YESTERDAY, today, tomorrow—all the same. Get up before dawn. Tiptoe down the ladder steps. Feed the fire. Sweep the hearth. Eat a dry oatcake. Head for the mill. Sweep up yesterday’s sawdust. Saw clapboards by hand. Saw pipe-staves. Eat sawdust. Breathe sawdust. Sawdust in your hair, your ears, your boots. Saw! Saw until your muscles ache!
Yesterday, today, tomorrow dragging by, dragging by. Only the nighttimes different. The chores all done and supper eaten. And now the seeming miracle—now the nighttimes belonging to Joel.
He was free then to go to evening school, where he read and wrote, and ciphered and sang. He sang until his lungs were fit to burst, as if the louder he sang, the sooner his big happiness would come.
Then the moment Master Morgan dismissed class, Joel flew out the door and ran to the Jenks place—past the house, past the woodpile, past the chicken coops, leaping across the root cellar, to the shed behind the house.
Suddenly all the tiredness washed out of the boy, and a sharp ecstasy filled him. There was Little Bub waiting for him, waiting to hear his name called out, waiting to scratch his head up and down Joel’s rough jacket.
“Feller,” Joel would gasp, out of breath. “I been waitin’, too!”
The colt’s quizzical face butted Joel. Then he stamped and pawed with a forefoot. “Let’s do something!” he seemed to say.
Never was a creature more willing to be gentled. After but two lessons, he wore a halter as if it were part of him. Like his forelock. Or his tail. Fastening two ropes to the halter, Joel drove him around and around in a circle, teaching him to “git up” and to “whoa.”
Next Joel slipped a bit in the colt’s mouth. At first Bub’s ears went back in displeasure. He did not mind rope or leather things, but iron felt cold and hard to his tongue. One night Joel warmed the bit in his hands and coated it with maple syrup. From then on Little Bub accepted it each time, actually reaching out for it, jaws open wide.
Whenever the colt learned a new lesson, Joel told him what a fine, smart fellow he was. “Soon you’ll be big for your size!” he would say. “And then you’ve got to be so smart and willing that even an ornery man won’t have reason to whop ye. I couldn’t abide that!” he added in dread.
Some nights Joel fastened a lantern to an old two-wheeled cart borrowed from Mister Jenks. Then, filling the cart with stones for weight, he drove Bub over the rolling hills. He practiced pulling him up short. He practiced walking him, trotting him, stopping and backing him.
The moon waned and became full again. By now Joel was galloping Little Bub, galloping him bareback across the fields. And Bub wanted to go! It was as if the clean, cold air felt good in his lungs, as if he liked the night and the wind and the boy.
One evening when Master Morgan remained late at school, Joel burst in on him so full of laughter he could scarcely talk. The other apprentice boys had gone long ago, and Joel’s laughter rang out so heartily in the empty room that the schoolmaster joined in without knowing why.
Between spasms the boy managed to gasp, “You should’ve seed that little hound-dog run!”
“What little hound-dog?”
“Why, Mister Jenks’s yellow one,” giggled Joel, bursting into fresh laughter. “He come a-tearin’ out the house, yammering at Little Bub, tryin’ to nip his legs. Oh, ho, ho, ho!”
“What did Bub do?”
“What did he do?” shrieked Joel. “Why, he sprung forward like a cat outen a bag. And that idiot hound was too addled to go home. He streaked down the road with Bub after him.”
Joel had to wipe away his tears before he could go on. “By and by,” he chuckled, “the hound got so beat out I took pity on him and reined in.”
Master Morgan’s eyes twinkled. “I reckon Farmer Beane was right,” he said. “Seems as if Little Bub and dogs just don’t cotton to each other.”
When Mister Goss first heard that Joel was training the schoolmaster’s colt, he was furious. But later, when neighbors marveled at the boy’s skill, he boasted and bragged about it: “All that boy knows about horses he got from me!”
The truth of the matter was that in watching his father train a colt Joel had learned what not to do, as well as what to do. While his father could break and train in a matter of hours, his horses often seemed broken in spirit, too. The boy was determined that this should not happen to his colt. And it had not. Little Bub’s eyes were still dancy. He still tossed his mane and nosed the sky. He still had a frisky look about him. No, he had lost none of his spirit.
Even in the rough winds of winter, the colt’s schooling went right on, night after night. And about the time when Joel began to think Little Bub might be his forever, a stranger came knocking at the schoolhouse door.
School was in full session. A dozen apprentice boys were bent over their copybooks. As if on one stem, a dozen heads turned around.
Master Morgan pushed his spectacles up on his forehead, brushed the chalk off his vest, and went to the door. “Come in, sir,” he said.
A tall, gaunt man entered and sat down on the splint-bottomed chair which the schoolmaster offered. “Good evening,” he said in a voice that rolled out strong. “I’m Ezra Fisk, a new settler, and word has come to my ear that you have a horse to rent.”
Eleven pens stopped scratching and eleven pairs of eyes looked up with interest. Joel’s pen skated wildly across the page as if his arm had been jolted out of its socket.
“You will continue with your work,” the schoolmaster nodded to the boys. He could not bring himself to answer the man’s question at once.
Mister Fisk filled in the silence that followed. “I’ve been watching a lad ride a smallish horse in the moonlight,” he said in his trumpet of a voice, “and by inquiring at the inn, I understand the horse belongs to you, sir.”
Justin Morgan made a steeple out of his fingers. His Yes was spoken through tight lips.
“You see,” the newcomer explained, “I have a piece of wooded land along the White River. And Robert Evans, my hired hand, will need a horse to help clear it. This fellow, Evans, is a brawny man, and I figure he and a horse with some get-up-and-git could clear the land in a year’s time.”
Master Morgan hesitated a long moment before he spoke. “You would like to buy the horse, sir?”
“Tsk, tsk, Morgan. No, indeed! Who would buy such a little animal? As I said, I merely wish to rent him.”
The schoolmaster stood up and looked questioningly at Joel. Ezra Fisk followed his glance. “That the boy who’s been riding the colt?”
“Aye,” Master Morgan said very softly. “And for his sake I am loathe to part with the animal.”
The visitor now lowered his voice, too. “I understand,” he said, leaning one arm on the desk, “that you are paid sometimes in Indian corn and sometimes the full sum of two dollars per week. Yet even the latter amount,” he added knowingly, “covers no such extras as horses and harpsichords.”
Joel sat forward, holding his breath, trying to hear the next words.
“But I, my good man,” and now the voice waxed strong again, “stand ready to pay fifteen dollars a year, and the animal’s keep, of course.”
He said no more.
The noise of the scratching pens faded away. A stray flutter of smoke went up the chimney with a faint hiss. Joel was afraid he was going to cry. He wanted to run to Little Bub and hide him away somewhere deep in the woods. Perhaps this was all a bad dream. It must be a bad dream! Why else would his head drop forward in a nod, answering Yes to the schoolmaster’s unspoken question?
The next afternoon Joel was setting a log in the sawmill when he heard the creaking of a wagon wheel and the cloppety-clop of hoofs coming down the road. This in itself was nothing to make him stop work, but from the uneven beat of the hoofs he could tell that the animals were not traveling in a team. And then, without looking up, he knew. He knew that the lighter hoofbeats were those of Little Bub. He started the saw, and then he turned and faced the road.
It was Little Bub, all right, not five rods away. He was tied to the back of a wagon pulled by a team of oxen. His reddish coat glinted in the sunlight, and he held his head high, as if he found nothing at all disgraceful in being tied to an oxcart.
The blood hammered in Joel’s head. He might have called out, “Hi, Little Bub!” and felt the hot pride of having him nicker in reply. Instead, he kept hearing the schoolmaster’s words: “I’ve got to pay off my debts before I die. Will you gentle the colt for me, lad?”
Well, Bub had been gentled, all right. Anyone could see that. With a heavy heart, Joel watched the procession as it passed him by, and then clattered over the log bridge and climbed up and up the steep hill. At last it disappeared over the brow, and nothing was left of it. Nothing, but a wisp of dust.
