Miss Elliot's Girls Part 10

"Fast enough for a boy to ride. From five to seven miles an hour, perhaps, and keep it up all day, if need be, for the Canadian horses have great strength and endurance. The last time I saw Herbert he told me a pretty story about Elf King."

"Is that his name?"

"Yes; isn't it a pretty name? Elf for fairy, you know, and King for the head of the fairies. But perhaps I am keeping you, boys. Is there any thing you ought to be doing at home?"

"No, no!" both answered together, and Sammy answered that he did up all his ch.o.r.es before he came away.

"Very well; then I will tell you about Elf King's visit to the blacksmith."

"Instead of next Wednesday?"

"Oh, dear, no! I have a long story for next Wednesday. This is very short, and doesn't count; is just a little private entertainment thrown in on our own account."

Roy, who had all this time sat uncomfortably on the edge of his chair, settled back, and Sammy made use of his favorite expression:--

"All right!"

"When Elf King came into Herbert's possession he had never been shod; but very soon he was taken to the village blacksmith and four funny little shoes fitted to his feet, which, when he was accustomed to, he liked very much.

"One day the blacksmith saw the pony trotting up to his shop without a halter. He supposed the little thing had strayed from home, and drove him off, and when he refused to go, threw stones at him to make him run away. But in a few moments back he came again. When the blacksmith went out a second time to drive him off he noticed his feet and saw that one shoe was missing. So he made a shoe, the pony standing by, quietly waiting. When the new shoe was fitted Elf King pawed two or three times to see if it felt comfortable, gave a pleased little neigh, as much as to say, 'Yes, that's all right; thank you!' and started for home on a brisk trot.

"Think how surprised and pleased Herbert was when he went to the stable to ride Elf King to the blacksmith's, to find that the sharp little pony had taken the business into his own hands."

"I tell you," said Roy, "that's a horse worth having. What do you suppose that boy would take for him?"

"More money than you could raise in a hurry," said Sammy. "Miss Ruth, if you had a horse now that jibbed, would you lick him?"

"That jibbed," she repeated doubtfully.

"Why, yes; stopped in the road, you know; wouldn't go."

"Oh, yes; now I understand. No, indeed, Sammy! If I had a horse that--jibbed, I should be very patient with him and try to cure him of the bad habit by kindness. I should know that beating would make him worse."

"Well, that's what I think, and the other day pa and I were huskin' corn in the barn, and there was a horse jibbed on our hill, and the driver got down and licked him with the b.u.t.t end of his whip, and kicked him with his great cowhide boots, and I asked pa if I might take out a measure of oats and see if I couldn't coax that horse to take his load up the hill--you see pa owned a jibber once and I knew how he used to manage him. And pa said I might, only I'd better look out or the fellow would use me as he was usin' the horse. But I wasn't afraid, for he was half-drunk, and I knew I could clip it faster'n he could.

"Well, sir, I went out there and I stood around a while, and says I, 'What'll you bet I can't get your horse to the top of the hill?' And he said he wouldn't bet a red cent. 'Well,' says I,'will you let me try just for fun?' and he said, 'Yes, I might try all day if I wanted to.'

And I got him to stand one side, where the horse couldn't see him, and I went up to the horse's head and stroked his nose and gave him a handful of oats, just a little taste, you know, and when he was kind of calmed down I went a ways ahead holdin' out the measure of oats, and if that horse didn't follow me up that hill just as quiet as an old sheep, and the man he stood by and looked streaked, I tell you!"

Sammy told his story with considerable animation and some forcible gestures.

"That was well done," said Miss Ruth, "and I hope the cruel fellow profited by the lesson you gave him. I don't think I'm naturally vindictive, but when I see a man beating a horse I find myself wis.h.i.+ng I was strong enough to s.n.a.t.c.h the whip from him and lay it well about his own shoulders. But come, boys, the fire is down to coals--just right for popping corn. Sammy, you know the way to the kitchen. Ask Lovina for the corn-popper and a dish, and, Roy, you'll find a paper bag full of corn in the cupboard yonder. Quick, now, and we'll have the dish piled by the time Susie and Mollie are back from meeting."

"Haven't we had a gay old time," said Roy, on the way home, "and ain't you glad I put you up to coming, Sam Ray?" And Sammy admitted that he was.

"Now, girls and boys," said Miss Ruth, on the next Wednesday afternoon, "I am going to take you on a long journey,--in fancy, I mean,--over the hills and plains and valleys, to the country of the Far West, with its rolling prairies and big fields of wheat and corn. You shall be set down in a green meadow, with a stream running through it, shallow and clear at this time of year, but a little later, when the September rains have filled it, rus.h.i.+ng along full of deep, muddy water.

"Under a big oak in about the middle of the pasture you will find an old horse feeding. He is fat and sleepy looking, and has a kind face, and a white spot on his forehead. This is Old Star, Farmer Horton's family-horse. You may pat his neck and stroke his nose and feed him a cookie or a bit of gingerbread,--I am afraid the old fellow hasn't teeth enough left to chew an apple,--and then you may sit near him on the gra.s.s, and while I read aloud to you, fancy that he is talking, and, if you have plenty of imagination, you will get

THE STORY OF OLD STAR, TOLD BY HIMSELF.

"I hope n.o.body thinks I am turned out in this pasture because I am too old to work. Horses pa.s.s here every day drawing heavy loads, older by half a dozen years than I am, poor broken-down hacks too, most of them, while I--well, if it wasn't for a little stiffness in the joints and a giving out of wind, now and then, I can't see but what I'm as well able to travel as I ever was.

"The fact is, I never was put to hard work. There were always horses enough besides me on the place to do the farm work and the teaming--Tom and Jerry and the colt, you know; not Filly's colt: he died, poor thing, before he was a year old, of that disease with a long name that carried off so many horses all over the country: but a great shambling big-boned beast old master swapped a yoke of steers for, over to Skipton Mills. We called him Goliath, he was so tall: strong as an elephant, too: a powerful hand at a horse-rake and mowing-machine. Well, well, how time flies, to be sure! He's been dead and gone these five years, and Tom and Jerry, they were used up long ago--there's a deal of hard work to be done on a farm of this size, I can tell you; and as to Filly, she came to a sad end, for she got mired down in the low pasture, and had to be hauled out with ropes, poor critter, and died of the wet and the cold.

"Well, as I was saying, I never was put to hard work. I was born and raised on the place, and I do suppose--though I say it, who shouldn't--that I was an uncommon fine--looking colt, dark chestnut in color, and not a white hair on me except this spot in my forehead that gave me my name. When I was three months old, master made a present of me to his oldest boy on his sixteenth birthday, and every half-hour Master Fred could spare from his work, he used to spend in dressing down and feeding me and teaching me cunning tricks. I could take an apple or a lump of sugar from his pocket, walk down the slope behind the barn on two legs, with my forefeet on his shoulders, and shake hands, old master used to say, 'just like a Christian.'

"Master Fred set great store by me, as well he might. He's traveled hundreds of miles on my back over the prairies, and we've been out together many a dark night when he'd drop the lines on my neck and say, "Well, Star, go ahead if you know the way, for not one inch can I see before my nose." That was after he learned by experience that I knew better than he did where to go, and when to stop going. For he lost his temper and called me hard names one night, when I stopped short in the middle of the road and wouldn't budge an inch for voice or whip, with the wind blowing a gale, and the rain coming down in bucketsful. But when a flash of lightning showed the bridge before us clean washed away, and only a few feet between us and the steep bank of the river, Master Fred changed his tune. Afraid! not I; but I'm willing to own I _was_ a little scared the day we got into the water down by Cook's Cove, for you see I was. .h.i.tched to the buggy and the lines got tangled about my legs, and there were chunks of ice and lots of driftwood floating about, and the current sucking me down; but master had got to sh.o.r.e and stood on the bank calling, "This way, Star, this way!" and when I heard his voice I--well, I don't know how I managed to do it, but I turned square round and swam upstream with the buggy behind me, and got safe and sound to land. I've heard Master Fred say my back was covered with river-gra.s.s, and I trembled all over with the fright and the hard pull.

"But, dear me, all that happened long ago when master was courting old Tim Bunce's daughter Martha, down Stony Creek Road. How that girl did take to me! She used to say she knew the sound of my hoofs on the road, of a still night, when we were a mile away; and she'd say over a little rhyme she'd got hold of somehow:--

'Star, Star, good and bright, I wish you may and I wish you might Bring somebody to me I want to see to-night.'

"If she said that twice, looking straight down the road, she told us we were sure to come. She was a plump rosy-cheeked girl when Master Fred brought her to be mistress here, though you mightn't think it to see her now, what with the cooking and the dairy-work and raising a big family of children. But if you want to know what mistress was like twenty years ago, you've only to look at our Ada.

"Now, there's a girl for you, as good as she is pretty, and getting to be a woman grown; though I remember, as though it happened yesterday, her mother's coming out one spring day to where I was nibbling gra.s.s in the door-yard, with her baby in her arms, and holding up the little thing to me, and saying, 'This is Ada, Star,--you must be good friends with Ada,' Friends! I should say so. Before that child was a year old, she used to cry to be held on my back for a ride, and when she was getting better of the scarlet fever, she kept saying, 'Me 'ant to tee ole 'Tar,' till, to pacify her, they led me to the open window of the room where she lay, and she reached her mite of a hand from the bed to stroke my nose and give me the lump of sugar she had saved for me under her pillow.

"Bless the child! And it was just so with all the rest, Tim and Martha and Fred and Jenny and baby May--there was a new baby in that house every year. Those young ones would crawl over me, and sit on me, when I was lying down in the stable; ride me, three or four at a time, without bridle or saddle, and cling to my neck and tail when there was no room left on my back. They shared their apples and gingerbread with me, and brought me goodies on a plate sometimes so that I might eat my dinner, they said, 'like the rest of the folks,' I fetched them to and from school, and trotted every day to the post-office and the Corners to do the family errands; and when our Ada was old enough to be trusted to drive, the whole lot of them would pile into the carryall, and away we would go for a long ride, through the lanes and the shady woods that border the pond, stopping a dozen times for the girls to clamber out and pick the wild posies and for the boys to skip stones or wade in the water. For _I_ was in no hurry to go on. There was plenty of tender gra.s.s to be cropped by the roadside, and the young leaves of the maples and white birch were sweet and juicy.

"'Take good care of them, Star,' mistress used to say, standing in the door-way to see us off; 'you have a precious load, but we trust you, kind, faithful old friend,'

"And so she might. I knew I must just creep down the hills with those children behind me, and never stop for a drink at Rocky Brook, though I were ever so thirsty, because of the sharp pitch down to the watering-trough. And though from having been scared nearly to death, when I was a colt, by a wheelbarrow in the road, I always _have_ to shy a little when I see one, our Ada will tell you, if you ask her, that in the circ.u.mstances, I behaved very well.

"_She_ behaved well. She always chose the well-traveled roads, and gave me plenty of room to turn. Once, I remember, they all wanted to take a short cut by way of an old corduroy road; and though, if master had been driving, I should have made no objection, and, as like as not, with a little jolting and pitching, we should have got safe over, I didn't feel like taking the responsibility, with all those young ones along, of going that way; so I tried to make our Ada understand the state of my mind, and after a while she did; for she said: 'Well, Star, if you don't want to draw us over those logs, I'm not going to make you,' Now, wasn't that sensible?

"Well, if I was proud and happy to be trusted with master's family on week-days, think how I must have felt of a Sunday morning in the summer time, with mistress dressed in her silk gown, and our Ada in muslin and pink ribbons, and the boys in their best clothes, and master riding along-side on Tom or Jerry, all going to meeting together. I liked hearing the bells ring, and I liked being hitched under the maple-trees, with all the neighbors' horses to keep me company. We generally dozed while the folks were indoors, and woke up brisk and lively, and started for home in procession.

"But, dear! dear! there came a time when, with five horses on the farm, not one could be had to give the children a ride or to do a stroke of work, when master had to foot it to the Corners, and the two steers, Old Poke and Eyebright, dragged mistress and the children to meeting in the ox-cart.

"For we were all down with the epizootic, coughing and sneezing enough to take our heads off, and so sick and low, some of us, that we couldn't stand in our stalls, and a man with a red face, Master Fred had over from Skipton Mills, pouring nasty stuff down our throats, and making us swallow big black b.a.l.l.s of medicine that hurt as they went down--as if we hadn't enough to suffer before! But our Jenny came to the stable with a piece of pork-rind, and a bandage she'd made out of her little red-flannel petticoat, and she wanted Master Fred to put it on my neck; for, says she: 'That's what ma put on me when I had the sore throat,'--the blessed child!

"Well, we all pulled through except Filly's colt. He keeled over one morning, poor fellow! and was dragged out and buried under the oaks in the high pasture. But for some reason, I didn't pick up as quick as the others. The cough held on, and I was pestered for breath, and I didn't get back my strength; and what I ate didn't seem to fatten me up much, for Master Fred says one day, laughing, 'Well, Old Star, we've saved your skin and bones, and that's about all!' However, I got round again, only my legs had a bad habit of giving way under me, without the least bit of warning.

"Our Ada did all she could to keep me up, holding a tight rein, and saying, 'Steady, Star! steady!' when she saw any signs of stumbling. But trying to keep from it seemed to make me do it all the more, and down I would come on my poor knees and spill those children out of the wagon, like blackberries from a full basket.

"One day, after this had happened, master told our Ada she was not to drive me any more, and before I had got over feeling bad about that, there came some thing a great deal worse; for I was standing by the pump in the backyard one day, and master and mistress were in the porch, and I heard him tell her he had had an offer from Jones the milkman, to buy me. 'Twould be an easy place, and he'd promised to treat me well, and he'd about made up his mind to take up with it; for he couldn't afford to keep a horse on the place that--well, I don't care to repeat the rest of the speech. 'Twas rather hard on me, but I haven't laid it up against master. Fact is, he had a deal to worry him about that time, for he was disappointed in the wheat crop, and the heavy rains had damaged his corn, and he was feeling mighty poor.

"But mistress was up in arms in a minute. 'What, sell Star!' says she, 'our good, faithful Star, who's been in the family ever since you were a boy! and to Ki Jones to peddle milk round Skipton Mills and Hull Station! O pa!' says mistress, says she, 'have we got down so low as that? Why 't would break our Ada's heart, and mine too, to see Star hitched to a milk-cart. Rather than have you do that, says she, 'I'll go in rags, and keep the children on mush and mola.s.ses;' and she put her ap.r.o.n to her eyes.

"'Well, well, don't fret!' says master,--and I thought he looked kind o'

ashamed,--'I haven't sold him yet I've a notion to turn him out to gra.s.s a while, and see what that'll do for him,' So the next day he put me in this pasture.

"You see that plank bridge yonder, over the creek? That's where our Ada fell into the water. Master has put up a railing, and made all safe since the accident happened. 'T was a risky place always, though the children have crossed it hundreds of times, and none of them ever tumbled over before.

"But I hadn't been here a week, when one suns.h.i.+ny afternoon our Ada came through the pasture, on her way to visit the sick Simmonses--there's always some of that tribe down with the chills. She came running up to me--her little basket, full of goodies, on her arm,--stopped to talk a minute and feed me an apple, and then pa.s.sed along, while I went on nibbling gra.s.s, till I heard a scream and a splash, and knew, all in a minute, she must have fallen off the plank bridge into the water. Dear!

dear! what was to be done? I ran to the fence, and looked up and down the road. Some men were burning brush at the far end of the next field.

I galloped toward them, and back again to the creek, and whinnied and snorted, and tried my best to make them understand that they were needed; but they didn't appear to notice, and I just made up my mind, that if any thing was done to save our Ada from drowning, I was the one to do it.