Traveller (5 page)

Now during these days while I was standing round the stable and waiting, Tom, I'd come to have quite an idea in my own head of what this here War place was gonna be like. First off, it must be a mighty fine place, a whole lot finer'n where we was living now. That stood to reason—why else would the men be so all-fired hankering to go there? I kinda visioned it as a real big house o' red bricks—I'd seed one or two when we was coming and going to the fairs, you know—and it was going to have a big stone doorway in the middle and stone steps going up from the lawn out front. Green shutters on the windows. Tall chimneys. A nice, friendly touch of wood smoke in the air, trees round ‘bout the house, and all the leaves red in the fall, maple and beech and sechlike. Fine evenings, the black folks'd be singing and dancing bit of a ways off, back o' the big house—near the stables, maybe, where I could hear ‘em for company, evenings. The sun'd shine and the grass in the big meadows'd be jest right. Trees to scratch on, good spots for horses to dung in their proper ways—'cause that's important to us, Tom, you know; stallions, mares, geldings, we've all got our ways and places and got to do it right. Hay and oats. Warm in winter, not too hot in summer but plenty of shade when ‘twas. Breezes at dawn and dusk so's you're a bit lively and playful. I could believe ‘most anything ‘bout it, but I jest couldn't believe there'd be no flies; that'd be asking altogether too much, but maybe they'd be fewer. ‘Course, the men and the horses'd be the best of company. I knowed I was a good horse, and they must be picking the good horses to go to the War.

‘Bout Jim an' Joe, I jest couldn't figure it out. Would they both be there? Maybe Joe would take Andy's place, ‘cause Andy warn't going. I knowed that. All summer I'd noticed that only young fellas went; the ones left now was the older men, an' black folks like Zeb. Well, at the War they'd have their own black folks, o' course, born and raised there.

Next morning, Jim and me was off, all in the rain: first yellow leaves blowing down from the trees, wind tugging at the long grass in the big field and the raindrops dripping steady off the fence rails. Jest about everyone came out to see us go. I felt real proud. I arched my neck, tossed my head, held my tail up and nuzzled Andy's shoulder. What I couldn't really make a guess at was whether it would be far to the War—a short road or a long ‘un. I still don't know the answer to that, Tom, cause o' course, as I'm gonna tell you, we never got there. We never did.

Been riding out to that there Rockbridge today, Tom, to see the old lady. Marse Robert brung her right up to me, too, in that rolling chair of her'n, and she stroked my nose and talked to me a piece. Too bad she can't walk. She's been at Rockbridge a while now, you know, and we ride over pretty reg'lar.

It's real nice in summer—'bout ‘leven mile of road an' plenty of shade, sun through the leaves, creek winding in and out through the rocks down below. Maybe stop for a mouthful of grass now and then. Lotsa hills, too, and that's what I like. Y'see, me and Marse Robert, we don't need all that much in the way of signals from me and orders from him. I don't think ‘bout him on my back no more'n I think ‘bout the shoes on my feet. He's jest natcherly there and he don't aim to go holding me in. I can't abide holding in; I'm a big horse—big man, big horse—I mean big in our spirits, Tom; an' if I ain't ridden hard I get real fretful, like a dog chained in a barrel—'ceptin' I don't howl none. When we get to a hill, I aim to have what Marse Robert calls a breather—we jest light out and go galloping hard up them long hills. ‘Makes you feel real good to beat ‘em—feel ‘em falling away under your hooves, trees going by, dust a-kicking up. S'afternoon, when we was galloping lickety-split, we overtook two fellas riding along, easy-like, gentlemen who live here and help Marse Robert with his commanding. So he pulls me up and gives a howdy to ‘em. “I thought a little run would be good for Traveller,” he says. One of their horses blows out of his nose at me, “Hrrrrmph,” friendly-like, ‘much as to say “A little run, hunh?” I'd like to see
him
try a full gallop up that there hill. Guess he'd soon be hollering ‘nuff.

Early fall, 1861. A bleak, rolling, precipitous wilderness, disclosing itself in glimpses between drifting rain clouds, stretching northward into an infinity of mist and wooded solitude: the Allegheny Mountains of western Virginia. Between the cliffs and chasms, the desolate uplands are covered not only with virgin forest but also, in many places, with thick undergrowths of laurel, so dense and interlocked as to be almost impenetrable. These are now heavy with water, millions of gallons of rain held in suspension among the branches and foliage, so that anyone trying to push through even a few yards is instantly soaked to the skin. Daily, for weeks past, it has rained; it is still raining. The more open uplands are quagmires in which advancing men sink suddenly to their knees, cursing and calling for help. Every small creek coursing down these westward-facing slopes has covered its rocks, burst its banks. Many are impassable; turbid brown torrents, chattering and growling. From time to time the bleak wind, which stirs but never disperses the low clouds, creeps lower to swirl the mists hanging in the chasms, veiling and half-revealing the sheer drops, intensifying their naturally sinister aspect
.

In this fastness, a terrain where any kind of coordinated movement has become virtually impossible, where both motion and immobility are alike misery, where the few dirt tracks are morasses and a man without a compass can become lost and disoriented within minutes, two tiny armies—each numbering fewer than ten thousand—are engaged upon an almost mutual sequence of blunders, dissensions and suffering that for want of a better term must still be called a campaign. It is to neither's advantage to move. The side attempting an attack will be defeated; or else, not improbably, never succeed in reaching the enemy at all, as has already happened at Cheat Mountain, in the wilds between Monterey and Huttonsville
.

This place of torment is made of rain. Men breathe the rain, sleep in it, are soaked in it, die in it. Tentless and shelterless, the young farmhands, counter clerks and smallholders' sons who comprise the disjointed Confederate forces opposed to Cox and Rosecrans stand, sit or lie shivering in the chill air, their original fervor of enlistment leaking away through sodden, rotting boots. A large proportion have gone sick with scurvy, dysentery, pneumonia. A plague of measles has swept through the camps
.

The local people evince no friendliness. The army might as well be in enemy country. Their doings, their every movement are reported to the Federals. General Garnett has been killed in action. Generals Floyd and Wise have been on bad terms, refusing to cooperate with each other, though both have been equally resentful of the command of General Robert E. Lee, appointed by President Davis to reconcile their differences and reorganize the army—such as it is. General Wise has been relieved of his command
.

As the approach of winter makes itself daily more evident, General Lee, who has with difficulty withdrawn southward from Cheat Mountain down the Greenbrier valley, has all he can do even to get food through to the soldiers and horses. The enemy, on Great Sewell Mountain, are in sight, but upon them, as upon the Southerners, the mountains and the weather have clamped an immobility like that of a dream. Troops and horses live only from day to day, drenched, suffering, irresolute and down at heart
.

Well, like I was telling you, Tom, we come along in the rain: quite a piece, and past that there town where I went to the fair. I seed plenty of chaps in gray clothes like Jim's: one bunch was all marching along together in the rain, and every one of ‘em carrying guns. Some of ‘em called out and waved as we went by, and Jim waved back. Raining? It was raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock!

Well, o' course, I didn't know where in heck we was going, nor how far. But pretty soon after that, we turned onto a dirt road and started up into the mountains. You better believe it, Tom, when I tell you that I'd never seed anything like that sort of country before. I wondered where on earth we'd come to—yeah, and where we'd be finishing up, too. Made me real jumpy—I was startling at jest about everything. It was all strange. A lot of the time there was trees all round, close together, and the red and yellow fall leaves still on ‘em so thick you couldn't see more'n a few yards any which way. They warn't big old trees like the ones back home by the pond, neither. They was little, thin, spindly things, all a-crowding close to each other—what they call a mountain wilderness. The track was like bran mash, too, an' deep, so's I was going in over my fetlocks and afraid for my hooves every time one of ‘em turned on a rock I couldn't see. And on top o' that, time and again a gray soldier would step out suddenly from the trees, asking who we was or had Jim got any tobacco or sechlike. I went along ‘cause I trusted Jim. And even at that I was fidgeting; I wouldn't have done it for no other rider. It was a durned sight worse'n the drink tent at the fair, ‘cause the men—all of ‘em—was in a bad mood—troubled with a feeling of jitters and gloominess.

Evening time, we fetched up somewheres we was ‘parently s'posed to be. But there was no house, no fields, no stables, no black folks around—jest a nasty, wet clearing in them hills, a patch no different from any other. There was a whole passel of gray soldiers, all looking ‘bout as cheerful as treed coons. They was keeping fires going—best as they could in the rain—and trying to get dry. They all looked mighty down in the mouth—thin, pinched faces, lot of ‘em shivering and fixing to be sick, so I figured. And my ears! Didn't the whole place smell bad? I'd smelt nary place like that, not in my whole life.

They had a few horses—not many; jest tethered among the trees. They was half-starved—ribs showing, most of ‘em. I nickered to ‘em, but hardly a one nickered back. They was all feeling too lowdown. Well, I thought, I b'lieve I'm jest going to take agin this place, more'n any place I ever seed. I jest hope we'll light out tomorrow and get to the War.

Jim, he got off my back an' spoke very respectful to some man who seemed to be the boss. This man stroked my nose and I could tell he was praising me, but then he shook his head and said something to Jim ‘bout how they was in a bad way and there was precious little for the horses to eat; he'd have to make out best he could.

All the same, Jim did manage to find me some hay, and some oats, too. Goodness only knows how he did it—'cepting I've larned since then that a good soldier's like a good cat: he's gotta be a good thief, too. You should jest ‘a knowed General Red Shirt's Sergeant Tucker, Tom. Still, never mind ‘bout him for now. All through those next days, like I say, somehow or other Jim always found some way to keep me fed. Even if it warn't ‘nuff, I didn't never starve. He kept me well groomed, too, and he slept right ‘longside o' me, so no one could steal my blanket.

But we didn't keep on. I couldn't make it out. We moved about in them dad-burn mountains until I got to knowing miles of the place and hating it more an' more every day. ‘Fact, I'd jest as soon stop thinking ‘bout it. I'll jest tell you one thing, Tom, that I recall; one thing. It was early afternoon, and Jim and me was floundering along one of them mashed mountain roads, when we met a double team of horses hitched up to a cart that hadn't no more on it but a load of hay. And the axles of that there wagon was scraping and leveling the bed of the road; it was hub-deep in mud, and the poor devils of horses was heaving away at it step by step. ‘Course, they was bogged down, too. I've never forgot it.

Jim and me used to get around lots. The way I see it now, looking back, I was the best horse in that outfit and the only one that warn't next thing to exhausted, so they figured to use me and Jim for taking messages and keeping in touch with the other outfits, and so on. This here warn't a horse outfit, you see—not cavalry. They was foot soldiers, and they jest had a few horses with ‘em. ‘Course, I didn't know none of that then. Now I'm what they call a veteran, I've larned a whole lot more ‘bout armies. All I knowed then was that I was hungry and a long ways from home and it was a mighty bad place.

Now one morning me an' Jim, we was out in the rain, riding up a right steep stretch of mountain in the open. Jim had let me have my head and I was cracking on the pace—much as you could on that sorta ground—when we seed a little group of riders coming towards us, going t'other way. We'd have had to pass them, but before it come to that Jim reined me in, pulled me over into the bushes one side and waited, very polite, to let them have the best of it. There was only two-three of them, but it was this one man I noticed particular.

He noticed me, too. He reined in his horse and came up to us where we was stood. And that's right where he found hisself in a peck o' trouble, on account of this horse of his had what you might call strong peculiarities. For a start, he didn't like me—I knowed that at once. He'd put on a stiff neck, a long nose and a real tight mouth, and his ears was laid back as though he'd be at me if he could. And then all of a sudden he let out a squeal; and he would have reared, too, only his man—who evidently knowed what he was like—was holding him in real firm. He pulled away, but the man pulled him back and spoke to him and got him quiet. Watching him, I got a notion that this man knowed everything about horses, and I wondered what the heck he could be doing with sech a troublesome one.

Anyways, he got off, and give the horse to one of his mates, who led it off a ways, and at this Jim got off, too, stood up straight and touched his hat real smart. “Good morning, my man,” says the other fella. “Good morning, General,” answers Jim. “That's a fine horse you got there,” says the General. “Where's he from?” “Blue Sulphur Springs in Greenbrier, sir,” answers Jim.