CHAPTER 17
I IT WAS ONLY WITH THE GREATEST DIFFICULTY THAT I STAYED standing on my three good legs in the veterinary wagon that carried me that morning away from the heroic little Welshman who had brought me in. A milling crowd of soldiers surrounded me to cheer me on my way. But out on the long, rattling roads I was very soon shaken off my balance and fell in an ungainly, uncomfortable heap on the floor of the wagon. My injured leg throbbed terribly as the wagon rocked from side to side on its slow journey away from the battle front. The wagon was drawn by two stocky black horses, both well groomed and immaculate in well-oiled harnesses. Weakened by long hours of pain and starvation, I had not the strength even to get to my feet when I felt the wheels below me running at last on smooth pavement, and the wagon came to a jerking standstill in the warm, pale autumn sunshine. My arrival was greeted by a chorus of excited neighing and I raised my head to look. I could just see over the side of the wagon a wide, cobbled courtyard with magnificent stables on either side and a great house with turrets beyond. Over every stable door were the heads of inquisitive horses, ears pricked. There were men in khaki walking everywhere, and a few were running now toward me, one of them carrying a rope halter.
Unloading was painful, for I had little strength left and my legs had gone numb after the long journey. But they got me to my feet and walked me backward gently down the ramp. I found myself the center of anxious and admiring attention in the middle of the courtyard, surrounded by a cluster of soldiers who inspected minutely every part of me, feeling me all over.
“What in thunder do you think you’re doing?” came a booming voice echoing across the courtyard. “It’s a horse. It’s a horse just like the others.” A huge man was striding toward us, his boots crisp on the cobbles. His heavy red face was half hidden by the shade of his peaked cap that almost touched his nose and by an auburn mustache that spread upward from his lips to his ears. “It may be a famous horse. It may be the only thundering horse in the whole thundering war brought in alive from no-man’s-land. But it is only a horse, and a dirty horse at that. I’ve had some rough-looking specimens brought in here in my time, but this is the scruffiest, dirtiest, muddiest horse I have ever seen. He’s a thundering disgrace, and you’re all standing around looking at him.” He wore three broad stripes on his arm and the creases in his immaculate khaki uniform were razor sharp. “Now, there’s a hundred or more sick horses here in this hospital and there’s just twelve of us to look after them. This here young lazybones was detailed to look after this one when he arrived, so the rest of you guys can get back to your duties. Move it, you idle monkeys, move it!” And the men scattered in all directions, leaving me with a young soldier who began to lead me away toward a stable. “And you,” came that booming voice again, “Major Martin will be down from the house in ten minutes to examine that horse. Make sure that horse is so thundering clean and thundering shiny you could use him as a shaving mirror, right?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” came the reply. A reply that sent a sudden shiver of recognition through me. Quite where I had heard the voice before I did not know. I knew only that those two words sent a tremor of joy and hope and expectation through my body and warmed me from the inside out. He led me slowly across the cobbles, and I tried all the while to see his face better. But he kept just that much ahead of me so that all I could see was a neatly shaven neck and a pair of pink ears.
“How the devil did you get yourself stuck out there in no-man’s-land, you old silly?” he said. “That’s what everyone wants to know ever since the message came back that they’d be bringing you here. And how the devil did you get yourself in such a state? I swear there’s not an inch of you that isn’t covered in mud or blood. No telling what you look like under all that mess. Still, we’ll soon see. I’ll tie you up here and get the worst of it off in the open air. Then I’ll brush you up in the right way before the officer gets here. Come on, you silly, you. Once I’ve got you cleaned up, then the officer can see you and he’ll tidy up the nasty cut of yours. Can’t give you food, I’m sorry to say, nor any water, not till he says so. That’s what the sergeant told me. That’s just in case they have to operate on you.” And the way he whistled as he cleaned out the brushes was the whistle that went with the voice I knew. It confirmed my rising hopes, and I knew then that I could not be mistaken. In my overwhelming delight, I reared up on my back legs and cried out to him to recognize me. I wanted to make him see who I was. “Hey, careful there, you silly. Nearly knocked my hat off,” he said gently, keeping a firm hold on the rope and smoothing my nose as he always had done whenever I was unhappy. “No need for that. You’ll be all right. Lot of fuss about nothing. Knew a young horse once just like you, he was really proper jumpy he was till I got to know him and he got to know me.”
“You talking to them horses again, Albert?” came a voice from inside the next stable. “God’s truth! What makes you think they understand a word you say?”
“Some of them may not, David,” said Albert. “But one day, one day one of them will. He’ll come in here and he’ll recognize my voice. He’s bound to come in here. And then you’ll see a horse that understands every word that’s said to him.”
“You’re not going on about your Joey again?” The head that came with the voice leaned over the stable door. “Won’t you ever give it up, Berty? I’ve told you before if I’ve told you a thousand times. They say there’s near half a million horses out here, and you joined the Veterinary Corps just on the off chance you might come across him.” I pawed the ground with my bad leg in an effort to make Albert look at me more closely, but he just patted my neck and set to work cleaning me up. “There’s just one chance in half a million that your Joey walks in here. You got to be more realistic. He could be dead—a lot of them are. He could have gone off to Palestine with the cavalry. He could be anywhere along hundreds of miles of trenches. If you weren’t so good with horses, and if you weren’t the best friend I had, I’d think you’d gone a bit screwy the way you go on about your Joey.”
“You’ll understand why when you see him, David,” Albert said crouching down to scrape the caked mud off my underside. “You’ll see. There’s no horse like him anywhere in the whole world. He’s a bright red bay with a black mane and tail. He has a white cross on his forehead and four white socks that are all even to the last inch. He stands over sixteen hands and he’s perfect from head to tail. I can tell you, I can tell you that when you see him you’ll know him. I could pick him out of a crowd of a thousand horses. There’s just something about him. Captain Nicholls, you know, he’s dead now—the one I told you about that bought Joey from my father, he sent me Joey’s picture—he knew it. He saw it the first time he set eyes on him. I’ll find him, David. That’s what I came all this way for, and I’m going to find him. Either I’ll find him, or he’ll find me. I told you, I made him a promise, and I’m going to keep it.”
“You’re crazy as a loon, Berty,” said his friend opening a stable door and coming over to examine my leg. “Crazy as a loon, that’s all I can say.” He picked up my hoof and lifted it gently. “This one’s got white socks on his front legs, anyway—that’s as far as I can tell under all this blood and mud. I’ll just sponge the wound away a bit, clean it up for you while I’m here. You’ll never get this one cleaned up in time else. And I’ve finished mucking out my stables. Not a lot else to do, and it looks as if you could do with a hand. Old Sergeant Thunder won’t mind, not if I’ve done all he told me, and I have.”
The two men worked tirelessly on me, scraping and brushing and washing. I stood quite still trying only to nuzzle Albert to make him turn and look at me. But he was busy at my tail and my hindquarters now.
“Three,” said his friend, washing off another of my hooves. “That’s three white socks.”
“Stop it, David,” said Albert. “I know what you think. I know everyone thinks I’ll never find him. There’s thousands of army horses with four white socks—I know that, but there’s only one with a blaze in the shape of a cross on the forehead. And how many horses shine red like fire in the evening sun? I tell you, there’s not another one like him, not in the whole wide world.”
“Four,” said David. “That’s four legs and four white socks. Only the cross on the forehead now, and a splash of red paint on this muddy mess of a horse, and you’ll have your Joey standing here.”
“Don’t tease,” said Albert quietly. “Don’t tease, David. You know how serious I am about Joey. It’ll mean all the world to me to find him again. Only friend I ever had before I came to the war. I told you. I grew up with him, I did. Only creature on this earth I felt any kinship for.”
David was standing now by my head. He lifted my mane and brushed gently at first then vigorously at my forehead, blowing the dust away from my eyes. He peered closely and then set to again brushing down toward the end of my nose and up again between my ears till I tossed my head with impatience.
“Berty,” he said quietly. “I’m not teasing, honest I’m not. Not now. You said your Joey had four white socks, all even to the inch? Right?”
“Right,” said Albert, still brushing away at my tail.
“And you said Joey had a white cross on his forehead?”
“Right.” Albert was still completely disinterested.
“Now, I have never even seen a horse like that, Berty,” said David, using his hand to smooth down the hair on my forehead. “Wouldn’t have thought it possible.”
“Well, it is, I tell you,” said Albert sharply. “And he was red, flaming red in the sunlight, like I said.”
“I wouldn’t have thought it possible,” his friend went on, keeping his voice in check. “Not until now, that is.”
“Oh, can it, David,” Albert said, and there was a genuine irritation in his voice now. “I’ve told you, haven’t I? I told you I’m serious about Joey.”
“So am I, Berty. Dead serious. No messing. I’m serious. This horse has four white socks—all evenly marked like you said. This horse has a clear white cross on his forehead. This horse, as you can see for yourself, has a black mane and tail. This horse stands over sixteen hands, and when he’s cleaned up, he’ll look pretty as a picture. And this horse is a red bay under all that mud, just like you said, Berty.”
As David was speaking, Albert suddenly dropped my tail and moved slowly around me running his hand along my back. Then at last we stood facing each other. There was a rougher hue to his face, I thought; he had more lines around his eyes and he was a broader, bigger man in his uniform than I remembered him. But he was my Albert, and there was no doubt about it, he was my Albert.
“Joey?” he said tentatively, looking into my eyes. “Joey?” I tossed up my head and called out to him in my happiness, so that the sound echoed around the yard and brought horses and men to the door of their stables. “It could be,” said Albert quietly. “You’re right, David—it could be him. It sounds like him even. But there’s one way I know for sure,” and he untied my rope and pulled the halter off my head. Then he turned and walked away to the gateway before facing me, cupping his hands to his lips and whistling. It was his owl whistle, the same low, stuttering whistle he had used to call me when we were walking out together back at home on the farm all those long years before. Suddenly there was no longer any pain in my leg and I trotted easily over toward him and buried my nose in his shoulder. “It’s him, David,” Albert said, putting his arms around my neck and hanging on to my mane. “It’s my Joey. I’ve found him. He’s come back to me just like I said he would.”
“See?” said David wryly. “What did I tell you? See? Not often wrong, am I?”
“Not often,” Albert said. “Not often, and not this time.”