Traveller by Richard Adams Page A

real bad. He hated most other horses, and any time there was other horses round he was liable to set up this dad-blamed squealing. Goodness knows why. It was enough to throw everyone into confusion, and yet the General never beat him, never cussed at him—jest kept on bringing him firmly to order. I hated to be near Richmond. He warn’t fit to be a bossman’s horse. Plain truth was, he did the General no credit. People liable to start thinking, Well, what you a General for and you can’t get yourself a better horse’n that? Maybe you ain’t a very good General, neither.
    He had another horse, called Brown-Roan. Brown-Roan was better. But bless you, he’d no real spirit! Poor fella, he hadn’t any courage in him—anyone could tell that. He was fit to do what he was told, but that was about all he was fit for. You see, Tom, a real horse ain’t there jest to do what he’s told. A real horse has got to be
part
of his man—to
want
to be part of his man. Once’t they begin to fit together ‘zackly, the man ought to be free to forget ‘bout managing the horse all the time and get on with whatever he has to do. The horse jest
knows
what the man wants. There’s hundreds of little ways a horse can tell. And there’s hundreds of ways the man can tell ‘bout the horse, too, without really taking his mind off of what else he’s doing. But it’s got to be the right man and the right horse.
    Now the General knowed all that, and he knowed I was the right horse and Brown-Roan warn’t. Only Brown-Roan
didn’t
know it, you see, because he’d never larned more’n half of what there is to know, and he reckoned it was all there was.
    What it come down to was that the General would have liked me for his own, and by the time we was done on that mountain he’d made that pretty plain. For one thing, he never used my name. “How’s my colt?” he used to say. “Nasty weather for the horses. Ain’t got no saddle sores, I hope? Do you figure, Captain, maybe that girth might be a little tight?” And so on. And one day he said, “Look after my colt, because I’m going to need him later on.”
    Durned cat’s gone to sleep again. Can’t blame him. ‘Don’t mean no harm. How much can you ‘spect a cat to understand, anyways? Take a rest in your dry straw, old soldier, you’ve seed many worse nights. Leastways, I know when I’m well off.

V
    Tom, do you figure I’ve got the mumps? Do you happen to know what the mumps might be? Well, neither do I, ‘ceptin’ I guess it must be some kind of a sickness. I ain’t aiming to go sick, and I don’t reckon it’s likely, not if I didn’t go sick with being three years and more in the Army. I’m s’prised Marse Robert would even let the idea come into his head.
    No, Tom, he cert’nly
did
let it come into his head. It was this way. S’afternoon we started out on our ride as usual, and we was jest heading out of town along one of the quiet back streets, when we come up with two little girls was riding up and down on an old horse—jest passing the time, you know. I’ve seed them round afore now—and the horse, too. They belong to one of them fellas that helps Marse Robert with his commanding the country and speechifying and all the rest of it. Marse Robert pulls me up and offs with his hat to these little girls, and then he said if they liked to come long with us, he’d show ‘em a real fine ride.
    â€˜Course, they was both as pleased as two foals loose in a meadow. I’ll be starved if I was, though. I’d been reckoning the two of us was all set to light out on one of our twenty-milers in the country. ‘Stead, here’s me dawdling ‘longside this old nag—his name’s Frisky; can you beat that?—like a couple of baggage-train mules with double loads on. I guess I must