CHAPTER VII. WHITEY
Penrod and Sam made a gloomy discovery one morning in mid-October. Allthe week had seen amiable breezes and fair skies until Saturday, when,about breakfast-time, the dome of heaven filled solidly with gray vapourand began to drip. The boys' discovery was that there is no justiceabout the weather.
They sat in the carriage-house of the Schofields' empty stable; thedoors upon the alley were open, and Sam and Penrod stared torpidly atthe thin but implacable drizzle that was the more irritating becausethere was barely enough of it to interfere with a number of things theyhad planned to do.
"Yes; this is NICE!" Sam said, in a tone of plaintive sarcasm. "This isa PERTY way to do!" (He was alluding to the personal spitefulness ofthe elements.) "I'd like to know what's the sense of it--ole sun pourin'down every day in the week when nobody needs it, then cloud up and rainall Saturday! My father said it's goin' to be a three days' rain."
"Well, nobody with any sense cares if it rains Sunday and Monday,"Penrod said. "I wouldn't care if it rained every Sunday as long I lived;but I just like to know what's the reason it had to go and rain to-day.Got all the days o' the week to choose from and goes and picks onSaturday. That's a fine biz'nuss!"
"Well, in vacation--" Sam began; but at a sound from a source invisibleto him he paused. "What's that?" he said, somewhat startled.
It was a curious sound, loud and hollow and unhuman, yet it seemed to bea cough. Both boys rose, and Penrod asked uneasily: "Where'd that noisecome from?"
"It's in the alley," said Sam.
Perhaps if the day had been bright, both of them would have steppedimmediately to the alley doors to investigate; but their actualprocedure was to move a little distance in the opposite direction. Thestrange cough sounded again.
"SAY!" Penrod quavered. "What IS that?"
Then both boys uttered smothered exclamations and jumped, for the long,gaunt head that appeared in the doorway was entirely unexpected. It wasthe cavernous and melancholy head of an incredibly thin, old, whitishhorse. This head waggled slowly from side to side; the nostrilsvibrated; the mouth opened, and the hollow cough sounded again.
Recovering themselves, Penrod and Sam underwent the customary humanreaction from alarm to indignation.
"What you want, you ole horse, you?" Penrod shouted. "Don't you comecoughin' around ME!"
And Sam, seizing a stick, hurled it at the intruder.
"Get out o' here!" he roared.
The aged horse nervously withdrew his head, turned tail, and made arickety flight up the alley, while Sam and Penrod, perfectly obedientto inherited impulse, ran out into the drizzle and uproariously pursued.They were but automatons of instinct, meaning no evil. Certainly theydid not know the singular and pathetic history of the old horse whowandered into the alley and ventured to look through the open door.
This horse, about twice the age of either Penrod or Sam, had livedto find himself in a unique position. He was nude, possessing neitherharness nor halter; all he had was a name, Whitey, and he would haveanswered to it by a slight change of expression if any one had thusproperly addressed him. So forlorn was Whitey's case, he was actually anindependent horse; he had not even an owner. For two days and a half hehad been his own master.
Previous to that period he had been the property of one Abalene Morris,a person of colour, who would have explained himself as engaged inthe hauling business. On the contrary, the hauling business was aninsignificant side line with Mr. Morris, for he had long ago givenhimself, as utterly as fortune permitted, to the talent that early inyouth he had recognized as the greatest of all those surging in hisbosom. In his waking thoughts and in his dreams, in health and insickness, Abalene Morris was the dashing and emotional practitionerof an art probably more than Roman in antiquity. Abalene was acrap-shooter. The hauling business was a disguise.
A concentration of events had brought it about that, at one and thesame time, Abalene, after a dazzling run of the dice, found the haulingbusiness an actual danger to the preservation of his liberty. He wonseventeen dollars and sixty cents, and within the hour found himselfin trouble with an officer of the Humane Society on account of analtercation with Whitey. Abalene had been offered four dollars forWhitey some ten days earlier; wherefore he at once drove to the shop ofthe junk-dealer who had made the offer and announced his acquiescence inthe sacrifice.
"No, suh!" the junk-dealer said, with emphasis, "I awready done got mea good mule fer my deliv'ry hoss, 'n'at ole Whitey hoss ain' wuff no fo'dollah nohow! I 'uz a fool when I talk 'bout th'owin' money roun' thata-way. _I_ know what YOU up to, Abalene. Man come by here li'l bitago tole me all 'bout white man try to 'rest you, ovah on the avvynoo.Yessuh; he say white man goin' to git you yit an' th'ow you in jail'count o' Whitey. White man tryin' to fine out who you IS. He say,nemmine, he'll know Whitey ag'in, even if he don' know you! He say heketch you by the hoss; so you come roun' tryin' fix me up with Whiteyso white man grab me, th'ow ME in 'at jail. G'on 'way f'um hyuh, youAbalene! You cain' sell an' you cain' give Whitey to no cullud man 'n'is town. You go an' drowned 'at ole hoss, 'cause you sutny goin' tojail if you git ketched drivin' him."
The substance of this advice seemed good to Abalene, especially as theseventeen dollars and sixty cents in his pocket lent sweet colours tolife out of jail at this time. At dusk he led Whitey to a broad commonat the edge of town, and spoke to him finally.
"G'on 'bout you biz'nis," said Abalene; "you ain' MY hoss. Don' lookroun'at me, 'cause _I_ ain't got no 'quaintance wif you. I'm a man o'money, an' I got my own frien's; I'm a-lookin' fer bigger cities, hoss.You got you biz'nis an' I got mine. Mista' Hoss, good-night!"
Whitey found a little frosted grass upon the common and remained thereall night. In the morning he sought the shed where Abalene had kept him;but that was across the large and busy town, and Whitey was hopelesslylost. He had but one eye, a feeble one, and his legs were not to bedepended upon; but he managed to cover a great deal of ground, tohave many painful little adventures, and to get monstrously hungry andthirsty before he happened to look in upon Penrod and Sam.
When the two boys chased him up the alley they had no intention to causepain; they had no intention at all. They were no more cruel than Duke,Penrod's little old dog, who followed his own instincts, and, making hisappearance hastily through a hole in the back fence, joined the pursuitwith sound and fury. A boy will nearly always run after anything thatis running, and his first impulse is to throw a stone at it. This is asurvival of primeval man, who must take every chance to get his dinner.So, when Penrod and Sam drove the hapless Whitey up the alley, they werereally responding to an impulse thousands and thousands of years old--animpulse founded upon the primordial observation that whatever runs islikely to prove edible. Penrod and Sam were not "bad"; they were neverthat. They were something that was not their fault; they were historic.
At the next corner Whitey turned to the right into the cross-street;thence, turning to the right again and still warmly pursued,he zigzagged down a main thoroughfare until he reached anothercross-street, which ran alongside the Schofields' yard and brought himto the foot of the alley he had left behind in his flight. He enteredthe alley, and there his dim eye fell upon the open door he hadpreviously investigated. No memory of it remained; but the place had alook associated in his mind with hay, and, as Sam and Penrod turnedthe corner of the alley in panting yet still vociferous pursuit, Whiteystumbled up the inclined platform before the open doors, staggeredthunderously across the carriage-house and through another open doorinto a stall, an apartment vacant since the occupancy of Mr. Schofield'slast horse, now several years deceased.
Penrod and Sam Page 7
