Traveller, Page 2

  It was all through playing that I larned not to be afraid of men. 'Course, the men fed us in the cold weather, and combed us down, and took the older horses out to ride and all that. Men need horses same's they need dogs and cats. Without horses they couldn't get around. Without dogs they couldn't have cows or sheep, and I guess they'd all be robbing each other, too, with no dogs to bark for 'em. Without you cats the rats'd have every durned thing--oats, bran--the lot.

  How did we play, did you say? My golly, I never realized then--well, 'course I didn't--the luck it was for me to be raised and trained the way I was! Since then I've seed that many young horses beaten and ill-treated--spirits broken, tempers spoiled--all on 'count o' what some men call training. They figure they've got to show the horse who's master--whips, spurs, hard words--until he's been driven jest about mad. And then they'll turn around an' say he's natcherly vicious! The Army--the Army was full of it; Marse Robert hisself was forever telling men not to whip their horses. But once a horse has been spoiled it's jest about too late, you see. There's no listening no more, no signals, no watching out either way.

  Jim coming to play--well, I don't recollect 'zackly when he started, but I s'pose it might have been the summer after I was born--that or the next; I don't rightly recall. I know it was after they cut me between the legs, but I don't remember much about that neither; not after all this time. I can recall being throwed and held down. That was bad, and it hurt some, but anyhow it healed up quick.

  The men used to lean over the fence, chatting an' lazing around, easy; they'd chew tobacco an' watch us foals playing together. The way I figure it now, they was sizing up a whole lot that way: which of us was timid, which was lazy, or 'quisitive, or heading to turn out steady--all that sort o' thing. 'Course, in them days it never crossed my mind.

  I remember, one day, there was six or seven of us herded off into another big field next to the one we'd growed up in. There we was, all larking around, hightailing, playing follow-the-leader, bumping each other and all the rest of it--having a high old time. An' then all of a sudden there was this young fella--Jim, they called him--I came to know later he was the boss's son--he jest came right on into the field an' sat hisself down on a log. I was kinda leery; I was wondering what he reckoned to do, but he never did nothing at all--not all the afternoon. He jest sat there, an' 'bout sunset he went off again. Next day it was the same; and the next. Sometimes he was sitting a-chewing tobacco, and sometimes he was jest whittling away at a stick with his knife, or tossing bits of bread to the sparrows an' the juncos. 'Seemed to have jest about as much time for doing nothing as a horse.

  In the end I got kinda 'quisitive 'bout him--you know, wondering why he was there. So I quit playing with the others and wandered over to him. He never took no notice. Finally I went right up to him and smelt him over. He never moved: jest raised one of his arms, after a bit, real slow, and began stroking me. He treated me like another horse would--you know, scratching my back, sniffing his nose along my mane an' all the rest--'ceptin' he was talking all the time, kinda quiet an' friendly--I could tell from the sound of his voice. He scratched my rump, too, and that's something all foals like a lot.

  "Jeff," he kept saying. "Howdy, Jeff. Good boy, Jeff." He cut some apples up into pieces an' I ate them out of the flat of his hand. They was sweet--the sweetest things I'd ever tasted; they was real good. After that, whenever he came into the field I nearly always used to come up to him straightaway. But if I didn't, he jest sat down anyway. After a while I'd stand still and let him pick up my hind feet, run his fingers through my tail--anything. Sometimes he'd take his hat to the flies, flip them out of my eyes. 'Didn't seem to startle me none, the way he did it.

  What about the play, you asked, Tom. Gosh sakes, that young Jim fella, it really used to tickle me, the games we got up to! I jest never knowed what we'd be doin' next. We'd get up to all sorts of tricks; like, he'd walk along in front and I'd come along behind him with a loose rope round my neck. One day we was taking a walk down the lane when all of a sudden this dad-burn rabbit run right acrost under my nose! I rar'd back an' jerked my head away. I would've run, too, but Jim jest stood there and kept talking quiet. "Jest a rabbit, Jeff. No call to be scairt of an old rabbit. Easy--easy--" All that sort o' thing, you know.

  He never let the two of us get dull. It was always something new. Would you believe it, one day he brung along an old banjo and played it to me? First time I'd ever heared one, o' course. Heared plenty since. The soldiers--well, never mind that for now. Another day he laid down a big white sheet of cloth and called me to walk over it to get my apple. I warn't scared! 'Nother time it was six poles laid across pegs in the ground; he'd call me over to him and I had to be careful 'bout not knocking none of 'em off. Tricky, that was. Made me feel real clever. 'Nother day he came down to the field with a basket and put the handle in my mouth, for me to carry. We walked up to the big house, me still carrying that durned basket. There was a woman working in the yard. "Here's my Jeff, ma'am," says Jim. "He's brung back your basket." She laughed fit to bust. "You rascal!" she says to me, and then she give me a piece of sugar.

  One time, though, when I was feeling a bit short-tempered with the flies, I turned my head and nipped Jim's shoulder--yeah, hard, too. He was on to me sharp as thorns! He cussed me out something terrible! He spoke to me real angry, and then he jest walked away, like he didn't want to have no more to do with a horse like that. I felt bad. I never wanted to hear him speak to me like that again. I gave over nipping right then. That was all he did--it was all he had to do. Since then I've often seed horses whipped for less.

  Well, Tom, I guess you won't want to be hearing 'bout lunges and bits and saddles and harness and all the rest of it. What's sech things to a cat? But you're a friend, all the same. You're company: I like company. A horse needs company. That young Jim, he was real good company. I can see now that's what he was aiming at. He wanted to make me feel like a smart horse, and he wanted to make me like going along with him and feel we was a-working together. And I did, too. 'Took him a long time; but bless you, what's time to a horse? In the end, when he rode me out in the lanes I really used to enjoy myself. You wouldn't understand--no cat would--but I used to feel prop'ly interested in whatever we was doing--included in, you might say. I felt I was doing what a horse ought to be doing.

  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.

  II

  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!

  III

  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.