Read Online Traveller by Richard Adams - Free Book Online

first time I’d ever been on a railroad. You’ll never see a railroad, Tom, and I don’t figure I can give you much idea of it. Horses and men—all of ‘em—have to get into sort of stables on iron wheels, like big carts with roofs on, and then these carts go ‘long on their own. It’s all done with noise and smoke and shaking about, but it’s a nasty, dirty smoke, not like the wood smoke here. The shaking makes you afeared of losing your feet and falling, and the smell in itself’s ‘nuff to upset a horse. The whole thing’s scary—all the rumblin’ and banging, and then maybe the whole shebang stops suddenly and pitches you one way or t’other. One horse gets to panicking and then maybe it spreads. I don’t like railroads, but you can get used to ‘em, like everything else.
    We went a long way on this railroad—hundreds of miles, I figure. It was only jest Captain Joe had come—not his brother. It must have taken quite a while—longer’n I thought—because when we fin’lly got off, ‘twarn’t winter. It was real warm and the air smelt beautiful—all green leaves and flowers. There was ‘nother smell, too—something I’d never smelt before: a salty, muddy kind of a smell, like a lot of salty water. And a day or two later, when Joe and some of his men took us out along the country a piece, I seed that was ‘zackly what it was. All along to one side of us there was this water in among the land: great fields of water, all moving up an’ down, and smelling of salt and mud. And even the air, too, seemed to be sort of watery—all soft and thick. Slowed you down an’ made it harder to breathe.
    That was the strangest country I’ve ever seed. When we went out on them cavalry rides, as they call ‘em, we was forever working along the banks o’ creeks and picking our way acrost soft ground, marshes and mud, and every now and then we’d come out and see this great field of salt water rocking up and down. There was flowers everywhere— big, colored flowers with strong, sweet smells. The roses was bigger and smelt stronger’n any I’d ever seed back home, and there was lots of long, climbing plants, some of them with bright red fruit growing on them. Joe gave me some to eat; they was good—redder and softer’n apples, but tasting different.
    And then one day, while we was riding nice and easy along the bank of a big river, we came round the corner of a grove of live oaks and there, not fifty yards ahead, was the General. He warn’t riding Richmond; he was riding Brown-Roan, and seemed like he was looking around him, kinda getting to know the place. Soon as he seed him, Joe pushed his heels into my sides and clicked his tongue, and we went straight acrost. Joe saluted. When the General seed who ‘twas, he smiled.
    â€œAh!” he said. “There’s my colt! So you’ve brung my colt, Captain Broun, have you?”
    I think I knowed right then—that very moment—that I was going to belong to the General. Somehow seemed like—well, my fate, I guess. I felt I wouldn’t mind not getting to the War, if only he was to become my master. I felt sure, too, that he’d never really forgotten me since the day we first met on that mountain, an’ he looked jest as I remembered him, ‘ceptin’ now he’d growed a white beard.
    Well, Tom, I guess you ain’t biting your tail and waiting to hear what happened next, ‘cause you know he
did
become my master. It took a while, though. I went to the General for some-odd days and then I was taken back to Joe. But somehow that didn’t worry me none, ‘cause all the time the General was riding me I jest knowed I was meant to be his horse and that he felt the same and had no fault to find with me. The second time I was taken back to him, I knowed it was for keeps.
    I s’posed