Gib and the Gray Ghost (12 page)

Gib was horrified and it must have showed because Missus Julia reached out and took both his hands in hers. “Don’t worry, Gib,” she said. “You won’t have to go back. I’ve about decided that we’ll just forget about the adoption effort. We’ll let that Offenbacher woman go on biting off her own nose to spite her face. After all, a formal adoption isn’t necessary to say that you are where you belong and you will stay here until ...

Gib looked up quickly as the old farm-out rule flashed through his mind. The rule about how a farm-out should be kept till he was eighteen and then paid fifty dollars and sent on his way. As if she had read his mind, Missus Julia shook her head slowly, her eyes softening toward tears. She pulled Gib toward her and touched his cheek as she went on, “... you’ll stay here as long as ever you want to,” she said softly. Then she turned him loose and told him to run along and not to worry anymore about adoption papers or anything at all. “Promise?” she said. “Promise me, Gib? No more worrying?”

So Gib promised, and he meant it too. After all, just like Missus Julia said—and Hy too—a piece of paper wasn’t what made the difference. He wasn’t going to think about it ever again.

After that the lessons continued. Every afternoon Gib saddled up Lightning, and Livy rode him up and down the corridor inside the barn. And after Livy’s lesson was over and she’d gone back to the house Gib stayed on for a while. He groomed lightning first off, and then did a little more teaching. But this time his student was the big gray, or Ghost, as Gib had started calling him.

Gib had to laugh a little, thinking about his two hard-headed students. The one that was likely to kick and bite, and the other one, which could be pretty dangerous too and a lot harder to predict. But they were both improving, there was no doubt about that. Livy had quit grabbing the saddle horn, and Ghost was letting Gib groom him a little without even threatening to bite. The whip marks were invisible now under his winter hair, but Gib could still trace them with his fingertips. They seemed to have reached the itchy stage, because Ghost obviously liked it when Gib scratched them gently with the currycomb.

The phone lines stayed down all that week, so the Rocking M continued to be completely cut off from human civilization, as Miss Hooper put it. At least until Wednesday, when Dr. Whelan showed up plowing through snowdrifts on his long-legged chestnut mare. He’d come, he said, to check on both his patients, Mrs. Thornton and Hy as well. Folks in Longford had been worried about them, Doc Whelan said, and he was right glad that he could go back and put their minds at rest.

But the doctor didn’t put Gib’s mind to rest any about Ghost. When Gib asked the doc if he’d heard anything about a dapple gray that had gone missing he said he hadn’t, but he’d let Gib know if he did. And he also said that Hy wasn’t to even think about going outside anytime soon, and that they all should be very careful not to say anything that would make him think he had to. Like telling him about any kind of barnyard problems that needed his immediate attention.

“And we shouldn’t tell him about the riding lessons either,” Missus Julia told Gib and Livy later. “Because he’d be bound to think it was his duty to be out there keeping an eye on things.”

By the day before Christmas the snow had firmed up some and, for the first time, Livy’s riding lesson moved out to the big corral. Gib went out first on Silky and let her work the kinks out and, at the same time, pack the snow down a little, before he went back to the barn for Livy on Lightning. Then the two of them rode around the corral side by side.

They started trotting lessons that day and Livy kept asking Gib to tell her how to ride out the trot the way he did. “With-out-boun-cing-like-this,” she said with a bounce between every syllable. It wasn’t, Gib discovered, an easy thing to explain and no matter what he told her she went right on bouncing. But when he said he thought they’d had enough practice for one day, she didn’t want to stop. Gib told her she might be sorry tomorrow, but she only shrugged and said, “Don’t be silly. I feel fine.” But the next day Gib noticed her walking kind of stiff-legged, and for the first time she suggested they should take a day off.

“After all, it is Christmas,” she said, “and nobody should have lessons on Christmas day. Not even riding lessons.”

Christmas was different that year, that was for sure. No dinner party for Longford guests and not even any fancy decorations. But Mrs. Perry cooked a special dinner with ham and sweet potatoes, and Hy made it extra special by coming to the table for the first time since the influenza. And there were gifts too, some of them handmade, and a few from the Sears, Roebuck catalog.

Gib got a new jacket, which Miss Hooper had cut down from one that had been Mr. Thornton’s, and two pairs of hand-knitted socks. Gib didn’t have much to give. He surely would have liked to have had something better for the ladies than the letter openers he’d carved from an old chair leg he’d found in the basement. And for Hy a handmade frame for a Will James drawing of a bucking horse that Hy had cut out of a magazine and tacked up on his wall. But with no way to get into town, and no money to spend if he’d gotten there, it was the best he could do.

The day after Christmas the lessons in the big corral started up again, and the other secret ones with the Gray Ghost went on too.

G
HOST WASN’T A MEAN-NATURED
horse any more than Silky was. He was just scared and angry and, Gib found out, definitely head-shy. Even after he’d started being real welcoming when Gib showed up with a currycomb and a pocketful of carrots, he didn’t like having his head touched. At least not by a hand that had anything in it. Right at first he even shied away from a brush if it got too near his head. And the first time Gib tried to put a halter on him things got pretty lively for a while.

When Gib came in carrying the halter Ghost took one look and turned back into the wild-eyed thing he’d been when he first showed up, snorting and rearing and threatening to bite. It took a lot of slow, easy talk and a carrot or two before he would even come close enough to get a good look at the halter. But after he’d shoved it around with his nose he seemed to calm down some, and before long Gib was able to slip it on his head. And when Gib clipped on a lead rope the big gray let himself be led up and down the barn corridor with no fuss at all, except for a few snorts and nickers at the other horses as he passed their stalls. And when Gib brought in a saddle and blanket, things went even more smoothly.

But the next step was the bridle and that was when Gib began to find out where the trouble lay. There was, Ghost told Gib plain as day, no way in the world he was going to let that bit be put in his mouth. And even after Gib reasoned with him for a long time he didn’t look to be changing his mind one little bit.

That night Gib did a lot of thinking about Ghost’s problem. So much thinking, in fact, that he was kind of absent-minded at the dinner table. The rest of them happened to be talking about earthquakes and tornados, but Gib kept forgetting to listen to what was being said. And of course he couldn’t mention what he was thinking about because they’d all promised not to mention any urgent barnyard problems around Hy.

“And where do you suppose our Mr. Whittaker is tonight?” Miss Hooper wanted to know. “Certainly not here with the rest of us. Haven’t heard two words out of him since we sat down.”

“That’s for sure,” Hy said. “I been noticin’ that too. What you been mullin’ over so hard, pardner?”

Gib laughed and said he guessed he’d been woolgathering, all right. “I was listening, though. I heard what everybody was saying about that earthquake in California.”

They all laughed then and Livy said, “That was at least half an hour ago. Just now we were talking about President Taft and before that it was coyotes. Where have you been, Gib?”

When Gib said he didn’t know, Livy said, “Well, I do. Out in the barn trying to get that wild ... Oops.”

There were frowns all around the table and Livy must have gotten the message because she swallowed the rest of what she was saying with a big forkful of mashed potatoes, and the conversation went back to politics and President Taft. Gib made an effort to get back into the discussion but without much luck.

When the meal was over Gib didn’t stay downstairs to read or play games the way he sometimes did. After he’d helped Hy up the stairs he went on to his own room. What he was tempted to do was to go back to Hy’s room and just plain out ask him what he thought was the matter with a horse that didn’t even hump his back when you saddled him, but who went crazy when you tried to make him take a bit. But he knew that was exactly the kind of thing you didn’t want to mention to Hy Carter. Not unless you wanted him to be on his way to the barn immediately, influenza or no influenza.

So no good advice from Hy. But later that night while Gib was waiting to go to sleep he began to develop a theory of his own. He was still making plans for testing it out when he finally fell asleep, and went right on solving head-shy horse problems in his dreams.

But the next day was Thursday and, with the end of Christmas vacation only a few days away, Livy insisted that she needed a special riding lesson. A lesson that would include some time outside on the open road. Which, Gib had to admit, made a certain amount of sense. Riding down the snowy driveway and then out onto the Longford road was likely to present some problems that you wouldn’t run into trotting around inside a corral. So after they’d been around the corral a few times Gib unlatched the gate and off they went down the Rocking M’s long drive.

There’d been a couple of inches of fresh snow the night before, but now the sky was a clear, cold blue. Under the thin layer of fluffy stuff, the remains of the old snowpack were still unthawed, so the footing was pretty tricky. Old Lightning, who’d probably seen lots of bad weather in his time, took it calm and easy, and even Silky, after a few snorting, plunging protests, settled down to businesslike behavior. On the driveway some of the drifts were almost up to the horses’ bellies and as they struggled forward, their heavy breathing sent twin plumes of frozen mist from their distended nostrils.

Right at first Livy’s face had been tight with fear, but halfway down the drive she began to relax. “Look at the horses’ breath,” she said. “They look like smoke-breathing dragons.” She giggled. “I was scared at first but I like it now. Do you suppose we could go all the way to Longford today? It ought to be easier once we get out on the main road where the snow’s been packed down a little.”

But Gib, who was anxious to get back to the barn to try out his theory about Ghost, said he didn’t think they should go too far on the first day. “Got to break the horses in to heavy going like this kind of gradual-like,” he argued, and after a while Livy agreed.

“All right,” she said, “let’s turn around. Right now. I think Lightning is getting tired, and besides my nose is freezing.”

Back in the barn with Lightning and Silky taken care of, and with Livy off to the house to warm up her nose, Gib went looking for a hackamore he remembered seeing somewhere in the tack room. Sure enough, there it was on a high peg under a bunch of old broken halters. It was a nice one. Made mostly of horsehair rope, it had a leather chin strap, but the knot that went under the chin was a large ball of braided rope. Gib examined it carefully. He’d never used a hackamore instead of a bridle before, but he knew how it was supposed to work. The reins were attached so that when you pulled on them the knot pressed under the horse’s chin and the pressure told him to stop. In general, what Gib had heard was that you didn’t have nearly as much control as you did with a bit, so hackamores were usually used only on a mount that was pretty easy to control.

“Well,” Gib told Ghost as he walked into the stall carrying the hackamore. “Can’t say as how you’re all that gentle, pardner, but what I think is that somebody’s really turned you against having a rough old iron bit in that soft mouth of yours. So let’s see how you’re going to take to this contraption.”

Like before, the saddling went without a hitch, but when Gib started to slip the hackamore over the gray’s nose there was some pretty suspicious snorting and head tossing. But Gib made a lot of soft talk, telling Ghost, “See, there’s no bit here. Just like another halter, is all it is. Nice soft halter with nothing that has to go inside your mouth.”

A lot of such soft talk and a few carrots later, Gib led Ghost out into the corridor wearing a cinched-up saddle and, on his head, an old braided horsehair hackamore. Using the reins as a lead rope, Gib led Ghost up and down the aisle a few times before he pulled him to a stop.

Talking all the time, he lined the gray up, adjusted the reins, and started to ease himself up into the saddle. But Ghost didn’t like it. His ears flicked backward and he sidestepped before Gib could get his foot clear into the stirrup. But after some more soft talk and a couple more circles up and down the aisle, Gib tried again. And this time Ghost stayed put, even when Gib put his foot in the stirrup, put some weight on it, waited a moment, and then swung up into the saddle.

“Okay, boy,” Gib said as he touched his heels to the gray’s flanks. “Here we go.”

The big horse’s head went up. He snorted softly and began a dancing, head-tossing movement down the corridor. They were almost to the barn door when, holding his breath, Gib leaned the reins to the left across the powerful gray neck. Immediately Ghost turned left in a sharp circle. Letting his breath go in a puff of relief, Gib grinned. Just as he’d figured, Ghost certainly had been trained to neck rein. There was no problem there.

But the important test came at the other end of the corridor when Gib pulled back on the reins and whispered, “Whoa.” The gray hesitated, tossed his head anxiously, and then, responding to the pressure on the noseband and the lump of rope under his chin, came to a stop. Grinning again, Gib patted the gray’s neck, telling him over and over again what a good boy he was and how well he was doing. And he was too, letting a pull on the reins tell him to stop even though there was no controlling bit in his mouth.