Traveller by Richard Adams

an’ that was “Old Pete”—General Longstreet. I never entirely liked Old Pete. Hard to say ‘zackly why, but somehow I got the notion that he didn’t really respect Marse Robert or like the idea of Marse Robert being his boss. ‘Course, I couldn’t understand a lot of their talk, but very often, as we went along, I could tell jest from the sound of their voices that he was argufying with Marse Robert and kinda telling him what he ought to do. And Marse Robert, Tom, you see, he was always so kind and gentlemanly to everybody, he never could bring hisself to tell this here Pete to go and jump in the ditch, like he oughta. I knowed Marse Robert jest couldn’t do that to save his life, but quite often I used to feel like kicking Old Pete myself. Jest the sound of his voice worried me. Still, he was a soldier sure ‘nuff, and a lot braver under fire’n what I was, as I found out later on. But in them days I’m speaking of now, I didn’t know what we was in for n’more’n if I’d been old Miss Dabbs’s cat.
    I knowed there was something in the wind, though. Us horses are always sensitive to any kind of uneasiness or tenseness, Tom, you know, and that time I could feel the stress kinda building up all over, day by day. One day, ‘stead of ‘tending to the digging, Marse Robert and Colonel Long—Ginger, his horse was called; nice fella—rode us out five or six mile north and acrost a bit of a river. Marse Robert and me stopped on a slope t’other side of this here river, and he held up a pair of bottles to his eyes. What? No, ‘course I don’t understand why. But he was forever holding up them bottles.
    â€œNow, Colonel Long,” he says, pointing out over the country, “how can we
get
at those people? What ought we to do?”
    I wonder how many times I’ve heared Marse Robert say that since. I come to know jest rightly what it meant—trouble, always. When he said that to someone, like it might be Jine-the-Cavalry or Red Shirt or Colonel Long, he didn’t really want them to answer him back. Sometimes they did and sometimes they didn’t. It was a kind of game with Marse Robert. He already knowed what he was going to do. Colonel Long knowed that, so he didn’t say nothing.
    The two of em rode round a while, Marse Robert sometimes talking and pointing, and then again holding them bottles up to his eyes. The reason it puzzled me was that there was no soldiers digging—no one there at all ‘cepting him and Marse Long.
    When we got back to old Miss Dabbs’s, first person we seed outside was Old Pete. “Ah, General Longstreet,” says Marse Robert; and him and Old Pete got to talking right there in the yard. Marse Robert was scratching in the dust with a stick, and pointing here and there. They was at it a long time.
    Over the next few days lots of people came and went—Red Shirt, the Little General—yeah, and the President, too. And somehow I got the idea they was all in some kind of secret together. I couldn’t bottom it out; and you see, there warn’t no other horse I could ask. I’d never ask Richmond nothing, and all Brown-Roan knowed was that he didn’t like the mounting feeling of strain. Well, neither did I—and yet, Tom, do you know? I felt, too, that I didn’t want to be left out of it, whatever it was.
    One afternoon, not long after that ride acrost the river, I was grazing in the meadow, right ‘longside the yard outside the house. I knowed Marse Robert was inside, and I couldn’t help wondering what he could be a-doing all that time. You see, Tom, we’d growed that close I sometimes used to feel a mite jealous and grudging on days when he was a long time indoors and we warn’t together. It was fine weather for a change, and suddenly I seed the dust of horsemen quite a ways off. Turned out there was two of ‘em, riding up to the