Free Traveller by Richard Adams Page A

‘spect—when one day we-all lit out and headed north on the railroad. I was a-feared it was back to the dad-burn mountain, but Marse Robert, I reckon he knowed I was worried, ‘cause he came several times to have a word with me and make sure I was all right on the journey.
    What we came to warn’t the mountain, though. It was a city— the biggest city in the world. Leastways, I’ve never seed or heared tell of a bigger one. I can’t really describe it, Tom. It’s a thousand times bigger’n this here little town—lots more houses, more people, more noise. When we got off the railroad—why, it was like the whole world was a city—streets and streets, an’ all full of horses and carts, crowds of people pushing up and down the sidewalks and everywhere men shouting to each other over the noise of wheels on the cobblestones. And that’s not all, neither. There was them kind of long wagons with flat tops; carriages like, and full of men and women, with horses to pull ‘em on rails, running up and down the streets. Don’t they jest ‘bout rattle and bang, too? I was being ridden by one of Marse Robert’s soldiers, and I s’pect I was kinda hard to handle, ‘cause I was feeling a mite nervous and skittish then. But Brown-Roan was a lot of help; he’d seed all o’ this truck before, and his acting manageable made me feel quieter, too. ‘Sides, there was plenty more horses round and they warn’t letting things faze them one bit.
    What really fazed me, when we got to Marse Robert’s place in this here city, was there was that durned Richmond in the stable, his loose box right next to mine. I hadn’t figured on meeting him ever again, not never; and there he was. When he seed me, he jest wrinkled his nose and laid his ears back. It was evidently jest as nasty a surprise for him as it was for me. What I know now is that Richmond knowed real well, even then, that Marse Robert found him a troublesome fella and was looking out for a better horse. He didn’t know—but he was going to— that I was that better horse. Well, maybe he did know, for he never really troubled to make an enemy of Brown-Roan. It was me in particular he didn’t like.
    I didn’t care for the stables in the city. There warn’t ‘nuff for a horse to do. ‘Fact, there was nothing to do, ‘cause of Marse Robert seemed to have quit riding. I couldn’t make it out. ‘Course, he used to come into the stable to look us over and talk to us, but it was jest only for a few minutes mostly, and then he always seemed to have something else uppermost in his mind. The stablemen used to take us out for exercise, and they’d ride us ‘longside the big river, but I couldn’t never really get to liking it, ‘cause I knowed I warn’t working for Marse Robert. And anyway, like I was telling you, Tom, ‘far as I was concerned Marse Robert had become the center of things. He was my whole world. I know I was difficult once’t or twice’t. I couldn’t relax, and there warn’t one of the soldiers looking after us that I really took to. ‘Sides, they kept a-changing, and that didn’t help none neither. ‘Nother thing that didn’t help was the few times Marse Robert did take me out hisself, I could tell—a good horse can always tell, Tom, you know—that he was out o’ sorts and discontented. Whatever ‘twas he had to do in that city, he didn’t like it. What it come down to was he was fretting and so was I.
    â€˜Twarn’t really surprising, though, that I felt strung up tight. You could feel the same thing all over the city—in the men and women, I mean: the way they stood, the way they moved and held theirselves, the sound of their voices. They didn’t know it, maybe, but I felt it whenever I was out of my stable. I noticed it most particular in the soldiers. The