Born to Trot

by Marguerite Henry

  ‘The banker,’ Mister Kent offered, ‘gave me no papers with her. Nor a name. We call her Butcher’s Nag from her habit of pulling up lame after a day’s work.’

  As if the mare had overheard, she began limping, and by the time they reached the Bull’s Head Tavern she was a pitiable sight with her uneven gait.

  William Rysdyk jumped out of the cart, waiting for Mister Seely, but his employer was deep in thought.

  ‘What of her lameness?’ he asked, looking at Mr. Kent.

  ‘I know not the particulars.’ The man’s eyes glinted as he slowly returned the whip to its socket, sensing a deal in the air. ‘I was told there was an accident,’ he replied, measuring his words. ‘The mare had good cause to shy and run away, and the chaise swung into a tree. As I heard it, she got her leg caught in one of the wheels and she herself was thrown to the paving stones.’

  ‘The result a spavin?’

  ‘A slight one,’ nodded Mister Kent, forgetting about the seating of the dignitaries. ‘Only when she is tired would you observe it.’

  ‘I find it somewhat of a smart,’ Mister Seely said, plucking at the tufts of his muttonchop whiskers, ‘to see a mare put to work with a bad spavin.’

  ‘The spavin is nothing, I tell you. In the morning, rested, she will go sound.’

  The question Mister Kent looked for came more quickly than he expected. ‘What will you take for your Butcher’s Nag?’ Mister Seely inquired.

  From the stables beyond the inn, two grooms came up, listening, awaiting orders.

  ‘Go on about your business,’ Mister Kent told them not unkindly. Then turning to Mister Seely, ‘I’ll take a hundred and thirty-five for her.’

  Looking at the mare, William Rysdyk swallowed. A hundred and thirty-five taler! Why, she was over the fifteen. Over the twenty, maybe.

  ‘It is too steep a price,’ Mister Seely was saying without any rise in his voice. ‘You know it full well. And I know it.’

  ‘P’raps so. P’raps so. But I too bought her with the same spavin. And, I might add, at the same figure. Now I really must be off.’

  Mister Seely got down from the cart, thinking. ‘The turtle feast tempts me,’ he said, yawning, ‘but I believe I will rest against the morrow’s journey.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Should the mare go sound by noontide, I will buy her at your price. She might make a good brood mare.’

  The two men shook hands to seal the agreement. Then William Rysdyk and Mister Seely stood watching as the mare limped away, until she and her cart were swallowed by the lengthening shadows.

  Twelve

  GIBSON was brought back to the here and now by a sharp pinch of his toe.

  “That book must be something!” A nurse stood laughing at the foot of the bed, holding a tray on her arm. “Your lunch is getting cold.” She turned and set the tray down on a small table beside the wing chair. “You can get up to eat it,” she said, opening out the drop leaf. “And Tante has put your mail on the table. She felt put out that you didn’t even know she was here.”

  For the first time since he had left the Grand Circuit, Gibson was hungry. With each mouthful of meat loaf and tomato sauce he made believe he was eating runderslappen smothered in spicy gravy. And the gingersnaps on his tray were not gingersnaps at all; they were rich, crumbly crullers.

  Chewing his food, he slit open the letter with his forefinger. He read it not once, but two and three times over.

  Your filly’s got horse sense, Son. No bees in her bonnet. Knows enough to take a good snooze in the afternoon, lying down.

  The other day I was showing her to Mr. Reynolds and Bill Strang and she dropped into a trot and strode off with fine knee action. By George, they were impressed. I was puffed up as a bullfrog over it.

  Gibson laughed, took another mouthful, read on.

  The fast trot is becoming a habit with her. She’s the first one to reach the gate at feeding time and she always comes on a trot.

  Gibson poured himself a glass of milk from the pitcher on his tray.

  Dr. Mills found a cabin near the hospital for your mother and grandmother. You can expect them for a visit any day now.

  I’m sending you a catalog of training gear so you’ll know costs.

  Gibson emptied his glass of milk and glanced through the catalog. “Gosh,” he said, “Rosalind’s going to have to be a two-minute horse to pay her keep!” Two minutes! He took hold of the cords on his bathrobe. He closed his eyes. The cords became reins and the pull on them was strong, and Rosalind was flying down the stretch. He could hear the sound of her hoofs on the track. She could do it! The two-minute mile was a breeze.

  Each letter about his filly seemed to bring new strength to Gibson. And some days the hands on the clock flew around in a tearing hurry, exactly as they had done on his dresser at home. There was so much to do! Rosalind’s progress to be entered in the notebook. Lessons to be worked out and sent back to school. Letters to be written. And each day his mother and grandmother came, remembering important things.

  “Bear naps right between Rosalind’s feet. And she stands quiet and gentle, not daring to move until he wakes,”—this was his grandmother speaking.

  “Rosalind’s tail beckons when she goes,” his mother said.

  The talk had stuff and purpose. No little surface words like “Everything’s fine. Isn’t the weather lovely?”

  But it was strange how Gibson lived in two worlds now. Part of the time he was himself, Gibson White, owner of Rosalind in training for the Grand Circuit. And part of the time he was a rugged hired hand, strong as all outdoors. The big black beard didn’t make William Rysdyk a character remote at all. It was like a Hallowe’en mask. Behind the beard Gibson saw an overgrown boy. At home under the sky. Boxed in and wretched in the city.

  The moment visiting hours were over, Gibson crawled back into his other world. Even when famous baseball players came to the hospital and looked in on him, their good-bys still echoed while his hands were reaching out for the book, finding the place.

  3: A Bargain Made

  Precisely at the hour of noon, Mister Kent appeared at the Bull’s Head Tavern with the mare tied to the tail of a wagon.

  ‘Here she is! And sound as a dollar,’ he announced to Mister Seely as he untied her and walked her about. ‘Note,’ he said, ‘how the swelling has subsided and the lameness with it.’

  Mister Seely tilted his head, watching to see if the mare placed her weight evenly on all four feet. ‘Hmm,’ he mused in unbelief, for her feet touched the ground smartly, each stroke quick and strong.

  William Rysdyk stared in astonishment as he saw ten- and twenty-dollar gold pieces go from Mister Seely’s pocket into the cupped hands of Mister Kent. And, dumbfounded, he heard the calm words, ‘Here are the gold pieces you paid out for the Alderney; your own dollars come back to roost!’

  On the way out of the city, Mister Seely rode Sir Luddy and William Rysdyk led the mare. It was true about her going sound after a night’s rest. She raised her knee and hock well, thrusting her legs forward and backward in a smooth stroke.

  Not a word passed between the two men until they had crossed King’s Bridge over the Spuyten Duyvil Creek and were out on the Harlem Valley Road.

  Then Mister Seely made an eyeshield of his hand. He looked ahead and he looked behind. ‘Whoa, Rysdyk!’ he commanded when he had made certain no one was anywhere in sight. ‘Now look! Does the butcher’s nag have a star? Very small? High under the forelock?’

  Quick hands lifted the graying lock of hair. ‘Yah, shure.’

  ‘And is one foreleg more roan than bay?’

  ‘Shure, shure. Already I see it in New York.’

  ‘Look sharp! Does she have a fine white coronet on her near, no, on her off hind leg?’

  William Rysdyk walked around and observed. ‘Yah, on her off side, sir, if you look hard.’

  The questions streamed on. ‘Look, Rysdyk! On the neck under her mane. A quirl?’

  ‘How say you?’

  ‘A qui
rl—a spot where the hair grows frowardly?’

  William Rysdyk lifted the mane. And there, underneath, just as Mister Seely had said, was a little spot where the hair grew wayward. ‘Shure! Shure! The hairs they turn themselves around!’

  Mister Seely threw back his head and slapped his thigh. ‘It’s the same mare all right,’ he chuckled, as if enjoying some secret joke. ‘The same mare brother Peter rode. She could be a vixen, Rysdyk, if it were not for that bad spavin.’

  ‘Yah?’

  ‘Now leg up on her. You’re not so old as your beard makes you out. I wager she’ll feel younger as she gets to traveling country roads instead of cobblestones. Here, lead her alongside. That’s it. Now put your foot in my stirrup and leap aboard. No need of a bit and bridle. She’ll stay close to Sir Luddy for companionship.’

  William Rysdyk vaulted onto the mare’s back and snugged his knees into place. He felt her alert. And all of a sudden he was elevated in spirit as well as body. ‘Ach!’ he cried in ecstasy. ‘I feel myself big. Look once, sir. By golly, she stands me good! You think maybe I fit her all right?’

  Mister Seely’s nod left no doubt.

  For the first time in his life William Rysdyk was riding alongside Mister Seely. For the first time he was astride a fine trappy animal instead of a broad-backed work horse. As they journeyed along he could not help comparing the mare with Sir Luddy. ‘That Luddy, he is jughead alongside her,’ he said to himself. ‘By criminy, with her rough coat yet she’s beautiful like anything.’

  They rode on in silence, following the silver river, going slowly along like the steamboat lazing downstream.

  At last Mister Seely broke into the quiet. ‘This mare without a name,’ he said as they ambled along, ‘is a great-granddaughter of Messenger.’

  ‘So? That explains it why she could go around the Union Course so quick?’

  ‘That is but part of the reason.’

  ‘Yah?’

  ‘Yes, but a part.’

  A flock of wild pigeons flew low over their heads, the noise of their wings shutting out the talk.

  ‘How you going to say, sir?’ reminded William Rysdyk when the whistle of bird wings had gone by.

  Jonas Seely laughed loud and long until the blood deepened in his face. It made his white stock look whiter than the underside of the pigeons. Could be a stroke striking him! the hired man thought in alarm. Then he sighed with relief as Mister Seely went on.

  ‘The mare you ride,’ he chortled, ‘had no time to wait for a name. She was a runaway at every chance.’ His laughter broke out afresh. ‘One day my brother limped home from a ride and sold her off quick as scat before his bruises had a chance to heal.’

  ‘Yah?’ asked William Rysdyk, his eyebrows crawling up and up his forehead.

  ‘The wings on her heels came from—’

  ‘Yah? Yah?’

  ‘They came from her grandsire and granddam.’ Mister Seely slapped a fly that worried his horse.

  William Rysdyk could stand the suspense no longer. Now his face was red, too. ‘And who was they, sir?’ he exploded.

  ‘They were,’ said Jonas Seely, stretching out the words until they snapped into the hired man’s face, ‘they were my Silvertail and your Bishop’s Hambletonian.’

  A gasp came from the black beard. ‘Bishop’s Hambletonian!’ The hands holding the halter rope began to shake and the bronzed face went ashy gray. With a little cry no more than a dog’s whimper, William Rysdyk toppled from the mare’s back into the dust of the road.

  Like a scalded cat she bolted up the pike, the lead rope snaking out behind her.

  Thirteen

  GIBSON thought he heard a knocking. He swung around to listen. There! It came again. Louder.

  He raised himself on both elbows. “Come in,” he said, trying to hide the annoyance he felt.

  A tall, dark-eyed woman entered his room carrying a basket on her arm. The basket was filled with books in yellow and red and green jackets.

  “Good morning,” she said, stopping just inside the door. “Would you like to select a book from our new library? A mystery? A western? A sea story, perhaps?

  Gibson found it difficult to wrench his mind away from the book in his hands. What was happening to the runaway mare? Would she ever race again? Would she get worse and be led away to her death? “No, thank you,” he managed to say politely, “I have a book, and schoolwork, too.”

  A hurt look came into the woman’s eyes. She turned to leave, the heavy basket sagging her shoulder.

  “Wait,” Gibson called, feeling mean. “I could see what you have, and when you come next time . . .”

  She came back, smiling, resting the basket on the edge of his bed. “May I look at your book while you look over these?”

  Gibson gave her the old, old book while he glanced at the titles in her basket. Smoky, by Will James. Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. Death at Dawn. And tucked in between Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Mutiny on the Bounty was a book on boxing. “I’d like this one,” he said, pointing to it. “Could you bring it next time you come?”

  The woman nodded, wrote down the book title on a scrap of paper, picked up her basket and was gone. But before Gibson could go back to his reading, the door opened again and his mother came in. She read aloud a letter from Miss Briggs, asking why she had not received his mathematics paper.

  “I’ll just stay and wait while you do it,” Mrs. White said, taking out her knitting and making herself comfortable in the wing chair.

  Gibson sighed as he opened the textbook and found the problems he was to solve. How many rolls it took to paper Mr. Anderson’s circular room, nine feet high, diameter twelve feet, seemed small doings while a lame mare was streaking off, unguided, over dangerous terrain. Each problem was more irksome than the one before. The same Mr. Anderson was offered as many flagstones as he wanted at two cents a stone. And the question was how many would he need and how many pounds would they weigh and how much would it cost to build a terrace of such and such dimensions. There were twelve problems, all about this Mr. Anderson and his busyness. Gibson fairly hated the man by the time they were worked out and given to his mother to mail.

  It was night before he found time to read. No sound anywhere except the distant cry of a screech owl. He sighed in anticipation. His supper tray had been picked up. The room straightened. Evening visitors gone. A whole hour before lights would go out. And now, at last!

  His hands went to the table beside his bed. He lifted the harness horse magazines. He lifted some old newspapers. But the book with the gold hasp was not there.

  He felt in his mail pouches, in the outgoing and the incoming. It was not there, either.

  He pawed through the things in his dresser, knowing all the while the book could not possibly be there. He looked underneath the bed. There was nothing. Only his shadow crouching.

  His mind darted back to the morning. The book lady! His book picked up by mistake. His book in her basket. He rang for a nurse and almost shouted his question. “Where is the library?”

  “It’s not in the building, Gib,” the nurse told him.

  “Where is it?”

  “It’s a bookmobile.”

  “A bookmobile?”

  “Yes, a library on wheels.”

  “When will it be back?”

  “In a month.”

  “A month!” Gibson’s voice quavered. He thought of all the things that might happen to the book, of all the things that might happen to the mare! He thought of Dr. Mills. How would he feel when he heard his book was lost?

  In the month that followed, Gibson wrote a dozen letters to Dr. Mills explaining about the book, then tore each one up. He would wait until next bookmobile day. Surely the book would be returned.

  Meanwhile, Time took to acting strangely again. Sometimes Gibson had to shake the clock to make sure it was running. Letters were fewer now that his father was in the heat of training. Callers were fewer now that his grandmother had a cold and his mother was carin
g for her.

  Late one day when there had been no visitors and no letters, Tante thrust her head in the door. “You,” she said, smiling with importance, “are wanted on the telephone. It’s long distance!”

  His bathrobe half on, his bedroom slippers flapping, Gibson followed Tante down the hall.

  “Wait now until it rings,” she said, waving him into the telephone booth.

  He sat down on the stool, waiting, little fears and excitements stirring inside him. The bell when it came sounded like an alarm. Then the reassuring voice: “Son! I just wanted to tell you Rosalind takes her training in the spirit of play.”

  “Is that good, Dad?”

  “Good? It’s phenomenal!”

  “Gee, Dad, that’s great.”

  Now Mr. White could not keep the pride out of his voice. “Your filly’s not only bridle-wise, she’s whip-wise.”

  “How’d you do it so soon, Dad?”

  “Oh,” the voice chuckled, “just by tickling her with the whip along her crest. Now we can crack it and she just pricks an ear as if to say, “Humph, I know where that sound comes from—no harm in that.’ ”

  Gibson drummed his fingers up the wall at a quick trotting gait. “When she gets to racing she won’t flinch at other drivers’ whips, will she, Dad?”

  “That’s the idea of it, Son.”

  A brittle voice spiked into the conversation. “Your three minutes are up, sir.”

  “Oh, no, ma’am, we haven’t talked that long. Dad—? Dad—?”

  “What is it, Son?”

  “You know—” A long pause. “I’d like to come home.”

  “I know, Son, but be game. Stick it out.”

  The brittle voice again, wedging in between them, pushing them apart.

  “So long, Son. You’ll have a letter from me tomorrow.”

  The letter did come and with it a whole pack of snapshots, like a moving picture. Rosalind rolling in the grass, splashing in the frog pond. Rosalind looking through a bridle, mouthing a leather bit as if it were a teething ring. Rosalind being guided with reins while Mr. White walked along behind. Rosalind sharing a meal with Bear.