Born to Trot

by Marguerite Henry

  Gibson laughed aloud. “Why, she’s going to be big and husky. She’ll be sixteen hands when she’s full grown.”

  “Hands?”

  The boy nodded. “Four inches to a hand,” he explained. “That means she’ll probably be five feet and four inches over the withers when she’s grown.” He was pleased at the look of surprise the nurse gave him.

  When she left, Gibson propped the picture on his knees and turned to the letter. It was in his father’s handwriting, a whole page long and not a word about the weather!

  Your filly, it began, is nosy as any cat. I turned her and Alma Lee out to pasture today with a dozen brood mares and their foals. She had to snuff and snort to each of them. Her dam was in a dither. She knows a newcomer is an outcast for days and is usually greeted with flying heels and bared teeth.

  I wish you could have watched them. Your mother and I decided Alma Lee would have made a good roundup pony. She’d nip her youngster very gently on the rump, then run her in ever-widening circles until finally she’d herded her away from the big mares.

  Your Rosalind is full of ginger, you bet. Wild and uncertain as a deer. She bunts the daisies with her nose and nicks the clouds with her heels. And when she’s through with her antics, she wades in that old frog pond down by the clump of willows. Sometimes she just stands there, admiring the little ripples around her feet.

  By George, Son, this is the longest letter I’ve ever written an owner. I’ve got work to do! Good-by for now.—Dad

  Gibson tacked the picture on the bulletin board. It was no bigger than a square of toast, but when he squinched his eyes it grew until the whole wall became a pasture with daisies in it, and Rosalind was snorting at them with her nose and beheading them with her heels, frisking and capering from one end of the pasture to the other. But what pleased Gibson most was that in her frisking she had no gallopy gait. It was all trot with her!

  Then he opened his eyes and watched the picture shrink back to size. He laughed out at his wishfulness.

  Ten

  THE folks at the Trotting Association were prompt in answering letters. Gibson had a postcard from them in the same mail with the book from Dr. Mills.

  Dear Sir: the neatly typed postcard read, In answer to your letter, please be advised that names proposed for registration in the American Trotting Register shall be limited to sixteen (16) letters.

  Gibson counted on his fingers. R-O-S-A-L-I-N-D. Only eight letters! He was safe! At home he would have sounded out with an ear-splitting war whoop. But here he could only scribble the good news in handwriting that rocked wildly from margin to margin. He dropped the note to his father in the outgoing mail pouch. Then he slipped out of bed and tacked the card from the Trotting Association on his bulletin board. He liked the official look of it; it would do until the big certificate came.

  As long as he was up, he decided to sample the day. He stood a moment looking out his window, his hands resting on the sill. Below him a wide expanse of well-tended lawn swept down to a mountain stream, and beyond the stream spruce-covered hills climbed up and up into the mist. Gibson noted again the untracked emptiness of the lawn. There was no motion anywhere. None at all. And the clear stream, too, seemed lonely, with no creatures mirrored in it.

  Quickly he began stocking the scene with brood mares and foals. They were everywhere! Cropping the grass. Rolling in it. Pawing it. Plunging their muzzles in the stream. Plashing in it, sending up rainbows of spray. And one baby trotter with alternating white feet was headed toward him, her saucy tail outflung on the wind.

  “A sight fairer!” he laughed as he crawled back into bed, sitting by mistake on the package with the book in it. He pulled it out from under him, examining the scrawly hand. From Dr. S. W. Mills, it said, to Mr. Gibson White, Horseman.

  Gibson began to tear the wrappings as if he were opening just any package. But suddenly he caught sight of a gold hasp with a tiny padlock and key, and he saw the red binding frayed bare at the corners. His fingers slowed. This was not just any book. This book had been smoothed by many hands and many years, until it had the gloss of old feed boxes, satined by the tongues of many horses. Gibson ran a finger over the gold stamping—over the slim-bodied horse, over the spider-web wheels of the wagon, over the bearded man holding the reins, over the dates underneath the medallion, 1849-1876. He broke out in goose flesh as if he were putting a finger on the past and by so doing could make it come alive again. Aloud, he read out the title bannered in gold letters across the book.

  Now he could wait no longer. With eager fingers he unlocked the hasp, then opened the cover as if it were made of glass. Carefully he began riffling the pages. They were yellowed darkly around the edges and had a brittle feel.

  He skipped the preliminary pages and plunged into the story. And in the very first sentence he was lost. Lost in a broad valley with the wind blowing clean.

  1: Sky=Borne

  Feet planted wide in the peaty earth, William Rysdyk straightened from his ditching, rolled up his sleeves, took out a red bandanna handkerchief, and swabbed his sweating forehead and neck.

  A rugged, muscle-powered man he was, and now he flexed and stretched and rose up on tiptoe like some Atlas propping the heavens with the pillars of his arms. Scraggly brows shadowed his deep blue eyes, and a full black beard grew down to hide the first two buttons of his linsey-woolsey shirt. His ears, rather large, were pointed a little at the top to give him the look of a leprechaun.

  As he returned the handkerchief to its pocket, he jutted his beard to the sky. What he saw held him transfixed.

  Appearing from nowhere at all, a cloud, massive and dark, loomed over Sugar Loaf Mountain, then in one motion scudded up to the sun and inked it out. William Rysdyk stood aghast.

  The cloud was clean-formed, and its likeness was a stallion—a stallion that stood wide on the sky. He was veined with light, his mane was on end in licks of flame, his upflung tail was fringed with fire, and his nostrils blew sparks so that the sky was all horse and the valley all his shadow.

  ‘Ai yai yai!’ breathed William Rysdyk above the tremor in his throat. ‘Yonder he is, himself! Who else?’

  So lost was he in the spectacle that the voice of his employer fell on him like a weight.

  ‘Rysdyk! Rysdyk!’

  Startled, the hired man came back to himself. He looked over his shoulder to see handsome Jonas Seely astride his gray gelding.

  ‘Excuse, sir?’ William Rysdyk asked, puckering his lips as if he were saying O.

  Mister Seely’s voice filled the valley, then the mountain took it up and buffeted the sound back. ‘Rysdyk! June is blowing across the land!’

  What kind of talk was this! How could a month go blowing? The hired man stood with questioning eyes, watching Mister Seely gesture toward the upland pasture.

  ‘The steers are sleek and stout,’ he pronounced, ‘and the gloss on the Alderney bull is high. Friday next, if Mister Townsend can spare you, we will drive them to New York market.’

  The hired man nodded absently, as if going to market were no adventure at all.

  ‘And I have also come to make a survey of your progress with the drainage ditch. Lay a footbridge across about here,’ Mister Seely directed, ‘about where Sir Luddy’s forefeet stand.’

  ‘Yah, sir.’ The answer was a faraway singsong as William Rysdyk’s gaze was drawn back to the sky. The horse-cloud still blotted the sun, but the animal’s spirit was gone. The fire had died, leaving a dim, vaporous creature in its place.

  ‘Rysdyk!’ There was irritation in Mister Seely’s voice. It made his face red and his muttonchop whiskers very white. ‘What holds you in a trance? What is it?’

  A work-soiled finger pointed to the sky. Mister Seely looked, and even without the fiery spirit the phenomenon cast its spell over him. He tied the reins in a knot and leaned back, his hands on Sir Luddy’s hips. ‘’Tis strange,’ he exclaimed, ‘how man can witch the clouds. I see in them a ghost mare.’

  ‘You too, sir?’ The que
stion had a note of admiration in it.

  ‘Aye,’ Mister Seely breathed quickly. ‘The cloud is a ghost from my boyhood.’

  Now that his stallion had faded, William Rysdyk looked up no more. He bent to his ditching, then thought better of it. Maybe, he said to himself, if I listen sharp and nice to Mister Seely’s remembrances, then maybe Mister Seely to me listens. ‘How was she called, sir?’ he asked, but not really caring.

  Mister Seely’s eyes were fixed on the cloud. ‘She was called Silvertail because of a tuft of silver hair at the root of her tail.’

  ‘And does it yet grieve you for her?’

  ‘No, no! Not now,’ chuckled Mister Seely. ‘That was nigh onto forty years ago.’

  ‘A year already before I was born.’ The questions stopped. Try as he would, William Rysdyk could not keep his mind on Mister Seely’s ghost mare. He returned to his work, digging and pitching, pitching and digging.

  ‘What, Rysdyk?’

  ‘I didn’t say nothing.’

  But Mr. Seely could not wait for questions. He was bursting with memories. ‘I’m minded of the time Silvertail galloped seventy-five miles in a day.’ He glanced down quickly at his hired hand for an ‘Ai yai yai.’ When none came, he went on. ‘And my father and I were riding double to boot! Of course, I was a mere sprout of a boy at the time. Ten or thereabouts.’

  ‘By golly,’ said William Rysdyk with no emphasis at all.

  ‘Aye. There was a mare! She came by her spirit honestly. Her sire was the Imported Messenger, brought over from England.’

  At the word ‘Messenger’ William Rysdyk’s head jerked up, his beard parting in the little wind. This was a name he knew! ‘Sir! A question I could want to ask.’

  ‘Ask!’ encouraged Mister Seely.

  ‘When Messenger stomps down the gangplank, what they say about him—it is true?’

  ‘Indeed so. When his boat landed at Philadelphia, the other horses were too weak to walk down the gangplank—’

  ‘And him, sir?’

  ‘He came charging down, lifting two grooms off their feet, up and down like pump handles. Then he ran through the streets of Philadelphia, the grooms dangling along like birds on a string.’

  William Rysdyk laughed, wishing he had been there to see.

  ‘Silvertail was like him!’ Mister Seely said proudly. Suddenly he was embarrased by all this talk of himself and his mare. He turned kindly to his hired man. ‘Did you ever see a horse that fastened itself on your memory?’

  William Rysdyk stood helpless. He felt dumb, like the steers with their wet noses and their big stand-out ears. He looked around awkwardly, letting the gelding lick the salt of his hand. ‘My words, sir, lie all together in a heap.’ He glanced up to the cloud. And wonder of wonders, the stallion was on fire again, high-tailing for the mountain, leaving streaks of flame across the sky.

  ‘Mister Seely!’ he yelled in excitement. The words usually so slow in forming tumbled out in a rush. ‘Once some water I was pumping up and a horse and rider go by me. And I forget to pump up only one of my buckets. I forget I must home. My mother the evening meal is making ready. I just stand. The horse—in his eye a look he had. How is called that in the English?’

  ‘The look of eagles?’

  ‘Yah, yah! The eagle look he had.’ William Rysdyk’s head nodded excitedly, the chords in his neck swelling. ‘Now comes it, sir!’ His voice hushed. ‘Now comes the best part. The evening is pulling down already. But the rider turns the horse and they make for me. And they stop. And I water the horse from our own drinking pail. He drinks it all, with the eagle look still looking.’

  William Rysdyk was trembling violently. ‘And when he gallops away, I just stand. Yah,’ he nodded, ‘I just stand until the mama calls. And she yells, “Will-yum! Pump out!” And I to her yell, “There comes no water out!” And she yells, “Pump! You not pumping!”’

  Now it was William Rysdyk’s turn to be embarrassed. He looked down at his big hands. ‘You think I stay just at the talking?’ he asked. ‘I must hurry myself along with the ditching. No?’

  ‘Not yet, Rysdyk. I find myself curious as to the stallion’s name. Do you know it?’

  A deep guttural laugh accompanied the answer. ‘To my first memory belongs the name. It stabs like a dagger in my head. Hambletonian it was, called after Hambleton, a race course in England. The man, he was called by the name Bishop. And the horse, he was the son of Messenger.’

  Mister Seely was out of the saddle, grasping William Rysdyk, shaking him until the hairs in his black beard jumped up and down like wire springs. ‘Bishop’s Hambletonian!’ he thundered. ‘Egad, Rysdyk, my father bred Silvertail to your stallion!’

  And overhead the cloud wisped off into nothing and the brassy sun came out.

  Eleven

  WITH his finger marking the picture, Gibson looked up a moment at his bulletin board as if to make sure of Rosalind. Satisfied, he let the book fall open again. He was going to like it! That man Rysdyk was a character! Tough and strong as a bull. Gibson didn’t quite see what the strange cloud shape had to do with the great American trotter, but he liked the story anyway.

  His eyes caught the stack of textbooks on his table, their bookmarks pointing accusing fingers at him. He turned away quickly. Studies could wait. He glanced at the round-faced clock and it seemed to be winking, in league with him now.

  I’ll read just another page or two, he thought. And the clock ticked, ‘Why not? Why not?”

  He peeked at the title of the next chapter and with that he was swept into the past.

  2: Butcher’s Nag

  William Rysdyk forgot the cloud image in his first trip to New York City. To him the journey was good beyond all dreaming. The teamwork between Mister Seely and himself was so nice and precise. They were a matched pair! That Mister Seely, he thought, is not afraid of the work. Here, there, everywhere he is. Herding the cattle out of the brush, away from grazing space, around a hill, keeping them always on the go.

  ‘Boss good!’ he kept chuckling to himself, proud of his employer. ‘Like he was born with a horse under him, he rides.’

  He had no idea that Jonas Seely was equally proud of his hired man. Here was a drover, Mister Seely thought, who prodded the steers with his voice. Not his stick.

  Along the way whole families came running when they saw the cloud of dust rising as the cattle clumped toward them. Out of their fields and kitchens they came, waving broad hats and sunbonnets, shooing the steers, keeping them from turning into the farm lanes and joining their own cattle.

  Sometimes they were round-faced Dutch folk who stood in shy embarrassment when pompous Mister Seely rode up. But when they heard the familiar singsong of William Rysdyk’s speech, they invited him and Mister Seely too into their snug, whitewashed houses.

  ‘Come,’ they would urge, ‘is nooning time. Our Hans and Hendrick the cattle for you can watch. The eating is ready. It gives runderslappen and fresh crullers.’

  Such good food it was! Even Mister Seely, used to porridge and cold mutton at noon, passed his plate for second helpings of runderslappen, the thick-sliced beef spiced with apples and cloves. Often there was lentil soup, too, made with pigs’ feet and sausage, and for dessert a huge bowl of crullers, filled from a bottomless crock.

  And so the employer on horseback and the drover afoot made a pleasant junket of the journey southward along the Hudson River until they approached New York.

  Once in the hurry-scurry of the city, however, William Rysdyk was a man lost. The city sounds boxed his ears and bewildered his mind. By day he felt himself a frighted hound, hugging his master’s heels. By night in his bed in the Bull’s Head Tavern, the city vehicles and the river craft seemed to rumble over his very body. He could hardly breathe for the hurting of the noise.

  Afterward, he remembered very little of the city itself. He recalled, as in a dream, the livestock parade with bands playing and bells ringing and people’s heads sprouting out of windows. And he remembered he was in t
he parade, holding the lead shank of the Alderney bull. But of the sea of people on either side of him he remembered not one face. Of Pearl Street and Wall Street and Broadway he could recall not one building. Of the awarding of a silver trophy to Mister Seely he remembered only that the sun glanced off it, almost blinding him. The words said he could not remember. They were mere puffs of smoke.

  But with the parade over and the cattle sold and now the joyous prospect of going home, everything suddenly came sharp and clear. William Rysdyk was in the box of the cart, alone now that the prize bull had been sold at auction. And Mister Seely, sitting on the driver’s seat beside Butcher Kent, was holding the trophy his Alderney had won.

  ‘I’ll drop you and your man at the Bull’s Head,’ Mister Kent was saying. ‘You know, of course, that you are expected at the turtle feast of the Agricultural Society this evening. It is my duty to arrange the seating of the dignitaries.’

  Mister Kent looked for and got no answer, for he was making a great flourish with his whip. And the rough-coated mare that drew the cart was taking off at a good gait, picking her way through the streets in elegant style. Dogs and cats and a big fat goose retreated in alarm.

  ‘For an old mare,’ Mister Seely said loudly, leaning forward in pleasure, ‘she is quick and trappy.’

  Mister Kent nodded. ‘Aye!’ he shouted, ‘and she should be! I got her of a banker who paid six hundred dollars for her. Under saddle she twice trotted the Union Course at a two-fifty clip.’

  ‘Eh?’ grunted Mister Seely in astonishment.

  William Rysdyk held onto the sides of the cart, spraddling his feet to steady himself as they lunged and lurched over the rough streets.

  ‘And where did the banker get her?’

  ‘From a fish peddler who’d paid out a paltry sum for her.’

  Mister Seely’s next words jerked out to the motion of the cart. ‘There’s something about her head . . . and her way of going . . . and the angling of her hock . . .’ But the wind scattered his words.