Traveller by Richard Adams Read Free Book Online

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
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    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,