"There's Zed," he cried. "My horse. Haven't seen him since Cambrai.
Leading a team, and they're flogging him."
I fancy he knew I should join him, for he never closed Ping's door. As he changed into second, I swung myself inboard. A moment later we were flying along the dusty road….
Zed had been Jonah's charger for over three years. Together, for month after month, the two had endured the rough and revelled in the smooth. They had shared misery, and they had shared ease. Together, many times, they had passed through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. And, while the animal must have loved Jonah, my cousin was devoted to the horse. At last came Cambrai….
Jonah was shot through the knee and sent to England. And Zed—poor Zed disappeared.
My cousin's efforts to trace him were superhuman. Unhappily his groom had been killed, when Jonah was wounded, and, though all manner of authorities, from the Director of Remounts downwards, had lent their official aid, though a most particular description had been circulated and special instructions issued to all the depots through which the horse might pass, to his lasting grief Jonah had never heard of Zed again.
And now…. I found myself praying that he had not been mistaken.
Jonah was driving like a man possessed.
We tore up a rise, whipped round a bend and, coming suddenly upon a road on our right, passed it with locked wheels.
The noise my cousin made, as he changed into reverse, showed that his love for Zed was overwhelming.
We shot backward, stopped, stormed to the right and streaked up a shocking road at forty-five…. We flashed into a hamlet, turned at right angles, missed a waggon by an inch and flung up a frightful track towards a farm….