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BONNIE PRINCE FETLAR
MARSHALL SAUNDERS
Come, walk the open road with us,
Far out beyond the town,
Where all the winds of Arcady
Go wandering up and down.
If problems vex, if cares perplex,
O leave them all behind.
Step lightly here, with vision clear,
And free, inquiring mind.
LILIAN LEVERIDGE.
BONNIE PRINCE FETLAR
THE STORY OF A PONY AND HIS FRIENDS
BY
MARSHALL SAUNDERS
AUTHOR OF "BEAUTIFUL JOE," "THE WANDERING DOG," ETC.
[Illustration: Logo]
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1920,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE BOY WITH THE PALE EYES 9
II THE MAN AND THE BOY 19
III THREE FRIENDS ON DEER TRAIL 27
IV THE WOLF AND THE LAMB 39
V A COWARD STANDS ASIDE 52
VI THE BELOVED LIAR 62
VII PRIZE PIGS AND THEIR DOG FRIENDS 77
VIII A GREAT SECRET 95
IX CASSOWARY TRIES MY PACES 107
X EARLY MORNING ON DEVERING FARM 118
XI ANOTHER LIE 134
XII THE DRIVE TO THE GAME WARDEN'S 148
XIII BOLSHY THE RUSSIAN 168
XIV THE WHITE PHANTOM 180
XV A NIGHT PROWLER 191
XVI THE HIGHLANDER WALKS 202
XVII A MYSTERIOUS LAMB 210
XVIII THE ARRIVAL OF THE PONIES 220
XIX CASSOWARY LOSES HER TEMPER ONCE 229
XX CASSOWARY LOSES HER TEMPER TWICE 241
XXI A FLIGHT BY NIGHT 253
XXII BACK TO THE HOME STABLE 264
XXIII MY MASTER LOSES GROUND 275
XXIV THE MOTHER MYSTERY 287
XXV WE HAUNT THE WOODS 297
XXVI THE GREEN LADY AND THE BROWN MAN 310
XXVII FATHER, MOTHER AND CHILD 319
XXVIII THE FIRE AT WIDOW DETOVER'S 325
XXIX A RUSSIAN PRINCESS 330
XXX AN END AND A BEGINNING 341
BONNIE PRINCE FETLAR
CHAPTER I
THE BOY WITH THE PALE EYES
One day early this last summer I was feeling rather puzzled and
surprised.
I am a black Shetland pony brought up mostly in cities and lovely open
country places, and here was I shut up in a wild hilly spot miles from
any human being except a few settlers.
I wasn't worried. I am a middle-aged pony and have seen enough of life
to know that it does not pay to get stirred up about mysteries for
invariably time straightens them all out.
I was just curious and amused and a little bored. No one was going to
hurt me. I was sure of that. I am worth a great deal of money, but why I
had been toted from down South to New York, and from New York to a
Canadian stock farm and from the stock farm away up here to this
out-of-the-way place in the woods was a problem to me.
I didn't like being shut up this fine day, and I didn't understand the
reason for it. In the distance were children, a whole flock of them
giggling and carrying on and probably crazy to get on my back, but they
were being kept away from me.
"Well," I thought, "I'd better take a little nap while I'm waiting for
this tangle to straighten itself out," and I was just turning my head to
the wall of my log-house stable and drooping my head when there was a
slight noise from the direction of the doorway.
At first I was not going to look round. I thought, "Oh! it's only one of
the calves from the barnyard. They've been gaping at me ever since I
came. What's the use of looking at them. Not one of them understands a
Shetland pony."
However, I did at last turn my head. Anything to pass away the time in
this dull place. To my surprise, it was not a calf but a boy that stood
in the doorway, evidently a city boy for he was smartly dressed and not
clad in overalls like the children in the distance, or poor clothes like
the children in the few log cabins we had passed on the way to this
lonely place.
He was a white-faced lad with light brown hair and pale eyes. I never
saw such eyes before except in the head of a cat. They were greenish in
hue and they grew bigger and darker as he stared at me. He seemed to be
looking right through me at something in the background, and, if I
hadn't known there wasn't a thing in the cabin except a couple of deer
mice that he couldn't possibly see, I would have looked behind me to
find out what he was staring at.
His expression was all right. I divide boys into two classes--kind and
cruel. This lad was good-hearted whatever else he might be, and he
wouldn't hurt a pony.
If he was from the city he spoke my language, and I advanced a bit
toward him and stretched out my neck agreeably.
To my amazement he gave a leap backward.
"Oh! excuse me," he stammered, "I'm a bit cut up. I've had a long
trip--I didn't know but what you were going to bite."
I curled my lip in a pony smile. Who was he and where did he come from,
not to know that a Shetland pony is the soul of good nature. How
different he was from those brown-faced young ones outside who looked as
if they feared neither man nor beast.
Well, I could do nothing more. It was for him to make the advances, and
I examined him more carefully.
He was very much excited. His hands were clenched, his young breast was
heaving, and he had red spots over his cheek bones. I believed that he
had run up here because he thought he was going to cry.
I have had many young masters and my rôle is to keep quiet at first and
see how they treat me. So I just took a nip of hay, and gave him time to
get his nerves together for they seemed to be at pretty loose ends.
He was shuddering now. What was the trouble? I looked over my shoulder
and saw that someone had been killing a sheep and had hung up its
streaked skin on the logs. Well, men have to eat sheep and if they kill
them mercifully I suppose there is no harm in it, but what a sensitive
lad this must be. I rather liked this tenderness in him. It's hard to
die, even if you're only a sheep.
I whinnied sympathetically, and he said quite nicely and as if I were a
person, "You have a very good place here."
I tried not to curl my lip again. If he could have seen the handsomely
appointed quarters I had been used to--the paved floors and fine stalls!
Poor lad! where had he been brought up to think this rough log cabin of
some early backwoodsman a suitable place for a Shetland pony?
However I was not complaining. I was comfortable enough in the mild July
weather. I have been used to roughing it in a nice way with some of my
rich masters, but I certainly wouldn't like to put in a winter here with
those daylight chinks between the big logs.
I wished the boy would let me out. What a stupid he was not to take me
for a good gallop. Advancing very cautiously lest I should frighten him
again, I pressed a shoulder against the half door of the cabin.
He understood. Very cautiously he lifted the bar, and creeping like a
house mouse, not leaping like my deer mice, I placed myself beside him.
Now he could see that I wasn't a lion or a tiger to eat him up.
"Pony-Boy," he said in a trembling voice, "what do you want?"
"I want exercise, you young snail," I tried to tell him by starting
slowly up the gentle slope of the barnyard, and then turning to look
round at him.
The sheep were pasturing away up on the hill. I would lead him toward
them for I guessed that he would not be afraid of them. Those lively
children in the distance would probably jolly the life out of him.
His green eyes glistened. He understood me once more, and a most
beautiful smile broke over his face. That smile was like the opening of
a window in his boy soul. He was a queer acting lad, but he had--Oh! I'm
only a pony and I can't describe it. Anyway it was something that makes
us animals worship certain people. If he chose, he could be my master. I
would certainly be his slave.
I tossed my head and acted quite frisky. "Come on, boy," I tried to say
to him, "be a sport. Have a little run. 'Twill bring some color to your
pale cheeks."
"Stop a minute," he called suddenly, "I want to get my bearings."
I stared at him as he stood--delicate, eager, his pale eyes glistening
with some new emotion.
"We are on the borders of a long beautiful lake," he said, "which is
shaped like an hour-glass."
I didn't know what an hour-glass was, but I guessed that it was like the
egg-glasses I have seen cooks use when I've been looking in kitchen
windows to watch them time the boiling of eggs.
"We are at the waist of the glass," he said, "and all round us are vast
hills clad with forests. Here a clearing has been made, and someone has
built a beautiful long low house with ivy-clad verandas."
How nicely the boy talked and how prettily he waved his slender arm, and
I kept on gazing at him in admiration.
"Also," he went on, "there is a smooth lawn about the house with flower
beds and shrubbery, a driveway leading to the road along the lake and
another driveway leading to a big barn painted red with a queer high
round thing at the end."
That was a silo to store green food for the cattle, but I could not tell
him.
"Beside the big red barn," he said, "is a little brown barn and a number
of out-buildings. I don't know what they are. It is a fine place anyway,
and must, I think, belong to my father's friend who invited me here--now
let us go up to this wide pasture where you were leading me."
I gladly went ahead of him and he was following me quite nicely when
suddenly he stopped.
"Pony-Boy," he said, "I hate these forests with their sour-faced trees."
This was a new thought to me and I turned it over in my mind.
"They've got brains in their tossing heads," he said. "They used to be
wicked giants and some great power turned them into these wooden things
with waving arms that beg us to come in and be choked to death."
What kind of a boy was this, I wondered. He talked something like a
girl and something like a lad who had always had his nose in a
story-book. Well, he wasn't dull anyway. I love to have boys talk to me.
Some of them treat me as if I were an animated rocking-horse with no
brains at all. So I stepped along quite happily while he went on talking
to himself.
"I wonder why my father let me come here. This bird of mystery has
certainly flown to one queer place. The whole trip was owlish. After I
left the cities there were forests like these, then lakes and rivers and
more lakes and rivers. Then that awful drive in a democrat over rocks
and rills and corduroy roads. My bones are most racked apart."
So that was why he didn't want to ride me, I thought. Poor lad! he was
tired.
"Pony-Boy," he said, laying a timid finger on the tip of one of my ears,
"I'm not afraid exactly, but I don't like spooky woods and queer silent
waiting people. That old settler who drove me in wouldn't open his mouth
and his name is Talker--what do you think of that?"
I was amused. This queer man had brought me in the evening before tied
to the tail of his cart. He had taken me from a steamer that came to a
big lake, and all the way in he had said nothing but "Get up" to his old
grey mare, who had not deigned to pass the time of day with me. They
were a pair--but I must listen to the boy who was speaking quite
earnestly now.
"Why in the name of old King Log did my father send me to spend the
summer in this eerie place? Is there no country air south of these wads
of Canadian forest?"
I shook my head. How could I tell anything about his father? I had never
seen him. He must be a peculiar man though, if his son did not dare to
ask him the reason for things.
The lad was venturing now to lay his hand on my head. "Pony-Boy, I've
never had a pet as big as you. I live in a city, and my friends are
small creatures like dogs and cats and mice and rats."
As if he thought I was wondering whether he had no boy friends he went
on slowly, "My father says that human beings may go back on you, but an
animal never does."
I pawed the grass thoughtfully. This boy had been brought up in a queer
way. I'm sorry for boys and girls when they're puzzled and unhappy--boys
especially because I've been more with them. What this lad wanted to do
now was to get his mind off himself. He was travelling about right
inside of his little home cage.
I cautiously touched my muzzle to his shoulder, then glanced at the
sheep.
He was pretty quick to respond and broke into a nice boyish laugh, but a
rather subdued one as if he had been hushed up a good bit.
"Isn't he a caution," he said, pointing to the old ram, who, after one
terrified look at us two strangers, was leading the ewes in and out
among the magnificent old trees scattered about the hillside.
"He's going to hide them in the forest back there," said the boy. "He
doesn't trust us. Poor animals--they run no risks."
I was delighted. This boy was a brother to us of the lower creation, but
why had he been afraid of me? Possibly it was because he was not used to
being with animals, though in his soul he loved them.
"I'm so tired," he said suddenly, and he flopped down on a big flat rock
which was very pleasant and warm in the sunshine.
"_Squattez vous_, Pony," he said, and to be agreeable I lay down, for I
have not the objection to doubling my legs under me that some members of
the horse family have.
"I'm sure out of the world," he was murmuring as he gazed at the blue
waters of the long lake spread out before us. "Of course I've seen
mountains and hills in the distance before, but I never got right up
among them. Pony-Boy, I'm the queerest kid you ever saw."
"You sure are," I thought, but of course I could say nothing.
His attention wandered from the lake to me. "I've often seen ponies like
you in parks and on the streets, but I've never been so near one. Oh! I
wish I had a pony of my own, but I suppose you cost a good deal of
money."
I certainly did, but there was no reason why he should know just how
much. I don't like to hear a lad counting up the cost of everything.
"I shouldn't think a settler away up here could afford you," he said.
"You look like A, number one stock."
I twitched my ears backward and forward as I have a way of doing when
I'm puzzled. Old Talker couldn't own this place. I had my suspicions
that the whole thing was the fad of some rich man. My log cabin was the
only rough thing on the place. The barns, hen-houses, ice-house,
root-house, carriage-house and the flower garden in front and the
vegetable garden at the back were as up-to-date as if they were right
down in my original home in the State of New York.
These sheep running away from us were of standard stock, and the evening
before I had seen a fine herd of Holstein cows and some of the best bred
pigs I had ever come across.
Someone was trying an experiment up on these Highlands. Perhaps it was
the tall man I had just seen coming out of the house and joining the
children.
The boy did not see him. He was lying on the rock, his face propped on
his hands.
"You're talking with your ears, Pony," he said. "I'll bet you want to
know all about me--who I am, where I come from, and why in the mischief
I came up here. Well, as I told you, I'm in a class by myself, for my
father won't allow me to associate with anyone but himself and our two
old servants, John and Margie. Ever since I was a little boy, someone
has been trying to kidnap me. Now what do you think of that?"