Traveller (3 page)

Sharp tonight, ‘tain't it? Touch of frost outside, you reckon? Aw, you don't know what cold is. Now when the Blue men crossed the river on their boat-bridges and we was stood a-waiting for ‘em in the snow—now
that
was cold! ‘Fore you was born, Tom; but never mind. We're warm, plenty to eat. And never a gun—never again. Think about that! Nothing but friends all round. Tell you what let's do. Let's go to sleep.

Durn it, Tom, now the spring's coming on, the dad-blamed mice seem to be getting worse and worse. ‘Tain't your fault, though, an' it ain't Baxter's. Without you I wouldn't get an hour's sleep. I ‘spect the varmints'd be chewin' my hooves off. ‘Spoil twice as much as they steal, too. Well, now you've got yourselves here—right cats, right time, right place—I'll keep quiet while you jest go on and carry out orders at discretion.

That's a good hour's work. Quite a pile, Colonel. Damn' Blue mice, I guess: real mean. ‘Reckon you can rest a while. Why don't you jump up here in the manger and settle down in the hay? What's that? My breath makes you feel wet? All right, I'll breathe the other way.

Spring's a good time, ain't it? I was out grazing on the lawn this morning. Marse Robert, he was jest as busy as ever. Well, of course a commander's bound to be busier than most. Like our old stallion in the big field when I was a foal. His name was Monarch an' he sure was one. He looked after us young ‘uns jest about like a sheepdog. All the same, when it came to someone having their own way, he'd give in to the mares nearly every time. Yeah, he'd be real obliging with them. Like he felt he didn't have to be the boss—jest the one who sort of kept us up together. Monarch used to play with the colts an' even the young foals, so all us young ‘uns got to know him well. These days, when I go through the town with Marse Robert and he reins in and talks to anyone, even the kids, it always puts me in mind of old Monarch.

I really enjoy grazing alongside Marse Robert when he's working in the garden. And he sure has done a mighty lot o' work since we come here in the fall! He's laid out that there vegetable garden, paved the paths, planted the fruit trees—why, I've even seed him knocking in nails—setting this here stable to rights with his own hands! I figure he likes working like that, jest the same as he enjoys our riding out together in the afternoons. He enjoys playing that he's not the commander at all. Well, sometimes I like playing I'm jest an ordinary old horse. I often get to feeling that if someone pulls one more hair outa my tail ‘cause I'm Traveller, I'll kick him from here to the canal. Marse Robert wouldn't like that, though. You gotta act grand: kinda quiet, like you know jest who you are. Why, the other day the town folks was going to take that there horse thief out of jail an' string him up, or so I heared. Marse Robert wouldn't let them, though. He jest put a stop to it in his quiet way. ‘Didn't see it myself, but that's what the jailer's horse in town was telling me a day or two back, when we was hitched together outside the courthouse.

‘Course, it's only now and then Marse Robert has time for digging an' hammering nails and all that. He's too busy talking—giving orders, running the country and seeing after all them young fellas. Not that they're all of them that young. Some of ‘em I can remember when they was soldiers in the Army. Why, there was one came into the garden only yesterday, with a pile of books and papers under his arm, began talking to Marse Robert. I ‘member him plain as plain from when the Army was crossing that big river up north. He was one of Jine-the-Cavalry's fellas. A horse can often recall a man from where he's seed him, Tom, you know—same as you'd ‘member someone from what they'd given you to eat, I reckon.

Well, I got some of that myself this morning, too. People—they're always bringing Marse Robert presents, you know. Not surprising, I s'pose—a country's commander is the commander, after all, and a champion's a champion—with horses, anyway. He gets the best, I know that much, even though I don't understand the most of what Marse Robert has to do since we stopped killing Blue men. He was planting a fruit bush and jest throwing me a few words every now and then, the way he does, when up the path comes this old lady carrying a bowl with a cloth over, and says him howdy. ‘Course, Marse Robert's always mighty agreeable to ladies—jest like old Monarch was with the mares—and he puts down his spade and rubs the dirt off his hands, and they gets to smiling and talking away. And what it come down to was, she'd brung him a honeycomb.

Marse Robert thanks her as if she'd brung him a passel of Blue prisoners and their guns. “And of course Traveller must have a piece,” he says then. “Traveller mustn't go without a piece.” And with that he outs with his knife and slices off a lump as big as his thumb and holds it out to me. I licked his hand clean. Not that I was s'prised, of course. There's the two of us, you see. Always has been. But I'll jest remember that old lady if I see her again.

What I was telling you the other night, about the big field and Jim and the games we used to get up to—that set me to thinking. After Jim figured he was as good as through training me, the bossman, Andy—that was Jim's father—he used to take me out and ride me hisself lots of times. After Jim, Andy felt very quiet and steady. I liked Jim ‘cause he was a lot of fun and ‘cause I could feel it kind of roused him up when we was out together. ‘Made me feel daring. Andy—well, he didn't make you feel that way—not feisty, like Jim did. He made you feel quiet-like—like being out of the wind in the lee of a shed. Other horses felt it, too. Andy made a horse feel safe and protected, like he was kind of guiding him—escorting him. You could feel all that experience seeping out of him like sweat. I liked the smell of him. I liked his hands and I liked his voice. ‘Course, horses get to feel a whole lot about their riders, Tom. You see, that's why a horse—a no-fool horse—often behaves differently with one rider from what he does with another. If the man has slow, calm movements, it kind of makes the horse calm, you see. If the man's a bit frisky in his ways, it often makes the horse frisky; and if a man's afeared, it makes his horse afeared. But usually—ain't it queer?—the men don't realize nothing about that. Leastways, I've always figured they don't. It never seems to strike them that it's the way
they
are that makes the horse act the way
he
does. I've always been a bit nervous, myself—sort of jumpy and lively, you might say—and if I hadn't fetched up with Marse Robert, as understands everything, ‘sakes only knows what might've become of me. The way I figure it now, I growed up that way ‘cause Jim was that way hisself—sort of like wind in the grass, you might say.

It was Andy and Jim, both of them together, took me and some other horses to the big fair in town. Right up till then, that was the scariest thing I'd ever knowed. ‘Hadn't ‘a been for old Andy, ‘reckon I'd ‘a run away. The bits of bright-colored trash lying about everywhere, you wondered what they were—the crowds of people, the shouting and the noise—there was a band of music playing. ‘Course, you ain't never heared a band, Tom, have you? Neither had I then—the smell of so many strange horses—some of them real sassy, too—and the smells of tromped grass and smoke and strange animals, like—well, pigs, for instance, that I'd never smelt before. I've often thought, you know, that it's funny horses take to men and want to go along with ‘em, ‘cause all the things men want horses to do, horses by nature mostly want to do jest the opposite. A horse natcherly don't want nothing on his back. And he don't want nothing moving about behind him where he can't see it. When anything startles him, the first thing he wants to do is to run away. He don't like anything interfering with his feet. He don't want to be shut up inside nowhere—not even out of the rain or the snow. I was lucky, ‘cause Andy and young Jim, you see, they knowed all that, and brung me up according. Since then, I've seed men who reckon they're horsemen and seem to think ‘bout nothing ‘cept spoiling a horse's nature.

When you first go to a place like this here fair, with all the crowds and noise and strangers, you feel jest like a length of wire strung tight between two posts. I ‘member, at one of these here gates on the way in, I went rigid, and there was a big man behind, leading another horse, and he started cussing. Andy turned round and cussed back, and ‘course that made me worse'n ever. I nearly pulled my halter off. Still, Andy calmed me down and in the end we got to where we was s'posed to be.

I don't remember all that well jest what we was s'posed to do—not after all this time. But seems as how I must ‘a done something good at that there fair, though I'll be whupped if I know what ‘twas. Anyway, I finally had to be led out in front of all the folks, and some boss fella stuck colored ribbons on me, and Andy and Jim, they got some sort of ribbons, too. I'll tell you what I
do
remember. You know I told you how Jim was always up for games and funning? Well, after all this ribboning and messing around, he got up on my back again. There was a big kind of place all made of gray cloth and ropes and pegs—that was jest how it seemed to me at the time, you know. ‘Course, it was a tent, and a big one; since then I seed as many as there's leaves on a tree, though not that big. And there was all these fellas going in and out, glasses in their hands, and all bawling and singing. I looked at it an' I could smell that smell—bottles and glasses—made me jumpy—I was pawing about— the smell seemed to get into my feet—but Jim, he jest dug in his heels and clicks his tongue and all these fellas crowding in, and he says, “Go on, Jeff, go on,” and—would you believe it?—I went right on inside that tent—all the smell and the boots and the crushed grass—and then everything went kinda quiet, ‘cause they was all a-staring. And Jim reined me in by this long table with the white cloth on it and speaks to this fella behind it, who gave him a glass; and I jest stood there, reins slack on my neck and this tromped grass under my hooves. In the end, I dropped my head and sniffed it for a nibble, but it warn't no good— tromped foul, you see. And Jim, he jest sat there on my back in all the tobacco smoke, drinking up his glass; and then we walked out again. Old Andy was outside, an' he was real mad. “You gone crazy?” he says to Jim. “Never in the world, sir,” says Jim, jest keeping me still, and me pawing my forehooves about a little. We was teasing, Tom, you see. “I knowed he was a good horse, sir,” he says. “I jest wanted to know he trusted me ‘nuff to do anything I asked him.”

I don't mind telling you, I was real glad to get out o' that fair. Jim rode me home, two hours by moonlight. It was lucky Andy's mare, Ruby, knowed the way, ‘cause I figure she was the only one that did, that night. The men were sure ‘nuff happy ‘bout whatever we'd done. They warn't none too particular where we was going.

Durn it, I ‘spect I've got a shoe coming loose! Hear that clink? Tom? Hear that clink? Oh! Now would you ever? They've both gone sound asleep in the hay!

I was right ‘bout that shoe, Tom. ‘Didn't take Marse Robert two shakes of a blue fly's tail to spot it. He was ‘way off the other side o' the lawn, talking to some young fella, when all of a sudden he stops and stands looking at me, and I could tell he was waiting to see me move again. Then he whistled, the way he does when he wants me to come, and soon as I was standing right beside him, he picks up my hooves and looks at ‘em one by one. Then he strokes my neck and scratches my ears. “You and me's going to the blacksmith, Traveller,” he says. “Right this afternoon, too. But you can take it easy, ‘cause I'll stay right with you till he's done.”

Oh, I do hate that there blacksmith's! Mind you, the smith—Mr. Senseney, they call him—he's a good ‘nuff fella; good at his job. But it's the fire, and the way they blow it up, kind o' roaring, and then all the hammering; and ‘course it's indoors, not much light, and people coming behind you where you can't see. It's too much like the guns, and being back in those dad-burn woods at night with the Blue men around. I was hopping about, and Mr. Senseney, I reckon he mighta said a whole piece only for Marse Robert being there, holding my bridle. He was talking to Mr. Senseney, and I figure he was telling him to be patient on account of I was nervous after all the guns and the fighting. Anyway, it's finished now.

‘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.