Chapter 27

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 passed 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 Saturday 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 passion 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 mass 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 trespassed 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."

"No, sir. She's fast," the other answered. "Fair wore out. He wouldn't take the bottle yesterday, and she was up with him all night. I went down to her when it come light. Only where it is she won't allow nobody to do nothin' for him only herself." He stole back to his lair in the straw at the far end of the loft. "That's the woman in her, sir," he said in his sagacious way. "Must have her baby all to herself. Nobody don't know nothin' about it only mother."

Four-Pound-the-Second after the first few perilous weeks throve amazingly. He ceased to be a pretty creature, pathetic in his helplessness, and grew into a gawky hobbledehoy, rough and rude and turbulent.

Old Mat shook his head over the colt.

"Ugliest critter I ever set eyes on," he said, partly in earnest and partly to tease his daughter.

"You'll see," said Boy firmly.

"If he's a Berserk he's worth saving, surely," remarked Silver. "Berserker--Black Death. Ought to be able to hop a bit."

Everybody at Putnam's knew that the colt was the son of that famous sire, but nobody, except Mat Woodburn and Monkey Brand, knew how they knew it.

"Oh! if he's going to win the National--as I think he is, de we--he's worth a little trouble," replied the old man, winking at Monkey Brand.

"D'you think he'll win the National?" cried the young man, simple as a child.

"Certain for sure," replied the other. "When 'e walks on to the course all the other hosses'll have a fit and fall down flat. And I don't blame 'em, neether."

"Father _thinks_ he's funny," said the girl with fine irony.

"I ain't 'alf so funny as that young billy-goat o' yours, my dear," replied the old trainer, and lilted on his way. "It's his foster-ma he takes after. The spit of her, he be."

As soon as the foal began to find his legs Boy took him out into the Paddock Close, and later on to the Downs. He followed like a dog, skirmishing with Billy Bluff up and down the great rounded hills.

The bob-tail at first was inclined to be jealous. He thought the foal was a new kind of dog and a rival. Then when he understood that after all the little creature was only an animal, on a different and a lower plane, to be patronised and bullied and ragged, he resumed his self-complacency. Thoroughly human, a vulgar sense of superiority kept his temper sweet. He accepted Four-Pound-the-Second as one to whom he might extend his patronage and his protection. And once this was understood the relations between the foal and the dog were established on a sound basis, while Maudie watched with a sardonic smile.

* * * * *

That autumn the girl, the foal, and the dog roamed the hillside by the hour together in the cool of dawn and evening. And the colt became as handy as the goat he was alleged by his detractors to resemble.

"Go anywhere Billy Bluff does," said Monkey Brand. "Climb the ladder to the loft soon as look at you."

On these frequent excursions Boy took her hunting-crop with her, and the long-flung lash often went curling round the legs of the unruly foal. Early she broke him to halter, and when he became too turbulent for unbridled liberty she took him out on a long lounging rein.

The Downs about Cuckmere, which lies half-way between Lewes and Beachy Head, are lonely. Apart from shepherds, you seldom meet on them anyone save a horseman or a watcher. But more than once the three came on Joses on the hillside.

Since the moment she had marked him cowering in the Gap like a hunted creature, Boy had seen the tout with quite other eyes than of old. Never afraid of him, from that time her aversion had turned to pity for one so hopelessly forlorn.

Whether Joses felt the change or not, and reacted to it unconsciously, it was impossible to say. Certainly he showed himself friendly, she thought, almost ashamed. At first she was not unnaturally suspicious, but soon the compassion in her heart overcame all else.

One brilliant September evening she came upon him on the Mare's Back.

The fat man pulled off his hat shyly.

"You've put him on the chain, I see," he said, referring to the long rein.

Boy stopped.

His face was less bloated, his appearance more tidy than of old. It was clear he had been drinking less.

"What d'you think of him?" she asked.

The tout threw a critical eye over the foal. There was no question that Joses knew a thing or two about a horse.

"Ugly but likely," he said, with the deliberate air of a connoisseur. "What they call in France a _beau laid_."

The girl demurred to the proposition. Her foal was _not_ bow-legged.

"His legs are all right," she said, somewhat tartly. "He's a bit _on_ the leg; but he's sure to be at that age."

"How's he bred, d'you know?" asked the other thoughtfully.

Boy was on the alert in a moment. That was a stable secret, and not to be disclosed.

"I'm not _quite_ sure," she answered truthfully. "We picked up the dam from a gypsy."

The fat man nodded. He seemed to know all about it. Indeed, it was his business to know all about such things.

"She was a Black Death mare, that, no question," he said, and added slowly, his eye wandering over the colt: "Looks to me like a Berserk somehow." She had a feeling he was drawing her, and kept her face inscrutable in a way that did credit to the teaching of Monkey Brand. "If so, you've drawn a lucky number," continued the other. "Such things happen, you know."

Boy moved on, and was aware that he was following her.

She turned and saw his face.

There was no mischief in the man, and fluttering in his eyes there was that look of a hunted animal she had noticed in the Gap.

She stopped at once.

"What is it, Mr. Joses?" she asked.

She felt that he was calling to her for help.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Woodburn," he began.

"Yes, Mr. Joses."

Her deep voice was soft and encouraging as when she spoke to a sick creature or a child. Those who knew only the resolute girl, who went her own way with an almost fierce determination, would have been astonished at her tenderness.

"That little mistake of mine on the cliff," muttered the man.

A great impulse of generosity flooded the girl's heart and coloured her cheek.

"That's _quite_ all right," she said.

It was clear he was not satisfied.

His eyes wandered over heaven and earth, never meeting hers.

"You've not said anything to the police about that?"

"No!" she cried.

"Nor that gentleman?"

"Mr. Silver?"

"Yes."

"I'm _sure_ he hasn't."

The other drew a deep breath.

"It wouldn't help me any if he had," he said.

He looked up into the deep sky, that was gathering the dusk, and still alive with the song of larks. "I wouldn't like to see 'em in a cage," he said quietly. "It wasn't meant. Never!"

* * * * *

Next Saturday, when Mr. Silver came down, she told him of the incident.

"You didn't say anything to the police, did you?" she asked anxiously.

"No," he said. "I meant to, but I forgot."

She repeated Joses's remark about the cage.

"He's been in the cage," she said quietly.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

She nodded with set lips.

"How d'you know?"

"I saw it in his eyes."

The young man was genuinely moved.

"Poor beggar!" he said.