ON THE shores of Chincoteague the people pressed forward, their faces strained to stiffness, as they watched Assateague Beach.
“Here they come!” The cry broke out from every throat.
Maureen, wedged in between Grandpa Beebe on one side and a volunteer fireman on the other, stood on her mount’s back. Her arms paddled the air as if she were swimming and struggling with the wild ponies.
Suddenly a fisherman, looking through binoculars, began shouting in a hoarse voice, “A new-borned colt is afeared to swim! It’s knee-deep in the water, and won’t go no further.”
The crowds yelled their advice. “What’s the matter with the roundup men?” “Why don’t they heft it into deep water—it’ll swim all right!” “Why don’t they hist it on the scow?”
The fisherman was trying to get a better view. He was crawling out over the water on a wall of piling. It seemed a long time before he put his binoculars to his eyes again. The people waited breathlessly. A small boy began crying.
“Sh!” quieted his mother. “Listen to the man with the four eyes.”
“The colt’s too little to swim,” the fisherman bawled out. “Wait! A wild pony is breaking out from the mob. Swimming around the mob! Escaping!”
An awed murmur stirred the crowds. Maureen dug her toes in her mount’s back. She strained her eyes to see the fugitive, but all she could make out was a milling mass of dark blobs on the water.
The fisherman leaned far out over the water. He made a megaphone of one hand. “Them addle-brained boatmen can’t stop the pony,” his voice rasped. “It’s outsmarting ’em all.”
Maureen’s mind raced back to other Pony Pennings. The Phantom upsetting a boat. The Phantom fleeing through the woods. Always escaping. Always free. She clutched the neck of her blouse. She felt gaspy, like a fish flapping about on dry land. Why was the man with the binoculars so slow? Why didn’t he say, “It’s the Phantom!” Who else could it be?
Now he was waving one arm wildly. He looked like a straw in the wind. He teetered. He lost his balance. He almost fell into the water in his excitement.
“It’s the Phantom!” he screamed at last. “I can see the white map on her shoulders!”
The people took up the cry, echoing it over and over. “It’s the Phantom! She’s escaped again!”
Maureen felt tears on her cheek, and impatiently brushed them away.
Again the fisherman was waving for quiet.
“Hush!” bellowed Grandpa Beebe.
The people fell silent. They were like listeners around a microphone. “It’s the Phantom’s colt that won’t swim!” he called out in a voice so hoarse it cracked. “The Phantom got separated from a bran’-fire new colt. She’s gone back to get it!”
The people whooped and hollered at the news. “The Phantom’s got a colt,” they sang out. “The Phantom’s got a new colt!”
Again the fisherman was waving for silence.
“She’s reached her colt!” he crowed. “But the roundup men are closing in on her! They’re making her shove the colt in the water. She’s makin’ it swim!”
Grandpa Beebe cupped his hands around his mouth. “Can the little feller make it?” he boomed.
The crowd stilled, waiting for the hoarse voice. For long seconds no answer came. The fisherman remained as fixed as the piling he stood on. Wave after wave of fear swept over Maureen. She felt as if she were drowning. And just when she could stand the silence no longer, the fisherman began reporting in short, nervous sentences.
“They’re half-ways across. Jumpin’ Jupiter! The colt! It’s bein’ sucked down in a whirlpool. I can’t see it now. My soul and body! A boy’s jumped off the scow. He’s swimming out to help the colt.”
The onlookers did not need the fisherman with the binoculars any more. They could see for themselves. A boy swimming against the current. A boy holding a colt’s head above the swirling water.
Maureen gulped great lungfuls of air. “It’s Paul!” she screamed. “It’s Paul!”
On all sides the shouts went up. “Why, it’s Paul!”
“Paul Beebe!”
Grandpa leaped up on his mount’s back as nimbly as a boy. He stood with his arms upraised, his fists clenched.
“God help ye, Paul!” his words carried out over the water. “Yer almost home!”
Grandpa’s voice was as strong as a tow rope. Paul was swimming steadily toward it, holding the small silver face of the colt above the water. He was almost there. He was there!
Maureen slid down from her mount, clutching a handful of mane. “You made it, Paul! You made it!” she cried.
The air was wild with whinnies and snorts as the ponies touched the hard sand, then scrambled up the shore, their wet bodies gleaming in the sun. Paul half-carried the little colt up the steep bank; then suddenly it found its own legs.
Shouts between triumph and relief escaped every throat as the little filly tottered up the bank. Almost to the top, her feet went scooting out from under her and she was down on the sand, her sides heaving.
Maureen felt a new stab of fear.
If only the big ponies would not crush her! That tender white body among all those thrashing hooves. What chance had she? What chance with the wild wind for a mother?
But all the wildness seemed to have ebbed out of the Phantom. She picked her forefeet high. Then she carefully straddled her colt, and fenced in the small white body with her own slender legs.
For a brief second Paul’s and Maureen’s eyes met above the crowds. It was as if they and the mare and her foal were the only creatures on the island. They were unaware of the great jostling and fighting as the stallions sorted out their own mares and colts. They were unaware of everything but a sharp ecstasy. Soon the Phantom and her colt would belong to them. Never to be sold.
The Pied Piper wheeled around Paul. He peered at the dripping boy from under his matted forelock. Then he trumpeted as if to say: “This sopping creature is no mare of mine!” And he pushed Paul out of the way while the crowds laughed hysterically.
Dodging horses and people, Grandpa Beebe made his way over to Paul.
“Paul, boy,” he said, his voice unsteady, “I swimmed the hull way with you. Yer the most wonderful and the craziest young’un in the world. Now git home right smart quick,” he added, trying to sound very stern. “Yer about done up, and Grandma’s expectin’ ye. Maureen and I’ll see to it that the Phantom and her colt reach the pony pens.”
Chapter 9
ON TO THE PONY PENNING GROUNDS
IT WAS NOW mid-morning and the hot July sun was high in the heavens. The wild ponies stood with heads hanging low, tails tucked in. They looked beaten and confused. Only the Phantom’s foal seemed contented. She slept, her sides rising and falling in the cool shade made by the mare’s body.
“Rest ’em a bit longer,” Wyle Maddox directed. “Then on to the pony pens.”
Maureen sat watching, thinking. The little colt must never know the hungry feeling of being without a mother. But the hundred dollars? Would it pay for both?
She was jolted out of her thoughts with the cry, “Get-a-going!”
Onlookers fell back while Maureen, Grandpa Beebe, and the other horsemen surrounded the ponies and began driving them toward town. The Phantom broke at the start, her colt weaving along behind her like the tail of a kite.
“Please, God, don’t let Phantom escape now!” breathed Maureen as she and Grandpa Beebe took out after them. But Phantom could not travel fast with her stilty-legged youngster. Maureen soon came upon them, hidden among the foliage of a kinksbush, the Phantom’s proud, wild face and the colt’s comical baby face all framed round with green leaves.
With a shout she drove them back into the herd.
After that the mare no longer tried to escape, for there were no openings into the cool woods—only lines of cars and visitors forming a solid fence on either side of them.
Slowly and dejectedly the wild ponies paraded through the main streets of Chincoteague. Only the P
hantom’s colt seemed happy with her lot. She could smell her dam close by. Her stomach was stretched tight with milk. She was full of sleep. She kicked her heels sideways, dancing along, letting out little whinnies of joy. She seemed to like Chincoteague.
All up and down the streets the people came spilling out of their houses, shouting to one another as they recognized some mare or stallion from previous roundups.
“There’s that pinto with the shark eyes.”
“Look at the Pied Piper! His forelock’s grown ’most as long as his tail!”
“See all the big colts!”
“Who’s the chestnut mare with the white mark on her shoulders?”
“Not the Phantom! Not her!” they gasped in disbelief.
“It is the Phantom!” someone yelled in answer. “And she’s got a colt! I saw ’em swim in!”
“And Paul Beebe caught her,” someone else called. “I heard Kim Horsepepper tell all about it.”
The excitement ran from house to house like a flame in the wind. “They got the Phantom! Paul Beebe got her! And she’s leadin’ a colt!”
Through the shouting, elbowing crowd, the slow parade went on—past stores and restaurants, past the white frame hotel, past the red brick firehouse which the colts of other years had paid for.
Maureen looked straight ahead. She stayed so close to the Phantom and her foal that when the foal looked sideways Maureen could see her long golden eyelashes.
At last the procession turned into the pony penning grounds. It moved quickly once around the ring. Then once again, while children and parents and horse dealers hung over the fence. The children shouted at the top of their lungs.
“Oh, Dad! Buy me that colt with the star on her face!”
“I want the one with the white stockings!”
“I want the littlest one!”
Only the dealers were silent. They were thinking in terms of buying and selling.
Grandpa Beebe rode close to Maureen. “We got ’em here,” he sighed sharply. “Now it’s up to the men afoot.”
Again that feeling of something pressing against her throat came to Maureen as she watched the men on foot drive the ponies out of the ring, separating the colts from their mothers. They herded the colts into small pens, giving the mares and stallions the run of a big corral.
Suddenly it was the Phantom’s turn to be herded into the corral. She flew ahead of the men, never allowing them to touch her. Now two brawny men were making a grab for her foal. For long seconds the men held the foal high, their hands supporting her little round belly. Then they put her down, slapped her hip and sent her along with her dam into the big corral.
Maureen drew a deep breath of happiness. “The colt’s too little to leave her mother. Too little!” she whispered into Grandpa’s whiskery ear. “They’ll let them stay together.”
Then she hurried home to tell Paul.
• • •
“Paul’s asleep,” Grandma said, “and you leave him be. I got some butter beans warmin’ fer ye and some nice fresh cornbread sittin’ a-top the oven.”
While Maureen ate, Grandma talked on. “I kin see you’re boilin’ over with things to tell, but they’ll keep till you’ve ate. Between whiles I’ll do the talkin’.” She closed one eye in thought. “Let’s see. Oh, Victoria Pruitt stopped by. Figgered you or Paul might like to earn some money helpin’ her and Mr. Pruitt catch chickens. They’re fixin’ to ship ’em to Norfolk. But I told Mis’ Victoria yer money pouch was fat as a tick.”
Maureen’s spoon fell to the floor.
“Oh, Grandma! The Phantom’s got a colt and we got to earn a lot of money to buy her, too.”
Grandma looked at Maureen’s plate. She saw that the beans were gone and there was nothing left of the cornbread but a few crumbs. “Go ’long,” she nodded. “Mis’ Victoria wanted ye right much.”
Maureen spent the afternoon chasing hundreds of chickens and cooping them up in little crates. By sundown her arms were pecked and scratched and her face streaked with perspiration.
As she walked home, clutching two dollars in her moist hand, she saw Paul riding toward her on Watch Eyes.
“Leg up behind me,” he called out. “I got to go to the store for Grandma. You can help carry the things.”
Maureen scrambled up behind her brother. “Paul!”
“Huh?”
“Do you reckon the firemen’ll sell us both the Phantom and the little one?”
“’Course. The colt’s too young to take away from the mare.”
“But where’ll we get the money?”
Paul slowed Watch Eyes to a walk. “I been working on it whilst I slept,” he said. “What time does the sale begin?”
“It says half-past nine on the program.”
“All right,” exclaimed Paul, giving Watch Eyes his head. “You and I’ll get to the pony penning grounds at sunup. We’ll wait there at the entrance for the fire chief. Soon as he comes, we’ll say to him: ‘We got exactly one hundred dollars, sir. We earned it in less’n four months. In four months more we can earn another hundred. Y’see, chief, we’re fixin’ to buy the Phantom—and Misty, too.’”
“Why, Paul! That’s exactly what we’ll do. It’ll be just as easy as that.” She threw her arms about Paul’s waist. “Misty,” she chuckled. “Who named the Phantom’s colt?”
“She kind of named herself,” Paul answered. “When I was in the woods there on Assateague, I couldn’t tell if I was seeing white mist with the sun on it, or a live colt. The minute I knew ’twas a live colt, I kept calling her Misty in my mind.”
“Misty!” said Maureen softly. “Misty,” she repeated as they jogged along. “She came up out of the sea.”
• • •
Grandpa was in the kitchen, standing before a mirror, trimming the bristles in his ears when Maureen and Paul came in with the groceries.
“Consarn it all!” he fussed. “Do you got to rustle them bags like cows trompin’ through a cornfield? A fella can’t hear hisself think, let alone hold his hand steady. This here’s a mighty ticklish job.”
“Why, Clarence!” exclaimed Grandma, “I’ve never seed you so twittery.”
“Ef’n you had whiskbrooms in your ears, maybe you’d be twittery, too.”
Grandma stopped basting the marsh hen she had just taken out of the oven and burst out in helpless laughter. “Whiskbrooms in my ears!” she chortled. And soon Maureen and Paul and even Grandpa were laughing with her.
“All right now,” said Grandma, recovering her breath. “Maureen, you can set the potatoes to boil and lay the table. Lay an extra place like allus. Never know when some human straggler is goin’ to stop. And bein’ as it’s Pony Penning Day you kin cut a few of them purty-by-nights and some bouncin’ Bess fer a centerpiece.”
No straggler came. Just the four of them sat around the table while a light wind played with the curtains. Grandpa became more like himself with each mouthful of the tender marsh hen.
“The reason I was jumpy,” he confessed, “was account of thinkin’ about that Phantom you children wanter buy. No one of sound mind ever buys a three-year-old wild pony. Why, Phantom’s like the topsail on a ship—a moon-raker she is!”
The flapping of the curtain broke the little pause that followed.
“Besides,” Grandpa continued, “My feet is killin’ me. Reckon we’re in fer a blow. A sou’wester come up this afternoon, and I never seed a nor’easter take no back talk from a sou’wester.”
“If a thunder squall’s a-brewin’,” spoke Grandma, “the children got to stay home from the race tonight.”
Paul’s and Maureen’s eyes sought Grandpa’s, as much as to say, “How can you do this to us? Why, the race on the eve of the sale is almost as important as the roundup!”
“Oh,” coughed Grandpa, “it’ll be after the race afore the weather turns squally. And my advice is fer the children to go right smart quick so they kin mill around in the colt pens afore the race. They might find a critter with lots purtie
r markings than the Phantom.”
Paul and Maureen leaped to their feet. They galloped around and around the table, stopping to nose Grandma and Grandpa like curious colts. Then they soberly promised to visit the colt pens, but in their hearts they knew there was room only for the Phantom and Misty.
Chapter 10
COLTS HAVE GOT TO GROW UP
AS PAUL and Maureen stood inside the big corral, looking at Misty, they knew she was the finest-blooded foal in the world. Oh, the beauty of her! She was neither silver nor gold. She was both. And she had a funny white blaze that started down the left side of her face, then did a right-about and covered her whole muzzle. It gave her a look of wonderment and surprise. Like her mother she, too, wore a white map of the United States on her withers, but the outlines were softer and blended into the gold of her body.
They could have gazed at her forever, exclaiming over her gold eyelashes, her pink underlip, her funny knobby knees, her short flappy tail, the furry insides of her ears. But suddenly Paul was aware of an uneasy feeling, as though someone were eying him. Then he felt a hot breath on the back of his neck. Slowly he turned his head and came face to face with the Pied Piper.
For an instant neither the stallion nor the boy winked an eyelash. Pied Piper stared fixedly at Paul from under his long forelock. He was like a man peering out from ambush. Paul could see the white ring around the stallion’s eyes, the red lining of his nostrils, the ears flattened. He could smell the wildness. He sensed that one false move, and a darting foreleg might knock him down as if he were a cornstalk. He opened his mouth to speak, but for a long time no sound came.
“Your baby,” he spoke at last in the softest of voices, “your baby is—is beautiful.”
The Pied Piper’s ears twitched ever so slightly.
“You mean our filly!” corrected Maureen in her strong, high voice.
The Pied Piper laced his ears back again. He bared his teeth, breathing loudly.
“I’m not talking to you, Maureen,” Paul whispered, his face pale. “Turn your head.”