Part 25 (1/2)
Who that knows the horse will doubt it? Hartigan's first aim was to convince the black colt that men were not cruel brutes, and that he, Hartigan, was the gentlest and kindest of them all. And this he did by being much with him, by soft talking, by never being abrupt, and by bringing him favourite food. Not in a stable--it was a month before the wild horse would consent to enter a stable--this first period of training was all in a corral. Then came the handling. Midnight was very apt to turn and kick when first a hand was laid on him, but he learned to tolerate, and then to love the hand of his master; and when this treatment was later reinforced with a currycomb, the sensation pleased him mightily. The bridle next went on by degrees--first as a halter, then as a hackimore, last complete with bit. The saddle was the next slow process--a surcingle, a folded blanket and cinch, a double blanket and cinch, a bag of oats and cinch and, finally, the saddle and rider.
It was slow, but it was steadily successful; and whenever the black colt's ears went back or his teeth gave a rebellious snap, Jim knew he was going too fast, and gently avoided a clash. Never once did he fight with that horse; and before three months had pa.s.sed, he was riding the tall black colt; and the colt was responding to his voice and his touch as a ”broken” horse will never do.
”Yes,” said Kyle, ”I know all about that. It costs about twenty-five dollars to learn a horse that way, and it costs about five dollars to break him cowboy way. An average horse is worth only about twenty-five dollars. The cowboy way is good enough for our job, so I don't see any prospect of change till we get a price that will justify the 'training.'”
Belle was an intensely interested spectator of all this Midnight chapter. She wanted Jim to get a good horse that he would love, but oh, how she prayed and hoped he would not happen on another speeder! She knew quite well that it was about one chance in ten thousand; but she also knew that Jim could make a good horse out of mediocre material; and it was with anxiety just the reverse of his that she watched the black colt when first they rode together. He was strong and hard, but, thank heaven, she thought, showed no sign of racing blood.
”Of course, he'll come up a little later, when I get him well in hand,”
Jim explained apologetically.
And Belle added, ”I hope not.”
”Why?” asked Jim in surprise.
”Because, you might ride away from me.” And she meant it.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII
The Sociable
Christmas time with its free days and its social gatherings was at hand; and the Church folk must needs respond to the spirit of the season with a ”sociable.” In such a meeting, the young minister is king--that is the tradition--and on this occasion it was easier than usual to crown the heir apparent. At least twenty girls were making love to Jim, and he was quite unconscious of it all, except that he thought them a little free, and at length he recited an appropriate couplet from ”The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk”: ”They are so unaccustomed to man, their tameness is shocking to me.” He joked and laughed with all; but ever he drifted over toward Belle, to consult, to whisper, to linger.
For such affairs there is a time-honoured and established programme that was fairly well adhered to at least in the early part. They met at the church parlours and gossiped; had a prayer, then more gossip; next followed tea and cakes in a poisonous abundance, and more gossip. Now the older preacher, as expected, read a chapter out of some safe story book, amid gossip--harmless in the main, but still gossip. Next the musical geniuses of the congregation were unchained. A perfectly well-meaning young lady sang, ”Be kind to your brother, he may not last long,” to an accompaniment of squeaks on the melodeon--and gossip. A boy orator recited ”Chatham's speech on American Independence,” and received an outburst of applause which, for a moment, overpowered the gossip.
Lou-Jane Hoomer, conspicuous for her intense hair and noisy laugh, had been active in getting up the sociable, and now she contributed of her talents by singing ”Home, Sweet Home.” About the middle of the second period, according to custom, the preacher should recite ”Barbara Frietchie” to a whispering chorus of gossip. But Jim was brought up in a land not reached by Barbara's fame and he made a new departure by giving a Fenian poem--”Shamus...o...b..ien”--with such fervour that, for the moment, the whisperers forgot to gossip.
Belle, as the manager of the affair, was needed everywhere and all the time, but made no contribution to the programme. Lou-Jane scored such a success with ”Home, Sweet Home” that she was afterward surrounded by a group of admirers, among them Jim Hartigan.
”Sure,” he said, she ”was liable to break up the meeting making every one so homesick,” and she replied that ”it would never break up as long as he was there to attract them all together.”
John Higginbotham, with his unfailing insurance eye, pointed out that the stove-pipe wire had sagged, bringing the pipe perilously near the woodwork, and then gossiped about the robberies his company had suffered. A game of rhymes was proposed. In this one person gives a word and the next to him must at once match it with an appropriate rhyme.
This diversion met with little enthusiasm and the party lagged until some one suggested that Jim recite. He chose a poem from Browning, ”How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.” He put his very soul in those galloping horses and wondered why the poet said so much about the men and so little about the steeds. Dr. Jebb could not quite ”see the lesson,” but the fire and power of the rendering gripped the audience.
Dr. Carson said, ”Now you're doing real stuff! If you'd cut out all your piffling goody talk and give us life like that, you'd have all the town with you.”
Lou-Jane was actually moved, and Belle glowed with pride to see her hero really touching the n.o.bler strings of human emotion--strings that such a community is apt to lose sight of under cobwebs of long disuse but they are there and ready to resound to the strong, true soul that can touch them with music.
But what was it in the trampling horses that stirred some undiscovered depth in his own heart? How came it that those lines drove fogbanks back and showed another height in his soul, a high place never seen before, even by himself? And, as those simple townfolk, stirred they knew not how, all clamoured for another song, he felt the thrill that once was his in the far-off stable yard of Links, when Denny Denard, brandis.h.i.+ng a dung-fork, chanted ”The Raiding of Aymal.” Now it all came back and Hartigan shouted out the rede:
”Haakon is dead! Haakon is dead!
Haakon of the bronze-hilt sword is dead.
His son's in his stead; Aymal, tall son of Haakon, Swings now the bronze-hilt sword of his father.
He is gone to the High-fielden To the high pasture to possess the twelve mares of his father; Black and bay and yellow, as the herdsman drave them past him; Black and yellow, their manes on the wind; And galloped a colt by the side of each.”
So he sang in a chant the saga-singer's tale of the king killing all the colts save one that it might have the nursing of the twelve. His eye sparkled and glowed; his colour mounted; his soul was so stirred with the story that his spirit could fill the gaps where his memory failed.
The sense of power was on him; he told the swinging tale as though it were in verity his own; and the hearers gazed intensely, feeling that he sang of himself. It was no acting, but a king proclaiming himself a king, when he told of the world won by the bronze sword bearer mounted on the twelve-times-nourished stallion colt; and he finished with a royal gesture and injunction: