The Red Pony: Part III

In a mid-afternoon of spring, the little boy Jody walked martially along the brush-lined road toward his home ranch.

Banging his knee against the golden lard bucket he used for school lunch, he contrived a good bass drum, while his tongue fluttered sharply against his teeth to fill in snare drums and occasional trumpets.

Now Jody marched seemingly alone, with high-lifted knees and pounding feet; but behind him there was a phantom army with great flags and swords, silent but deadly.

The gray army halted, bewildered and nervous.

His grimy hand went out and grasped the spiked halo and held firmly while the little beast struggled.

With a gentle forefinger he stroked the throat and chest until the horny-toad relaxed, until its eyes closed and it lay languorous and asleep.

The brush along the road stirred restively under a new and unexpected population of gray tigers and gray bears.

The hunting was very good, for by the time Jody reached the fork of the road where the mail box stood on a post, he had captured two more horny-toads, four little grass lizards, a blue snake, sixteen yellow-winged grasshoppers and a brown damp newt from under a rock. This assortment scrabbled unhappily against the tin of the lunch bucket.

Mrs. Tiflin was in the kitchen spooning clabbered milk into a cotton bag.

“Always a bad conscience. What did you do?”

“Nothing, ma’am,” he said lamely. But he couldn’t remember, and besides it was impossible to know what action might later be construed as a crime.

Hearing his mother open the lunch pail and then gasp with rage, a memory stabbed him and he trotted away toward the barn, conscientiously not hearing the angry voice that called him from the house.

They were talking slowly and aimlessly.

The mare, Nellie, stood backed up against the gate, rubbing her buttocks on the heavy post.

He dragged one foot to give an impression of great innocence and nonchalance.

He went to his work with unprecedented seriousness.

The triangle at the house rang stridently.

On the fences the shiny blackbirds with red epaulets clicked their dry call.

The meadowlarks sang like water, and the wild doves, concealed among the bursting leaves of the oaks, made a sound of restrained grieving.

She became coquettishly feminine.

And Nellie followed docilely after him. She was so quiet that Jody climbed on a stump and rode her most of the way home.

The five dollars his father had advanced reduced Jody to peonage for the whole late spring and summer.

The bay mare Nellie quickly grew complacent.

As she walked about the yellowing hillsides or worked at easy tasks, her lips were curled in a perpetual fatuous smile.

He studied her with critical eyes and saw no change whatever.

“Why, you can’t ever tell. The stud is black and the dam is bay. Colt might be black or bay or gray or dappled. You can’t tell. Sometimes a black dam might have a white colt.”

“Why, you can’t ever tell. The stud is black and the dam is bay. Colt might be black or bay or gray or dappled. You can’t tell. Sometimes a black dam might have a white colt.”

He felt badly about his lost prestige, and so he said, meanly, “I’ll do everything I know, but I won’t promise anything. Nellie’s a good mare. She’s thrown good colts before. She ought to this time.”

Where the water spilled over and sank into the ground there was a patch of perpetually green grass.

On the other hand, the black cypress tree by the bunkhouse was as repulsive as the water-tub was dear; for to this tree all the pigs came, sooner or later, to be slaughtered.

It seemed to him an unlucky thing to be thinking of his colt in the very slaughter place, especially after what Billy had said. To counteract any evil result of that bad conjunction he walked quickly past the ranch house, through the chicken yard, through the vegetable patch, until he came at last to the brush line.

The trilling water sounded in his ears.

The winter fell sharply. A few preliminary gusty showers, and then a strong steady rain.

But Jody was filled with terror and desolation.

It was a moment before his eyes, blinded by the feeble lantern-flame, could make any form of the darkness.

Jody ran frantically after the lantern and caught up to Billy just as he reached the barn.

There was a rim of dawn on the mountain-tops, but no light had penetrated into the cup of the ranch yet.

Nellie was standing rigid and stiff.

He sawed and ripped at the tough belly. The air filled with the sick odor of warm living entrails.

Jody stared stupidly at the wet, panting foal.