Gib and the Gray Ghost Read online

  But he stopped grinning then, thinking how most likely he was back at the Rocking M to be exactly what he’d been before: a farm-out orphan whose job it was to help poor old bum-legged Hy take care of chores around the barnyard. Exactly like it had been before, except that he was now living in the big house instead of Hy’s tumbledown old cabin.

  But Hy was living in the big house now too, and had been since the roof blew off the bunkhouse. And Hy was definitely hired help, so that didn’t really prove anything. In fact the whole upstairs was a lot like a bunkhouse now. A bunkhouse where nothing but hired help lived. Hy and Mrs. Perry and now Gib Whittaker, orphan farm-out.

  Then again, there had been the feeling tonight that it was sort of a special occasion. Like the supper Mrs. Perry had ready for them. It was in the kitchen as usual, instead of in the grand dining room, but the table had been set with dining room china, and there had been all kinds of great food, including peach pie, Gib’s favorite dessert. It didn’t seem likely, Gib told himself, that they’d go to that much trouble for a farm-out.

  Supper had been different in other ways too. For one thing, there was a lot more talking, and a lot of it had been done by Hy. Gib remembered how one of the things Hy had told him on his very first night at the Rocking M was that the hired help were expected to be quiet at the dinner table. Being quiet obviously was a rule that nobody cared about anymore. But that difference, Gib decided, probably had a lot more to do with Mr. Thornton’s absence than with Gib Whittaker’s presence.

  When he came to think about it, however, there was another small sign that tonight had been a special event, and that was Livy’s locket watch. It seemed to Gib, if he was remembering correctly, that she never used to wear it for just an ordinary day. For churchgoing on Sundays maybe, or if company was coming, but never on a day when nothing important was going to happen.

  Gib was still arguing with himself, stacking up all the good signs against the bad ones, when his thinking began to blur some, and the next thing he knew, it was morning.

  Chapter 5

  WHEN THE ALARM CLOCK went off its jangling clatter scared Gib half to death. Sitting straight up in bed, he stared around him expecting to see—he didn’t know what. A row of metal cots full of sleepy orphans, most likely. While he was still fumbling at the clock wondering how in tarnation you shut the durn thing off, he couldn’t help chuckling a little at how he’d bounced himself straight up, as wide-eyed and jumpy as a spooked horse. He found the shut-off switch then and flopped back down under the covers for a minute. Just long enough to get his hackles down and his wits together.

  So—it hadn’t been a dream after all. Not a hope dream like the ones he’d had as a little kid when, halfway between waking and sleeping, he used to imagine the family he’d someday belong to. And certainly not one of the crazy scenes your mind trots out when you’re too sound asleep to care about making sense. Nope. This room was as real and solid as a rock. There he was in a fancy wooden bed under a slanty roof and surrounded by walls covered in flowery paper. It had to be the truth. He really was back at the Rocking M. Glancing at the clock, he saw that it was five-thirty. Just about the time he and Hy had always started the milking and feeding.

  Sliding out into the cold air from under the heavy warmth of the blankets, he struggled quickly into his clothing. He tiptoed down the stairs, picked up his mackinaw, and was out the door before he had time to think about what the five-thirty alarm meant. What it meant was—nothing had changed. Just like before, Gib Whittaker, orphan farm-out, was expected to be out of bed and out doing morning chores an hour and a half before breakfast was put on the table.

  Hy was already in the barn. “Well, howdy there, pardner,” he said as Gib came in. “I been waiting fer you. Right glad to have you back on the job.” He didn’t have to say that Gib should climb the ladder into the hayloft and throw down the hay while he took care of the water buckets and the oat pails. That was the way it had always been.

  Back in Silky’s stall after the feeding was finished, Gib barely had time to tell her hello and get started with the currycomb before Hy said, “Awright buckaroo, come along now. Grooming can come later. We got to get them chickens fed and the milkin’ done faster’n lightnin’ or we’ll miss out on breakfast.”

  But when Gib left off combing, Silky nudged him away from the stall door. “Look,” he said, “she doesn’t want me to go.”

  Hy chuckled. “Well, you can just tell that fancy blue-blooded lady that you’ll be back later to spruce her up a little. After us two-legged critters git our turn at the feedin’ trough.”

  So everything was back the way it had always been, with the feeding and milking first, and then breakfast. Cleaning up on the back porch, Gib had only a little time to consider what being “back on the job” meant, before he was once again in the good-smelling warmth of Mrs. Perry’s kitchen.

  As Gib had noticed the night before, the kitchen was a lot noisier than it used to be. Mrs. Perry was scolding Hy for snitching a piece of bacon right off the grill, and Miss Hooper was looking out the window and announcing to anyone in earshot that, for once, Hy’s aching bones had been right about the weather. There definitely was a storm blowing up. Missus Julia and Livy, who were already at the table, were busy talking to each other. When Gib walked in everybody stopped long enough to say hello, before they went back to what they’d been doing and saying.

  But now Gib talked too. As he ate eggs and bacon and pancakes instead of lumpy oatmeal for the first time in almost four months, he also found himself answering questions. And to his surprise Livy did a lot of the asking. Questions like “How come that headmistress woman let you stay at Lovell House when my father took you back? I thought you said she never let anybody come back once they’d been adopted or farmed out. How come you were different?”

  “I don’t rightly know,” Gib said. “Miss Offenbacher always said no one could come back. I didn’t think she’d let me back in either. But when Mr. Thornton ... He paused, wondering how to go on. But then Miss Hooper took over.

  As Gib smiled inwardly, thinking about all the times she’d come to his rescue lately, she said, “The difference was money. Mr. Thornton offered that Offenbacher woman a good-sized monthly payment if she’d let Gib back into the orphanage. It’s as simple as that.”

  The mention of Mr. Thornton, particularly in the tone of voice Miss Hooper was using, made Gib uneasy. But neither Missus Julia nor Livy seemed upset, so he guessed that it was all right, even though it had sounded pretty much like speaking ill of the dead. However, he was considerably relieved when Missus Julia changed the subject by asking about Black Silk.

  “What did she do when she saw you, Gib?” she asked. “Do you think she remembered you?”

  Gib nodded hard, swallowed a mouthful of pancake, and said, “Oh yes, ma’am, she did for sure. She even left off eating her hay to come over to see me. And she made that little whispery nicker like she always does when she’s happy about something.”

  After that the conversation was about horses for quite a spell, with Livy doing a lot of the talking. Livy had a lot to say about how nobody would let her drive the team. Seemed she was pretty unhappy about not being able to go to Longford School anymore because Hy didn’t think she could handle a high-spirited team like Comet and Caesar all by herself. But then Hy broke in to say, “No, siree, that warn’t it at all, Miss Livy, and you know it warn’t. I don’t ’spect you’d have any trouble with them old bays. All I said was a little gal like you got no business driving any team out across open prairie all by her lonesome.”

  But then Missus Julia said, “But that’s not going to be a problem anymore now that Gib’s here. He’ll undoubtedly be going to Longford too, and I’m sure he’ll have no trouble with Comet and Caesar.”

  Gib stared at Missus Julia, wondering if she meant he’d be attending the Longford School too. That seemed like her meaning, but before he could ask to be sure Livy said, “Oh, good. Gib will drive. And he can drive the Model T
too.”

  Gib had almost forgotten about the Model T, which, it seemed, had been sitting uselessly in its garage ever since Mr. Thornton’s death. Livy sounded excited as she went on, “Gib could learn how to drive the Model T, and then he can be my chauffeur. How’d you like to be a chauffeur, Gibson?”

  Everybody laughed and Gib was saying that he thought he knew a lot more about driving horses than motorcars when Miss Hooper interrupted. “Look at that,” she said, pointing to the window. “What did I tell you? It’s started already.”

  They all looked to where a sleety mixture of snow and ice was sweeping across the kitchen window. “Well, that settles it,” Miss Hooper said. “Looks like nobody’s going to be driving to Longford by any means whatsoever. At least not anytime soon.” She sighed. “Which probably means that yours truly is going to be playing the role of reluctant schoolmarm for quite a while longer.”

  So the blizzard had arrived. Not as bitterly cold as a midwinter blizzard perhaps, but as Hy said, just as wild and woolly, with howling wind and heavy snowfall, and plenty of bone-aching chill. Which meant no Longford School for either Livy or Gib, and no chance to saddle Silky up and ride her out across the prairie. No riding, but plenty of time for grooming and stall cleaning, not only for Silky but the other horses as well.

  And, starting on Monday morning, a few hours for Gib and Livy in the library in what Miss Hooper called the Rocking M Institution of Higher Learning. And a lot more time than Gib needed for considering whether he was still only an orphan farm-out, or maybe something more.

  Not that he’d really asked. He certainly hadn’t asked Missus Julia, who’d never treated him like an orphan nobody, but who wasn’t the kind of person you could just up and talk to about personal things. Particularly not now, when she was a new widow, looking pale and delicate in her lacy black dresses.

  Gib had always been tempted to stare at Missus Julia, ever since the first time he’d seen her being wheeled into the kitchen in her high-backed chair. He didn’t know why for sure. For a time it had been knowing that Silky was hers, and that she’d once been one of the best horsewomen in the whole state. And then, later on, there had been finding out that Julia Thornton had known his own mother, Maggie Whittaker. But, perhaps most important, was when he’d learned from Miss Hooper that Julia Thornton would have adopted Gib right after his mother died, except that Mr. Thornton wouldn’t let her.

  So there had always been all sorts of audacious questions he would have liked to ask Missus Julia, but for some reason he just couldn’t. Not even when they had long talks about other things, like about the old days when her father, Dan Merrill, was alive and the Rocking M was the biggest ranch in the state. Gib particularly liked hearing Missus Julia talk about all the horses she’d owned, clear back to a pinto pony named Dandy her father gave her for her fourth birthday.

  Gib liked hearing about Missus Julia’s horses. And he especially liked the way her face changed when she talked about them. It seemed to Gib that her face had a healthier color to it and her cough got better too when she talked about Dandy or Silky or any of the other horses she’d owned. Missus Julia was easy as anything to talk horses with, but bringing up things like adoption papers was something else again.

  It was with Hy that Gib finally managed to edge up on the adoption question. It was on the second day of the blizzard when the two of them were out in the barn, feeding the stock. Asking Hy any kind of personal question had its good side and its bad side. The good side was how easy Gib felt about asking. The bad side was that, unless the question had to do with horses, Hy probably wouldn’t know the answer. Gib decided to ask anyway, but the only answer he got was, “Well now, Gibby. Seems to me as how you’re askin’ if you’re still just a hired hand like old Hy Carter, or if there’s going to be some paperwork done that says you’re a part of the Thornton family. That it?”

  “No,” Gib said, “not exactly. Well, sort of ...

  And Hy chuckled and said he didn’t see why it mattered. “Not now anyways. Not now we got ourselves a real Merrill back in charge of the spread agin. Don’t matter none that her name’s still Thornton, Missus Julia’s a real prairie-bred Merrill and always will be. And you can bet your bottom dollar that she’ll treat everybody fair and square, jist like her daddy afore her. So don’t you go worryin’ none about what’s put on a piece of paper.” Hy hobbled off then, leaving Gib as much in the dark as ever.

  Miss Hooper wasn’t talking either. Not even when Gib came right out and asked her what kind of paper it was that she’d signed for him that day in Miss Offenbacher’s office. Miss Hooper had let school out early that day, because she had a headache and Livy had already disappeared, so Gib thought it was a good time to ask. But when he did, Miss Hooper said that the only signing she’d done that day was on a check.

  But if no one else would tell Gib exactly what kind of space he was filling, Livy didn’t mind sharing her opinions on the subject. Particularly when she got her dander up over something Gib had done or said. Whenever that happened she could think of things to say that made it pretty clear that, as far as she was concerned, Gib Whittaker was still just an ordinary old farm-out orphan.

  Like the time, during an American history class, when Miss Hooper had gone out to get some tea and Livy asked Gib how he’d answered the “Give me liberty or give me death” question. Gib was pretty sure it had been Patrick Henry who’d said it, but when he said so Livy said that she distinctly remembered seeing a picture of Paul Revere shouting something about death and liberty along with the news about the British coming. So she wrote down Paul Revere and when it turned out that Gib was right, she only shrugged a little and pretended she didn’t care. But a little later she found a way to get even.

  That happened when Miss Hooper asked Gib to explain the difference between renting and leasing. Gib was trying to say as how he’d always thought that renting was something you did by the month, and leasing was when you wanted to keep something for a longer spell. But then Livy interrupted and with that dangerous, too-innocent look on her face she said, “Well, I guess farm-outs are leased then, because you get to keep them till they’re eighteen.”

  So Gib thought he knew why he was back at the Rocking M, at least as far as Livy was concerned, but the next day she was extra nice to him, like always after she’d had a spell of being real ornery.

  Gib had been back at the Rocking M for almost a week, and he was still wondering about why he was there when, on a cold, clear November day, something happened that definitely gave him something else to ponder on.

  Chapter 6

  BY SATURDAY MORNING THE blizzard finally blew itself out. The heavy clouds disappeared and a weak, wintry sun shone down on a gleaming white ocean of snow. A smooth and level ocean out on the open prairie, but one that piled up in deep white waves around fences and buildings.

  On the windward side of the house and barn the snow was as high as Gib’s head but in the open barnyard it was spread smooth and thin as a white carpet. And it was on that sleek white carpet that Gib rode Silky for the first time since his return to the Rocking M.

  He’d asked permission at breakfast that morning and Missus Julia had asked Hy if he thought it would be all right. Hy was planning to take advantage of the settled weather to drive the team into Longford for supplies, but when Gib asked he said, “Don’t see why not. You’ll not be needin’ my help. She’ll, be feeling her oats, that’s for certain, but you’ll know how to keep the lid on her till she settles down. Won’t you, Gibby?”

  So then Missus Julia said to be sure to bundle up, and Miss Hooper found him an old train engineer’s cap with woolly ear flaps. Livy hadn’t said anything at all at the table; in fact she didn’t even seem to be listening. But when Gib, bundled up like a North Pole Eskimo, was going out the door, there she was dressed up in her coat and boots and wearing a new fur-trimmed bonnet.

  “I’m coming too,” she said, and when Gib stared at her in consternation, wondering what to say, she went on, �
��Don’t worry. I won’t ask to ride. I just want to watch.” And then when Gib went on staring she added angrily, “I have permission. Don’t you believe me? Want to come back inside and ask my mother?”

  Gib shook his head. “No, I believe you. I just thought ...

  “Yes, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that the last time I rode Silky you got sent away. Well, don’t worry. Nobody’s going to send you away again.” Then her blue eyes widened and in an innocent, little-girl voice she said, “At least not till you’re eighteen.”

  Gib had never gotten angry easily but when someone, like old Elmer back in the orphanage, went out of their way to do or say something ornery, Gib always felt it deep down in the bottom of his stomach. Once or twice he’d even punched somebody for that kind of meanness, but that somebody had never been a lot smaller than he was, and a girl at that. Gib unclenched his fists and took a deep breath. Then he took hold of Livy by both shoulders and said very slowly, “Look here, Livy Thornton. Don’t you go making any more remarks about farm-outs, ’cause if you do—if you do ...

  He stopped then, noticing that Livy’s eyes and mouth were wide open and her breath was coming in little shaky gasps. She looked downright terrified. Suddenly Gib felt a grin coming on. “’Cause if you do,” he repeated, “I’m going to dump you in a snowdrift—headfirst.”

  He turned her loose then and headed for the barn, wondering what she’d do to get even. Wondering, but not regretting what he’d done, nor even looking back, so he didn’t notice she was right behind him until he was inside the barn. He was on his way to the tack room when something made him turn and there she stood, right across from Silky’s stall. When he stopped to stare, she smiled and nodded as if he’d just paid her a nice compliment instead of threatening to dump her in a snowdrift.

  “Yes,” she said, smiling sweetly, “I’m still here.”