TRUE GOES TO FOUND HIS RACE.
Beautiful Bay boasted of having carried the Marquis de Lafayette to the great banquet the Hartford people gave him at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern, in 1784. The reference to this made the younger horse hope, as ever, rather recklessly, that another war might be declared which would give him such opportunities to distinguish himself as his father had had.
Sometimes father and son stood beneath the Elm on Main street and Beautiful Bay told True of the meeting there of Generals Washington, Hamilton and Knox, in 1780, when they discussed the Yorktown campaign. The ground under it was trodden hard, as if many others had stood to tell or listen to the story.
One day True heard the tale of the Charter Oak as they passed it on their way for a lounge on Sentinel Hill; and he heard, too, the exciting times accompanying the burning of the State House, in 1783.
Often they passed a queer looking young man; head bent in thought, hands clasped behind his back, at whom people pointed, saying with a shrug of understanding, as if to make allowances for the eccentricities of a scholar.
“There goes No-y Webster!”
Now and again the two horses went over to Mathew Allyn’s mill where the stones turned corn into delicious meal; or they made trips under the saddle up Rocky Hill, where men were hanged from a gibbet over the precipice if they had been wicked—or if men said they had—which came to the same thing in the end.
Certain days each week were called “Market Days,” and farmers came to Hartford to sell their produce. The Meeting House bell called them together and when True was present they often stood near to admire him and invite him to visit their farms. These were very profitable experiences to True and his owner, for there was always plenty of good food and bedding.
It was with no little regret, therefore, that True found one day Master Morgan was making ready to leave, and he must say good-bye to his father and friends in that pleasant town.
Nevertheless, when they set out, and turned their faces northward, he stepped out with a stout heart, remembering his mother’s instruction:
“Duty that we cheerfully do,
Is always quickest through!”
The highway they took was the one they had travelled when on their way to Hartford, and True’s spirits rose, thinking he might soon see his dear mother and Caesar. He would have so much to tell them of his experiences in the great world.
A feeling of keen content and happiness swept over him as he cantered easily along the banks of the stately Connecticut River, or stopped to graze on the rich abundant grass bordering the roadway.
’Twas at turn of day he felt a sweet nearness to his old home, and by a thousand familiar signs and senses he knew they were approaching. Plucking up all his courage and enthusiasm, he increased his speed and, almost breathless with joy, stopped at the familiar barn-door and whinneyed twice in the old way.
There was no response.
His heart sank; a sudden anxiety seized him.
Finally Caesar appeared and purred a soft welcome as he rubbed against his old friend’s leg. True made hurried enquiries as to his mother’s welfare, while Master Morgan gave “halloo!” for the inmates of the house.
“Alas,” mewed the cat, sitting down to wash his face, “things have changed since you went away. Your mother is sold into the South——”
“Into the South!” interrupted True, but Caesar saw nothing exciting in that, and continued, placidly:
—“and our master lies ill of the fever, our mistress ever at his side and no one to notice me at all. The stables are lonely, even the rats and mice have moved away for lack of food, for the garden and farm are grown up in weeds.” And he wiped his paw surreptitiously across his eye, curled himself up on a beam and fell asleep.
The responsive tears filled True’s eyes, and he would have roused the cat with other questions but at the moment Mistress Whitman opened the kitchen door. She offered Master Morgan friendly greeting, but when she caught sight of True she ran quickly out and threw her arms about his neck. Her old pet was equally glad to see her and thrust his muzzle into the folds of the white kerchief about her neck and made little affectionate sounds of greeting in reply.
“Come, True, little pony,” she whispered, “he has almost grieved himself to death at parting from you. The very sight of you will make him better.”
Without ado, she led the horse right up the two stone steps and into the kitchen where once he and his mother had stolen soup out of the pot which was even now swinging from the crane. As he recalled the incident he thrust his wide nostrils forward, but, smiling sadly, Mistress Whitman drew him to the inner door. His shod hoofs made an unseemly stamping, and a feeble voice from beyond called:
“Nay, wife, there must be something wrong!”
Mistress Whitman opened the door wide and let light into the darkened room.
“Instead, dear husband, ’tis very right,” she cried, cheerily, “for here is our precious colt come to visit with you.”
True found himself in a small, bare room, standing beside a cot, and, as his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, he recognized his old master, wasted with illness, lying helpless before him, his cheeks flushed, his eyes bright with fever. The affectionate little horse nosed among the quilts, trying to express his joy at seeing his old friend and at the same time his grief at finding him so weak and ill.
“Wife,” called the sick man, presently, “wife, fetch me some maple sugar and do go into the barn and give the colt all there is left of food there.”
“I will pay you well, Mistress,” said Master Morgan, from the doorway.
“Pay us, sir?” said the feeble voice from the cot, “pay us, sir? For feeding True? Why, bless you, he is one of my own family. I should as soon think of taking pay for food I might give my good wife, there. ’Twas only misfortune that led me to part with our pet. But you mean well, sir, and I bear you no ill-will.”
It was thus that True was loved by those who understood his nature.
When at last he was led to the stable he whinneyed twice for Caesar, with leaping heart.
“Was the one from the South who purchased my mother,” he asked, “a peerless lily of a maid, with crow-black hair and stars for eyes? Had she palms like the petals of a wild-rose and did she smell like clover blossoms after a sudden shower?”
But Caesar had not noticed, he said, as he sat on the edge of the doorsill, and began his inevitable face-washing.
“Had not noticed! Then indeed, it was not she,” thought True, impatient with the cat. Even a cat would have noticed Mistress Lloyd.
He spent a lonely night and was relieved to set out early in the morning for Randolph, Vermont, where Justin Morgan lived; the old home was not what it had been and any change was better than the atmosphere that hung over all at the Whitman farm.
Besides, Justin Morgan was kind to him and they were good friends enough, and no doubt Randolph was as good a village as Springfield. He grew philosophic as they started off.
They galloped over fields and through vague roads, or walked under vast overhanging and dense forests, and in time they came in sight of the bold, heavily-timbered Green Mountains—“The Footstools of Allah,” his mother had called them. They gave the young horse a feeling of strength and confidence; he felt his muscles expand at sight of their bold outlines and he had no fear of their difficulties. From the top of one he gazed at the view, entranced, rearing his fine bony head and breathing deeply of the pure life-giving air.
According to his mother’s prophecy it would be in the shadow of these mountains that he, scion of a hundred famous horses, would found the new race, and at first sight of their high broken sky-line, he made a resolve to live such an exemplary life that it would be a standard for that race to come.
Master Morgan was town-clerk, school-teacher, and singing master, and went daily from place to place with books in his saddle bags; it was this life True had come to share. There was a comfortable stable but no stable-mates, and had they not been constantly on the go, True might have been lonely; he came to look for their trips with much content and cantered along right willingly from one place to another.
For a time he was hitched outside the schoolhouse door, but when Master Morgan found he would come at his whistle, he let the little horse graze at will—the bridle fastened securely to the saddle—and to make the acquaintance of other horses during school hours. He knew well True would not abuse this privilege and wander too far.
Thus the first weeks of his stay at Randolph were passed.
As winter set in his sensitive ears detected, high in the air, a snapping of the cold which disturbed him no little, owing to his fear of storms. One night, when this sound was more audible than it had ever been, he pawed and stamped so restlessly that Justin Morgan came to find out what the matter was.
As the stable door opened there flashed through it a flood of crimson light. In the North great shafts pierced from the horizon high into the centre of the heavens. Poor True gave a moan of fright and crowded into a corner of his stall—it looked so like that awful fire in which old Piebald Ceph had lost his life.
Master Morgan closed the door hurriedly.
“Why, you poor horse,” he said, kindly, “’tis nothing but the Northern lights. Steady, now, steady.”
’Twas not so much the words as the tone and the gentle pats on his shoulder that pacified True. He felt at once that his master would take care of him and calmed himself like a sensible animal.
When he was quieted Justin Morgan climbed into the hay-loft and down a ladder on the other side of the barn rather than let the light shine through the door again, which was very considerate and no doubt True was proportionately grateful.
Those were wild, unsettled days in Vermont, and tales of Indians pillaging and burning were so fresh in the minds of the pioneers that a certain feeling of insecurity remained, ready to be roused into action any minute. The forests were dense and dark, the farms scattered and lonely and the life primitive. Neighbors depended solely upon each other for assistance in times of trouble or danger.
Dame Margery Griswold—daughter of a friendly Indian chief, and wife of a white settler—was one of the fine and noble characters of Randolph. Wise in the ways of medicines and herb-teas, she was constantly called upon to administer to the sick, and never failed to respond, rain or shine, snow or sleet.
One cold, blustery night there came a need for her to go across the mountain to see a child lying sick of a fever.
When she called upon her old white mare she was met by a flat refusal; the poor old nag was crippled with rheumatism and could not rise from her stable floor where she lay on her bedding of dried leaves.
Dame Margery therefore consulted Uncle Peter Edson, to whom all turned for advice, he being the oldest man in the town and a Deacon in the church.
Not long after this Master Morgan was awakened by a smart rapping on his door.
“Who’s there?” he called, sleepily.
“Wake, Friend Justin,” cried Uncle Peter, for ’twas he. “Dame Margery would borrow your horse Figure for the night. She is sent for to doctor a sick child.”
“’Tis a raw night for the dame, no less my horse,” answered Morgan, lifting the latch and inviting the old man in out of the cold. The ever-smouldering back-log kept the fire ready to blow into a blaze any time and Justin Morgan, not disturbing his family, set about fanning it with a large, turkey-tail fan. “I do not wish to send my horse out on such a night. We’ve but just got in ourselves and are fagged,” he added.
The fire blazed and was soon roaring up the chimney as the lightwood caught and the pine-knots flamed; then Master Morgan straightened himself.
“By the Constitution of these United States,” cried the old man, “’tis not a time to think of brute-beasts. I tell you a human lies ill and needs the Dame. Come, come, have done, and let me fetch the horse from the stable!”
But Master Morgan still hesitated, as he hung the turkey-tail back in place beside the high mantel.
“Come, I say,” thundered the old man, whom everyone obeyed, “get the horse out, sir, or ’twill be the worse for you when the neighbors find you consider your animal before a human being.”
Such threats and language could not be withstood, and Master Morgan, ever willing to be of service to a fellow being, and only reluctant on account of the tired horse, took his lanthorn from the mantel-shelf and went out.
As soon as True left the protection of his stable he felt a storm brewing, not so far away either; he hoped it would not break before his return, yet not knowing where he was going.
Uncle Peter rode him over to Dame Margery’s, who, when she came out, was so bundled up in bearskins that had she not spoken at once True might have been startled. Throwing her bags across the saddle and bidding Uncle Peter a cheery good-night she set out on her errand.
It was a cruel night, clouds large and low swept over the moon’s face and piled themselves up along the horizon like banks of snow. Dame Margery spoke soothingly and blithely to the horse which partly reconciled him to the dire cold.
When they arrived at their destination Margery went into the hut and a young man came out to throw a fur square over True’s shivering back and lead him out of the wind.
Hours passed. Inside the hut a child lay on a pallet on the floor; Margery knelt beside it. Finally she withdrew her arm from beneath the little head very gently and rose to her full, lean height. The white-faced, dry-eyed mother stood near—undemonstrative as Vermont women are apt to be but none the less grateful for all their stillness.
She followed Margery to the door as the latter stepped out into the bitter night.
“Looks like a storm,” Margery said, over her shoulder. “See that you don’t forget the pleurisy-root tea—and have it piping hot!”
“Best tarry the night,” urged the woman, hospitably, from the door where she stood, screening a sputtering dip from the wind with her hand.
“Nay, nay, yet I give you thanks,” answered Margery, gaily. “I am not afraid of storms; I was born in one and brought up in a wigwam!”
She pulled the covering from True’s back and mounted.
They started just as a veil of blinding snow fell full in their faces—and it fell so fast the ground was soon white.
The vicious wind, like an unchained demon, caught True’s thick black mane and blew it upwards, giving him a spasm of cold on his neck. He shivered. A moan swept through the hemlock boughs, they bent before the wind. Margery moistened the end of her finger and held it up, a thin skin of ice formed on its front.
Beaten by the wind and blinded by the snow his old storm-terror came over the horse, he wheeled and let the biting blast beat against his haunches—head down and heavy black tail against the on coming snow and numbing cold.
Once or twice he sniffed, as if in consultation with his rider, but as she offered no advice, he sprang to the shelter of a clump of firs and the harsh wind whistled fiercely on.
Margery slid from the saddle and with stiff but deft hands she caught True’s foot and threw him, Indian-fashion, to the ground. Then she broke huge branches of hemlock and piled them up as a brake against the snow, crouching close to the willing body of the now motionless horse. The wind, making a grating sound, pressed hard against their brake but it did not give, and trembling with cold the two waited for the storm to pass. The snow fell and fell; like knives the icy splinters lashed their eyelids and swirled on, tossing wave upon wave of snow on their protection of boughs and mounding it almost over them.
A large branch, heavy with the weight of ice and sleet, snapped from a tree near by and crashed to the ground, but they did not stir.
Angry mutterings came to them through the evergreen branches and shrieked off over the mountains like wind-tossed spirits. Through the long hours they made hardly a movement.
At last the darkness was over and from out the place where it went the sun came, flashing long rays of gold on trees draped with icicles and a world carpeted with snow, sparkling and gleaming, dazzling their eyes with its glitter.
A strange calm had fallen on the wind-swept scene when they rose and shook themselves, stiff with cold, to set off homeward. Over all the glistening landscape hung a deep-blue sky, calm, serene.
It was his hardihood that saved the little horse, but good Dame Margery Griswold caught her death that night while the child she braved the storm to save lived on to bless her name.