Gib and the Gray Ghost (13 page)

It had gone so well that Gib didn’t want to stop, but it was getting late and there were still the chores to be done. Tomorrow, he told Ghost, they’d be branching out. Going out into the outside world. “Yes, sir,” he said as he pulled off the saddle and led the gray into his stall. “Tomorrow’s going to be the big day. Tomorrow we’re going to see what you can do outside this old barn. Out there in the big old scary world.”

G
IB HADN’T THOUGHT IT
would be an easy day, and it wasn’t. After the usual barnyard chores, there was saddling up Lightning and Silky for Livy’s riding lesson, which turned out to be a long one, followed by a rubdown for both horses. It wasn’t until midafternoon that Gib was able to keep his promise to Ghost.

The saddling up went without a hitch, but the moment Gib started to lead him across the barnyard Ghost became a different animal. A head-tossing prancer, whose sideways skittering almost jerked Gib off his feet two or three times before they reached the corral. And once inside the gate it took a lot of soft talk and several tries before Ghost would let Gib get close enough to swing up into the saddle.

Sitting on Ghost for the first few turns around the corral was something like riding on a barrel of dynamite. A barrel that threatened to explode at any minute. He didn’t buck, at least not exactly, but he surely wasn’t paying much heed to what Gib was telling him to do. Plunging forward, dancing sideways, rearing and tossing his head, he rounded the corral at least a half dozen times before he settled enough to respond to the reins, and to the sound of Gib’s voice telling him, “Take it easy. Settle down now, you high-stepping rascal.” But when he did start listening a little Gib put him to working out his nervous energy by rounding and re-rounding the corral, crossing and crisscrossing it in sharp figure eights.

The figure eights were high-legged and sideways at first. It wasn’t until a half hour or so had passed that they settled into a steadier trot, and finally an almost flat-footed, down-to-earth walk. Gib knew that one reason for the better behavior was that the gray was getting tired, but there was more to it than that. It seemed to Gib that Ghost was settling down because he was beginning to figure out that he wasn’t about to be hurt. Wasn’t about to be punished by bit and whip the way he’d surely been before.

By the time Gib took him back to the barn the sweated-up, hard-breathing gray was listening again, not only to the reins but also to the sound of Gib’s voice telling him what a great job he’d done.

Gib was mighty tired that night. Even after he’d cooled Ghost down and groomed him there were still the milking and the other evening chores to be taken care of. When dinner was over all Gib wanted to do was to go to his room and collapse, but Livy wanted him to stay downstairs and talk for a while. To talk, she said, about Monday, and their first ride to school.

“And something else,” she whispered as soon as they were out of hearing of the adults. Her eyes flickered excitedly as she went on. “There’s something else I want to tell you about too. Something secret.” She glanced around the library to where her mother was reading a book and Miss Hooper was writing a letter. “We have to go somewhere we can talk without anyone listening.”

She looked around the room for a moment longer before she said loudly, “I know. Let’s play dominoes. Come on, Gib, I want to play dominoes.”

Gib didn’t feel a bit like playing dominoes, but he saw right away what Livy was setting up. The game table was way across the room in the bay window alcove, where it would be possible to talk without being overheard as long as they kept their voices down. So he let himself be led over to the alcove and helped get the tiles turned over and stirred around. As soon as she’d drawn her tiles Livy plunked down a double-four and then forgot all about the game. “I saw you,” she whispered, leaning forward. “I was looking out of the window. Upstairs where you can see the corral. And I saw you riding the gray.” Her eyes were glittering.

Gib chuckled, shaking his head. “He’s pretty rambunctious, all right.”

“Rambunctious?” Livy raised her eyebrows. “A lot worse than rambunctious. I really thought you were going to get killed right there in front of my eyes.” She sighed shakily. “It was so exciting.”

“That right?” Gib asked, straight-faced. “That must have been pretty exciting, all right. Not every day you get to see somebody getting killed.”

Livy frowned. “That’s not what I meant and you know it, Gib Whittaker. I just meant it was so—thrilling. Like watching them ride the bucking broncos at the Longford rodeo. Only even more thrilling because those bony old rodeo broncos aren’t nearly as beautiful as Ghost is. He’s so magnificent and—wild.”

“No, not wild.” Gib shook his head. “He’s been stable-raised and trained too. Real well trained, I think. It’s just that he was kind of crazy when he first got here.”

“Crazy?” Livy was fascinated. She stared at Gib and he stared back, thinking how Livy’s face with its big eyes and sharp-edged cheekbones had a way of putting him in mind of a hot-blooded horse. A horse that was full of life and fire and—the thought made him grin—a lot of downright muleheadedness.

“Well, maybe not crazy,” he said. “But awful scared. Somebody’s scared him real bad and hurt him too.”

“Hurt him?” Livy’s eyes were wide and demanding. “How do you know? Tell me.”

All right, he thought. I guess you ought to know. So he told her about the whip marks. Not making it as bad as it really was, but enough to make her understand how serious the problem had been. “He was scared, but he was angry too,” Gib said. “Mighty angry and looking to get even.”

Livy was glaring now. “That’s terrible,” she said. “How could anybody do a thing like that? Whoever it was ought to be shot. He ought to be tied up and—” Suddenly she stopped raving and told Gib to get busy and play. “They’re watching us,” she said. “Hoop is. Go on, play a tile.”

So Gib put down a four-two, and they went on playing until the game was finished and Livy had won. Actually Gib helped her just a little because he knew she’d never quit until she’d won, and right at that moment he was mostly interested in getting up to bed. Livy didn’t say any more about the gray until the game was over, but as they were putting away the tiles she whispered, “Are you going to ride him again tomorrow?” And when Gib said he was hoping to she said, “Good. Tell me when, because I want to watch again.”

It was late Saturday afternoon, with the chores and Livy’s riding lesson finally finished, before Gib had time to get the gray saddled up and ready for another ride in the corral. Late in the afternoon on a darkening day with such a heavy mist in the air that halfway across the barnyard everything faded into blurry shadows. The weather, Gib thought, was playing the same sorts of tricks as it had that morning when Ghost had first appeared at the Rocking M. An icy fog had come in, like the one out of which a huge silvery shadow of a horse had appeared and then, just as swiftly, faded away.

Looking around the mist-shrouded barnyard, Gib couldn’t help shivering, even though he was warmly dressed. There was something mysterious about the blinding fog. Mysterious and cold too. Terribly cold and getting colder by the minute. As he led Ghost across the barnyard Gib told him it was going to be a short lesson. “So you’d better concentrate on learning something in a hurry, before we both freeze solid,” he told the prancing gray. And Ghost, throwing his head violently up and down, seemed to be saying that he wanted to hurry too. “All right, all right,” he seemed to be telling Gib. “Stop talking and let’s get started.”

Ghost started out pretty lively again. Plunging and sidestepping and tossing his head, he managed to keep Gib too busy to notice much of anything besides the dapple gray powder keg he was sitting on. It did occur to him, after a while, to wonder if Livy was watching from the upstairs window, like she’d said she was going to. But when he looked up toward the house the drifting mist made it impossible to tell whether anyone was there or not. Gib forgot about being watched then and concentrated on getting Ghost to stop the nonsense and quiet down.

It was Ghost who saw them first. Something near the gate spooked him into a sideways sashay so sudden that it almost left Gib behind. It wasn’t until he’d regained his balance and got the gray to quit acting the fool that he saw what the trouble was. Right outside the gate a tall man wearing a big Stetson and woolly chaps was sitting on a Roman-nosed buckskin. Gib recognized the horse first, and then the man. Yes, it surely was the Thorntons’ neighbor, Mr. Clark Morrison.

Gib was reining Ghost back toward the gate and fixing to call howdy, when Morrison started shouting. “My God, boy,” was what he yelled. “Get off that horse before you get killed.”

I
N THE FIRST FEW
seconds after Mr. Morrison appeared at the corral gate, Gib was too busy quieting the gray to think about what the man had yelled, and what it might mean. But by the time Ghost’s plunging dash toward the other end of the corral had finished up in a skittering sideways dance, the questions had begun to shape themselves inside his head.

Why did Mr. Morrison yell at Gib to get down before he got killed? Did he know something about Ghost? And if he did, why did he? Was it because—the thought hit Gib like a kick in the stomach. Was it because Ghost belonged to him? And if he did, did that mean that he was the one who ... ?

As Gib dismounted and led the fretting, head-tossing horse to the gate, the rest of that question was churning around inside his head and threatening to spill out of his mouth in an angry yell. But Morrison was no longer in asking distance. He had ridden off to the other side of the barnyard, and there he sat on his big buckskin, watching and waiting while Gib led Ghost back toward the barn. Gib blinked hard and shook his head, trying to see Morrison through a vivid memory of scabbed and bloodstained ridges on dapple gray flanks. Clenching his teeth, he looked back to where Morrison was following along behind, leading the buckskin. But when Gib slowed down to let him catch up Morrison slowed too. At the barn door he stopped altogether and waited until Gib unsaddled Ghost and put him in his stall. It was only then that Morrison came on into the barn and began to ask questions. To ask, but not to answer any, at least not right at first.

Morrison had lots of questions. “All right, young man, what are you doing with my horse? Who told you you could ride him? Did Carter let you do that? I can’t believe Hyram Carter would be fool enough let a boy ride a dangerous animal like that.”

Swallowing down some questions of his own, questions about horse beaters and bullwhips, Gib managed to squeeze out an answer to Morrison’s question about Hy. Between clenched teeth he said, “Hy has nothing to do with this, Mr. Morrison. He’s been sick in bed for almost a month. Real bad influenza.”

Morrison frowned. His voice had a tight, angry sound as he asked, “Do you mean to tell me Carter doesn’t know that he has an extra horse in this barn? A horse that just happens to be a valuable Kentucky Thoroughbred? And how about Mrs. Thornton? She doesn’t know either?”

Gib found himself explaining that yes, she knew he was there, all right. “But she doesn’t know where he came from or who he belongs to. Nobody does. Mrs. Thornton tried to call the livery stable to ask if they knew where he came from, but our phone line was down. We asked Doc Whelan too, when he came to see to Hy, but he hadn’t heard of anybody losing a dapple gray.”

Mr. Morrison seemed to calm down a little then, and when Gib started explaining how the gray had appeared outside the barn in the middle of the snowstorm, he finally began to really listen. “He was in bad shape.” The sharp edge of anger was back in Gib’s voice, and probably in his eyes too, as he repeated, “Real bad shape.”

“Bad shape?” Morrison’s eyes narrowed suddenly and he reached out and took hold of Gib’s shoulder. “How do you mean, bad shape?”

Gib pulled away. He tried to swallow the anger down but it was still there in his voice as he said, “Well, he was ganted up pretty bad, ribs showing and all.” He turned his back then and, gathering up the tack, headed down the corridor, trying to get away and calm down long enough to decide how much else to say, and how to say it. To decide whether to tell the man who’d probably done it about the bloody welts that crisscrossed Ghost’s barrel and flanks. But Morrison followed him and went right on asking questions all the way to the tack room door.

One of the questions he asked was what the date had been when the gray appeared at the Rocking M. Gib wasn’t sure of the day exactly, but he did remember it was on the second day of the big snowstorm.

“The day after the storm started.” Mr. Morrison was nodding slowly. “That means—that means—”

Gib interrupted. “Don’t you know when he ran away?”

Morrison shrugged impatiently. “No. No I don’t. Not exactly. I was in Chicago for almost a month. Just got back a few days ago.”

Gib stared in surprise and disbelief and then, as he began to understand, with a feeling of relief so strong that it almost made him smile. Relief that maybe it hadn’t been Morrison after all who had beaten Ghost. It hadn’t been the man who owned him and would surely take him back and own him again. As he turned away to lift his saddle up on the rack Gib must have sighed out loud. “What is it, boy?” Morrison asked sharply. “What aren’t you telling me?”

It came pouring out then like a river breaking over a dam. “He’d been beaten, real bad,” Gib said. “With a bullwhip or something that cut right through the hide. There were big welts all over him. Bloody ones.” He motioned toward the gray’s stall. “They’re better now. The scabs are all off, but you can still feel some scars there under the hair when you run your fingers over his flanks.”

“Beaten? With a bullwhip?” Morrison was staring at Gib. Staring and shaking his head and still muttering under his breath as he started up the corridor toward the gray’s stall. When Gib caught up with him Morrison was standing at the stall door, staring at Ghost with a kind of twitching around his eyes and mouth that almost looked like he was fixing to yell, or else to cry.