Read Three Famous Short Novels: Spotted Horses Old Man The Bear (Vintage) for Free Online Page B

aint going to waste all this here lace-trimmed top and these spindle wheels just on Texas. Long as I am this far, I reckon I’ll go on a day or two and look-see them northern towns. Washington and New York and Baltimore. What’s the short way to New York from here?” They didn’t know. But they told him how to reach Jefferson.
    “You’re already headed right,” Freeman said. “Just keep right on up the road past the schoolhouse.”
    “All right,” the Texan said. “Well, remember about busting them ponies over the head now and then until they get used to you. You wont have any trouble with them then.” He lifted the reins again. As he did so Snopes stepped forward and got into the buggy.
    “I’ll ride as far as Varner’s with you,” he said.
    “I didn’t know I was going past Varner’s,” the Texan said.
    “You can go to town that way,” Snopes said. “Drive on.” The Texan shook the reins. Then he said,
    “Whoa.” He straightened his leg and put his hand into his pocket. “Here, bud,” he said to the little boy, “run to the store and—Never mind. I’ll stop and get it myself, long as I am going back that way. Well, boys,” he said. “Take care of yourselves.” He swung the team around. The buggy went on. They looked after it.
    “I reckon he aims to kind of come up on Jefferson from behind,” Quick said.
    “He’ll be lighter when he gets there,” Freeman said. “He can come up to it easy from any side he wants.”
    “Yes,” Bookwright said. “His pockets wont rattle.” They went back to the lot; they passed on through the narrow way between the two lines of patient and motionless wagons, which at the end was completely closed by the one in which the woman sat. The husband was still standing beside the gate with his coiled rope, and now night had completely come. The light itself had not changed so much; if anything, it was brighter but with that other-worldly quality of moonlight, so that when they stood once more looking into the lot, the splotchy bodies of the ponies had a distinctness, almost a brilliance, but without individual shape and without depth—no longer horses, no longer flesh and bone directed by a principle capable of calculated violence, no longer inherent with the capacity to hurt and harm.
    “Well, what are we waiting for?” Freeman said. “For them to go to roost?”
    “We better all get our ropes first,” Quick said. “Get your ropes everybody.” Some of them did not have ropes. When they left home that morning, they had not heard about the horses, the auction. They had merely happened through the village by chance and learned of it and stopped.
    “Go to the store and get some then,” Freeman said.
    “The store will be closed now,” Quick said.
    “No it wont,” Freeman said. “If it was closed, Lump Snopes would a been up here.” So while the ones who had come prepared got their ropes from the wagons, the others went down to the store. The clerk was just closing it.
    “You all aint started catching them yet, have you?” he said. “Good; I was afraid I wouldn’t get there in time.” He opened the door again and amid the old strong sunless smells of cheese and leather and molasses he measured and cut off sections of plow-line for them and in a body and the clerk in the center and still talking, voluble and unlistened to, they returned up the road. The pear tree before Mrs Littlejohn’s was like drowned silver now in the moon. The mockingbird of last night, or another one, was already singing in it, and they now saw, tied to the fence, Ratliff’s buckboard and team.
    “I thought something was wrong all day,” one said. “Ratliff wasn’t there to give nobody advice.” When they passed down the lane, Mrs Littlejohn was in her backyard, gathering the garments from the clothesline; they could still smell the ham. The others were waiting at the gate, beyond which the ponies, huddled again, were like phantom fish, suspended apparently without