Mending Horses (26 page)

“That they would. Comes in handy other times, too. Nothing
better than having an incombustible horse when you need to get out of town in a hurry or hide from the sheriff. Takes a lot of patience and time to teach 'em, though.”

“I imagine so, 'specially after what that Perfesser put 'em through,” Daniel said. He knew he had the patience, if only Mr. Chamberlain would give him the time.

“It sounds a lot simpler than it is. But if you can make 'em truly incombustible, it's pretty impressive.”

“Impressive. Aye. And it'd show folk that you can gentle a horse without hurting him,” Daniel said. “So maybe there'd be no more Perfesser Romanovs.”

“No more Professor Romanovs,” Francesca said. “I doubt you'll ever see that day.”

For the first time he found his voice with her. “You think me a fool for even trying, then?” he asked.

She surveyed him with that same lingering head-to-toe stare that she'd given him when they'd met. His cheeks burned, but he couldn't look away from her dark cat's eyes. “I think you'd be worse than a fool if you didn't,” she said. Something that was almost a smile flickered across her lips before she turned away and went inside.

Daniel started with things the ponies knew already: the plumes and blankets and harnesses that Professor Romanov had used. When he and Billy laid the objects on the ground, the ponies milled away, showing the whites of their eyes as they retreated to a corner of the corral next to the pen where Daniel planned to do their training.

He brought Ivy into the pen while Billy sat on the fence and watched. Another set of watchers collected on the opposite side: a quartet of teamsters who drove the museum's wagons. They passed around a chaw of tobacco and settled in much like the men who stood in the pit and leaned over the low wall around the show ring. The hair on the back of Daniel's neck prickled. He put his cheek against Ivy's and murmured, “We'll show 'em, won't we, now, lass?”

He led Ivy up to the row of objects and let her examine them. As she studied each item and touched it with her nose, he rubbed her forehead and said, “There's a brave lass.” He picked up a blanket and rubbed it firmly against her neck, her chest, her back and sides, up and down each leg. She flicked her ears and whuffed curiously at him, bemused by this new game.

Billy took the blanket and waved it about–slowly at first, then with sharp flicks and snaps. If Ivy startled, Billy stopped and waited until the mare calmed. Then Daniel scratched and rubbed and spoke to her, rewarding the calmness and ignoring the starts until she grew bored with Billy's antics and gave the flailing blanket no more than a twitch of an ear.

He repeated the process with each object, hoping that
watching Ivy would show the ponies there was naught to fear. Then he put Ivy aside and led Gray from the corral into the pen. She put back her ears and snorted at the blanket. He let her take her time to look the things over.

“Hey, boys!” the tallest of the four teamsters shouted. “You work them ponies that way and you'll be there 'til doomsday!”

“Quit all that fooling around and just take a switch to 'em,” called out a second man whose florid features had earned him the nickname Red.

“Looks like Mr. Chamberlain's leaving his prancing ponies to a coupl'a children,” said the nasal voice of the third teamster.

They continued a running criticism of Daniel's training techniques. Although the back of his neck and his ears burned, Daniel tried to make himself deaf to their taunts.

It was another matter for Billy. “Shut up, you bloody bastards!” she shouted.

Daniel clamped a hand over her mouth. “Quiet, you.” He took her by the shoulders and shook her, his legs spread wide to keep her from kicking him in the shins. “Quit it, I said.” Then he dragged her to the far side of the pen, away from the laughing teamsters. “You can't pay them any mind.” His voice was low and jagged.

Billy tried to slap his hands away. “I'll say what I bloody well please.”

Daniel released her with a shove that sent her staggering against the fence. “Fine. Then you won't be training these ponies with me.” He wagged a finger under her nose, though what he wanted to do was slap her rebellious face as hard as he could, lass or no. “You think it'll be all cheers and smiles when we're working them ponies in the ring for real?”

“I–I never thought–”

“Never thinking, aye, that's always the way with you. How about thinking how long we'll be in this show if you curse out every fool who heckles you from the pit?”

“Hey, Paddy!” shouted Red.

The slur hit Daniel as hard as the slap he'd wanted to give Billy. He dug his fingernails into his palms.

“Hey, Paddy! Maybe you ought'a take that switch to your little brother!”

He was no longer Paddy, Daniel reminded himself. But damn it all, why was it that every time he finally felt himself out of that life, it would come back at him in some other way? “We got to be as incombustible as them horses,” Daniel said, as much to himself as to Billy.

“It might not be enough,” said a calm voice nearer to hand.

“What?” Daniel's head jerked toward the unfamiliar voice.

The black juggler, Mr. Sharp, faced him over the fence, on the opposite side of the pen from the teamsters. As soon as Daniel met the man's eyes, Mr. Sharp looked down, seemingly intent on the three knives in his hand. “Being incombustible. It's a start, but it may not be enough. Not to them, anyway.” He tossed one of the knives and caught it, then flicked the blade in the direction of the pavilion.

“I don't understand,” Daniel said. In the show ring, Mr. Sharp spoke with a slow drawl, his sentences full of
ain't
s. But now the man's words came out as clearly enunciated and grammatically correct as if he'd studied one of Mr. Stocking's books.

“Nigger. Coon. Darkie. Paddy. Bogtrotter. Boy.” The juggler lifted his head to meet Daniel's eyes. “It's all the same, isn't it? What they call you. To make you less than they are.”

“Less?” Daniel repeated, confused. A black man no less than a white one? How could that be true? He remembered his school geography book telling about the four races of man, from the most superior white race to the Asians, down to the savages like the Indians, and lowest of all, the Negro, a degraded race of brutes fit only to serve, so the book said.
Fit only to serve
 . . . Indeed, wasn't that what Lyman had said of Daniel once? But there was nothing brutish or stupid in the dark eyes staring back at him, as intense as Mr. Stocking's when the peddler had a hard lesson to teach.

The juggler tossed the knives in a low arc. “Being incombustible, that's good. It'll be enough for them.” He made a tiny motion of his chin toward the teamsters, who had lost interest now that
Daniel and Billy had stopped working with Gray. “They don't mean anything.” He caught one knife but continued to juggle the other two with one hand. “But some folks won't stop until they get past your . . . incombustibility.”

“And then?” Daniel asked.

The juggler shrugged. “What do you do with a fire you don't want?”

“Put it out?” Billy suggested.

The juggler grinned, a slow bloom of white cutting across his dark features. “Now there's a clever boy,” he said, gesturing toward her with one of the knives.

“Like what you done with that rude fella the other day?” Daniel said.

A pair of rowdies had mocked the two jugglers, but particularly Mr. Sharp. “Any monkey can do that,” one had taunted. “I could do it easy.”

Mr. Sharp had responded, “Yes, boss, you surely can,” then handed the tough the three torches he'd been about to ignite and gestured for him to come into the ring. “I'd 'preciate it if you'd show me how it's done, sir,” he'd said, opening the gate. The man's friends had laughed and shoved him forward. Mr. Dale, the white juggler, had lit one of his own torches with a great whoosh and come toward the suddenly sober rowdy, who had turned the sickly yellowish white of parchment.

“Now you go easy on Mr. Dale, boss,” Mr. Sharp had cautioned the rowdy. “He might not be able to keep up with you.” The rowdy had cast a suspicious glare at Mr. Sharp to see whether he was being mocked. But the juggler's face had been creased with concern that looked so genuine it had almost fooled Daniel.

Mr. Dale had tossed his torch into the air, staggered as if he were going to miss it, and caught it barely in time to keep it from scorching the trampled grass. The rowdy dropped his unlit torches and backed away, shaking his head frantically.

“You'd best thank the man, Caesar,” Mr. Dale had said sternly, jutting his chin toward Mr. Sharp. “It's very kind of him not to outdo you in front of all these good folks.”

From the looks on the jugglers' faces, it had seemed as though Mr. Sharp was the one who'd been put in his place, not the heckler. Amid gales of laughter, the rowdy had headed back to safety behind the low wall surrounding the ring. He'd strutted before his friends as though he truly believed he'd bested Mr. Sharp and Mr. Dale. But he'd kept quiet for the rest of the performance.

“That was a fair bit of acting. I'm none so clever as all that,” Daniel said.

“I'd'a set him afire,” Billy said. “Well, thrashed him, anyway.”

Mr. Sharp nodded. “You could do that. More likely his friends would outnumber you and you'd be the one thrashed. Or you could be smarter than him. Better than him.”

“And how do you do that?” Billy asked.

Mr. Sharp smiled. “My father was a preacher. It was something he said all the time.”

“Me mam said something a bit like it. She told me not to wish anyone ill, because it'll always come back at you,” Daniel said.

“Being a preacher, of course, Papa never held with fighting,” Mr. Sharp continued. “And being a black man, well . . . in most places if I ever laid hands on a white man, I might as well write my own death warrant. Some places it'd be death for me even to look a white man in the eye.”

“So you got to be always turning the other cheek, no matter what?” Billy said.

“So I thought at first, and did it ever gall me.” Mr. Sharp's fingers tightened around his knives. “But then I saw that being better doesn't mean giving up. It means finding some way other than fighting to win. Like you've been doing with your ponies.”

“Me?” Daniel said.

“Ebenezer Pruitt was afraid of being bitten or kicked, so he struck out at them before they could strike out at him. Not too many men are brave enough to win without cruelty. Or smart enough, either.”

Could Mr. Sharp be right? Or were these only stories a man invented to make himself feel less beaten down? Yet the juggler didn't seem at all beaten down or defeated.

“Where the other fellow's weak, that's where you've got to be strong,” Mr. Sharp continued. “You've got to be quick where he's slow, brave where he's cowardly, clever where he's stupid.”

“All of that? It seems a lot to learn,” Daniel said.

“You never stop learning. And even then, sometimes you still have no choice but to fight.”

At his worst, Lyman had never worked Daniel at as furious a pace as he worked himself to prepare for the show. For an hour each morning, he and Billy worked with Francesca and her brothers, learning falls and handsprings and cartwheels and somersaults and vaults—more falls than anything else, at first. They started practicing on the ground, then on a barrel set up on sawhorses, then on Phizzy at a standstill, a walk, and finally an easy canter, the placid old gelding unruffled by their antics. Then Daniel practiced with Ivy and Mr. Stocking, learning how to swoop up an object from the ground at a canter or how to coax Ivy to cross her front legs daintily as she walked and to prance with light dancing steps that seemed to float.

After his lessons with the tumblers and with Mr. Stocking, he worked with the ponies, teaching them to stand calmly no matter what he touched them with or how he moved about them, showing them not to fear new things, and that the old ones that had once hurt them would do no harm in his hands. He replaced their harsh bits with snaffles and removed the straps on their bridles that had bound their heads unnaturally high. Although Daniel at first objected, Mr. Stocking showed him how to use the longeing whip, not as a means of punishment, but as an extension of his arm, guiding the ponies with a feather-light tickle. Mr. Stocking helped him figure out what commands and tricks the ponies knew, and take note of what they didn't. He showed him how to coax them through simple maneuvers and patterns.

In between it all, Daniel kept the ponies and Ivy fed and groomed and helped the teamsters and Mr. Lamb and his assistants with their beasts whenever an extra hand was needed. He helped set up the museum and menagerie pavilions and Mr. Chamberlain's
dressing tent, the tiered benches for the audience, the low wall that bounded the ring. He helped Mr. Lamb set up the dens for the menagerie stock, and helped Mr. Stocking ready his wagon to peddle his tin after the show. He shined up the ponies' green-and-gold wagon for the Grand Cavalcade Entrée that paraded through town and opened the show.