop thinking 'bout it. I'll jest tell you one thing, Tom, that I recall; one thing. It was early afternoon, and Jim and me was floundering along one of them mashed mountain roads, when we met a double team of horses hitched up to a cart that hadn't no more on it but a load of hay. And the axles of that there wagon was scraping and leveling the bed of the road; it was hub-deep in mud, and the poor devils of horses was heaving away at it step by step. 'Course, they was bogged down, too. I've never forgot it.

  Jim and me used to get around lots. The way I see it now, looking back, I was the best horse in that outfit and the only one that warn't next thing to exhausted, so they figured to use me and Jim for taking messages and keeping in touch with the other outfits, and so on. This here warn't a horse outfit, you see--not cavalry. They was foot soldiers, and they jest had a few horses with 'em. 'Course, I didn't know none of that then. Now I'm what they call a veteran, I've larned a whole lot more 'bout armies. All I knowed then was that I was hungry and a long ways from home and it was a mighty bad place.

  Now one morning me an' Jim, we was out in the rain, riding up a right steep stretch of mountain in the open. Jim had let me have my head and I was cracking on the pace--much as you could on that sorta ground--when we seed a little group of riders coming towards us, going t'other way. We'd have had to pass them, but before it come to that Jim reined me in, pulled me over into the bushes one side and waited, very polite, to let them have the best of it. There was only two-three of them, but it was this one man I noticed particular.

  He noticed me, too. He reined in his horse and came up to us where we was stood. And that's right where he found hisself in a peck o' trouble, on account of this horse of his had what you might call strong peculiarities. For a start, he didn't like me--I knowed that at once. He'd put on a stiff neck, a long nose and a real tight mouth, and his ears was laid back as though he'd be at me if he could. And then all of a sudden he let out a squeal; and he would have reared, too, only his man--who evidently knowed what he was like--was holding him in real firm. He pulled away, but the man pulled him back and spoke to him and got him quiet. Watching him, I got a notion that this man knowed everything about horses, and I wondered what the heck he could be doing with sech a troublesome one.

  Anyways, he got off, and give the horse to one of his mates, who led it off a ways, and at this Jim got off, too, stood up straight and touched his hat real smart. "Good morning, my man," says the other fella. "Good morning, General," answers Jim. "That's a fine horse you got there," says the General. "Where's he from?" "Blue Sulphur Springs in Greenbrier, sir," answers Jim.

  Well, then the two of 'em got to talking, a whole lot more'n I could understand, and while they was at it I natcherly took a look at this stranger and set in to sizing him up. First off, he was an old man, older'n any other soldier I'd seed yet. I figured he was older'n Andy back home. He didn't have no beard--no, Tom, not then he didn't--jest a gray mustache. He was very quiet and sure of hisself, as if he was used to being the boss, but used to people liking him, too. Evidently he didn't aim to go shouting or finding fault, or making trouble for ordinary fellas like Jim. I found myself liking his style.

  He was dressed in gray, like all the other soldiers, and he was wearing a big black hat with a broad brim to it. After a while he took my bridle and began talking to me.

  Now during this time on the mountain, I'd got pretty well used to strangers doing that. I was a horse folks noticed, you see. Mostly I jest waited till they'd finished. But this man was different. I don't rightly know jest how to put it, but it seemed like he was a horse hisself. I felt he understood me through and through, and knowed everything I had to tell him. He knowed I was homesick and bewildered, and strung-up with being in a strange place and not knowing what the heck was s'posed to be happening on this durned mountain. He knowed I got along well with Jim and he knowed I didn't like his own horse. He was as good as telling me he didn't like him neither--figured he was a troublesome fella. I thought, I wish I was his horse; I'd do for him better'n that pest over there. And jest as I'd got to thinking that way, he nodded to Jim, put his foot in the stirrup, mounted me and off we went along the track.

  We hadn't gone twenty yards 'fore all the uneasiness was gone out of me. I hadn't even realized, till then, how tight-up I'd been all along, ever since we'd come to that there mountain. How could you relax and respond to your rider when you was wet through an' hungry all the time, in a strange place where the ground was a bog and you had no idea what was going to happen next? But this man on my back, he knowed all this, and he was as good as telling me to take it easy, 'cause he had everything in hand. I understood then that he must be the boss of the whole place. Whatever we was doing there, he was the one setting it up.

  Every signal from me, this man seemed to understand it. Jest the feel of his hands and the tone of his voice made you want to give him your best. I began to feel kind of--well, merry and alert--I'd forgotten what it felt like--and I broke into my buck-trot. The man liked this--I could feel he did. Somehow or other, I was cheering him up. Poor fella, I thought, he hasn't ridden a decent horse for months, and he's sure been missing it. I'll show him!

  We didn't gallop, though. Soon's I lit out, he turned me back. But the way he did it, it was like he was apologizing. "I know you'd like to gallop," his hands and knees was saying. "I'd like it, too, only right now we don't have the time. But it's sure been a pleasure meeting you."

  We came back to the others. He hadn't changed jest that morning for me; he'd changed my life, even if I never seed him again. I hadn't knowed there could be a horseman like that--a horseman who knowed what you was feeling nigh on 'fore you felt it yourself. Sure, Jim was a good horseman, but this man--well, like I said, he was a horse who'd somehow been turned into a man. Leastways, he spoke horse language. You remember, Tom, I told you how when Andy first rode me I could feel his reliability and experience? Well, what was pouring out of this man, jest like water into a trough, was fellow-feeling for me and for every animal in the world. Come to think of it, now that I'm telling you 'bout that first meeting of ours, maybe I don't really blame you so much for that business of miaowling in the rain and climbing up the crutch. Jest come natchral, I 'spect.

  Well, the General got off my back, patted my neck and gave me a heap of praise.

  "Good horse, General?" says the black-haired young man who's holding his own for him.

  "Yes, indeed," says the General, and then he turned to Jim an' talked some more. The way I figured it, he was asking Jim whether he could have me for his own horse, and of course Jim was saying no he couldn't, though it was all very friendly. But then I thought--best as I could understand it--Jim was saying maybe he could fix it up. I lost track of the talk; but somehow, as the General and his 'uns rode away, I got a hunch I hadn't seed the last of him. He didn't know it--Jim didn't know it--but I did.

  The next day I got another surprise. Jim rode me right down through the woods to a camp of soldiers where we'd never been before. This was a horse outfit--any number of horses--but that warn't the surprise. The surprise was that the first man I seed was Captain Joe, the soldier who'd come to the meadow back home and tried me out. So that was it! He had bought me, and now the time had come for Jim to turn me over to Joe.

  'Fore he went away, Jim more or less cried on my neck. He went off without looking back, like he couldn't bear to. I never seed him again from that day to this. Like Zeb said, horses are forever parting. At the time, though, I didn't feel it like I should have, because Captain Joe began making sech a fuss over me. I was hungry as could be, and first thing off he gave me a real good feed--'bout the best I'd had since we come to the mountain. After that he jest natcherly couldn't resist showing me off to a whole passel of his friends. I spent that ni
ght on the picket lines with the other horses. It was nice to be back in a crowd of company again, even though every durned horse was wishing he was somewheres else. I remember there was a mare called Daffodil, an' she told me she'd been up and down this mountain country for somethin' like five months and felt ready to lie down and die on it.

  During the rest of the time we spent on the mountain, I was ridden every day, sometimes by Captain Joe and sometimes by another fella-- his brother, I reckon, 'cause they was so much alike in their ways, as well as to smell and to look at. But although they was a couple of real nice fellas, and looked after me best as they could in that place and that weather, somehow I jest couldn't settle down with 'em in the kind of way that ought to be between a horse and his master. It was partly the hard conditions, of course, and partly jest wanting to be back home, but the real thing was that every time a bunch of us horses was rode out to have a look round the mountain--which seemed to be our job-- we'd often as not meet the General riding around. Even if he seed us some ways off, and we wouldn't natcherly have met, he'd still ride acrost to speak to Joe--or to his brother--whichever one was a-riding me.

  "Ah, there's my colt," he'd say, keeping his own horse up tight. "How's my colt making out?"

  "Oh, jest fine, General, sir," they'd answer. "Best horse in the Army, that's for sure."

  One day the General rode me again--not far; half a mile, maybe-- and this time it left me with the feeling that I'd never be really happy again, on account of I didn't belong to him. Well, when you've had a taste--even if it's only a taste--of what's perfect, it's hard, ain't it, to settle for anything less? I jest had to keep telling myself that I mustn't go apining an' getting a lot of ideas 'bove my way of life. The General had jest taken a fancy to me for a while, and that was all there was to it.