The Tale of Applebeck Orchard (21 page)

It was indeed Major Ragsdale, and he looked like a parade because he was wearing his service uniform: a smart wool jacket, khaki-colored, with epaulettes on the shoulders and a colorful array of campaign ribbons pinned above the left breast pocket; khaki wool riding trousers, carefully brushed; Sam Browne leather belt and holster and brown leather boots, polished to a fare-thee-well; officer’s cap with a shiny visor, set at a cocky angle. The rain pattering down on the visor beaded up into tiny droplets.

“Ah, Captain!” the major cried, and brandished his swagger stick. “And Constable Braithwaite! The troops are assembled, then, and ready for battle, rain or no. Prepared to storm the barricades, eh, what?”

John Braithwaite glanced at the captain and cleared his throat in an embarrassed sort of way. He was a burly, red-faced man, whose village constable’s uniform was slightly shabby with patches on the elbows and tarnished buttons. “Er, g’ mornin’, Major,” he said.

“Egad,” muttered Captain Woodcock, with barely disguised amusement. This was not what he had planned. Aloud, he said, “Ah, Ragsdale. You’re punctual. And in full kit, no less.”

“Thought our campaign maneuver merited a bit of the old dress-up,” the major said in his brisk military way. He squinted at the sky and held out a hand. Several drops splatted into his palm. “Unlucky weather, eh? But nothing like the downpours we had at Mafeking. Mud so deep the horses mired in it up to their fetlocks.” He smoothed his mustache with his little finger. “Now, then, gentlemen. Are we ready?”

“I believe we are ready,” said the captain, still amused. He had not planned anything on the order of a military expedition and found the major’s getup rather silly. “If you will just put your hand on—”

But the major was already advancing. He raised his swagger stick over his head, struck a pose as if he were engaging a fencing opponent, and cried, at the top of his lungs, “Dread tyrant fall! Down with the barricades!” With that, he smacked his swagger stick across the top of the pile of twisted wire and wood staves.

What followed has been the subject of much dispute. Mr. Harmsworth claims that he shouted a warning from behind the clump of willows where he had been waiting since the first gray light of dawn. What he said (he said) was, “Git off me proppity, or I’ll shoot!”

The captain, the major, and the constable all claim that they heard no warning. (Max the Manx and Fritz the ferret were not asked to give evidence, but if they had, they would have testified that they didn’t hear it, either.) So perhaps Mr. Harmsworth only meant to shout and never quite managed to get the words out.

But it is certainly not disputed by either party that Mr. Harmsworth fired his shotgun (aiming high, as he later claimed, so as not to injure but merely to frighten the trespassers and persuade them to leave his property).

And if causing great fright was his purpose, Mr. Harmsworth certainly achieved it. The captain, the constable, and the major, hearing the blast, threw themselves flat on the ground behind the barricade as the birdshot went whizzing over their heads.

“Take cover!” cried the major—unnecessarily, since all three of them had already done this. In great excitement, he fumbled at the button on his holster and pulled out his Webley. “Never fear. I shall return fire!”

“Put that gun down, Ragsdale!” the captain shouted and, since Ragsdale showed no signs of doing so, yanked the revolver from the major’s hand. He got to his knees behind the barricade and raised his head to peer over it, trying to catch sight of their attacker. “Hold your fire, Harmsworth!” he shouted. “Fire again and I’ll have you charged with—”

Afterward, Mr. Harmsworth claimed that he heard the major cry, “Return fire!” and the captain call, “Fire again!” And so he fired his shotgun once more.

Now, if you will glance quickly at the map at the front of this book, you will see that the spot where this armed altercation took place—the north end of Applebeck Footpath—is no more than a few yards from the Kendal Road, just to the east and south of the bridge over Wilfin Beck. As it happened, Miss Potter, driving Winston the pony, with Rascal on the red pony-cart seat beside her and the two bunnies in a hamper underneath, was traveling east on the Kendal Road, in the direction of Raven Hall and Far Sawrey. Unluckily, she happened to drive onto the bridge at the very moment Mr. Harmsworth happened to fire his first shotgun blast. Winston (normally a mild-tempered pony who is slow to react to strange noises) was so terrified by the sudden, ear-splitting BLAM that he reared up on his hind legs, whinnying loudly, as Miss Potter pulled on the reins, struggling to regain control.

“Ayyee!”
Winston cried.
“Somebody’s shooting at me! Ayyee! Ayyeeeee!”

And as it further happened, a farmer’s wagon, loaded with four stacks of wooden crates filled with live chickens and pulled by an old, slow draught horse named Nellie, was approaching from the opposite direction, headed for the poultry market at Hawkshead, where the chickens were destined to be sold for slaughter. Nellie, like Winston, was so startled by Mr. Harmsworth’s shotgun blast that she, too, reared up on her hind legs and pawed at the air, something she had not done since she was a filly. The young farmer’s boy who was driving the wagon first thought that he himself had been shot, then thought that the horse had been shot, and then feared that Nellie (who was standing up, as tall as a house) was going to fall straight backward, into his lap. Quite properly, the boy did not want a lapful of heavy horse, so he threw up the reins and dove over the side of the wagon.

Then came the second
BLAM
, which seemed even louder and more terrifying than the other. First Winston, then Nellie stopped pawing the air and came down hard on their front feet. And both horse and pony, each equally terrified and having nowhere to go but forward, ran full-tilt toward each other, with the predictable result.

And that is why I say that books, like hotels and theaters, ought perhaps to leave out the thirteenth chapter altogether.

14

Miss Potter Puts on the Brakes

Well. Since we have arrived at the fourteenth chapter, I may now tell you that neither Winston nor Nellie was badly hurt when they ran together, for (and this is very good luck, I would say) they managed at the last possible moment to avoid a direct collision.

The farmer’s boy, having dropped the reins and dived out of the wagon, had left his horse to her own devices. But this turned out not to be a bad thing, for Nellie is an old, slow creature who ought to have been retired years ago and is still on the job because she is the farmer’s only horse. She does not in any circumstance like to run, even when (as she thought in this case) she is being fired upon. And she most certainly does not like to bump into another horse, or even a pony. Something might get broken—some part of Nellie, that is.

So Nellie breathed a sigh of relief when Winston veered to the left at the very last minute. She stopped running as soon as she could and stood there, head down, sides heaving, taking in huge gulps of air. But Nellie is a big horse (about the size of the Clydesdale horses you may have seen on television) and she didn’t come to a full stop quite soon enough to keep the farmer’s wagon from tipping onto two wheels, first one side and then the other. It did not tip over altogether, just far enough to slide those four tall stacks of wooden chicken crates onto the road, where they broke wide open, scattering dozens of squawking chickens. (There were so many loose white feathers that, afterward, the village children ran down to the road and pretended that it had snowed.) The farmer’s boy, badly scratched from having taken a nosedive into a bramble patch but not otherwise damaged, scrambled to his feet and began to give chase to the chickens, who ran off to hide under the farthest bushes. (Chickens are not nearly so brainless as people say. They understood full well that if they got to Hawkshead Market, the next stop would be the stew pot.) The boy found a few, but more found new homes in the village, at Belle Green and Castle Farm and Hill Top and Low Green Gate, thereby postponing their date with the dumplings for another year or two.

And what of our Miss Potter? Well, she did not drop the reins and dive over the side of the pony cart, like the farmer’s boy. She stayed on her seat, held on to the reins, and gave Winston the firm, expert guidance he needed, which probably explains the fact that Nellie and Winston only brushed past each other, and that the wheels of the pony cart and the wagon did not lock together (as sometimes happens in this sort of collision), wreck both vehicles, and seriously injure both horses and occupants.

Safely past the danger of collision, Miss Potter put on the brakes. “Whoa, Winston!” she cried, bracing her feet against the front of the cart and pulling back on the reins with both hands. “Whoa, there!”

“Naaayy!”
whinnied Winston. He tossed his mane, flicked his tail, put back his ears, and kept on running.
“Naaayy!”

“Stop, Winston!”
Rascal barked frantically, trying hard to keep his balance as the pony cart lurched from one side to the other.

“Whyyyy?”
whinnied Winston, who by this time had stopped thinking that he had been shot and was running because . . . well, just because. You know how some ponies are.

“Because I said so!” Miss Potter shouted, and yanked back on the reins with all her might.

Winston stopped so abruptly that Miss Potter and Rascal were flung forward.
“That hurt!”
he exclaimed in a self-pitying tone. He felt the bit with his tongue.
“That reallyyy hurt, Miss Potter!”

“Serves you right, you rogue pony. We could have been killed!”
Rascal was breathing heavily, his tongue hanging out.
“Miss Potter, that was an amazing feat—keeping your seat, holding on to the reins. You kept us from turning over!”

“Are you all right, Miss Potter?” cried Captain Woodcock, running up to the pony cart.

“Jolly good horsemanship, Miss Potter,” shouted Major Ragsdale, right behind the captain. “By Jove, Baden-Powell should have liked that!”

Miss Potter fixed her rain hat more firmly on her head and scowled at the gun in Captain Woodcock’s hand. “Were you shooting at us, Captain?” she asked frostily.

“No. No, oh, no,” said the captain, and hastily returned the Webley to its owner, who buttoned it into his holster. “Mr. Harmsworth did the shooting. At us. That is, at the major and myself. And the constable,” he added, as Constable Braithwaite appeared. He had seized the reprobate Mr. Harmsworth and now had the shooter in one hand and his shotgun in the other.

“Tha wast trespassin’ on me private proppity!” shouted Mr. Harmsworth angrily, struggling to free himself from the constable. But while Mr. Harmsworth was broad-shouldered and stocky, he was much shorter than the burly constable, who had him firmly collared and was holding him so high that his feet barely touched the ground. “An’ I wasn’t shootin’ at thi—nor at tha, Missus,” he cried to Miss Potter. “I was shootin’ over t’ men’s heads, where they was on me footpath.” He kicked his heels so fiercely that the constable set him down.

“Well, I was on the
public
road, Mr. Harmsworth,” Miss Potter said with asperity. “And since the road is higher than the footpath, I was your target, however unintended. I consider myself lucky not to be picking birdshot out of myself or my pony.”

“Or me!”
Rascal barked. He shuddered, thinking how his handsome fur could have been tattered by birdshot.

“Apologize to the lady,” the major growled. “Just think of the damage you could have caused.” He glanced back to where the farmer’s boy had crawled out of the bramble bushes and was making his way toward his waiting horse and wagon. “And have caused,” he amended. “That boy will never catch all those chickens. Their owner has sustained a considerable property loss, I’d say.”

Mr. Harmsworth looked down at his feet.

“Apologize to Miss Potter,” the captain ordered. “You understand that she can press charges against you, don’t you?”

At the words
press charges
, Mr. Harmsworth looked up. “Sorry, Missus.” His voice was low and sullen. “Din’t mean no harm.”

Miss Potter considered this for a moment, remembering what Miss Nash had told her, and also recalling the occasion when she had come upon Mr. Harmsworth beating the dog.

“I will accept your apology,” she said crisply, “on one condition.”

“Condition?” Mr. Harmsworth said dubiously.

“Yes. On condition that your niece be allowed to spend the afternoon with me. Tomorrow.”

“Gilly?” Mr. Harmsworth gaped. “Wot dost tha want wi’ Gilly? Her be but a poor girl, an’ not much of a hand at workin’ in the house, ’cept wi’ t’ butter ’n’ cheeses, which tha dusn’t need.”

If Miss Potter heard and took note of this, she gave no indication. “What I want with the girl is of no concern to you, sir,” she said, raising her chin. “I shall call at Applebeck Farm at half-past one tomorrow to fetch her. Please see that she is ready. She will be returned before tea.”