Traveller Read Free Page B

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.
    â€˜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