Chapter 10

WHERE THE HORSE LIVED

Sunny Boy was right. The children stared at each other in surprise and the little girls forgot that their feet were cold. Who ever heard of a horse and wagon without a driver?

"Is he running away?" asked Jessie Smiley.

"Silly, of course he isn't," retorted Jimmie Butterworth. "A horse can't run away in a snowstorm. I tell you what let's do--let's get in and drive him home!"

"How do you know where he lives?" said Helen Graham.

"Oh, I guess I can find out," replied Jimmie, though he was wondering how to find the answer to that question.

"Do you know how to drive a horse?" asked Sunny Boy.

"Well I never did, but I think I could," said Jimmie, who was a good-natured boy and quite ready to try any kind of new experiment.

"You know how, don't you, Sunny Boy?" said Perry Phelps. "You went to see your grandfather in the country, didn't you? And he has horses and things. You drive us home."

"No," said Sunny Boy, "I don't know how to drive a horse like this. Wait a minute, and I'll think."

The other children waited for him to think. Though he was the youngest in his class, they had found out that Sunny Boy was often wiser than they were and that he could be trusted to find a way to do things. Miss Davis said that Sunny Boy was her "right-hand man."

"My daddy says," announced Sunny Boy, after he had thought a minute, "that horses can go home all by themselves, so I guess this one can. But if we all got into the wagon, the girls would cry and be afraid he would run away."

"We wouldn't, either!" said Jessie Smiley crossly.

"Yes you would," Sunny Boy told her. "I think the girls ought to get in the wagon and ride and we'll stay and walk with the horse. Then he'll go home and we'll find out where he lives."

They argued a few minutes about this plan, but as no one could think of a better one, the girls, Helen and Jessie and Dorothy, climbed into the wagon and the four boys trudged along beside the horse who started to walk slowly the minute Sunny Boy called "gid-ap" to him.

He wasn't a fast horse, and it did seem as though his home must be at the very end of Centronia, for he continued to walk long after the boys were lame and tired from slipping around in the snow. The three little girls were more comfortable, for while the wagon was not warm, the cover kept the snow off them.

"I never saw much a slow horse," grumbled Jessie, putting her head out to see where they were, though it was impossible to tell because the whirling snow hid everything.

"My feet are cold!" cried Dorothy Peters.

"I don't think this horse lives anywhere," shouted Helen, so that the boys could bear her. "He's probably going out into the country and we'll all freeze and Miss May will wonder where we went, and is she does come looking for us, she'll never find us!"

Sunny Boy patted the horse gently.

"I guess you're cold, too," he said gently. "I wish I had a blanket for you Mr. Horse. Maybe there is one in the wagon."

He said "whoa" and the horse stopped. Then Sunny Boy climbed into the wagon and felt under the seat. Sure enough there was a blanket.

"What are you going to do with that, Sunny Boy?" asked Helen Graham.

"Put it on the horse," replied Sunny Boy. "I think he must be awfully cold. He's a pretty tall horse, but I guess Jimmie will help me."

Jimmie helped him and so did Perry and Carleton, and it took them all to get the blanket spread over the horse. They got it on wrong and there was no way to fasten it, so they took turns holding it around the horse's neck as he walked. Sunny Boy held the blanket in place till his hands were cold, then Jimmie held it while Sunny warmed his hands. When Jimmie's hands were cold, Perry held the blanket, and then Carleton. The horse looked surprised at such kindness, but he did not walk any faster. He couldn't.

"I guess we've walked a hundred miles," said Sunny Boy wearily, when they had trudged through the wind and snow for a long, long time.

Then, as though he had heard, the horse stopped suddenly. He pointed his ears straight ahead and then turned the wagon around so quickly that the girls inside cried out in fright. They thought they were going to be tipped out in the snow. But the horse was walking slowly up a driveway, and now he stopped again and Sunny Boy saw that he stood in front of a barn.

The barn doors were closed and the children heard a horse inside give a loud neigh. Their own horse answered.

"I'll bet he lives here," said Jimmie Butterworth.

Sunny Boy waited a minute, and then, as no one opened the barn doors, he looked around for a house. Yes, there was a house; at least there was a chimney showing through the driving snow.

"I'll go tell the folks the horse is here," he said. "You wait for me." They all wanted to come, but Sunny Boy pointed out that the horse might go off again. So Perry Phelps and Carleton agreed to hold him and keep the blanket on him, while Sunny Boy and Jimmie Butterworth went to tell the people in the house that their horse had come home.

The two little boys walked out of the drive way and started to go across the field to the house. Sunny Boy was ahead, and suddenly he went into a snowdrift up to his neck!

"Do you suppose it is as deep as that all the way there?" he gasped, when Jimmie helped him out. There was snow inside his rubber boots and down under his coat collar. But Sunny Boy seldom fussed even when he was not quite comfortable.

Luckily, it was not as deep all the way to the house, and after they had walked and stumbled and even run a little, they reached the front door of the farmhouse. Sunny Boy rapped on it, and a woman came in answer to his knock. She held a small child in her arms.

"Why, Sunny Boy!" she cried. "How did you ever get here in weather like this? Where is your mother? Come in quickly, out of the storm."

It was Mrs. Parkney, and Sunny Boy was so surprised that before he could say a word he found himself in the warm kitchen with the seven Parkney children and Mr. and Mrs. Parkney all standing around him and Jimmie.

"Does a horse live here?" was Sunny Boy's first question. "He's waiting outside your barn. And the other children are there, too."

Mr. Parkney, who by the way looked strong and well again, soon had everything all straight. He and Bob went out to the barn and put the horse in his stall and brought back the five children. Mrs. Parkney spread a red cloth on the kitchen table, for the kitchen was cozy and warm and no amount of snow from rubber boots and little shoes could harm the linoleum floor, and began to get them something to eat.

"They must be starved, poor lambs," she said, "It is almost three o'clock."

You see, the children had been walking ever since half-past eleven o'clock that morning and had had nothing to eat since their breakfasts. No wonder they were tired and hungry.

"I don't see how you could walk away out here," said Bob Parkney, pouring milk into the bowls his mother had put out on the table. "I did it this forenoon, and I was dead tired when I got home."

"Bob walked to school, because the trolley cars were not running," explained Mrs. Parkney. "His father took the light wagon and one of the horses and went after him right after dinner to save him the walk home. But the public schools dismissed the pupils early, just as Miss May did you, and Bob had started before his father got to the school."

"And while I was in the building, asking for Bob, the horse took it into its head to walk away without me," said Mr. Parkney. "So I had to walk all the way back home myself."

"How are we to get these children home?" said Mrs. Parkney to her husband, while Sunny Boy and his six playmates were busy with the delicious home-made bread and country milk she had given them. "Their mothers will be wild with anxiety, Robert. Our telephone is out of order, or we could telephone and let them know and keep the children here over night."

"Bob and I will take them home in the sleigh," said Mr. Parkney at once. "It's an old rattletrap affair, and I don't believe it has been used for years. Still, I reckon Bob and I can make it hold together for one trip. But, Mother, find out where these little folks live before they go to sleep. I might leave the wrong child at the wrong house."

The cold and the long walk had made the children very sleepy. Sunny Boy could hardly hold his eyes open and Jessie Smiley went to sleep with her spoon in her hand. When Mrs. Parkney tried to wake her up and ask her where she lived, Jessie only opened her eyes and smiled and closed them again.

"My feet are warm now," she murmured.

"I know where she lives," said Sunny Boy to Mrs. Parkney. "I'll tell Bob. I know where all the children live, don't I, Jimmie?"

Mrs. Parkney said she would have to depend on Sunny Boy, for the others were so sleepy they almost tumbled over standing up when she tried to put their hats and coats on them.

Bob and his father went out and harnessed the old sleigh to two black horses (not the one the children had brought home, for he was tired out, of course,) and Mrs. Parkney filled bottles with hot water and wrapped hot flatirons in old cloths to keep them warm. She insisted on coming out to the sleigh and tucking away the seven boys and girls, and every one of her own children followed to watch her. Perhaps they wanted a sleigh ride, but Mr. Parkney said he would have his hands full with the load he had, and he did not want any extra passengers.

"We'll tuck Sunny Boy up in the front seat between us," said Bob, "and then he can tell us where the different youngsters live."

And Sunny Boy did, though he was so sleepy Bob had to wake him by shaking him gently every time. They soon reached Centronia, for it was not a very long drive for two horses and a sleigh which can travel swiftly over the snow. Once in the city, Bob began shaking Sunny Boy awake and asking him where his playmates lived.

They came to Jessie Smiley's house first, and she did not wake up, even when Bob lifted her and carried her in. Mrs. Smiley wanted to hear the whole story, but Bob explained that he had more children to see safely home, and Mrs. Smiley was so glad and thankful to have Jessie back that she told Bob to hurry.

"For I know the other mothers are as anxious as I have been," she said. "We have had a terrible day. The telephone wires are all down, and my husband has been to Miss May's school and to the house of every child in Jessie's class, trying to find some trace of her. He is out hunting now."

Around and around Mr. Parkney drove, and at every house they stopped Bob carried in a sleeping child. How glad the mothers were, so glad they wanted to hug Bob, and some of them did. At last every one was safe home but Sunny Boy, and then Mr. Parkney made the horses go as fast as they could. When he stopped them at the Horton's house, both he and Bob got out and went in with Sunny Boy.

"Mrs. Horton, here's Sunny Boy!" cried Harriet, when she answered the ring at the doorbell and found Sunny Boy standing there with the Parkneys.

Daddy Horton came down the front stairs three steps at a time and grabbed Sunny. Mother Horton came running down after him, and she was so glad to see Sunny Boy that she cried just a little--the way she had cried in New York when he was lost and then found again.

She held him in her lap all the time Mr. Parkney and Bob were explaining how they came to bring him home. When Mr. Horton tried to thank them, Mr. Parkney stopped him.

"I'm only trying to do for your family one-tenth part of what you've done for me and mine," he said, though Sunny Boy was so sleepy he didn't hear him very well and had to ask Mother the next day what he had said. "There isn't anything the Parkneys, from the two-year-old to Mrs. Parkney and me, wouldn't do for you, Mr. Horton."