Master Morgan bent his head. “Could you perchance use the little one for trading?” he inquired, his voice toneless.
“Who, me?” Hawkes laughed, a loud laugh. “Why, I’d sooner buy that weathervane horse on yonder barn! No, m’friend, I ain’t buying one or t’other.”
Little Bub opened wide his jaws, bared his teeth, and sneezed in Hiram Hawkes’ face. Even Ebenezer laid back his ears.
“By ginger!” thought Joel. “Eb and Bub be good judges, too!” And he laughed softly in relief and happiness.
5. Pa Gets an Idea
THE SUN was almost overhead when Joel spied the sugar maples shading his own log house, and the sheep browsing in his front yard.
A quick, small cry escaped him, and he slipped between Ebenezer and Little Bub, trying to hold on to each. “Pa’s heard the news!” he told himself as he turned in the gate. “Else why is he blocking the door, his feet planted solid like the ram’s when he’s fixing to butt?”
The next thing Joel knew, a slight figure had darted around his father and was running down the path. “Joel boy!” a gentle voice was calling.
“We’re home, Ma!”
His mother did not need to be told. Her eyes were flooded with happiness. She held the boy close and felt of him to make sure he was all in one piece. Then, quite satisfied, she shook Master Morgan’s hand and went directly to Little Bub.
“He’s little . . . and he’s big, all to once!” she said, holding his face in the cup of her hands. “Like a little wood carving I used to have as a girl. And the other colt is real nice, too,” she added quickly, as if Ebenezer had shown he was slighted. “Welcome home! All four of you.” Suddenly remembering Mister Goss, she cast a worried glance in his direction.
He had not moved from the doorway. He stood rigid and stern, like a steersman at his post. Only a disrespectful breeze played with his brown beard.
“What can I do!” Joel thought desperately. “I got to make Pa see how smart the colts are.” He stepped Ebenezer around, trying to show how well he led. His father’s face did not change. Next, Joel put his bundle on Little Bub’s back. Then he picked up the creature’s feet, one at a time, as he had seen Farmer Beane do.
Grudgingly Mister Goss said, “Howdy.” But he did not smile or nod. He ignored the colts completely.
“Maybe if they are looking out the door of our own shed,” Joel thought, “maybe then they would seem part of the place and Pa would like them.” He led Ebenezer away and whistled for Bub to come along.
The shed. had not been used in a year, but Joel remembered that up in the loft there was still some timothy hay. He put the colts each in a stall and hurried up to the loft. He smelled of the timothy. It was not stale at all. He filled each manger. Then he scrubbed and filled the water buckets. As the colts began munching the hay and making themselves at home, Joel wished his father would come out to see how happy they were. With a sigh, he shuffled slowly toward the house.
“I repeat, sir, ’twas my doing, bringing the colts home,” Justin Morgan was saying as Joel entered the kitchen. “I calculate to sell them.” Then tiredly he started up the ladder to his room in the garret. “The fatigues of the journey have overcome me,” he said over his shoulder. “Slumber is the best cure.” And he closed the trap door behind him.
Mister Goss’s eyes were blazing now. “Joel!” he bellowed. “The schoolmaster can talk till he’s blue in the face, but I know ’twas you had a finger in this. And I don’t aim to play nursemaid to two colts. Hear? I’m through having horses on the place.” He turned to Mistress Goss now. “You recollect the last ’un? No sooner do I have him broke than he gets the strangles and I got to shoot him. What in tunket they think I am? They’ll lark off to school and leave me to muck out and do their work. By thunder!” he exploded, pounding his fist on the table until the dishes jumped. “I won’t have it!”
“Now don’t get your dander up, Pa,” soothed Mistress Goss, wondering it a piece of her fresh pumpkin pie would calm him. She brought the pie to the table and began marking it off into four big wedges.
Joel’s father noticed the four wedges of pie, when there were only three people in the room. “And that ain’t all!” he sputtered. “Boarding the schoolmaster’s got to stop, too. High time he found a new place. Feeding four is costly.” He stopped for breath, then added, “And ’tis high time our Joel learnt a trade.”
Suddenly Mister Goss looked at Joel, measuring him with his eye. He stopped bellowing and now his voice wheedled, trying to persuade his wife. “The trip hardened the boy, Emma. Lookit his muscles beginning to show underneath his shirtsleeves.”
Joel broke in softly. “Pa? Couldn’t I just stay to home and take care of the colts and . . . ”
“Lemme see now,” Joel’s father was thinking aloud. “Why, o’ course, that’s who ’twas.”
“Who was who?” Mistress Goss asked timidly.
“Why, Mister Chase, o’ course. I hearn he needs an apprentice boy to work part time at his mill and part time at his inn. Joel here’s just the one for the job. Why, mostly all Joel’s friends has been bound out a’ready.”
The knife in the mother’s hand dropped to the table with a clatter. “It doesn’t do to act sudden about sending a boy away,” she said, trying to keep fear out of her voice.
Joel felt like crying out, “I belong here. And the colts . . . they need me.” But the words died inside him.
“’Tain’t sudden at all,” Mister Goss snorted. “Why, we got all the rest of the day to be mulling on it. In the morning me and Joel will call on Miller Chase. And now, Ma, I can do with a piece of that pie and a tankard of buttermilk.”
To please his mother, Joel tried to eat, too. But even his favorite pumpkin pie was flannel in his mouth. Every spoonful stuck in his throat, like the time he had the quinsy. Unable to keep back the hot tears, he ran out of the house and let them fall into Little Bub’s mane.
When his sobbing had quieted, he set to work with a new fierceness. He curried both colts and he dumped the water out of the buckets and ran to the spring pipe, letting them fill up again with clear, cold water. He cleaned out the shed, and bedded the stalls with wild grass that had already turned dry and golden.
Dimly he heard his father’s voice, and several times he heard the kitchen door creaking on its hinges as someone came or went, but he was intent on his work. At suppertime, his mother called and he had to go in. One look at his father told the boy that matters had been settled. He ate in silence, and was glad for bedtime.
As he climbed the ladder steps, candle in hand, the schoolmaster called him into his small garret room. Spread out on the feather bed were the goose-quill pens, the silver inkhorn, the shiny hourglass, the brass candle snuffer—all the treasures which had made the room seem beautiful to Joel.
The schoolmaster cleared a space for the boy to sit down. Then he went on with his packing, talking as he worked. “Two heartening things happened to me this afternoon,” he said. “I went to see the Jenks family up the road, and they agreed to board me. And, secondly, I found an honest horse dealer.”
“You hain’t!” cried Joel in alarm.
“Joel! I thought you were all over saying ‘hain’t’!”
“But the little colt—he’s not sold?”
The schoolmaster laughed. “I’ve a good home for Ebenezer, but news of Little Bub has traveled like wildfire. ‘Too small! Too small!’ everyone says. ‘And besides, he isn’t broken, to saddle or harness!’ ”
Joel leaned forward eagerly. He thought he could guess what the schoolmaster had in mind.
“Now, Joel, what I ask of you is this—”
“Yes?”
“Do you think you could gentle Little Bub for me?”
Could he gentle Little Bub? Had he thought of anything else, awake or asleep? “’Course I could!” he said, his eyes shiny. “I been watching Pa gentle colts ever since I was a baby.”
Then suddenly all the eagerness faded. “You mean . . . ” He broke off
the drippings of the candle and nervously formed them into a ball. “You mean I’m to gentle him—for someone else?”
“That’s what I really mean, lad. We are both more fond of Little Bub than men should be of any beast; but I have debts to pay, and I must pay them before I die. I need your help, Joel. Will you shake hands, man to man?”
The boy hesitated a long moment. Then, taking a deep breath, he put his hand into the thin, dry one of the schoolmaster.
“Thank you, Joel. Now then,” the master continued in a more cheerful tone, “if Miller Chase takes you on, he will be obliged to send you to night school. I wonder,” he said, wrapping a faded waistcoat about his reading boards and song-books, “I wonder if you wouldn’t like to spend an hour with the colt after lessons each night.”
“In the dark?”
Justin Morgan snuffed out his own tallow candle, and then Joel’s. He threw wide the shutters and drew the boy to the gable window. The moon was three-quarters full. It sifted through the trees and spattered the yard with a magical white light.
“For two weeks,” he said, “there will be light enough for you to see. Horses, you know, can see quite well in the dark.”
6. Seven Years! Seven Years!
THE NEXT morning Joel’s mother set down a big platter of fried ham and oatcakes in front of him, as if already he were a visitor instead of family.
Joel smiled up at her. “I feel like Preacher Clapsaddle,” he said, “come to pay a call.”
“See that you stow away your food like Preacher Clapsaddle!” his mother replied, with a catch in her voice.
Then they both laughed at the remembrance of the preacher eating so heartily that he kept tucking his beard into his mouth along with the food, and had to pull it out again and pat it dry.
“How nice it is,” Joel thought, “that Ma and I can laugh even when we feel all pinched up inside.”
Mister Goss clumped in then, and breakfast became a business to be finished with dispatch. “Sniggering and tomfoolery have small place in this workaday world,” he said, shaking a forefinger. “Won’t be no such nonsense at Miller Chase’s, I kin promise you that!”
The meal was eaten in silence, with only the sounds of chewing and swallowing and Mister Goss’s pewter cup brought down sharply on the table.
At last the father wiped his mouth and stood up to go. He motioned to Joel to follow, and without a word the man and the boy marched out into the morning sunshine and set off for Chase’s Inn.
Only once did Joel turn back. His mother, looking very small, was waving her apron at him, a white flag of courage.
It was almost a mile to Chase’s Inn, and all the way Joel walked with head bent, letting dreams take over his thoughts. He made believe the colts were right behind him. Once he imagined he heard Ebenezer neighing and Little Bub sending forth his high notes which died out in that low rumble. He tried hard to listen, but Mister Goss was ranting on about the sorry condition of the Jenkses’ fence, and Joel could not be sure.
As they passed the Jenkses’ house, he hoped for a glimpse of the schoolmaster, but the only sign of life was a yellow hound pup sniffing along a hedgerow. Joel said to himself, “Little Bub hain’t going to like that hound-dog, if what Farmer Beane told us was sure enough true.”
As luck would have it, Thomas Chase was alone, working on his accounts, when Joel and his father walked into the office of the inn. He paused, quill pen in hand, and looked up from under his bushy eyebrows.
“Wal,” he smiled, noting the worried look on Joel’s face, “ain’t nothing in the world so bad nor so good as it seems. Now what kin I do fer you two?”
Mister Goss wasted no time on pleasantries. He went right to the point. “I’d admire,” he said, “to have you take on my Joel as your apprentice. With a sawmill and an inn to tend, you need a stout lad to help. Joel here will be handy as the pocket on your coat!”
The miller let his cool gray eyes travel over the boy with interest. Only this morning he had received a big order for barrel staves and hoops from the West Indies. Besides, Mistress Chase had been snappish of late. A likely lad—one who could buckle down to work—might make things easier all around.
“Hmmmm,” he said, hedging for time. “It’ll take a lusty lad to work by day and go to school by night, like the law requires.”
Mister Goss thumped Joel on the back. “The boy ain’t what you’d call a strapper—that is, not to look at—but he’s tough as leather.”
“Hmmmm!” the miller said again, trying to compare this boy with an overfat one who had come to see him just last evening. He put down his pen and looked earnestly at Joel.
“Y’know, son,” he said, “’twouldn’t be no snap around here. There’s an awful lot of hand sawing to do, and Mistress Chase is mighty smart at thinkin’ up chores. A boy’d have to be strong as a bear and quick as a cat.”
“Show him your muscle, son. Make a fist and show him.”
Joel winced. His eye fell on the wall clock behind Mister Chase. The hour hand pointed exactly to seven. Below the dial the pendulum was hidden in a glass case painted with flying white doves, and the words, “Time is fleeting.”
Joel obeyed his father. What did it matter if Miller Chase laughed at his puny arm? In a few seconds it would be all over. He made his fist and flexed his muscle, while his mind repeated the words, “Time is fleeting, time is fleeting, time is . . . ”
At last he brought his gaze away from the clock. To his surprise, the miller was not laughing. His gray eyes were filled with kindness. “Boy,” he said, “I recollect when I was a youngling with no more muscle than you got. But I was full o’ spunk, and for a word o’ encouragement I could do a man’s lick of work.”
Joel smiled in relief. He heard his father cough hesitantly, then heard his voice come, oily nice. “Uh . . . Chase . . . uh . . .. ah . . . stands to reason Joel could saw a bit o’ lumber for my use if’n it didn’t interfere with his regular labors?”
Mister Chase was listening with only half his mind. Suddenly he wanted this boy. He had always hoped for a son of his own and there was something about Joel, not just the gangly growing look, but something about the eyes that he liked. A kind of awareness, like a startled deer. Yet there was trust in them, too. Yes, here was a lad he would be proud to look upon as his own. “If the boy be willing,” he said slowly, thoughtfully, “it would very well suit me to take him.”
“Ahem . . . Chase . . . and about that free lumber?”
The miller waved his hand impatiently. “Yes to that, too. Now let’s step over to the Justice of the Peace and have him draw up the papers all proper-like.”
“What papers?” a high, sharp voice demanded. It belonged to Mistress Chase, who swept into the room wearing a red wrapper and a scowl that said, “Ain’t nothing goin’ to happen around here without my say-so.”
Thomas Chase turned around. “This boy,” he explained to his wife, “is ready to be parceled out. He’ll be considerable help to both of us.”
To the man’s amazement, his wife nodded vigorously, and the white flounces on her cap went up and down like waves billowing. “Aye!” she agreed. “The skinny ones be quicker.”
All this while the big hand on the clock had moved but five minutes. Joel swallowed hard. In five minutes he had lived a whole lifetime! In five minutes he had grown from boy to man.
Woodenly he followed along after his father and the miller as they walked through the public room of the inn and out of doors and down the road to the small weathered house of the Justice of the Peace.
The office of the Justice was a crowded-in place—the desk too big for the room, and the chairs set at awkward angles, so that Joel stumbled over one and almost fell flat. There was a clock here, too, a big one, very plain, without doves or cupids or words of wisdom. Its tick was loud and doleful as it tolled the seconds.
The Justice, a black-frocked spider of a man, listened to Mister Chase’s story and began at once to fill in the blank spaces on a printed sheet. A
fter some time he peered over his spectacles at Joel and said in a whiny voice, “Boy! Repeat after me: I, Joel Goss . . . ”
“I, Joel Goss . . . ” came the frightened voice.
The whine went on, “ . . . of my own free will, and by the consent of my father . . . ”
“Of my own free will, and by the consent of my father . . . ”
“Doth put myself apprentice to . . . ”
“Doth put myself apprentice to . . . ”
“Thomas Chase of Randolph, Innkeeper and Miller . . . ”
Joel turned white. He felt as if his whole body were going through the sawmill, being ground into bits. He grabbed at his father’s sleeve. But Mister Goss stood straight and unmoving, as if no more than a fly had lit on him. A sob meant to be a silent one escaped the boy as he repeated:
“Thomas Chase of Randolph, Innkeeper and Miller . . . ”
The voice of the Justice twanged on: “ . . . . until the full term of seven years be compleat and ended.”
“Seven years!” Joel cried. And “Seven years! Seven years!” the clock tolled. The boy stared at the clock. Things were happening to him. Without a hand touching him, he was being shoved down the years.
“During the aforesaid term,” the Justice was saying, “I, Joel Goss . . . ”
“During the aforesaid term, I, Joel Goss . . . ”
“Shall never absent myself day or night without leave . . . ”
Joel imagined he saw his mother’s face now, wiping away a tear. He saw her crying into Little Bub’s mane, just as he had done. His words came without his willing them.
“Shall never absent myself day or night without leave . . . ”
“But shall always . . . ”