Free Traveller by Richard Adams

‘em from morning till night. Up and down we went, pushing ‘em to get on with it. One day, Tom, believe it or not, we rode forty mile, nigh on to. When we finally stopped, I was real beat. Marse Robert, he got off, put his arms right round my neck and said, “Well done, boy, well done!” Some other officer who was with him says, “What a horse, General! What a traveller!”
    Marse Robert kinda looks up real slow, as though this fella had said something real important. Then he nods his head two-three times and says, “Good name! We’ll
call
him ‘Traveller.’”
    After that he never called me anything else. And do you know, Tom, I felt I’d jest stepped right into the skin of the real horse I was? I’d only jest
thought
I was Jeff Davis, because Jim and Andy had said so. Then Joe had taken away my name and given me one I didn’t like. But now Marse Robert had found out my
right
name, and put it on me like he put on my saddle—he used to saddle me hisself lots of times, to make sure I was comfortable. Now I was comfortable with my name. I was me; I was what you might call a real, true part of Marse Robert and his outfit, and since then I’ve never been nothing ‘cept Traveller.
    During them warm days down south, we used to see hundreds of horses. Like I was saying, we often rode alone and Marse Robert would go into any stables where we fetched up, jest to look at the horses and make sure they was being prop’ly cared for. But he did it all so quiet and homey—none of this here “I’m the General: jest you stand up straight!” stuff—that a lot of the soldiers never even knowed who he was. One day he stopped to talk to two fellas driving a team of horses, but one of ‘em was deaf, and as we was moving on, this deaf fella said to the other, real loud, “Who is that durned ol’ fool? He’s always a-pokin’ round my horses as if he meant to steal one of ‘em!”

VI
    â€˜Seems like quite a while since you been in here to see me, Tom. You killed that many rats early on this summer, I s’pose you’ve no particular reason to come and sit in here nights. ‘Met the goat, have you? That’s Sandy. Marse Robert’s put him in here for company, seeing as how Ajax is down in the other shed. And powerful good company he is, too. Sandy, this is Tom the Nipper, Marse Robert’s commander of ratcatchers. He has the most refined manners of any cat I’ve met.
    Y’know, one thing I like ‘bout this here place is that even though we’re pretty far on with summer now, the flies ain’t all that bad. Why, I’ve knowed ‘em worse this time of year when we was up north. But ‘course, any Army draws flies—the crowds of men and horses natcherly breed ‘em. It’s different here. Well, for one thing it’s cooler, an’ ‘tain’t a lot o’ horses, neither. S’afternoon, when me and Marse Robert was riding over to Rockbridge, he stopped off once’t or twice’t, like he gen’rally does, to talk with folks ‘long the way. He’s that friendly, they’ve all got to know him real well. He was talking to this old fella quite a spell—’bout his corn crop, I figure, from the way they was both looking at the plants. I was hitched to the gate an’ hardly a fly come round. Jest had to twitch my skin and stamp some; that was ‘nuff to fix ‘em.
    That was what set me to remembering ‘bout the time I was telling you, Tom, when we was down south and doing all that digging round the creeks and swamps. Now down there it’s skeeters pretty well round the year, but the time we was there was the best time of year for losing ‘em, so this horse told me—nearest it ever gets to winter, he said. It was jest getting to early spring, and I was dreading what a full crop of skeeters would be like—worse’n flies, I