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extra grooming hisself, and all the time he was jest quietly singing away between his teeth, “War-war-war, War-war-war.”
    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.
    â€˜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.

IV
    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