THE SUN was almost overhead when Joel spied the sugar maples shading his own log house, and the sheep browsing in his front yard.
A quick, small cry escaped him, and he slipped between Ebenezer and Little Bub, trying to hold on to each. “Pa’s heard the news!” he told himself as he turned in the gate. “Else why is he blocking the door, his feet planted solid like the ram’s when he’s fixing to butt?”
The next thing Joel knew, a slight figure had darted around his father and was running down the path. “Joel boy!” a gentle voice was calling.
“We’re home, Ma!”
His mother did not need to be told. Her eyes were flooded with happiness. She held the boy close and felt of him to make sure he was all in one piece. Then, quite satisfied, she shook Master Morgan’s hand and went directly to Little Bub.
“He’s little . . . and he’s big, all to once!” she said, holding his face in the cup of her hands. “Like a little wood carving I used to have as a girl. And the other colt is real nice, too,” she added quickly, as if Ebenezer had shown he was slighted. “Welcome home! All four of you.” Suddenly remembering Mister Goss, she cast a worried glance in his direction.
He had not moved from the doorway. He stood rigid and stern, like a steersman at his post. Only a disrespectful breeze played with his brown beard.
“What can I do!” Joel thought desperately. “I got to make Pa see how smart the colts are.” He stepped Ebenezer around, trying to show how well he led. His father’s face did not change. Next, Joel put his bundle on Little Bub’s back. Then he picked up the creature’s feet, one at a time, as he had seen Farmer Beane do.
Grudgingly Mister Goss said, “Howdy.” But he did not smile or nod. He ignored the colts completely.
“Maybe if they are looking out the door of our own shed,” Joel thought, “maybe then they would seem part of the place and Pa would like them.” He led Ebenezer away and whistled for Bub to come along.
The shed. had not been used in a year, but Joel remembered that up in the loft there was still some timothy hay. He put the colts each in a stall and hurried up to the loft. He smelled of the timothy. It was not stale at all. He filled each manger. Then he scrubbed and filled the water buckets. As the colts began munching the hay and making themselves at home, Joel wished his father would come out to see how happy they were. With a sigh, he shuffled slowly toward the house.
“I repeat, sir, ’twas my doing, bringing the colts home,” Justin Morgan was saying as Joel entered the kitchen. “I calculate to sell them.” Then tiredly he started up the ladder to his room in the garret. “The fatigues of the journey have overcome me,” he said over his shoulder. “Slumber is the best cure.” And he closed the trap door behind him.
Mister Goss’s eyes were blazing now. “Joel!” he bellowed. “The schoolmaster can talk till he’s blue in the face, but I know ’twas you had a finger in this. And I don’t aim to play nursemaid to two colts. Hear? I’m through having horses on the place.” He turned to Mistress Goss now. “You recollect the last ’un? No sooner do I have him broke than he gets the strangles and I got to shoot him. What in tunket they think I am? They’ll lark off to school and leave me to muck out and do their work. By thunder!” he exploded, pounding his fist on the table until the dishes jumped. “I won’t have it!”
“Now don’t get your dander up, Pa,” soothed Mistress Goss, wondering it a piece of her fresh pumpkin pie would calm him. She brought the pie to the table and began marking it off into four big wedges.
Joel’s father noticed the four wedges of pie, when there were only three people in the room. “And that ain’t all!” he sputtered. “Boarding the schoolmaster’s got to stop, too. High time he found a new place. Feeding four is costly.” He stopped for breath, then added, “And ’tis high time our Joel learnt a trade.”
Suddenly Mister Goss looked at Joel, measuring him with his eye. He stopped bellowing and now his voice wheedled, trying to persuade his wife. “The trip hardened the boy, Emma. Lookit his muscles beginning to show underneath his shirtsleeves.”
Joel broke in softly. “Pa? Couldn’t I just stay to home and take care of the colts and . . . ”
“Lemme see now,” Joel’s father was thinking aloud. “Why, o’ course, that’s who ’twas.”
“Who was who?” Mistress Goss asked timidly.
“Why, Mister Chase, o’ course. I hearn he needs an apprentice boy to work part time at his mill and part time at his inn. Joel here’s just the one for the job. Why, mostly all Joel’s friends has been bound out a’ready.”
The knife in the mother’s hand dropped to the table with a clatter. “It doesn’t do to act sudden about sending a boy away,” she said, trying to keep fear out of her voice.
Joel felt like crying out, “I belong here. And the colts . . . they need me.” But the words died inside him.
“’Tain’t sudden at all,” Mister Goss snorted. “Why, we got all the rest of the day to be mulling on it. In the morning me and Joel will call on Miller Chase. And now, Ma, I can do with a piece of that pie and a tankard of buttermilk.”
To please his mother, Joel tried to eat, too. But even his favorite pumpkin pie was flannel in his mouth. Every spoonful stuck in his throat, like the time he had the quinsy. Unable to keep back the hot tears, he ran out of the house and let them fall into Little Bub’s mane.
When his sobbing had quieted, he set to work with a new fierceness. He curried both colts and he dumped the water out of the buckets and ran to the spring pipe, letting them fill up again with clear, cold water. He cleaned out the shed, and bedded the stalls with wild grass that had already turned dry and golden.
Dimly he heard his father’s voice, and several times he heard the kitchen door creaking on its hinges as someone came or went, but he was intent on his work. At suppertime, his mother called and he had to go in. One look at his father told the boy that matters had been settled. He ate in silence, and was glad for bedtime.
As he climbed the ladder steps, candle in hand, the schoolmaster called him into his small garret room. Spread out on the feather bed were the goose-quill pens, the silver inkhorn, the shiny hourglass, the brass candle snuffer—all the treasures which had made the room seem beautiful to Joel.
The schoolmaster cleared a space for the boy to sit down. Then he went on with his packing, talking as he worked. “Two heartening things happened to me this afternoon,” he said. “I went to see the Jenks family up the road, and they agreed to board me. And, secondly, I found an honest horse dealer.”
“You hain’t!” cried Joel in alarm.
“Joel! I thought you were all over saying ‘hain’t’!”
“But the little colt—he’s not sold?”
The schoolmaster laughed. “I’ve a good home for Ebenezer, but news of Little Bub has traveled like wildfire. ‘Too small! Too small!’ everyone says. ‘And besides, he isn’t broken, to saddle or harness!’ ”
Joel leaned forward eagerly. He thought he could guess what the schoolmaster had in mind.
“Now, Joel, what I ask of you is this—”
“Yes?”
“Do you think you could gentle Little Bub for me?”
Could he gentle Little Bub? Had he thought of anything else, awake or asleep? “’Course I could!” he said, his eyes shiny. “I been watching Pa gentle colts ever since I was a baby.”
Then suddenly all the eagerness faded. “You mean . . . ” He broke off the drippings of the candle and nervously formed them into a ball. “You mean I’m to gentle him—for someone else?”
“That’s what I really mean, lad. We are both more fond of Little Bub than men should be of any beast; but I have debts to pay, and I must pay them before I die. I need your help, Joel. Will you shake hands, man to man?”
The boy hesitated a long moment. Then, taking a deep breath, he put his hand into the thin, dry one of the schoolmaster.
“Thank you, Joel. Now then,” the master continued in a more cheerful tone, “if Miller Chase takes you on, he will be obliged to send you to night school. I wonder,” he said, wrapping a faded waistcoat about his reading boards and song-books, “I wonder if you wouldn’t like to spend an hour with the colt after lessons each night.”
“In the dark?”
Justin Morgan snuffed out his own tallow candle, and then Joel’s. He threw wide the shutters and drew the boy to the gable window. The moon was three-quarters full. It sifted through the trees and spattered the yard with a magical white light.
“For two weeks,” he said, “there will be light enough for you to see. Horses, you know, can see quite well in the dark.”
