Penrod and Sam

by Booth Tarkington

  CHAPTER VIII. SALVAGE

  The two boys shrieked with excitement as they beheld the coincidence ofthis strange return. They burst into the stable, making almost as muchnoise as Duke, who had become frantic at the invasion. Sam laid handsupon a rake.

  "You get out o' there, you ole horse, you!" he bellowed. "I ain't afraidto drive him out. I--"

  "WAIT a minute!" Penrod shouted. "Wait till I--"

  Sam was manfully preparing to enter the stall.

  "You hold the doors open," he commanded, "so's they won't blow shut andkeep him in here. I'm goin' to hit him--"

  "Quee-YUT!" Penrod shouted, grasping the handle of the rake so that Samcould not use it. "Wait a MINUTE, can't you?" He turned with ferociousvoice and gestures upon Duke. "DUKE!" And Duke, in spite of hisexcitement, was so impressed that he prostrated himself in silence, andthen unobtrusively withdrew from the stable. Penrod ran to the alleydoors and closed them.

  "My gracious!" Sam protested. "What you goin' to do?"

  "I'm goin' to keep this horse," said Penrod, whose face showed thestrain of a great idea.

  "What FOR?"

  "For the reward," said Penrod simply.

  Sam sat down in the wheelbarrow and stared at his friend almost withawe.

  "My gracious," he said, "I never thought o' that! How--how much do youthink we'll get, Penrod?"

  Sam's thus admitting himself to a full partnership in the enterprisemet no objection from Penrod, who was absorbed in the contemplation ofWhitey.

  "Well," he said judicially, "we might get more and we might get less."

  Sam rose and joined his friend in the doorway opening upon the twostalls. Whitey had preempted the nearer, and was hungrily nuzzling theold frayed hollows in the manger.

  "Maybe a hunderd dollars--or sumpthing?" Sam asked in a low voice.

  Penrod maintained his composure and repeated the newfound expressionthat had sounded well to him a moment before. He recognized it as asymbol of the non--committal attitude that makes people looked up to."Well"--he made it slow, and frowned--"we might get more and we mightget less."

  "More'n a hunderd DOLLARS?" Sam gasped.

  "Well," said Penrod, "we might get more and we might get less." Thistime, however, he felt the need of adding something. He put a questionin an indulgent tone, as though he were inquiring, not to add to his owninformation but to discover the extent of Sam's. "How much do you thinkhorses are worth, anyway?"

  "I don't know," Sam said frankly, and, unconsciously, he added, "Theymight be more and they might be less."

  "Well, when our ole horse died," Penrod said, "Papa said he wouldn'ttaken five hunderd dollars for him. That's how much HORSES are worth!"

  "My gracious!" Sam exclaimed. Then he had a practical afterthought. "Butmaybe he was a better horse than this'n. What colour was he?"

  "He was bay. Looky here, Sam"--and now Penrod's manner changed fromthe superior to the eager--"you look what kind of horses they have in acircus, and you bet a circus has the BEST horses, don't it? Well, whatkind of horses do they have in a circus? They have some black and whiteones; but the best they have are white all over. Well, what kind of ahorse is this we got here? He's perty near white right now, and I bet ifwe washed him off and got him fixed up nice he WOULD be white. Well, abay horse is worth five hunderd dollars, because that's what Papa said,and this horse--"

  Sam interrupted rather timidly.

  "He--he's awful bony, Penrod. You don't guess they'd make any--"

  Penrod laughed contemptuously.

  "Bony! All he needs is a little food and he'll fill right up and lookgood as ever. You don't know much about horses, Sam, I expect. Why, OURole horse--"

  "Do you expect he's hungry now?" asked Sam, staring at Whitey.

  "Let's try him," said Penrod. "Horses like hay and oats the best; butthey'll eat most anything."

  "I guess they will. He's tryin' to eat that manger up right now, and Ibet it ain't good for him."

  "Come on," said Penrod, closing the door that gave entrance to thestalls. "We got to get this horse some drinkin'-water and some goodfood."

  They tried Whitey's appetite first with an autumnal branch that theywrenched from a hardy maple in the yard. They had seen horses nibbleleaves, and they expected Whitey to nibble the leaves of thisbranch; but his ravenous condition did not allow him time for cooldiscriminations. Sam poked the branch at him from the passageway, andWhitey, after one backward movement of alarm, seized it venomously.

  "Here! You stop that!" Sam shouted. "You stop that, you ole horse, you!"

  "What's the matter?" called Penrod from the hydrant, where he wasfilling a bucket. "What's he doin' now?"

  "Doin'! He's eatin' the wood part, too! He's chewin' up sticks as big asbaseball bats! He's crazy!"

  Penrod rushed to see this sight, and stood aghast.

  "Take it away from him, Sam!" he commanded sharply.

  "Go on, take it away from him yourself!" was the prompt retort of hiscomrade.

  "You had no biz'nuss to give it to him," said Penrod. "Anybody with anysense ought to know it'd make him sick. What'd you want to go and giveit to him for?"

  "Well, you didn't say not to."

  "Well, what if I didn't? I never said I did, did I? You go on in thatstall and take it away from him."

  "YES, I will!" Sam returned bitterly. Then, as Whitey had dragged theremains of the branch from the manger to the floor of the stall, Samscrambled to the top of the manger and looked over. "There ain't muchleft to TAKE away! He's swallered it all except some splinters. Bettergive him the water to try and wash it down with." And, as Penrodcomplied, "My gracious, look at that horse DRINK!"

  They gave Whitey four buckets of water, and then debated the question ofnourishment. Obviously, this horse could not be trusted with branches,and, after getting their knees black and their backs sodden, they gaveup trying to pull enough grass to sustain him. Then Penrod rememberedthat horses like apples, both "cooking-apples" and "eating-apples", andSam mentioned the fact that every autumn his father received a barrel of"cooking-apples" from a cousin who owned a farm. That barrel was in theWilliams' cellar now, and the cellar was providentially supplied with"outside doors," so that it could be visited without going through thehouse. Sam and Penrod set forth for the cellar.

  They returned to the stable bulging, and, after a discussion of Whitey'sdigestion (Sam claiming that eating the core and seeds, as Whiteydid, would grow trees in his inside) they went back to the cellar forsupplies again--and again. They made six trips, carrying each time acapacity cargo of apples, and still Whitey ate in a famished manner.They were afraid to take more apples from the barrel, which began toshow conspicuously the result of their raids, wherefore Penrod made anunostentatious visit to the cellar of his own house. From the inside heopened a window and passed vegetables out to Sam, who placed them in abucket and carried them hurriedly to the stable, while Penrod returnedin a casual manner through the house. Of his sang-froid under a greatstrain it is sufficient to relate that, in the kitchen, he said suddenlyto Della, the cook, "Oh, look behind you!" and by the time Delladiscovered that there was nothing unusual behind her, Penrod was gone,and a loaf of bread from the kitchen table was gone with him.

  Whitey now ate nine turnips, two heads of lettuce, one cabbage, elevenraw potatoes and the loaf of bread. He ate the loaf of bread last andhe was a long time about it; so the boys came to a not unreasonableconclusion.

  "Well, sir, I guess we got him filled up at last!" said Penrod. "I bethe wouldn't eat a saucer of ice-cream now, if we'd give it to him!"

  "He looks better to me," said Sam, staring critically at Whitey. "Ithink he's kind of begun to fill out some. I expect he must like us,Penrod; we been doin' a good deal for this horse."

  "Well, we got to keep it up," Penrod insisted rather pompously. "Long as_I_ got charge o' this horse, he's goin' to get good treatment."

  "What we better do now, Penrod?"

  Penrod took on the outward signs of deep thought.

&
nbsp; "Well, there's plenty to DO, all right. I got to think."

  Sam made several suggestions, which Penrod--maintaining his air ofpreoccupation--dismissed with mere gestures.

  "Oh, _I_ know!" Sam cried finally. "We ought to wash him so's he'lllook whiter'n what he does now. We can turn the hose on him across themanger."

  "No; not yet," Penrod said. "It's too soon after his meal. You ought toknow that yourself. What we got to do is to make up a bed for him--if hewants to lay down or anything."

  "Make up a what for him?" Sam echoed, dumfounded. "What you talkin'about? How can--"

  "Sawdust," Penrod said. "That's the way the horse we used to have usedto have it. We'll make this horse's bed in the other stall, and then hecan go in there and lay down whenever he wants to."

  "How we goin' to do it?"

  "Look, Sam; there's the hole into the sawdust-box! All you got to do iswalk in there with the shovel, stick the shovel in the hole till it getsfull of sawdust, and then sprinkle it around on the empty stall."

  "All _I_ got to do!" Sam cried. "What are you goin' to do?"

  "I'm goin' to be right here," Penrod answered reassuringly. "He won'tkick or anything, and it isn't goin' to take you half a second to sliparound behind him to the other stall."

  "What makes you think he won't kick?"

  "Well, I KNOW he won't, and, besides, you could hit him with the shovelif he tried to. Anyhow, I'll be right here, won't I?"

  "I don't care where you are," Sam said earnestly. "What difference wouldthat make if he ki--"

  "Why, you were goin' right in the stall," Penrod reminded him. "When hefirst came in, you were goin' to take the rake and--"

  "I don't care if I was," Sam declared. "I was excited then."

  "Well, you can get excited now, can't you?" his friend urged. "You canjust as easy get--"

  He was interrupted by a shout from Sam, who was keeping his eye uponWhitey throughout the discussion.

  "Look! Looky there!" And undoubtedly renewing his excitement, Sampointed at the long, gaunt head beyond the manger. It was disappearingfrom view. "Look!" Sam shouted. "He's layin' down!"

  "Well, then," said Penrod, "I guess he's goin' to take a nap. If hewants to lay down without waitin' for us to get the sawdust fixed forhim, that's his lookout, not ours."

  On the contrary, Sam perceived a favourable opportunity for action.

  "I just as soon go and make his bed up while he's layin' down," hevolunteered. "You climb up on the manger and watch him, Penrod, and I'llsneak in the other stall and fix it all up nice for him, so's he can goin there any time when he wakes up, and lay down again, or anything;and if he starts to get up, you holler and I'll jump out over the othermanger."

  Accordingly, Penrod established himself in a position to observe therecumbent figure. Whitey's breathing was rather laboured but regular,and, as Sam remarked, he looked "better", even in his slumber. It is notto be doubted that although Whitey was suffering from a light attack ofcolic his feelings were in the main those of contentment. After trouble,he was solaced; after exposure, he was sheltered; after hunger andthirst, he was fed and watered. He slept.

  The noon whistles blew before Sam's task was finished; but by the timehe departed for lunch there was made a bed of such quality that Whiteymust needs have been a born fault-finder if he complained of it. Thefriends parted, each urging the other to be prompt in returning; butPenrod got into threatening difficulties as soon as he entered thehouse.