The two boys shrieked with excitement as they beheld the coincidence of this strange return. They burst into the stable, ****** almost as much noise as Duke, who had become frantic at the invasion. Sam laid hands upon a rake.
"You get out o' there, you ole horse, you!" he bellowed. "I ain't afraid to drive him out. I--"
"WAIT a minute!" Penrod shouted. "Wait till I--"
Sam was manfully preparing to enter the stall.
You hold the doors open," he commanded, "so's they won't blow shut and keep him in here. I'm goin' to hit him--"
"Quee-YUT!" Penrod shouted, grasping the handle of the rake so that Sam could not use it. "Wait a MINUTE, can't you?" He turned with ferocious voice and gestures upon Duke. "DUKE!" And Duke, in spite of his excitement, was so impressed that he prostrated himself in silence, and then unobtrusively withdrew from the stable. Penrod ran to the alley doors and closed them.
"My gracious!" Sam protested. "What you goin' to do?"
"I'm goin' to keep this horse," said Penrod, whose face showed the strain of a great idea.
"What FOR?"
"For the reward," said Penrod simply.
Sam sat down in the wheelbarrow and stared at his friend almost with awe.
"My gracious," he said, "I never thought o' that! How--how much do you think we'll get, Penrod?"
Sam's thus admitting himself to a full partnership in the enterprise met no objection from Penrod, who was absorbed in the contemplation of Whitey.
"Well," he said judicially, "we might get more and we might get less."
Sam rose and joined his friend in the doorway opening upon the two stalls. Whitey had preempted the nearer, and was hungrily nuzzling the old frayed hollows in the manger.
"Maybe a hunderd dollars--or sumpthing?" Sam asked in a low voice.
Penrod maintained his composure and repeated the newfound expression that had sounded well to him a moment before. He recognized it as a symbol of the non--committal attitude that makes people looked up to. "Well"--he made it slow, and frowned--"we might get more and we might get less."
"More'n a hunderd DOLLARS?" Sam gasped.
"Well," said Penrod, "we might get more and we might get less."
This time, however, he felt the need of adding something. He put a question in an indulgent tone, as though he were inquiring, not to add to his cwn information but to discover the extent of Sam's. "How much do you think horses are worth, anyway?"
"I don't know," Sam said frankly, and, unconsciously, he added, "They might be more and they might be less."
"Well, when our ole horse died," Penrod said, "Papa said he wouldn't taken five hunderd dollars for him. That's how much HORSES are worth!"
"My gracious!" Sam exclaimed. Then he had a practical afterthought. "But maybe he was a better horse than this'n. What colour was he?"
"He was bay. Looky here, Sam"--and now Penrod's manner changed from the superior to the eager--"you look what kind of horses they have in a circus, and you bet a circus has the BEST horses, don't it? Well, what kind of horses do they have in a circus?
They have some black and white ones; but the best they have are white all over. Well, what kind of a horse is this we got here?
He's perty near white right now, and I bet if we washed him off and got him fixed up nice he WOULD be white. Well, a bay horse is worth five hunderd dollars, because that's what Papa said, and this horse--"
Sam interrupted rather timidly.
"He--he's awful bony, Penrod. You don't guess they'd make any--"
Penrod laughed contemptuously.
"Bony! All he needs is a little food and he'll fill right up and look good as ever. You don't know much about horses, Sam, I expect. Why, OUR ole horse--"
"Do you expect he's hungry now?" asked Sam, staring at Whitey.
"Let's try him," said Penrod. "Horses like hay and oats the best; but they'll eat most anything."
"I guess they will. He's tryin' to eat that manger up right now, and I bet it ain't good for him."
"Come on," said Penrod, closing the door that gave entrance to the stalls. "We got to get this horse some drinkin'-water and some good food."
They tried Whitey's appetite first with an autumnal branch that they wrenched from a hardy maple in the yard. They had seen horses nibble leaves, and they expected Whitey to nibble the leaves of this branch; but his ravenous condition did not allow him time for cool discriminations. Sam poked the branch at him from the passageway, and Whitey, after one backward movement of alarm, seized it venomously.
"Here! You stop that!" Sam shouted. "You stop that, you ole horse, you!"
"What's the matter?" called Penrod from the hydrant, where he was filling a bucket. "What's he doin' now?"
"Doin'! He's eatin' the wood part, too! He's chewin' up sticks as big as baseball bats! He's crazy!"
Penrod rushed to see this sight, and stood aghast.
"Take it away from him, Sam!" he commanded sharply.
"Go on, take it away from him yourself!" was the prompt retort of his comrade.
"You had no biz'nuss to give it to him," said Penrod. "Anybody with any sense ought to know it'd make him sick. What'd you want to go and give it to him for?"
"Well, you didn't say not to."
"Well, what if I didn't? I never said I did, did I? You go on in that stall and take it away from him."
"YES, I will!" Sam returned bitterly. Then, as Whitey had dragged the remains of the branch from the manger to the floor of the stall, Sam scrambled to the top of the manger and looked over.
"There ain't much left to TAKE away! He's swallered it all except some splinters. Better give him the water to try and wash it down with." And, as Penrod complied, "My gracious, look at that horse DRINK!"
