Traveller Read Online Free PDF Page B

once’t, and old Monarch and me and one or two others was out in the field next to the stables. This young man was riding a young brown mare. I liked the look of her. She was excited with coming to a strange place, full of strange horses; you could see that from the way she was acting—pricked-up ears, arched neck and her tail up high. Andy and Jim had come out, real respectful, to meet the young fella, and as he dismounted and hitched her up she let out a nice, friendly sort of neigh to us. I warn’t far off, so I answered her and jest strolled over to make acquaintance. She was groomed real pretty, her coat jest shining, and anyone could tell she was used to being understood by her man and being prop’ly ridden. She was wearing a new saddle, girth and stirrups, all real smart and smellin’ of saddle soap.
    The young man was smart, too. He was about the same age and build as Jim, and I ‘member thinking they looked like the same tree, one in summer and one in winter. Jim, you see, he used to wear a high-crowned hat with a big brim and a colored band round; and he’d have a red-and-blue handkerchief loose round his neck and a bright-colored shirt. This other fella had a low gray cap with a peak in front, and all his clothes was gray, too, with shiny yellow buttons—metal, they was. His belt and boots was shiny, too—as smart as the mare’s tack.
    â€˜Course, I know now that I was looking at a gray soldier—one of
our
soldiers—no different from thousands I was going to see later, ‘ceptin’ he looked so smart. But I’d never seed ary a soldier then, gray or blue, and that morning he seemed strange.
    There was nothing strange about his ways, though. You could tell at once that he knowed horses almost like Jim and Andy did. As I came up to put my nose agin his mare’s and have a chat with her, he showed right away that he liked the looks of me.
    â€œThat sure looks a good ‘un,” he says to Andy, and he began stroking my nose and talking to me. I could tell from his mare, as much as from him, that he was all right. Andy answered something about me not jest suiting everybody, but that I was one of the good ‘uns he’d kept back for men who’d know how to use ‘em right. And then Jim said, “D’you want to try him, Captain Broun?” So they saddled me up and this Captain Broun rode me round the field and up the lane a piece.
    Now, you know, Tom, it’s not everyone likes riding me, as I’ve come to larn over the years. It takes a durned good man to ride me, and I’ve no use for any other sort. I’ve got a lot of go in me, and I jest can’t abide hanging around. I
will
walk, mind you, if a man really wants it and insists, but I always keep it fast and springy. What I really like, though, is a sort of a short, high trot—what they call a buck-trot—and that always seems to go hard on a rider unless he’s got a real good seat. Why, I’ve kept up that kind of a trot for thirty mile or more before now, and jest
refused
to walk. I’ve always reckoned a good horse has to put a proper value on hisself, or no one else will.
    Well, this Captain Broun, I trotted him up and down quite a ways, and then Andy took Monarch out with us for a few miles. After a while, though, I lit out—left ‘em behind, and came back to meet them when Captain Broun turned me around. I’d put a lot of energy into that ride, ‘cause the way I figured it, if I
was
going to this War place, wherever it was, I didn’t want to go with a man who couldn’t live up to me and go along with me doing things
my
way. But this Captain Broun, pretty soon I could tell that though he warn’t nothing like the top-notchers Andy and Jim was, all the same he liked an energetic horse and he liked my style.
    â€œHe’ll be good,” he said to Andy, patting my neck as we walked over the field and back to his own