I
Penrod and Sam made a gloomy discovery one morning in mid-October. All
the week had seen amiable breezes and fair skies until Saturday, when,
about breakfast-time, the dome of heaven filled solidly with gray vapor
and began to drip. The boys' discovery was that there is no justice
about the weather.
They sat in the carriage-house of the Schofields' empty stable; the
doors upon the alley were open, and Sam and Penrod stared torpidly at
the thin but implacable drizzle which was the more irritating because
there was barely enough of it to interfere with a number of things they
had planned to do.
"Yes; this is _nice_!" Sam said, in a tone of plaintive sarcasm. "This
is a _perty_ way to do!" (He was alluding to the personal spitefulness
of the elements.) "I'd like to know what's the sense of it--ole sun
pourin' down every day in the week when nobody needs it, then cloud up
and rain all Saturday! My father said it's goin' to be a three days'
rain."
"Well, nobody with any sense cares if it rains Sunday and Monday," said
Penrod. "I wouldn't care if it rained every Sunday as long as I lived;
but I just like to know what's the reason it had to go and rain to-day.
Got all the days o' the week to choose from and goes and picks on
Saturday. That's a fine biz'nuss!"
"Well, in vacation----" Sam began, but at a sound from a source
invisible to him he paused. "What's that?" he said, somewhat startled.
It was a curious sound, loud and hollow and unhuman, yet it seemed to
be a cough. Both boys rose, and Penrod asked uneasily, "Where'd that
noise come from?"
"It's in the alley," said Sam.
Perhaps if the day had been bright, both of them would have stepped
immediately to the alley doors to investigate; but their actual
procedure was to move a little distance in the opposite direction. The
strange cough sounded again.
"_Say!_" Penrod quavered. "What _is_ that?"
Then both boys uttered smothered exclamations and jumped, for the long,
gaunt head which appeared in the doorway was entirely unexpected. It
was the cavernous and melancholy head of an incredibly thin, old,
whitish horse. This head waggled slowly from side to side; the nostrils
vibrated; the mouth opened, and the hollow cough sounded again.
Recovering themselves, Penrod and Sam underwent the customary human
reaction from alarm to indignation.
"What you want, you ole horse, you?" Penrod shouted. "Don't you come
coughin' around _me_!"
And Sam, seizing a stick, hurled it at the intruder.
"Get out o' here!" he roared.
The aged horse nervously withdrew his head, turned tail, and made a
rickety flight up the alley, while Sam and Penrod, perfectly obedient
to inherited impulse,[21-1] ran out into the drizzle and uproariously
pursued. They were but automatons of instinct,[21-2] meaning no evil.
Certainly they did not know the singular and pathetic history of the
old horse who had wandered into the alley and ventured to look through
the open door.
This horse, about twice the age of either Penrod or Sam, had lived to
find himself in a unique position. He was nude, possessing neither
harness nor halter; all he had was a name, Whitey, and he would have
answered to it by a slight change of expression if any one had thus
properly addressed him. So forlorn was Whitey's case, he was actually
an independent horse; he had not even an owner. For two days and a half
he had been his own master.
Previous to that period he had been the property of one Abalene Morris,
a person of color, who would have explained himself as engaged in the
hauling business. On the contrary, the hauling business was an
insignificant side line with Mr. Morris, for he had long ago given
himself, as utterly as fortune permitted, to that talent which, early
in youth, he had recognized as the greatest of all those surging in his
bosom. In his waking thoughts and in his dreams, in health and in
sickness, Abalene Morris was the dashing and emotional practitioner of
an art[22-1] probably more than Roman in antiquity. Abalene was a
crap-shooter. The hauling business was a disguise.
A concentration of events had brought it about that, at one and the
same time, Abalene, after a dazzling run of the dice, found the hauling
business an actual danger to the preservation of his liberty. He won
seventeen dollars and sixty cents, and within the hour found himself in
trouble with an officer of the Humane Society on account of an
altercation with Whitey. Abalene had been offered four dollars for
Whitey some ten days earlier; wherefore he at once drove to the shop of
the junk-dealer who had made the offer and announced his acquiescence
in the sacrifice.
"_No_, suh!" said the junk-dealer, with emphasis. "I awready done got
me a good mule fer my deliv'ry-hoss, 'n'at ole Whitey hoss ain' wuff no
fo' dollah nohow! I 'uz a fool when I talk 'bout th'owin' money roun'
that a-way. I know what _you_ up to, Abalene. Man come by here li'l bit
ago tole me all 'bout white man try to 'rest you, ovah on the avvynoo.
Yessuh; he say white man goin' to git you yit an' th'ow you in jail
'count o' Whitey. White man tryin' to fine out who you _is_. He say,
nemmine, he'll know Whitey ag'in, even if he don' know you! He say he
ketch you by the hoss; so you come roun' tryin' fix me up with Whitey
so white man grab me, th'ow _me_ in 'at jail. G'on 'way f'um hyuh, you
Abalene! You cain' sell an' you cain' give Whitey to no cullud man 'in
'is town. You go an' drowned 'at ole hoss, 'cause you sutny goin' to
jail if you git ketched drivin' him."
The substance of this advice seemed good to Abalene, especially as the
seventeen dollars and sixty cents in his pocket lent sweet colors to
life out of jail at this time. At dusk he led Whitey to a broad common
at the edge of town, and spoke to him finally.
"G'on 'bout you biz'nis," said Abalene; "you ain' _my_ hoss. Don' look
roun' at me, 'cause _I_ ain' got no 'quaintance wif you. I'm a man o'
money, an' I got my own frien's; I'm a-lookin' fer bigger cities, hoss.
You got you' biz'nis an' I got mine. Mista' Hoss, good-night!"
Whitey found a little frosted grass upon the common and remained there
all night. In the morning he sought the shed where Abalene had kept
him, but that was across the large and busy town, and Whitey was
hopelessly lost. He had but one eye; a feeble one; and his legs were
not to be depended upon; but he managed to cover a great deal of
ground, to have many painful little adventures, and to get monstrously
hungry and thirsty before he happened to look in upon Penrod and Sam.
When the two boys chased him up the alley, they had no intention to
cause pain; they had no intention at all. They were no more cruel than
Duke, Penrod's little old dog, who followed his own instincts, and,
making his appearance hastily through a hole in the back fence, joined
the pursuit with sound and fury. A boy will nearly always run after
anything that is running, and his first impulse is to throw a stone at
it. This is a survival of primeval man, who must take every chance to
get his dinner. So, when Penrod and Sam drove the hapless Whitey up the
alley, they were really responding to an impulse thousands and
thousands of years old--an impulse founded upon the primordial
observation that whatever runs is likely to prove edible. Penrod and
Sam were not "bad"; they were never that. They were something which was
not their fault; they were historic.
At the next corner Whitey turned to the right into the cross-street;
thence, turning to the right again and still warmly pursued, he
zigzagged down a main thoroughfare until he reached another
cross-street, which ran alongside the Schofields' yard and brought him
to the foot of the alley he had left behind in his flight. He entered
the alley, and there his dim eye fell upon the open door he had
previously investigated. No memory of it remained, but the place had a
look associated in his mind with hay, and as Sam and Penrod turned the
corner of the alley in panting yet still vociferous pursuit, Whitey
stumbled up the inclined platform before the open doors, staggered
thunderously across the carriage-house and through another open door
into a stall, an apartment vacant since the occupancy of Mr.
Schofield's last horse, now several years deceased.