Traveller Read Free Page A

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.
    â€œJeff,” 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