Gib Rides Home Read online

  Releasing Gib’s shoulder, he turned away, sat down at the desk, and as Gib’s mind reeled with fear and dread, and then the faintest echo of old hopes, the gray-bearded man signed the papers that transferred to his care and guidance one Gibson Whittaker, ten-year-old ward of the state and resident of the Lovell House Home for Orphaned and Abandoned Boys.

  Chapter 14

  THE BUGGY WAS LARGE and well made and the high-stepping bays were sleek and fat. From his perch on the driver’s seat next to the man called Mr. Thornton, Gib could look down across shiny bay backs and floating black tails and manes. Could almost lose himself in watching the beautiful team and forget about the stern-faced man who sat next to him saying nothing at all for mile after long, slow mile.

  Nothing, that is, since Miss Offenbacher and Mr. Harding came out to see them off and to explain that no, there would be no luggage, since the orphanage policy was that any spare articles of clothing would be retained by the institution to be used by other residents. Looking surprised and a little bit annoyed, Mr. Thornton had only said, “I see,” and, slapping the reins on the bays’ backs, pulled away from Lovell House at a fast trot. It wasn’t until they had reached the end of Lovell Avenue and turned off onto Fairfax Street that he began to ask questions. Not many questions and not as if they were a part of a conversation, but only now and then with maybe a half mile of silence in between.

  “Well then, young man,” he said suddenly as the bays trotted into the turn onto Willow Road and headed out across the prairie. Startled, Gib swallowed hard, found his voice, and said, “Yes sir?”

  “You say you don’t recall where you were born. What memories do you have of your life before your—before you arrived at Lovell House?”

  “Not very much, sir. I think I remember my mother a little. And the horses we had—a bay and a sorrel mare—and a little bit about the house where I lived. And a wagon. I kind of recollect a buckboard wagon.”

  Mr. Thornton nodded. “Do you recall how old you were when your—when you came to Lovell House?”

  “Six. I was six years old, sir. Miss Mooney, she’s one of the teachers, she told me so.”

  Mr. Thornton nodded and went on driving in silence. Silence except for the creak and whir of the buggy and the steady clop clop of hooves. Those sounds, the beat of hooves and the grate of wheels on gravel, would, in the days and weeks to come, bring back over and over again the memory of that buggy ride. Would re-create in Gib’s mind that strange journey to a new life, with its dreamlike tangle of fear and dread shot through with brief moments of hopeful anticipation.

  Gib kept trying to tell himself that in spite of everything, there really was some reason to hope. While Mr. Thornton didn’t seem particularly warm and friendly, he didn’t look to be cruel or violent, either. A quiet man, certainly, sitting there without a word for mile after long prairie mile, but perhaps a man who would answer a question or two if they were politely asked.

  Lifting his eyes from the team, Gib stole a glance at the man seated beside him, a glance that told him that Mr. Thornton’s suit was much more clean and sharp-looking than the bulky overcoat Mr. Bean had worn, or even than the suit Mr. Harding wore every day in his classroom. And while he didn’t really believe that cleanliness was next to godliness, like Miss Mooney said, that snappy suit did seem encouraging. It was encouraging to think that a clean, neat, well-dressed man would not be at all like Mr. Bean, or even Mr. Harding. Gib was still checking out the gold cuff links and watch chain and the shiny leather of high-topped black shoes when Mr. Thornton turned and stared at him for a long time without smiling or saying a word.

  Quickly shifting his gaze back to the smartly trotting horses, Gib decided that it would be best to wait to ask important questions. Questions whose answers would tell him where he would be living, and whether he’d be allowed to go to school, and if he’d be starved and sent out in freezing weather without any mittens. And that other question that he hardly dared even to think about—if he was being really adopted or only farmed out. Instead he would concentrate on the beautiful horses and shut his mind to those kinds of questions.

  But there were other things as well that it didn’t pay to think about, and one of them was that he had left Lovell House without telling anyone good-bye. Thinking about Miss Offenbacher’s refusal to let him tell Jacob and Bobby, or even Miss Mooney, good-bye made a cramping pain in Gib’s stomach.

  He was still trying not to think about not ever seeing Jacob and Bobby again when Mr. Thornton began to talk, this time asking more questions about the orphanage. “I understand there was a change in the administration a while back,” he said, and when Gib didn’t respond, he added, “When Mrs. Hansen died?”

  “Yes sir,” Gib said emphatically, glad to have understood what Mr. Thornton was driving at. “A real big change. Everybody liked Mrs. Hansen.” He thought for a moment before he added, “Miss Offenbacher was a big change all right.” Then, realizing what he’d as good as said, he winced, wondering if he was in trouble. More questions about Lovell House followed, and Gib was trying hard to answer without saying things he shouldn’t when the buggy topped a slight rise and he could see the outskirts of a town set along the edge of a wide river. Gib gasped in surprise, and Mr. Thornton pulled the buggy to a stop.

  “Yes?” Mr. Thornton said, looking at Gib questioningly. “Longford. Do you remember Longford?”

  “Longford,” Gib whispered. “Longford.” The name seemed to be attached to something far back in his mind, but when he reached for the spot it quickly faded. He was still reaching a few minutes later, trying to recall what that name had meant to him, when the bays picked up their pace eagerly as they approached a turnoff to a tree-lined drive. Mr. Thornton let them have their heads as they turned off the road, passing under a sign that said ROCKING M RANCH, followed by a capital M that sat on a curved line like the rocker on a chair: M

  The house was beautiful. Not a great stone castle, like Lovell House, but a large and sturdy two-story home surrounded by wide porches and shaded by old trees. A solid, forever kind of place so much like the ones he’d pictured in his dreams of the future that for a moment the quick, warm thrill of hope was back again, singing in his ears and tightening his throat.

  Gib was staring at the house when he thought he saw something in an upstairs window. He’d had only a quick glimpse, but he was almost sure that it had been a face. A pale, pointed face topped by something large and white, a hat maybe or a hair ribbon. He was still staring back over his shoulder when the team trotted through a yard surrounded by barns and sheds, turned into a narrow lane, turned again, and came to a stop in front of another house. A much smaller house this time, with unpainted walls and a steeply pitched roof of patchy shingles. Pulling the team to a stop, Mr. Thornton turned to look at Gib.

  “You’ll be staying here for now,” he said, “with Hy?” A testing question seemed to be there again, but when Gib didn’t respond he added, “Hyram Carter?” Another testing, but Gib could only shake his head. Mr. Thornton shrugged and went on, “Hy was the foreman on the Rocking M and now—”

  At that moment hinges creaked loudly as the cabin door swung open and crashed back against the wall, sending the team into a series of skittish sidesteps. Gib was watching the team’s shenanigans when he heard a voice say, “Sorry about that, boss. Durned crutch got away from me. Almost took a header.” The raspy, rough-edged voice produced a faint echo in Gib’s head, an echo that seemed to come from far back among the deepest shadows.

  The man standing in the cabin door was long and lean with a wild mop of wiry gray hair and a dark, sun-scorched face. He was wearing a denim shirt, a worn leather vest, and a pair of baggy denim stockpants—with only one leg. Stockpants with the left leg cut off above a heavy cast that extended from just above the knee down to his ankle. Hopping forward, he was bending down to retrieve his crutch when Gib suddenly came out of a trance of crowding shadows, saw what needed to be done, and jumped down from the buggy. Picking up the crutc
h, he handed it to the weather-beaten man, stared into his face, and knew with a rush of wild, warm excitement that he had known him before. Somewhere, sometime, he had known this man before.

  “Well, well, well.” Hy was steadying himself with one hand on Gib’s shoulder as he maneuvered the crutch around to his left side. “If it isn’t the little Whittaker dogie come back to the home range. Ol’ Gibby Whittaker nigh onto being growed up, sure as God made little apples.”

  Chapter 15

  SO THE MAN NAMED Hyram Carter was someone he’d known before. Gib was reaching back, concentrating so hard on trying to remember who and when, that he was only vaguely aware of the conversation between Hy and Mr. Thornton.

  “No, very little,” Mr. Thornton was saying when Gib began to listen. “He seems to remember almost nothing. Strange, really.”

  “Not so strange, considerin’ what he’d just gone through.” Shifting on his crutches, the man called Hy went on, “But he’s Gibby Whittaker all right. No doubt about that. And he knew me right off, didn’t you, boy?”

  Gib gasped, grinned uncertainly, and nodded. “I think so, sir. I think I used to know you, but I don’t know who you are. I feel all ... He glanced up at Mr. Thornton. “My head feels—mixed up.”

  Hy’s smile widened. “Well, don’t you go worryin’ none about that. Just tell the boss thanks for drivin’ all the way to Harristown to fetch you, and then come on in.”

  Gib did as he was told. “Yes—yes sir,” he said. “Thanks for fetching ... But Mr. Thornton was already turning the team, and a minute later Gib was inside the cabin, the clop and jingle of the buggy fading as it went back down the lane.

  The cabin was very small. One room with a table, two chairs, a rusty iron range at one end, and a bunk bed built into the wall at the other. Near the bed a ladder led up to a loft. Hy was standing near the table, his eyes fixed on Gib and a strange half smile on his dark, wrinkle-puckered face, when a sudden, crazy idea exploded in Gib’s head. Before he could stop it, it came out of his mouth. “Are you—my father?”

  Hy’s laugh had a harsh honking sound to it, like the horn of a motorcar. He honked until he almost choked himself—coughed alarmingly, slapped his chest—and honked some more. “Naw!” he said when he’d finally stopped laughing. “’Fraid not, pardner. But I knew your papa once upon a time, and your mama too.”

  “You knew ... Gib swallowed hard and swallowed again. For a moment his mind refused to take it in—or believe that it was true. That he had found the place where he belonged, or at least where the people he belonged to had once lived. It was a while before he managed to say, “Where—I mean—when ... ?”

  The man called Hy propped his crutches against the table, lowered himself into a chair, and said, “Well now, if you’d pour us some Java—pot’s there on the range—and sit yourself down here, I’ll tell you a thing or two.” He rolled his eyes toward the fading sound of the buggy and, grinning in a way that seemed to hint at hidden meanings, he added, “Leastways all the law allows.”

  Coffee had never been included in the Lovell House diet, and as Gib poured the second cup he eyed the dark, grainy liquid with some misgivings. But he did as he was told, and a moment later he was sitting across the table from the man who had known his parents, who knew who he was and where he had come from. He clutched the cup of coffee with both shaky hands and watched as a whirlpool of thoughts and feelings seemed to repeat itself in the swirling liquid.

  Hy sipped his coffee, cleared his throat, and stared squinty-eyed, not at Gib himself but at something faint and far away that he seemed to be trying to bring into focus.

  “Must have met your folks sometime in the late nineties, not long after they came to Longford. Up from Kansas, I think they were. Bought the old Anders place. Nice little spread just south of the Rocking M land. A mite small for ranchin’, but not too bad neither. Seems as how your ma had been a teacher back in Kansas and she taught here in Longford for a year or so. Up until you came along. But then, when you weren’t much more than a toddler, your pa ... Hy paused, looking at Gib closely. “Your pa got himself killed in a huntin’ accident.”

  “Nineteen one,” Gib said, triumphant that he knew and remembered something, anything at all, about his past. “Miss Mooney said it was in the records. That my father died in nineteen one.”

  Hy nodded. “Sounds about right.” He sighed. “Your ma did her best to keep things goin’. Hired extra help when she had to, and did an awful lot of the work her own self. A lot more’n a pint-sized little lady like her ought to have had to do. Folks from the church did what they could to help, and I helped out now and then with the stock.” His eyes shifted and refocused on Gib. “That’s why you’re rememberin’ ’bout me, more’n likely. Saw a lot of me in those days. Used to follow me around like a pup dog, watchin’ and asking all kinds of questions.” Hy chuckled. “Questions about handlin’ stock, mostly, specially horseflesh. Never saw a kid so plum crazy about horses. I taught you how to sneak a bit ’twixt a pony’s teeth myself, and after that you used to ride your ma’s gentle old bay Morgan ever chance you got. When you warn’t more’n four, five year old you’d climb up on a fence with your pockets full of oats and the bridle ’round your neck, and when that old bay—”

  “Amos,” Gib interrupted excitedly. “His name was Amos.”

  “Right you are. Amos it was. You’d have a bridle on him and be across his neck quick as lightning and sliding on down it to his withers.” Hy laughed. “And once you got there you stuck like a burr.”

  The bay’s name was Amos, Gib thought delightedly. Delighted that he was remembering and that he did have something to remember after all. He really had come from someplace and had his own people, and horses too that had belonged to him. Horses that were a part of who he was and where he came from. After all those years of not knowing, of wishing and wondering, it was a wonderfully exciting and satisfying thing to consider.

  Suddenly Hy’s grin disappeared and the laughter gullies that creased his cheeks shifted solemnly downward. “You remember your ma, don’t you? She was one fine lady.”

  Gib wanted to say he remembered everything about her. Not just her name on the records, and a few faint memories about what she did to an old horse beater, and some dreamlike scenes from the books she read at bedtime. “I remember her name was Maggie,” he said, “and—and she read a lot.” He paused, then went on reluctantly, “But I don’t know what happened to her. I never knew what happened to her.”

  Hy put down his coffee and stared at Gib. Then, speaking slowly and solemnly, he said, “She died, boy, in the epidemic of 1904. Lots of folks sickened that year all over the territory. Bad water, it was. At least that’s what was said later. At the time nobody knew what caused it. You took sick first, real bad sick. And then when your ma came down with it you was took to a clinic they’d set up down by the old church. Folks there took real good care of you, I guess, but ... Hy sighed deeply and went back to staring off into the past. He was still staring when someone knocked on the cabin door. An alarming knock that had a loud firmness to it, almost a headmistress kind of sound. Gib looked anxiously at Hy, who seemed puzzled for a moment before he nodded and grinned.

  “You get the latch, Gibby,” he said. “Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s for you anyways. Leastways in a manner of speakin’.”

  Maybe Hy wasn’t surprised, but Gib certainly was. When the door swung wide open the person standing there was not Mr. Thornton or anyone else he’d ever seen before. Except maybe just a glimpse in an upstairs window. The person standing in the cabin door was small; she was dressed in lots of pale yellow ruffles, and there was a big white ribbon on top of her head.

  Gib was regarding her in openmouthed surprise when the girl cocked her head, narrowed her blue eyes, and said to Hy, “He looks just about like I thought he would.” She nodded thoughtfully. “’Cept maybe taller and not so ... She paused, looked Gib over from head to toe, and then shrugged. Walking clear around him and back to Hy, she said,
“I came to tell you that we’re all eating in the kitchen at five-thirty. All right?” She turned then, and on her way back out the door she stared at Gib again.

  When she had gone and Gib had relatched the door, Hy broke into his honking laugh. “What’s so funny?” Gib asked warily.

  “Supper’s always at five-thirty,” Hy chortled. “Leastways when it’s in the kitchen. Oh, once in a blue moon when there’s important company the boss and the missus eat real late in the dinin’ room, but mostly it’s just in the kitchen with the hired help. At five-thirty on the nose.”

  Gib frowned thoughtfully. “Then why ... ?”

  “Not hard to figure,” Hy said. “Miss Livy just come to get a look at you. She’s been nigh onto dyin’ of curiosity for the last week or two, ever since ... He paused. “Well, ever since her folks decided to ... He paused again, narrowed his eyes, and then went on, “Decided to look you up.”

  “Look me up?” Gib repeated, but then Hy slapped his hand down on the table and began to struggle to his feet.

  “Here we sit gabbin’ when we got enough work to keep the both of us busy right up till dinnertime. Come on, pardner,” Hy said, reaching for his crutches. “Help me prop myself up on these old peg legs, and I’ll start showin’ you the ropes.”

  Chapter 16

  THE THORNTONS’ BARN WAS as solidly built as the house itself, and a lot bigger. A shiny buggy, the one Gib had ridden in with Mr. Thornton, sat in the central corridor, and on each side were box stalls. A great many box stalls, ten or more on each side. The barn smelled wonderfully of oats and hay and sweated leather and the sharp, warm, exciting smell of horses.

  Caesar and Comet, the bay team that Gib had met before, were in the first two stalls, and on the right side across the corridor a blue roan stuck his head out over the half door and nickered coaxingly. And suddenly the quiver was there again in the farthest corners of Gib’s mind, the deeply buried stirring of something almost remembered.