THEY WERE scarcely out upon the highroad when Master Morgan began teaching. Teaching was in his blood, and he couldn’t help giving lessons along the way.
“Joel,” he announced in his first-day-of-school voice, “we have two new pupils with us, and I’m of a mind to make this a pleasant junket. If we swing along at a nice easy pace, we should reach the village of Chicopee before the sun is over our heads. That’s where the little Chicopee River joins up with the big Connecticut. You remember how the Connecticut got its name, don’t you, Joel?”
Joel nodded but said nothing as he led Ebenezer along and kept his eye on the caperings of Little Bub. He knew the answer well enough, but the way the schoolmaster told it made it more exciting.
“Boys!” the teacher was saying. “I want you to picture Indian braves shooting their boats over the rapids, calling out to each other: ‘Quonnec! Quonnec!’ which means ‘long,’ and ‘tuck’ which means ‘river.’ ”
Joel could almost see the brown bodies like arrows flashing through the spray. “Quonnec-tuck sounds fiercer and better than Connecticut,” he offered.
“So it does!” the schoolmaster chuckled. He turned from the boy, and with a smile let his glance slide over the gangly colts. Now that they were his, he felt an inner squeeze of affection. He watched the dust rise from under their tiny feet as they pranced along. “Ebenezer, Little Bub,” he spoke quietly to them, “we’ll be crossing a covered bridge soon. You two ever been on a bridge? Likely not. But you’ll admire the sound of your hoofs clattering over wood. See if you don’t!”
The colts pricked their ears to take in the schoolmaster’s voice. It had a soft huskiness that seemed part of the wind and the river. And the way he looked at them when he talked—it was as if they were all friends making a pilgrimage together.
“Along about twilight,” the master went on, “we should be near enough to Hadley Falls to feel the spray on our faces. We’ll have a fine feast there. Joel and I will catch pike or perch, while you two graze the delicious grass that grows on the banks. And it wouldn’t surprise me if an obliging farmer would have a nosebag of corn to trade for the writing of a letter or the chanting of a psalm. Then we’ll all bed down under the stars and let the music of the falls sing us to sleep.”
And so, with pleasant talk, the morning spent itself. Noontide found them crossing the bridge at Chicopee, just as the schoolmaster said they would. And by sundown they were all in wading below Hadley Falls, the man and the boy fishing for their supper, the colts rolling in the water, sudsing themselves clean.
In the early mist of the next morning, they were on their way again. The road they traveled was no more than a path, winding its way among trees. Ever so often the schoolmaster sat down on the ground and leaned against a tree to rest. This gave the colts a chance to eat the green shoots that came up through the forest duff and to scratch their itchy shoulders against the tree trunks. And it gave Joel time to ease his bundle of clothes onto Little Bub and acquaint him with the feel of something on his back.
One day, while going through a deep woods, they heard the ring of ax strokes and the grunting of horses bent to the pull. Ebenezer whinnied to his fellow creatures. Then Little Bub added a few high notes which ended in a low rumble.
Joel laughed, and when they came upon the men clearing the wilderness, he explained like some proud parent, “That bugling you heard was our Little Bub. He was trying to act like a grown-up horse.”
They passed well-tilled country, too—wheat fields, and fields of Indian corn with yellow squash planted between the rows. And they passed meadow land with horned cattle grazing. And one morning they met a train of oxcarts. The very first driver pulled up to chat.
“Howdy, folks!” he said. “Smart big colt you got there.” Then he pointed his whip toward Little Bub. “But that runty one . . . ” He paused a moment, sizing him up more carefully. “Nope, that little feller don’t look like he’ll amount to much.”
This was the first time a traveler compared the two colts, but it was not the last. Day after day as they journeyed northward toward Vermont, their fellow travelers admired Ebenezer and scoffed at Little Bub. A cobbler who joined up with them for a mile or two even offered to buy the big colt in trade for his lapstone and awl. But Master Morgan needed cobbler’s tools even less than he needed a horse.
“Joel,” the schoolmaster admitted after he had turned down another offer, “discouragement rides me. With one colt at heel and another running free, our return trip is slowed. Here it is almost pumpkin time, and school begins in a month. How long will it take us? Three weeks? Four?”
The schoolmaster expected no answer and got none. He was talking as if to himself. The added responsibility seemed to weary him. Anxious as he was to get home, he had to stop more and more often to rest in the shade. Joel, meanwhile, pulled burrs out of Little Bub’s tail and mane. And then, if Master Morgan’s head nodded in sleep, he began talking nonsense to Little Bub as if they were two boys with a secret all their own. To his delight, the thing he longed for most was happening. The colt was answering in funny little whickers.
“He’s smart as a fox,” Joel would tell the schoolmaster when he awoke. “Knows lots of things.”
As the journey continued, Master Morgan had to agree that Bub was smart. Always it was the little colt who first sensed the presence of a snake and warned the others with a rattling of his own breath. And always it was the little colt whose ear first caught the faraway blowing of a conch shell calling men from the fields into dinner. The sound reminded him of Farmer Beane’s place, where mealtime for the family meant a handout for him, too—turnip tops or carrot greens, or even leftover applejohn. Now, far away from home, he was off like a bullet at the faintest sounding of the conch shell.
The others learned to follow eagerly, for his trail always led to a kitchen door, where the air was spicy with the smell of gingerbread baking, or the steaming fragrance of pork pie.
There the schoolmaster would remove his hat and sing in his softly husky voice:
“So pilgrims on the scorching sand,
Beneath a burning sky,
Long for a cooling stream at hand;
And they must drink or die.”