In those days prosperity was slow in arriving. I settled my cases under trees, in churches, in schools and stores—for barter and for cash.
Mary never neglected my food hamper; always something tasty, with an apple or a carrot or two tossed in for Jenny. We would stop in a patch of woods on a hot day; I would yank off my boots and rest my corns. Thunderstorms often fell on us; at the nearest stable I would rub Jenny until she was dry, and she would look and look at me as I rubbed her.
Willie liked to accompany me on our summer jaunts; he got to know the lone dead pine; the maple grove at Dobson’s Creek; he knew the roosting place of the red hawk, the place of the squirrels. We often saw fox and deer. I might read Fennimore Cooper to him as we rode along.
“...Papa, look at those pigeons...a whole cloud of them.”
Willie’s favorite topic was the railroad, the locomotives. He knew every type of engine, their speed, their horsepower. “Wonder horses,” he called them.
“All aboard,” he would shout, as we got into our buggy. “Let’s go...the Indians are comin’.”
Who owns Jenny now?
Where is she?
She’s about eleven years old.
