CHAPTER XXV A HAPPY HORSE
FOR a good while after I went to Dingley Farm I was very shy of the horses, for I was afraid they might kick me, thinking that I was a bad dog like Bruno. However, they all had such good faces, and looked at me so kindly, that I was beginning to get over my fear of them.
Fleetfoot, Mr. Harry’s colt, was my favorite, and one afternoon, when Mr. Harry and Miss Laura were going out to see him, I followed them. Fleetfoot was amusing himself by rolling over and over on the grass under a tree, but when he saw Mr. Harry, he gave a shrill whinny, and running to him, began nosing about his pockets.
“Wait a bit,” said Mr. Harry, holding him by the forelock. “Let me introduce you to this young lady, Miss Laura Morris. I want you to make her a bow.” He gave the colt some sign, and immediately he began to paw the ground and shake his head.
Mr. Harry laughed and went on: “Here is her dog Joe. I want you to like him, too. Come here, Joe.” I was not at all afraid, for I knew Mr. Harry would not let him hurt me, so I stood in front of him, and for the first time had a good look at him. They called him the colt, but he was really a full-grown horse, and had already been put to work. He was of a dark chestnut color, and had a well-shaped body and a long, handsome head, and I never saw, in the head of a man or beast, a more beautiful pair of eyes than that colt had large, full, brown eyes they were that he turned on me almost as a person would. He looked me all over as if to say: “Are you a good dog, and will you treat me kindly, or are you a bad one like Bruno, and will you chase me and snap at my heels and worry me, so that I shall want to kick you?”
I looked at him very earnestly and wagged my body, and lifted myself on my hind legs toward him. He seemed pleased and put down his nose to sniff at me, and then we were friends. Friends, and such good friends, for next to Jim and Billy, I have loved Fleetfoot.
Mr. Harry pulled some lumps of sugar out of his pocket, and giving them to Miss Laura, told her to put them on the palm of her hand and hold it out flat toward Fleetfoot. The colt ate the sugar, and all the time eyed her with his quiet, observing glance, that made her exclaim: “What wise-looking colt!”
“He is like an old horse,” said Mr. Harry, “When he hears a sudden noise, he stops and looks all about him to find an explanation.”
“He has been well trained,” said Miss Laura.
“I have brought him up carefully,” said Mr. Harry. “Really, he has been treated more like a dog than a colt. He follows me about the farm and smells everything I handle, and seems to want to know the reason of things.”
“Your mother says,” replied Miss Laura, “that she found you both asleep on the lawn one day last summer, and the colt’s head was on your arm.”
Mr. Harry smiled and threw his arm over the colt’s neck. “We’ve been comrades, haven’t we, Fleetfoot? I’ve been almost ashamed of his devotion. He has followed me to the village, and he always wants to go fishing with me. He’s four years old now, so he ought to get over those coltish ways. I’ve driven him a good deal. We’re going out in the buggy this afternoon, will you come?”
“Where are you going?” asked Miss Laura.
“Just for a short drive back of the river, to collect some money for father. I’ll be home long before tea time.”
“Yes, I should like to go,” said Miss Laura “I shall go to the house and get my other hat.”
“Come on, Fleetfoot,” said Mr. Harry. And he led the way from the pasture, the colt following behind with me. I waited about the veranda, and in a short time Mr. Harry drove up to the front door. The buggy was black and shining, and Fleetfoot had on a silver-mounted harness that made him look very fine. He stood gently switching his long tail to keep the flies away, and with his head turned to see who was going to get into the buggy. I stood by him, and as soon as he saw that Miss Laura and Mr. Harry had seated themselves, he acted as if he wanted to be off. Mr. Harry spoke to him and away he went, I racing down the lane by his side, so happy to think he was my friend. He liked having me beside him, and every few seconds put down his head toward me. Animals can tell each other things without saying a word. When Fleetfoot gave his head a little toss in a certain way, I knew that he wanted to have a race. He had a beautiful even gait, and went very swiftly. Mr. Harry kept speaking to him to check him.
“You don’t like him to go too fast, do you?” said Miss Laura.
“No,” he returned. “I think we could make a racer of him if we liked, but father and I don’t go in for fast horses. There is too much said about fast trotters and race horses. On some of the farms around here, the people have gone mad on breeding fast horses. An old farmer out in the country had a common cart-horse that he suddenly found out had great powers of speed and endurance. He sold him to a speculator for a big price, and it has set everybody wild. If the people who give all their time to it can’t raise fast horses I don’t see how the farmers can. A fast horse on a farm is ruination to the boys, for it starts them racing and betting. Father says he is going to offer a prize for the fastest walker that can be bred in New Hampshire. That Dutchman of ours, heavy as he is, is a fair walker, and Cleve and Pacer can each walk four and a half miles an hour.”
“Why do you lay such stress on their walking fast?” asked Miss Laura.
“Because so much of the farm work must be done at a walk. Ploughing, teaming, and drawing produce to market, and going up and down hills. Even for the cities it is good to have fast walkers. Trotting on city pavements is very hard on the dray horses. If they are allowed to go at a quick walk, their legs will keep strong much longer. It is shameful the way horses are used up in big cities. Our pavements are so bad that cab horses are used up in three years. In many ways we are a great deal better off in this new country than the people in Europe, but we are not in respect of cab horses, for in London and Paris they last for five years. I have seen horses drop down dead in New York just from hard usage. Poor brutes, there is a better time coming for them though. When electricity is more fully developed we’ll see some wonderful changes. As it is, last year in different places, about thirty thousand horses were released from those abominable horse cars, by having electricity introduced on the roads. Well, Fleetfoot, do you want another spin? All right, my boy, go ahead.”
Away we went again along a bit of level road. Fleetfoot had no check-rein on his beautiful neck, and when he trotted, he could hold his head in an easy, natural position. With his wonderful eyes and flowing mane and tail, and his glossy, reddish-brown body, I thought that he was the handsomest horse I had ever seen. He loved to go fast, and when Mr. Harry spoke to him to slow up again, he tossed his head with impatience. But he was too sweet-tempered to disobey. In all the years that I have known Fleetfoot, I have never once seen him refuse to do as his master told him.
“You have forgotten your whip, haven’t you Harry?” I heard Miss Laura say, as we jogged slowly along, and I ran by the buggy panting and with my tongue hanging out.
“I never use one,” said Mr. Harry; “if I saw any man lay one on Fleetfoot, I’d knock him down.” His voice was so severe that I glanced up into the buggy. He looked just as he did the day that he stretched Jenkins on the ground, and gave him a beating.
“I am so glad you don’t,” said Miss Laura. “You are like the Russians. Many of them control their horses by their voices, and call them such pretty names. But you have to use a whip for some horses, don’t you, Cousin Harry?”
“Yes, Laura. There are many vicious horses that can’t be controlled otherwise, and then with many horses one requires a whip in case of necessity for urging them forward.”
“I suppose Fleetfoot never balks,” said Miss Laura.
“No,” replied Mr. Harry; “Dutchman sometimes does, and we have two cures for him, both equally good. We take up a forefoot and strike his shoe two or three times with a stone. The operation always interests him greatly, and he usually starts. If he doesn’t go for that, we pass a line round his forelegs, at the knee joint, then go in front of him and draw on the line. Father won’t let the men use a whip, unless they are driven to it.”
“Fleetfoot has had a happy life, hasn’t he?” said Miss Laura, looking admiringly at him “How did he get to like you so much, Harry?”
“I broke him in after a fashion of my own. Father gave him to me, and the first time I saw him on his feet, I went up carefully and put my hand on him. His mother was rather shy of me, for we hadn’t had her long, and it made him shy too, so I soon left him. The next time I stroked him; the next time I put my arm around him. Soon he acted like a big dog. I could lead him about by a strap, and I made a little halter and a bridle for him. I didn’t see why I shouldn’t train him a little while he was young and manageable. I think it is cruel to let colts run till one has to employ severity in mastering them. Of course, I did not let him do much work. Colts are like boys a boy shouldn’t do a man’s work, but he had exercise every day, and I trained him to draw a light cart behind him. I used to do all kinds of things to accustom him to unusual sounds. Father talked a good deal to me about Rarey, the great horse-tamer, and it put ideas into my head. He said he once saw Rarey come on a stage in Boston with a timid horse that he was going to accustom to a loud noise. First a bugle was blown, then some louder instrument, and so on, till there was a whole brass band going. Rarey reassured the animal, and it was not afraid.”
“You like horses better than any other animals, don’t you, Harry?” asked Miss Laura.
“I believe I do, though I am very fond of that dog of yours. I think I know more about horses than dogs. Have you noticed Scamp very much?”
“Oh, yes; I often watched her. She is such an amusing little creature.”
“She’s the most interesting one we’ve got, that is, after Fleetfoot. Father got her from a man who couldn’t manage her, and she came to us with a legion of bad tricks. Father has taken solid comfort though, in breaking her of them. She is his pet among our stock. I suppose you know that horses, more than any other animals, are creatures of habit. If they do a thing once, they will do it again. When she came to us, she had a trick of biting at a person who gave her oats. She would do it without fail, so father put a little stick under his arm, and every time she would bite he would give her a rap over the nose. She soon got tired of biting, and gave it up. Sometimes now, you’ll see her make a snap at father as if she was going to bite, and then look under his arm to see if the stick is there. He cured some of her tricks in one way, and some in another. One bad one she had was to start for the stable the minute one of the traces was unfastened when we were unharnessing. She pulled father over once, and another time she ran the shaft of the sulky clean through the barn door. The next time father brought her in, he got ready for her. He twisted the lines around his hands, and the minute she began to bolt, he gave a tremendous jerk, that pulled her back upon her haunches, and shouted, ‘Whoa!’ It cured her, and she never started again, till he gave her the word. Often now, you’ll see her throw her head back when she is being unhitched. He only did it once, yet she remembers. If we’d had the training of Scamp, she’d be a very different animal. It’s nearly all in the bringing up of a colt, whether it will turn out vicious or gentle. If any one were to strike Fleetfoot, he would not know what it meant. He has been brought up differently from Scamp.
“She was probably trained by some brutal man who inspired her with distrust of the human species. She never bites an animal, and seems attached to all the other horses. She loves Fleetfoot and Cleve and Pacer. Those three are her favorites.”
“I love to go for drives with Cleve and Pacer,” said Miss Laura, “they are so steady and good. Uncle says they are the most trusty horses he has. He has told me about the man you had, who said that those two horses knew more than most ‘humans.’”
“That was old Davids,” said Mr. Harry; “when we had him, he was courting a widow who lived over in Hoytville. About once a fortnight, he’d ask father for one of the horses to go over to see her. He always stayed pretty late, and on the way home he’d tie the reins to the whip-stock and go to sleep, and never wake up till Cleve or Pacer, whichever one he happened to have, would draw up in the barnyard. They would pass any rigs they happened to meet, and turn out a little for a man. If Davids wasn’t asleep, he could always tell by the difference in their gait which they were passing. They’d go quickly past a man, and much slower, with more of a turn out, if it was a team. But I dare say father told you this. He has a great stock of horse stories, and I am almost as bad. You will have to cry ‘halt,’ when we bore you.”
“You never do,” replied Miss Laura. “I love to talk about animals. I think the best story about Cleve and Pacer is the one that uncle told me last evening. I don’t think you were there. It was about stealing the oats.”
“Cleve and Pacer never steal,” said Mr. Harry. “Don’t you mean Scamp? She’s the thief.”
“No, it was Pacer that stole. He got out of his box, uncle says, and found two bags of oats, and he took one in his teeth and dropped it before Cleve, and ate the other himself, and uncle was so amused that he let them eat a long time, and stood and watched them.”
“That was a clever trick,” said Mr. Harry. “Father must have forgotten to tell me. Those two horses have been mates ever since I can remember, and I believe if they were separated, they’d pine away and die. You have noticed how low the partitions are between the boxes in the horse stable. Father says you wouldn’t put a lot of people in separate boxes in a room, where they couldn’t see each other, and horses are just as fond of company as we are. Cleve and Pacer are always nosing each other. A horse has a long memory. Father has had horses recognize him, that he has been parted from for twenty years. Speaking of their memories reminds me of another good story about Pacer that I never heard till yesterday, and that I would not talk about to any one but you and mother. Father wouldn’t write me about it, for he never will put a line on paper where any one’s reputation is concerned.”
CHAPTER XXVI THE BOX OF MONEY
“THIS story,” said Mr. Harry, “is about one of the hired men we had last winter, whose name was Jacobs. He was a cunning fellow, with a hangdog look, and a great cleverness at stealing farm produce from father on the sly, and selling it. Father knew perfectly well what he was doing, and was wondering what would be the best way to deal with him, when one day something happened that brought matters to a climax.
“Father had to go to Sudbury for farming tools, and took Pacer and the cutter. There are two ways of going there one the Sudbury Road, and the other the old Post Road, which is longer and seldom used. On this occasion father took the Post Road. The snow wasn’t deep, and he wanted to inquire after an old man who had been robbed and half frightened to death, a few days before. He was a miserable old creature, known as Miser Jerrold, and he lived alone with his daughter. He had saved a little money that he kept in a box under his bed. When father got near the place, he was astonished to see by Pacer’s actions that he had been on this road before, and recently, too. Father is so sharp about horses, that they never do a thing that he doesn’t attach a meaning to. So he let the reins hang a little loose, and kept his eye on Pacer. The horse went along the road, and seeing father didn’t direct him, turned into the lane leading to the house. There was an old red gate at the end of it, and he stopped in front of it, and waited for father to get out. Then he passed through, and instead of going up to the house, turned around, and stood with his head toward the road.
“Father never said a word, but he was doing a lot of thinking. He went into the house, and found the old man sitting over the fire, rubbing his hands, and half-crying about ‘the few poor dollars,’ that he said he had had stolen from him. Father had never seen him before, but he knew he had the name of being half silly, and question him as much as he liked, he could make nothing of him. The daughter said that they had gone to bed at dark the night her father was robbed. She slept up stairs, and he down below. About ten o’clock she heard him scream, and running down stairs, she found him sitting up in bed, and the window wide open. He said a man had sprung in upon him, stuffed the bedclothes into his mouth, and dragging his box from under the bed, had made off with it. She ran to the door and looked out, but there was no one to be seen. It was dark, and snowing a little, so no traces of footsteps were to be perceived in the morning.
“Father found that the neighbors were dropping in to bear the old man company, so he drove on to Sudbury, and then returned home. When he got back, he said Jacobs was hanging about the stable in a nervous kind of a way, and said he wanted to speak to him. Father said very good, but put the horse in first. Jacobs unhitched, and father sat on one of the stable benches and watched him till he came lounging along with a straw in his mouth, and said he’d made up his mind to go West, and he’d like to set off at once.
“Father said again, very good, but first he had a little account to settle with him, and he took out of his pocket a paper, where he had jotted down, as far as he could, every quart of oats, and every bag of grain, and every quarter of a dollar of market money that Jacobs had defrauded him of. Father said the fellow turned all the colors of the rainbow, for he thought he had covered up his tracks so cleverly that he would never be found out. Then father said, ‘Sit down, Jacobs, for I have got to have a long talk with you.’ He had him there about an hour, and when he finished, the fellow was completely broken down. Father told him that there were just two courses in life for a young man to take; and he had gotten on the wrong one. He was a young, smart fellow, and if he turned right around now, there was a chance for him. If he didn’t there was nothing but the State’s prison ahead of him, for he needn’t think he was going to gull and cheat all the world, and never be found out. Father said he’d give him all the help in his power, if he had his word that he’d try to be an honest man. Then he tore up the paper, and laid there was an end of his indebtedness to him.
“Jacobs is only a young fellow, twenty-three or thereabout, and father says he sobbed like a baby. Then, without looking at him, father gave in account of his afternoon’s drive, just as if he was talking to himself. He said that Pacer never to his knowledge had been on that road before, and yet he seemed perfectly familiar with it, and that he stopped and turned already to leave again quickly, instead of going up to the door, and how he looked over his shoulder and started on a run down the lane, the minute father’s foot was in the cutter again. In the course of his remarks, father mentioned the fact that on Monday, the evening that the robbery was committed, Jacobs had borrowed Pacer to go to the Junction, but had come in with the horse steaming, and looking as if he had been driven a much longer distance than that. Father said that when he got done, Jacobs had sunk down all in a heap on the stable floor with his hands over his face. Father left him to have it out with himself, and went to the house.
“The next morning, Jacobs looked just the same as usual, and went about with the other men doing his work, but saying nothing about going West. Late in the afternoon, a farmer going by hailed father, and asked if he’d heard the news. Old Miser Jerrold’s box had been left on his door step some time through the night, and he’d found it in the morning. The money was all there, but the old fellow was so cute that he wouldn’t tell any one how much it was. The neighbors had persuaded him to bank it, and he was coming to town the next morning with it, and that night some of them were going to help him mount guard over it. Father told the men at milking time, and he said Jacobs looked as unconscious as possible However, from that day there was a change in him. He never told father in so many words that he’d resolved to be an honest man, but his actions spoke for him. He had been a kind of sullen, unwilling fellow, but now he turned handy and obliging, and it was a real trial to father to part with him.”
Miss Laura was intensely interested in this story. “Where is he now, Cousin Harry?” she asked, eagerly. “What became of him?”
Mr. Harry laughed in such amusement that I stared up at him, and even Fleetfoot turned his head around to see what the joke was. We were going very slowly up a long, steep hill, and in the clear, still air, we could hear every word spoken in the buggy.
“The last part of the story is the best, to my mind,” said Mr. Harry, “and as romantic as even a girl could desire. The affair of the stolen box was much talked about along Sudbury way, and Miss Jerrold got to be considered quite a desirable young person among some of the youth near there, though she is a frowsy-headed creature, and not as neat in her personal attire as a young girl should be. Among her suitors was Jacobs. He cut out a blacksmith and a painter, and several young farmers, and father said he never in his life had such a time to keep a straight face, as when Jacobs came to him this spring, and said he was going to marry old Miser Jerrold’s daughter. He wanted to quit father’s employ, and he thanked him in a real manly way for the manner in which he had always treated him. Well Jacobs left, and mother says that father would sit and speculate about him, as to whether he had fallen in love with Eliza Jerrold, or whether he was determined to regain possession of the box, and was going to do it honestly, or whether he was sorry for having frightened the old man into a greater degree of imbecility, and was marrying the girl so that he could take care of him, or whether it was something else, and so on, and so on. He had a dozen theories, and then mother says he would burst out laughing, and say it was one of the cutest tricks that he had ever heard of.
“In the end, Jacobs got married, and father and mother went to the wedding. Father gave the bridegroom a yoke of oxen, and mother gave the bride a lot of household linen, and I believe they’re as happy as the day is long. Jacobs makes his wife comb her hair, and he waits on the old man as if he was his son, and he is improving the farm that was going to rack and ruin, and I hear he is going to build a new house.”
“Harry,” exclaimed Miss Laura, “can’t you take me to see them?”
“Yes, indeed; mother often drives over to take them little things, and we’ll go, too, sometime. I’d like to see Jacobs myself, now that he is a decent fellow. Strange to say, though he hadn’t the best of character, no one has ever suspected him of the robbery, and he’s been cunning enough never to say a word about it. Father says Jacobs is like all the rest of us. There’s mixture of good and evil in him, and sometimes one predominates, and sometimes the other. But we must get on and not talk here all day. Get up, Fleetfoot.”
“Where did you say we were going?” asked Miss Laura, as we crossed the bridge over the river.
“A little way back here in the woods,” he replied. “There’s an Englishman on a small clearing that he calls Penhollow. Father loaned him some money three years ago, and he won’t pay either interest or principal.”
“I think I’ve heard of him,” said Miss Laura “Isn’t he the man whom the boys call Lord Chesterfield?”
“The same one. He’s a queer specimen of a man. Father has always stood up for him. He has a great liking for the English. He says we ought to be as ready to help an Englishman as an American, for we spring from common stock.”
“Oh, not Englishmen only,” said Miss Laura, warmly; “Chinamen, and Negroes, and everybody. There ought to be a brotherhood of nations, Harry.”
“Yes, Miss Enthusiasm, I suppose there ought to be,” and looking up, I could see that Mr. Harry was gazing admiringly into his cousin’s face.
“Please tell me some more about the Englishman,” said Miss Laura.
“There isn’t much to tell. He lives alone, only coming occasionally to the village for supplies, and though he is poorer than poverty, he despises every soul within a ten-mile radius of him, and looks upon us as no better than an order of thrifty, well-trained lower animals.”
“Why is that?” asked Miss Laura, in surprise.
“He is a gentleman, Laura, and we are only common people. My father can’t hand a lady in and out of a carriage as Lord Chesterfield can, nor can he make so grand a bow, nor does he put on evening dress for a late dinner, and we never go to the opera nor to the theatre, and know nothing of polite society, nor can we tell exactly whom our great-great-grandfather sprang from. I tell you, there is a gulf between us and that Englishman, wider than the one young Curtius leaped into.”
Miss Laura was laughing merrily. “How funny that sounds, Harry. So he despises you,” and she glanced at her good-looking cousin, and his handsome buggy and well-kept horse, and then burst into another merry peal of laughter.
Mr. Harry laughed, too. “It does seem absurd. Sometimes when I pass him jogging along to town in his rickety old cart, and look at his pale, cruel face, and know that he is a broken-down gambler and man of the world, and yet considers himself infinitely superior to me a young man in the prime of life, with a good constitution and happy prospects, it makes me turn away to hide a smile.”
By this time we had left the river and the meadows far behind us, and were passing through a thick wood. The road was narrow and very broken, and Fleetfoot was obliged to pick his way carefully. “Why does the Englishman live in this out-of-the-way place, if he is so fond of city life?” said Miss Laura.
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Harry. “Father is afraid that he has committed some misdeed, and is in hiding; but we say nothing about it. We have not seen him for some weeks, and to tell the truth, this trip is as much to see what has become of him, as to make a demand upon him for the money. As he lives alone, he might lie there ill, and no one would know anything about it. The last time that we knew of his coming to the village was to draw quite a sum of money from the bank. It annoyed father, for he said he might take some of it to pay his debts. I think his relatives in England supply him with funds. Here we are at the entrance to the mansion of Penhollow. I must get out and open the gate that will admit us to the winding avenue.”
We had arrived in front of some bars which were laid across an opening in the snake fence that ran along one side of the road. I sat down and looked about. It was a strange, lonely place. The trees almost met overhead, and it was very dim and quiet. The sun could only send little straggling beams through the branches. There was a muddy pool of water before the bars that Mr. Harry was letting down, and he got his feet wet in it. “Confound that Englishman,” he said, backing out of the water, and wiping his boots on the grass. “He hasn’t even gumption enough to throw down a load of stone there. Drive in, Laura, and I’ll put up the bars.” Fleetfoot took us through the opening, and then Mr. Harry jumped into the buggy and took up the reins again.
We had to go very slowly up a narrow, rough road. The bushes scratched and scraped against the buggy, and Mr. Harry looked very much annoyed.
“No man liveth to himself,” said Miss Laura, softly. “This man’s carelessness is giving you trouble. Why doesn’t he cut these branches that overhang the road?”
“He can’t do it, because his abominable laziness won’t let him,” said Mr. Harry. “I’d like to be behind him for a week, and I’d make him step a little faster. We have arrived at last, thank goodness.”
There was a small grass clearing in the midst of the woods. Chips and bits of wood were littered about, and across the clearing was a roughly-built house of unpainted boards. The front door was propped open by a stick. Some of the panes of glass in the windows were broken, and the whole house had a melancholy, dilapidated look. I thought that I had never seen such a sad-looking place.
“It seems as if there was no one about,” said Mr. Harry, with a puzzled face. “Barron must be away. Will you hold Fleetfoot, Laura, while I go and see?”
He drew the buggy up near a small log building that had evidently been used for a stable, and I lay down beside it and watched Miss Laura.