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from all over; and they warn’t particular ‘bout the horses they bought, neither. They didn’t lean on the rails and take their time and talk and then try three or four horses and maybe go up to the house with Andy and Jim. No, none o’ that. They seemed in a hurry. They’d buy a horse, any horse, ‘fore they was all gone. My friend Ruffian went among the first lot. He’d growed up good-looking an’ easygoing, and a fella who’d come in a buggy with his wife and a young lad—his son, I s’pose—bought him in no time at all. They’d brung a harness with ‘em, and the young lad saddled Ruffian up right away and rode him off down the lane behind the buggy.
He
had a gun with him, too—he had it slung acrost his back. Another man wanted to buy Flora, my dam, but Andy wouldn’t sell her. I s’pose he figured she was too valuable?—wanted to keep her for breeding. Before the redbud was out that spring, we was down to fewer horses and mares on the place than I’d ever knowed.
    â€œYou’ll be going now for sure, Jeff,” old Monarch used to say to me every time another stranger came. “You’re young—fourth summer, ain’t you?—and one of the best geldings on the place. You’re sure to go.”
    â€œGo where?” I asked.
    â€œTo this here War,” he answered. “That’s where they’re all a-going.”
    â€œWhere is the War?” I said. “I never heared tell of it. What kind of a place is it?”
    â€œWell, I don’t jest rightly know,” said Monarch, “but by all I can make out, it’s some place they’re all set on going to, so it must be real good.” What the town cob told me had got around, you see.
    â€œIs it far to the War?” I asked.
    â€œI don’t know,” said Monarch again, “and I don’t even know if it’s a town or a farm or what, but it’s a special place they’re all crazy to go to, and they need horses to go there.”
    I felt excited. I couldn’t wait to be off to this here War, wherever it was. It was the restlessness and activity in the air round the whole place: all the coming and going, and the strangers, and the feeling of everything being different—something you couldn’t smell or see that had changed everything and was more important than anything else. I felt life’d gotten dull in the field and the stable. I had a stable by then, you see, and I often used to feel bored in there—lack of company. One time I even got to biting my crib for something to do, ‘cause nowadays Jim seemed busy from morning till night—too busy to play with me. I figured wherever this here War was, where they was all going, it’d be a whole lot different there. Better’n one day same’s another and Jim an’ Andy having no time to ride me.
    What made everything still duller was that as summer wore on, the weather turned real nasty—no kind of weather at all. It rained near ‘bout every day—morning to night, very often—and there was too much wind. That kind of thing interferes with a horse’s way of life, you see, Tom. To stay in good condition we need to eat pretty steady, but you can’t settle down to grazing if it keeps raining and blowing on and off all the time. You want to get out of the wind, and if you let yourself get wet through, you start shivering with cold. Sometimes there was thunder with it—building up, you know, close and oppressive—made me jumpy and restless. I recollect one day, when I was in my stable, Jim came in to look me over and see how I was getting on, and while he was stroking me an’ talking to me, my back jest started to crackle and spark, you’d ‘a thought ‘twas a fire in the grass.
    It was a few days after that when still another young stranger came riding in, looking to buy a horse. Weather was fine for