The two boys shrieked with excitement as they beheld the coincidence of
this strange return. They burst into the stable, making almost as much
noise as Duke, who had become frantic at the invasion. Sam laid hands
upon a rake.
“You get out o' there, you ole horse, you!” he bellowed. “I ain't afraid
to drive him out. I--”
“WAIT a minute!” Penrod shouted. “Wait till I--”
Sam was manfully preparing to enter the stall.
“You hold the doors open,” he commanded, “so's they won't blow shut and
keep him in here. I'm goin' to hit him--”
“Quee-YUT!” Penrod shouted, grasping the handle of the rake so that Sam
could not use it. “Wait a MINUTE, can't you?” He turned with ferocious
voice and gestures upon Duke. “DUKE!” And Duke, in spite of his
excitement, was so impressed that he prostrated himself in silence, and
then unobtrusively withdrew from the stable. Penrod ran to the alley
doors and closed them.
“My gracious!” Sam protested. “What you goin' to do?”
“I'm goin' to keep this horse,” said Penrod, whose face showed the
strain of a great idea.
“What FOR?”
“For the reward,” said Penrod simply.
Sam sat down in the wheelbarrow and stared at his friend almost with
awe.
“My gracious,” he said, “I never thought o' that! How--how much do you
think we'll get, Penrod?”
Sam's thus admitting himself to a full partnership in the enterprise
met no objection from Penrod, who was absorbed in the contemplation of
Whitey.
“Well,” he said judicially, “we might get more and we might get less.”
Sam rose and joined his friend in the doorway opening upon the two
stalls. Whitey had preempted the nearer, and was hungrily nuzzling the
old frayed hollows in the manger.
“Maybe a hunderd dollars--or sumpthing?” Sam asked in a low voice.
Penrod maintained his composure and repeated the newfound expression
that had sounded well to him a moment before. He recognized it as a
symbol of the non--committal attitude that makes people looked up to.
“Well”--he made it slow, and frowned--“we might get more and we might
get less.”
“More'n a hunderd DOLLARS?” Sam gasped.
“Well,” said Penrod, “we might get more and we might get less.” This
time, however, he felt the need of adding something. He put a question
in an indulgent tone, as though he were inquiring, not to add to his own
information but to discover the extent of Sam's. “How much do you think
horses are worth, anyway?”
“I don't know,” Sam said frankly, and, unconsciously, he added, “They
might be more and they might be less.”
“Well, when our ole horse died,” Penrod said, “Papa said he wouldn't
taken five hunderd dollars for him. That's how much HORSES are worth!”
“My gracious!” Sam exclaimed. Then he had a practical afterthought. “But
maybe he was a better horse than this'n. What colour was he?”
“He was bay. Looky here, Sam”--and now Penrod's manner changed from
the superior to the eager--“you look what kind of horses they have in a
circus, and you bet a circus has the BEST horses, don't it? Well, what
kind of horses do they have in a circus? They have some black and white
ones; but the best they have are white all over. Well, what kind of a
horse is this we got here? He's perty near white right now, and I bet if
we washed him off and got him fixed up nice he WOULD be white. Well, a
bay horse is worth five hunderd dollars, because that's what Papa said,
and this horse--”
Sam interrupted rather timidly.
“He--he's awful bony, Penrod. You don't guess they'd make any--”
Penrod laughed contemptuously.
“Bony! All he needs is a little food and he'll fill right up and look
good as ever. You don't know much about horses, Sam, I expect. Why, OUR
ole horse--”
“Do you expect he's hungry now?” asked Sam, staring at Whitey.
“Let's try him,” said Penrod. “Horses like hay and oats the best; but
they'll eat most anything.”
“I guess they will. He's tryin' to eat that manger up right now, and I
bet it ain't good for him.”
“Come on,” said Penrod, closing the door that gave entrance to the
stalls. “We got to get this horse some drinkin'-water and some good
food.”
They tried Whitey's appetite first with an autumnal branch that they
wrenched from a hardy maple in the yard. They had seen horses nibble
leaves, and they expected Whitey to nibble the leaves of this
branch; but his ravenous condition did not allow him time for cool
discriminations. Sam poked the branch at him from the passageway, and
Whitey, after one backward movement of alarm, seized it venomously.
“Here! You stop that!” Sam shouted. “You stop that, you ole horse, you!”
“What's the matter?” called Penrod from the hydrant, where he was
filling a bucket. “What's he doin' now?”
“Doin'! He's eatin' the wood part, too! He's chewin' up sticks as big as
baseball bats! He's crazy!”
Penrod rushed to see this sight, and stood aghast.
“Take it away from him, Sam!” he commanded sharply.
“Go on, take it away from him yourself!” was the prompt retort of his
comrade.
“You had no biz'nuss to give it to him,” said Penrod. “Anybody with any
sense ought to know it'd make him sick. What'd you want to go and give
it to him for?”
“Well, you didn't say not to.”
“Well, what if I didn't? I never said I did, did I? You go on in that
stall and take it away from him.”
“YES, I will!” Sam returned bitterly. Then, as Whitey had dragged the
remains of the branch from the manger to the floor of the stall, Sam
scrambled to the top of the manger and looked over. “There ain't much
left to TAKE away! He's swallered it all except some splinters. Better
give him the water to try and wash it down with.” And, as Penrod
complied, “My gracious, look at that horse DRINK!”
They gave Whitey four buckets of water, and then debated the question of
nourishment. Obviously, this horse could not be trusted with branches,
and, after getting their knees black and their backs sodden, they gave
up trying to pull enough grass to sustain him. Then Penrod remembered
that horses like apples, both “cooking-apples” and “eating-apples”, and
Sam mentioned the fact that every autumn his father received a barrel of
“cooking-apples” from a cousin who owned a farm. That barrel was in the
Williams' cellar now, and the cellar was providentially supplied with
“outside doors,” so that it could be visited without going through the
house. Sam and Penrod set forth for the cellar.
They returned to the stable bulging, and, after a discussion of Whitey's
digestion (Sam claiming that eating the core and seeds, as Whitey
did, would grow trees in his inside) they went back to the cellar for
supplies again--and again. They made six trips, carrying each time a
capacity cargo of apples, and still Whitey ate in a famished manner.
They were afraid to take more apples from the barrel, which began to
show conspicuously the result of their raids, wherefore Penrod made an
unostentatious visit to the cellar of his own house. From the inside he
opened a window and passed vegetables out to Sam, who placed them in a
bucket and carried them hurriedly to the stable, while Penrod returned
in a casual manner through the house. Of his sang-froid under a great
strain it is sufficient to relate that, in the kitchen, he said suddenly
to Della, the cook, “Oh, look behind you!” and by the time Della
discovered that there was nothing unusual behind her, Penrod was gone,
and a loaf of bread from the kitchen table was gone with him.
Whitey now ate nine turnips, two heads of lettuce, one cabbage, eleven
raw potatoes and the loaf of bread. He ate the loaf of bread last and
he was a long time about it; so the boys came to a not unreasonable
conclusion.
“Well, sir, I guess we got him filled up at last!” said Penrod. “I bet
he wouldn't eat a saucer of ice-cream now, if we'd give it to him!”
“He looks better to me,” said Sam, staring critically at Whitey. “I
think he's kind of begun to fill out some. I expect he must like us,
Penrod; we been doin' a good deal for this horse.”
“Well, we got to keep it up,” Penrod insisted rather pompously. “Long as
_I_ got charge o' this horse, he's goin' to get good treatment.”
“What we better do now, Penrod?”
Penrod took on the outward signs of deep thought.
“Well, there's plenty to DO, all right. I got to think.”
Sam made several suggestions, which Penrod--maintaining his air of
preoccupation--dismissed with mere gestures.
“Oh, _I_ know!” Sam cried finally. “We ought to wash him so's he'll
look whiter'n what he does now. We can turn the hose on him across the
manger.”
“No; not yet,” Penrod said. “It's too soon after his meal. You ought to
know that yourself. What we got to do is to make up a bed for him--if he
wants to lay down or anything.”
“Make up a what for him?” Sam echoed, dumfounded. “What you talkin'
about? How can--”
“Sawdust,” Penrod said. “That's the way the horse we used to have used
to have it. We'll make this horse's bed in the other stall, and then he
can go in there and lay down whenever he wants to.”
“How we goin' to do it?”
“Look, Sam; there's the hole into the sawdust-box! All you got to do is
walk in there with the shovel, stick the shovel in the hole till it gets
full of sawdust, and then sprinkle it around on the empty stall.”
“All _I_ got to do!” Sam cried. “What are you goin' to do?”
“I'm goin' to be right here,” Penrod answered reassuringly. “He won't
kick or anything, and it isn't goin' to take you half a second to slip
around behind him to the other stall.”
“What makes you think he won't kick?”
“Well, I KNOW he won't, and, besides, you could hit him with the shovel
if he tried to. Anyhow, I'll be right here, won't I?”
“I don't care where you are,” Sam said earnestly. “What difference would
that make if he ki--”
“Why, you were goin' right in the stall,” Penrod reminded him. “When he
first came in, you were goin' to take the rake and--”
“I don't care if I was,” Sam declared. “I was excited then.”
“Well, you can get excited now, can't you?” his friend urged. “You can
just as easy get--”
He was interrupted by a shout from Sam, who was keeping his eye upon
Whitey throughout the discussion.
“Look! Looky there!” And undoubtedly renewing his excitement, Sam
pointed at the long, gaunt head beyond the manger. It was disappearing
from view. “Look!” Sam shouted. “He's layin' down!”
“Well, then,” said Penrod, “I guess he's goin' to take a nap. If he
wants to lay down without waitin' for us to get the sawdust fixed for
him, that's his lookout, not ours.”
On the contrary, Sam perceived a favourable opportunity for action.
“I just as soon go and make his bed up while he's layin' down,” he
volunteered. “You climb up on the manger and watch him, Penrod, and I'll
sneak in the other stall and fix it all up nice for him, so's he can go
in there any time when he wakes up, and lay down again, or anything;
and if he starts to get up, you holler and I'll jump out over the other
manger.”
Accordingly, Penrod established himself in a position to observe the
recumbent figure. Whitey's breathing was rather laboured but regular,
and, as Sam remarked, he looked “better”, even in his slumber. It is not
to be doubted that although Whitey was suffering from a light attack of
colic his feelings were in the main those of contentment. After trouble,
he was solaced; after exposure, he was sheltered; after hunger and
thirst, he was fed and watered. He slept.
The noon whistles blew before Sam's task was finished; but by the time
he departed for lunch there was made a bed of such quality that Whitey
must needs have been a born fault-finder if he complained of it. The
friends parted, each urging the other to be prompt in returning; but
Penrod got into threatening difficulties as soon as he entered the
house.