Traveller by Richard Adams Read Free Book Online Page B

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.
    â€œGood horse, General?” says the black-haired young man who’s holding his own for him.
    â€œYes, indeed,” says the General, and then he