Traveller by Richard Adams Page A

house. First thing, I could see the horses was all tuckered out. They was sweating, frothing at their bits and panting. I didn’t envy them. Wherever they’d come from, they’d come far and they’d come fast. One of the men dismounted very slow and stiff, and gave his horse to the other. Then he walked up to the door, and Perry came and spoke with him a piece. Then he came back and jest leant over agin the fence, with his head dropped down on his chest and his cap pulled right down over his eyes like he didn’t want no one to know who he was. I could smell his sweat from where I was standing. And that was the first time I ever seed Cap-in-His-Eyes—General Stonewall Jackson, to give him his right name.
    T’other man who’d come in with him had taken the horses round to the stable yard back o’ the house, and so there was no one around ‘cepting me and this man leaning hard on the fence, with his head down on his chest. He was covered with dust, and the sweat had made long streaks on his face. I figured he must be some soldier who’d been sent to deliver a message. But what struck me most ‘bout him, jest at that moment, was the way he seemed perfectly content to do nothing at all. I mean, Tom, you know what men are like, don’t you? ‘Cepting when they’re asleep, they’re very seldom doing nothing at all. Either they’re talking, or they’re eating or drinking, or mending this or cleaning that. This man jest simply stayed put, like now he’d got his journey over he warn’t aiming to do nothing else. He put me in mind of a tree; that’s to say, he ‘peared like he was doing all he had to do jest standing there and nothing was going to shift him. And yet somehow he made me feel he was friendly. I sorta sidled along the fence till I was close up to him, and at that he looked round and spoke to me and stroked my nose, but all the time ‘twas plain he was a-thinking ‘bout something else. He was a tall, gaunt, awkward-looking kind of a fella, and his clothes worn all anyhow. I wondered why he didn’t go and ask for somethin’ to eat and drink. I remember, too, that as I went back to grazing, he suddenly throwed both his hands up in the air. ‘Looked real strange. I couldn’t make him out at all.
    Jest then who should come riding up the road but the Little General, and when he seed Cap-in-His-Eyes leaning on the fence, he called out to him like he was real s’prised. “Why, Jackson,” he says, “what the devil are you doing here?” “Ah, Hill!” answers the other fella. And then the Little General got down and shook hands jest like Cap-in-His-Eyes was his oldest friend. As they stood there talking together, I realized that this awkward-looking soldier must be another general, and a pretty important one, too. Well, actually I only reckoned this a bit later on, ‘cause what happened then was they both went in the house together, and soon after, Red Shirt and Old Pete turned up. So then I knowed that all these here generals must ‘a come to hear what Marse Robert had got to say to em. They stayed a long time, too, ‘cause they hadn’t come out by sunset, when I was taken back to stables. I felt Marse Robert had left me real flat, that time.
    Well, ‘course I don’t recollect everything, Tom, not day by day. What I recall next is maybe two-three days later, and Marse Robert riding me out at early morning through great crowds of soldiers and guns and wagons on the road, till we stopped at another farm, up top a long slope. Beyond us, the road went down the other side to a river—’cepting the bridge was all smashed—and from there back up to a little village—if’n you could call it a village; a few houses, that’s all. It was clear, open ground—more’n a mile, I’d say—nice and green after the rain, and some trees down beside the