The Berserker Colt

On the morning that Make-Way-There had done his gallop Old Mat had noted that a change was coming over Boy.

She was ceasing to be a child, and was becoming a woman.

He mentioned it to Ma.

"Time she did," said the mother quietly. "She'll be seventeen in March."

The girl herself was aware of strange happenings within her. More, she knew that the tall young man was responsible for them.

A great new life, full of shadows and delicious dangers, was surging up in her heart, sweeping across the sands of her childhood, obliterating tide-marks, swinging her off her feet, and carrying her forward under bare stars toward the Unknown.

She fought against the invasion of this Sea, struggling to find footing on the familiar bottom.

That Sea and Mr. Silver were intimately connected. Sometimes, indeed, the girl could not distinguish one from the other. Was it the Sea which bore Mr. Silver in upon her resisting mind?--or was it Mr. Silver who trailed the Sea after him like a cloud?

Her helplessness angered and humiliated her. She fought fiercely and in vain. That strong will of hers, which had never yet met its match, was impotent now. This Thing, this Sea, this Man, crept in upon her like a mist, invading her very sanctuaries.

She might close the doors and lock them--to no purpose.

She was angry, excited, not entirely displeased.

The change wrought in her swiftly. At least she had the sense that she was embarking on a great adventure; and her romantic spirit answered to the appeal.

She became quieter and pa.s.sed much time in her room alone.

Mr. Silver kept knocking at the door in the loft which he had never entered; but she refused to open to him.

To revenge herself she practised small brutalities upon him, which had no effect. He just withdrew and came again next day with his big-dog smile, quiet and persistent as a tide. Shy he was, and singularly pertinacious.

Then his mother died.

That seemed to Boy unfair; but as she reasoned it out he could hardly be held responsible.

They knew all about it at Putnam's, because there was a paragraph in the paper about Brazil Silver's widow.

The young man buried his mother on Friday, and on Sat.u.r.day came down to Putnam's for his usual week-end.

Boy asked her mother if he had spoken to her about his trouble.

"No," said Mrs. Woodburn.

"Then he shall to me," said the girl, with determination.

He should not bottle up his grief. That would be bad for him. The mother in the girl was emerging from the tom-boy very fast.

On Sunday evening she took him for a ride, and had her way, without a struggle.

As they breasted the hill together, the young man told her all at some length.

"Was she much to you?" asked the girl keenly.

Her own mother was all the world to her.

He shook his head.

"Oh! that's all right," replied the girl, relieved and yet resentful, "if you didn't care."

"In some ways I'm glad for her sake," continued the young man. "She was always unhappy. You see she was ambitious. One of the disappointments of her life was that my father wouldn't take a peerage."

"Can't you be happy and ambitious?" asked Boy, peeping at him in the wary way he loved.

Jim Silver laughed and flicked his whip.

"I doubt it," he said.

"Aren't you ambitious?" she inquired.

He laughed his deep, tremendous laughter, turning on her the face she so rejoiced in.

"I've told you my one ambition."

"What's that?"

"To breed a National winner."

That brought them back to their favourite subject--Four-Pound-the-Second and his future.

The foal kept the girl busy, for the old mare died, and Boy had to bring up the little creature by hand. She didn't mind that, for the summer is the slack season in the jumping world. Moreover, trouble taken for helpless young things was never anything but a delight to her. And fortune favoured her. For the Queen of Sheba, one of her nanny-goats, had lost her kids, and the milk was therefore available for the foal.

Boy fed him herself by day and night, sleeping in his loose-box for the first few weeks, she and Billy Bluff, who promised to be good. Monkey Brand, who had neither wife nor child of his own, and loved the girl with the doting pa.s.sion of a nurse, wanted to share her watch, but his aid was abruptly refused. So the little jockey slept in the loft instead, to be near at hand, and would bring the girl a cup of tea after her vigil.

Once, in his mysterious way, he beckoned Silver to follow him. The young man pursued him up the ladder, treading, of course, on Maudie, who made the night hideous with her protests.

Up there in the darkness of the loft the little man stole with the motions of a conspirator to a far trap-door. He opened it gingerly and listened. From beneath came the sound of regular breathing. Thrusting his lantern through the dark hole, he beckoned to Silver, who looked down.

In a corner of the loose-box, on a pile of horse rugs, slept Boy, her ma.s.s of hair untamed now and spreading abroad like a fan of gold. Beside her on the moss-litter lay Billy Bluff, curled and dreaming of the chase. And on a bed of bracken by the manger, his long legs tied up in knots, was the foal.

Silver peeped and instantly withdrew as one who has trespa.s.sed innocently.

"Pretty as a pictur, ain't it?" whispered the little jockey. "Only don't go for to say I give her away. That'd be the end of Monkey Brand, that would."

He swung the lantern so that the light flashed on the face of the sleeping girl.

"That'll do," muttered the young man uneasily. "You'll wake her."