Traveller by Richard Adams Read Free Book Online Page A

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