Gib Rides Home (20 page)

But now Hy was looking worried again. “You mean you’ve let her ride the mare?” he asked.

“Not really ride,” Gib said. “But she’s sat on Silky some while I led her up and down inside the barn. She wants to go out in the corral but she’s going to ask her mother first.”

Hy was shaking his head. “Well, you be sure she does that. Get Miss Julia’s say-so. And don’t let Livy get ahead of herself. She’ll be good with the mare, like as not, but not as good as you were. Nowhere near as good as you were.”

Gib felt flattered. Flattered and puzzled. When he asked, though, Hy only said he couldn’t rightly put it into words. But after he’d thought awhile he started trying. “There’s two things is important with horses,” he said finally. “One of them’s confidence, and Livy’s got bushels of that. But the other one is deeper like. It’s what I’d call ... He paused, scratching his tumbleweed head. “It’s more a kind of—steadiness. Like some people don’t feel the need to go thrashin’ around proving who they are. Horses feel that steadiness in a person. Settles them right down.”

So Gib promised that he wouldn’t let Livy get ahead of herself, but at the time he wasn’t taking into account the fact that Olivia Thornton was pretty much born ahead of herself. And it wasn’t any more than a week later that she set about proving it for good and all.

Gib and Hy were irrigating the vegetable garden that day. The weather had been so hot and dry that some serious irrigating had become necessary, which always meant a lot of extra work. Hard work like digging ditches and moving pipes and hoses from one furrow to another. They had things pretty well under way when they heard Mrs. Perry ringing the bell for the noon meal. They washed up a bit at the standpipe and were heading toward the house when everything began to happen at once.

They were almost to the barnyard when Gib became aware of the distant sound of a motorcar. And just about then Hy said, “Sounds like the Model T. Did the boss say he’d be home early?”

Gib grinned and shook his head. “You know the boss never says anything to me. Must have come back for something he forgot. Or else he’s sick again maybe.”

They’d closed the gate and were just coming into the barnyard when the back door of the house opened and Mr. Thornton came down the steps and headed directly for the barn. They were close enough by then to see his face and the tight frown that narrowed his eyes, clenched his lips, and set muscles twitching in his jaw. When he reached the barn door he unlatched it and shouted as it swung open.

“Olivia,” Mr. Thornton was yelling. “Olivia! What are you—” He jumped back then, staggering to one side, as from the barn’s dimly lit interior there came the thunder of hooves and Black Silk burst out into the barnyard. A saddled and bridled Black Silk, who plunged into the sunlight carrying Livy Thornton on her back. Livy was dressed in trousers and riding astride, and her face glowed with a mixture of excitement and fear. But as Mr. Thornton yelled and lunged to grab the reins, Silky whirled away and danced sideways across the yard, lifting her legs high and floating her long tail like a proud black flag.

For a fraction of a second Gib was too stunned to react, so it was Hy who made the first move. As Silky, confused by Livy’s frantic jerks on the reins, whirled and headed across the yard, Hy lurched forward just in time to block the way to the drive and the open road beyond. But when he threw out his arms and yelled, “Whoa. Whoa, baby,” the mare’s skidding stop only turned into a snorting, sidestepping retreat.

Not meaning any harm, she wasn’t. Gib could see that. Just feeling her oats and showing off, but a kind of showing off that was scaring Livy and threatening to dump her on the hard-packed earth of the barnyard. Losing one stirrup and her balance, Livy had dropped the reins, grabbed frantically for the saddle horn, and was slipping farther and farther to one side.

Okay, Silky, that’s enough, Gib thought, and he told her so. Told Silky firmly but calmly to stop acting crazy and settle down. And at the sound of his voice the dancing, skittering mare pricked her ears toward him, gave a final little head-tossing celebration, and quieted to a quivering standstill. Gib walked over and picked up the dragging reins.

On the mare’s back, Livy clung to the saddle horn, her face flushed with fright, but also with what looked to be a strange sort of triumph.

But her father’s face was flushed, too, and he was striding toward them yelling in a way that might have set Silky off again if Hy hadn’t cut him off, grabbed his arm, and pulled him to a stop.

So the crisis was over and nobody was hurt, but less than an hour after Livy was safely down on the ground and Black Silk back in her stall, Gib was on his way back to the Lovell House orphanage.

N
OTHING MUCH HAD BEEN
said between the moment when Mr. Thornton found Livy riding Black Silk and the time, less than an hour later, when the Model T bounced down the driveway carrying Gib, a canvas bag full of his clothing, two saddles, and a silver-studded bridle. Nothing much had been said by Mr. Thornton, at least, or by Gib. Hy had said quite a lot, not that it did any good.

“It warn’t the boy’s fault,” Hy had said over and over again. “He warn’t even in the barn this mornin’. Been out in the field with me ever since breakfast.”

But Mr. Thornton only glared at Hy, grabbed Gib’s arm, and started off around the house toward the Model T. Hy hobbled along behind them still talking and asking questions. “Where you takin’ him? Where you goin’ to take the boy?”

Mr. Thornton’s whole face was tight as a closed fist, and something twitched in his cheek like the tendons in the face of an angry horse. “Back to where he belongs,” he muttered between clenched teeth. “The orphanage. Go get his belongings. We’re leaving in ten minutes.”

Mr. Thornton pulled Gib around to the front of the house, where the motorcar was parked. “Get in,” he said. “Get up there in the backseat.” As he disappeared back the way he’d come, he added, “And stay there.”

Gib sat in the backseat of the Model T and tried to make sense of what was happening. He’d never been in a motorcar before, but he couldn’t even think to be curious. He wasn’t, in fact, thinking very clearly about anything, except to wonder if the whole thing was a nightmare and whether he would wake up in a minute and find himself back in the loft in Hy’s cabin. But it wasn’t a nightmare and in a few minutes, or maybe it was half an hour—time was another thing he was finding it hard to keep track of—Mr. Thornton came back, with Hy and Livy right behind him. Hy was carrying a duffel bag and Livy was yelling at the top of her lungs.

“It wasn’t his fault! He didn’t have anything to do with it,” Livy was yelling. And when her father went on ignoring her, she started yelling something else. “I saddled her myself, and I rode her. And I’m going to go right on riding her, no matter what you say.”

That was the first thing anyone said that Mr. Thornton seemed to have heard. Whirling around, he stared at Livy, and then he disappeared again, heading back toward the barn with Livy running behind him. “You can’t,” Gib heard her yell. “You can’t hurt Silky. You promised Mother you wouldn’t. You promised.”

It was then that Gib started to get down and go after them, but Hy stopped him. “Stay there, Gibby,” he said. “Ain’t nothin’ you can do. And don’t worry. He won’t hurt the mare none. He’s a hard man to figure, the boss is, but he don’t break a promise.”

So Gib didn’t do anything, and in a few minutes Mr. Thornton came back carrying the silver-studded bridle and sidesaddle, as well as the small roping saddle that had been Livy’s mother’s and that she had given to Gib Whittaker after she’d watched him riding Black Silk.

Throwing all the tack into the backseat, Mr. Thornton cranked up the motor and climbed into the driver’s seat. At the last minute, while the motor was choking and heaving to life, Mrs. Perry came out the front door, trotted heavily up to the Model T, and, glaring at Mr. Thornton’s back, thrust a good-smelling package into Gib’s hands. Then the Model T roared down the drive carrying Gib away from the Rocking M on his way back to where he’d come from—the Lovell House orphanage.

But somehow it all still seemed as unreal as a bad dream. One of those terrible dreams in which awful things keep happening and nothing you do makes it any better, except that you kind of halfway understand that you’re only dreaming and that all you have to do is wake up. This time, though, the waking up was only to the certainty that it was not a dream.

It seemed to Gib that it was the good smell of Mrs. Perry’s package that did it. Suddenly there it was—the reality of no more of Mrs. Perry’s cooking. And no more of Miss Hooper’s friendly frowns, or Hy’s honking laugh and head full of old stories about horses and the men who rode them. It was real all right. Gib swallowed hard, and for the next few miles he had to fight against a painful pressure in his throat and a hot flood that threatened his eyes.

They hadn’t gone more than a few miles, however, when Mr. Thornton pulled over to the side, stomped on pedals, shoved levers, and just sat there, staring straight ahead. It was on a straight stretch of road several miles from the Rocking M, and Gib’s first thought was that he was going to be put out and left all alone on the prairie. But then he noticed that Mr. Thornton was fishing around in a small box that he had pulled from his coat pocket. He found something, put it in his mouth, and then continued to sit stiffly, with both hands clutching the steering wheel. He stayed that way for a long time.

After a while Gib leaned forward until he could see Mr. Thornton’s lean, bearded face. His eyes were closed and he seemed to be breathing extra hard. “Mr. Thornton, sir,” Gib said at last. “Are you all right?”

The man’s head jerked up then, and, turning to look at Gib, he said, “Yes, yes, quite all right.” But then he went back to clutching the wheel and breathing heavily. Several minutes later he straightened up, looked around, and then started to push and stomp on things again. But it was then that the motor, which had been chugging away softly, hiccuped violently and died. Moving very slowly, Mr. Thornton started to climb down out of the driver’s seat, but Gib said, “I’ll do it, sir. I think I can do it.”

Cranking up the car was a lot harder than it looked, but with Mr. Thornton calling instructions, Gib finally managed to bring the motor back to life. When he started to climb back up into the rear seat, Mr. Thornton motioned to the seat beside him and said, “Here. Sit here.”

They went on then, sitting side by side. But sitting there in the bouncing, rattling motorcar, it occurred to Gib that, what with the motor dying and all, the two of them had just had more of a conversation than they’d had in all the days since Gib arrived at the Rocking M. However, it now seemed the talking was over, and it wasn’t until they’d reached the outskirts of Harristown that Gib got up his nerve to say, “Mr. Thornton, sir.” And then, “I don’t think she’ll take me back. Miss Offenbacher has a rule about not letting anyone come back.”

Mr. Thornton made a grunting, questioning sound before he nodded and said, “She’ll let you stay. I think I can promise you that much.”

Gib felt surprised, but not much else. He certainly didn’t feel much better. Not that he doubted Mr. Thornton’s promise. Hy said that Mr. Thornton didn’t break promises, and Gib believed it. It was just that it wasn’t too easy to feel good about a promise that he could stay at Lovell House. Gib was still wondering how much Mr. Thornton knew about Miss Offenbacher and her rules when the Ford pulled up to the curb and stopped.

Lovell House looked just as it always had, tall, cold, and stony gray. A little more worn and shabby, perhaps, and no longer quite so much like the evil castle in the book of fairy tales. But even so, standing there on the wide driveway, Gib was definitely feeling faint stirrings of the terror-stricken little boy in the square collar. Suddenly he sensed that Mr. Thornton was watching him. When their eyes met, Mr. Thornton turned back to the motorcar and pulled a saddle out of the backseat.

“Here,” he said, “take this with you.” And when Gib hung back, staring at him in astonishment, he added, “Take it. According to Miss Hooper, Mrs. Thornton gave it to you some time ago.”

So Gib walked back across the marble entry hall and into the headmistress’s office carrying a duffel bag and the beautiful roping saddle that had belonged to Julia Merrill of the Rocking M Ranch. The saddle that his own mother, Maggie Whittaker, had once ridden on. And even though he felt sure he wouldn’t be allowed to keep it, for the moment it seemed to make a great difference. Somehow just the heft and the good horsey smell of it steadied his thoughts and firmed the beat of his heart.

Like the house itself, Miss Offenbacher still looked stern and forbidding and, at the same time, a little more worn and shabby. But her nutcracker jaw was just as firm, and the braids that coiled around her head still looked like fat gray snakes. And if Gib was surprised and distressed to find himself back in her office, she certainly seemed to be just as amazed and displeased to find him there. She was beginning to say so when Mr. Thornton pulled out a checkbook and began to write.

The two of them talked then in low voices for a long time. At one point Miss Offenbacher shook her head and said some things about “against the rules” and “highly irregular.” But when Mr. Thornton picked up his checkbook and started to put it back in his pocket, she nodded hurriedly and said something that started with the word
however
. And then the check writing began again.

In the end Gib was told to report to Senior Hall, where, for the time being, he was assigned to bed number five. And then, just as he had feared, Miss Offenbacher said, “But he can’t be allowed to keep that saddle, of course.”

Another long discussion followed. Watching and listening, Gib could catch only occasional words and phrases. Right at first he heard the word
saddle
quite a lot, but after a while it began to seem that the whole drift of the argument had changed to who was going to have the last word. At one point Gib almost grinned; it was going to be hard for either one of those two to back off, seeing as how neither one of them had ever had much practice in coming in second. But at last there was another picking up of the checkbook, which seemed to turn things around a bit, and it began to look like Mr. Thornton might come out ahead at the finish line.