Sea Star: Orphan of Chincoteague Read online

  “Consarn it all,” he spluttered and gulped, “I must of got one of them kinks-bush catkins in my gullet.”

  “Clarence, did you let the children sell Misty?”

  Grandpa Beebe took a long time folding his handkerchief and getting it back into his pocket. Then he looked sideways, from Paul to Maureen and back again. He cleared his throat. At last he said, “What else could I do, Ida? Misty is theirn. Besides, them men was dead right!”

  The silence around the little table seemed never-ending. It was Grandma Beebe who broke it, speaking very softly. “Now I know what you meant, Clarence, when you said the children done a heap of growing up. They had a mill day, too.”

  Again the silence held them together while each one braved his own thoughts. Suddenly, a sharp siren pierced the quiet. It went through the house like a streak of lightning.

  Grandma clutched the table in alarm.

  “Don’t be so twitchy, Ida. You know that was just the fire whistle calling volunteers to ready up the Pony Penning Grounds.”

  “Oh, I plumb forgot about all the big doin’s.”

  “Grandma,” asked Maureen, “could I go with Paul to help the firemen?”

  Grandma laughed, but there was a catch in her voice. “Tonight I guess I’d let you move the sands of the White Hill if you had a mind to. Go along. All of you. I got a mighty big letter to write to Richmond.”

  Chapter 4

  THE PICTURE-TAKERS’ PLANS

  OUT THE kitchen door, down the steps, through the barnyard, Paul and Maureen ran.

  Geese and turkeys, guinea hens and chicks, flew out of their way. Pigs ran snorting and squealing into the pens. But the ponies came running toward them, jostling each other to be first. Some pinned their ears back, driving the others away. To them Paul and Maureen meant good things. Corn. Water. A good hard gallop.

  Misty bustled in among the other ponies, scaring them away with her threatening teeth. She wanted to get closest to Paul and Maureen.

  “You’re the littlest one,” Paul whispered, “but you act the biggest.” He laced his fingers into her mane and led her into her own stall. For a second his face tightened. “Maybe,” he told her, “when you come back from New York, you’ll be old enough for me to ride.”

  He dropped a handful of corn into her feed box and while she was busy nibbling it, he quickly closed the door behind her.

  Maureen had already bridled Watch Eyes, the pony with the white eyes. She held another bridle out for Paul.

  “We got to find Mr. Van Meter and Mr. Jacobs before they meet Grandma,” she said.

  Paul took the bridle. He sorted the ponies with his eyes and selected Trinket, a lively mare, taller than the others. He slipped the reins over her head and the bit into her mouth. He fastened the cheek strap. Then he vaulted up, ready to go.

  Grandpa, pitchfork in hand, came to see them off.

  “Ye done a big thing,” he said, his eyes warm with admiration. “We can’t keep nobody to the end-time, anyhow. They got to grow up. And usually they got to go away.” He shoved his pitchfork in the soil and cleaned off the tines slowly to help his thinking. “Now the way for us all to take the sting off our thoughts is to keep busy as hummer-birds. We got to get so plumb tired we can’t lay awake by night. We’ll jes’ turn in, turn over, turn out. That’s what I’m going to do!”

  Fastening the gate, he brandished his pitchfork over his head and was off, singing in a husky voice,

  “Oh, they’re wild and woolly and full of fleas,

  And never been curried below the knees. . . . ”

  Down the lane, along the hard-packed trail to the Pony Penning Grounds, Paul and Maureen rode. The sun was slipping into the pocket of the horizon. Dusk was gathering, but Watch Eyes and Trinket knew their way. Often they had been entered in the races during Pony Penning Week. When they reached the grounds, they turned in of their own accord.

  “You’re early for the races,” a man in a fisherman’s cap laughed up at Paul and Maureen. “By the way, did two men find you? I understand they’re picture-takers, come all the way from New York.”

  “They here now?” asked Paul.

  The fisherman pointed his finger toward the pony pens. “They’re down yonder in the big pen, conferencing with the fire chief.”

  Paul and Maureen could see them now. Mr. Jacobs sitting on the fence, writing in a notebook, Mr. Van Meter nodding to the fire chief while his eyes wandered over the empty pens and out across the water to the masts of the oyster boats.

  Paul and Maureen rode up to them. The faces of the men turned quickly.

  “Hello, you two,” Mr. Van Meter called.

  The fire chief mopped the sweat beaded on his forehead. “I’m mighty relieved you’ve come,” he said. “Wilbur Wimbrow just asked me for a wiry somebody to do a special job for him. That’s you, Paul. And the ladies of the Auxiliary need you to help wash dishes in the dining hall, Maureen.”

  “We did come to help, Chief,” Paul answered, fixing his eyes on the ground, “but mostly we came to tell the movie men we changed our minds—about Misty.”

  Mr. Jacobs hastily stuffed his papers into his pocket and looked up with a startled expression.

  Mr. Van Meter ran a fingernail across the rail of the fence to scratch out his thoughts.

  “You—you haven’t changed your minds?” asked Maureen in sudden alarm.

  “I don’t know,” said Mr. Van Meter. “Your grandpa, how does he feel about it?”

  “Why,” gulped Paul, “he told Grandma at supper tonight that you were dead right.”

  Both children nodded, not daring to trust their voices.

  Mr. Van Meter put out his hand. He reached up and took Maureen’s first, then Paul’s. “It’s a deal, then,” he said in a very quiet voice, “and I think you know we’ll take the best possible care of Misty. We’ll fly her to New York the day after Pony Penning.”

  Paul and Maureen counted the days in their minds. They had less than a week.

  After a little while Paul said to the fire chief, “We’ll tie Watch Eyes and Trinket. Then we want to go to work.”

  The fire chief saw the look in their eyes. “Wilbur Wimbrow is over near the track, Paul,” he said with understanding. “He’s having trouble installing the loud-speaker. And the ladies are cleaning the cupboards, Maureen. Seem’s like you two must have sensed how shorthanded we were tonight.”

  All that week, day after day, Paul and Maureen spent at the Pony Penning Grounds, helping Chincoteague get ready for its big celebration. Paul liked working alongside the volunteer firemen. They were broad-shouldered and strong; yet they treated him as if he were one of them. When they needed someone to squeeze into a small spot, they never said, “We could use a youngster here.” Always it was, “Paul, he can do it for you. He’s wiry as any billy goat.”

  Once or twice Paul caught himself whistling as he worked. Then suddenly in the midst of a tune he would remember, and fall silent.

  Maureen worked in the hall where the huge Pony Penning dinner was to be served. All the dishes had to be washed, and fresh white paper tacked on the long tables. Cutting and tacking the paper was fun, but washing the stacks upon stacks of dishes unused since last Pony Penning seemed a waste of time to her. “Why don’t we just dust them off?” she suggested in a small voice.

  When everyone laughed, she slipped away to Pony Ranch to help Grandpa. She found Mr. Jacobs there, sitting in the doorway of the corn house, taking notes on the backs of old envelopes.

  “Could I ask something?” she said shyly.

  Mr. Jacobs looked up and gave a friendly nod. “I’d like that. Ask all the questions you want.”

  It was always hardest to begin. Maureen twisted one leg about the other uncomfortably. “Is New York,” she blurted out at last, “is New York a place where the sea winds blow?”

  Mr. Jacobs answered quietly and earnestly. “Yes,” he said, “but not as softly as here.”

  “And could a pony—I mean, could a body smell the sea?
”

  Mr. Jacobs’ eyes grew deep and thoughtful. “Yes, sometimes. But you’ve got to sift it through city smells. It’s far away, like something in a dream.”

  Misty butted right into their conversation. Grandma’s white curtains were on the line, and Misty had swooped under them. Now she came waltzing along, trailing the curtains far out behind her like a wedding veil.

  This sent Maureen and Mr. Jacobs off into peals of laughter, and brought Grandma out on a run. She caught up her curtains to wash them all over again without so much as a cross word for Misty.

  The days flew by, but the nighttimes did not go quickly at all.

  “Did you hear a lot of owls whooing last night?” Maureen asked Paul on the morning before the roundup.

  “ ’Course I did. Anyone would hear screechy critters like that. But what was even louder was the apples making a thud when they fell.”

  “Do you . . . do you hear them, too, Paul?”

  Paul nodded. “I counted eight. And twigs a-snapping like rifle shots, and the ponies tearing the grass as noisy as Grandma ripping old bed sheets to make dust rags out of them.”

  In the midst of their talk, Mr. Van Meter came driving up in an old rented car. He got out and sat down on the kitchen stoop so that he was looking up at them.

  “We plan to take the roundup scene tomorrow,” he said. “We’re anxious to get good shots of the roundup men driving the wild ponies to Tom’s Cove over on Assateague Island. You’ve been on the roundup, Paul. You’ll know where we should set our cameras. Will you help?”

  Paul lifted his chin and stood up very straight. “I’ll help,” he said.

  “Mr. Jacobs will go with you,” Mr. Van Meter went on. “But I’ll be waiting here on Chincoteague to get pictures of the ponies swimming across the channel. Maureen, will you help me? You could tell me just where the ponies will land.”

  “I have to be here,” Maureen answered. “After the wild ponies are swimmed across, I always help drive them into the pony pens.”

  “Good! Then everything’s settled. Paul will meet Mr. Jacobs at Old Dominion Point at seven-thirty sharp, and I will meet you there a little later, Maureen.”

  The boy and the girl nodded politely.

  “It’ll be just as exciting as going on the roundup,” Paul said, but his words were braver than his voice.

  “It’s funny,” Maureen confided to Paul after Mr. Van Meter had driven away, “instead of hating Mr. Van Meter and Mr. Jacobs, I like them. I like them both.”

  “I do, too,” admitted Paul. “And sometimes when I hear Grandma brag on ‘Clarence Lee at college’ I feel good inside.”

  “Like the time you turned the wild Phantom loose and let her go back to Assateague?”

  “Yes, like that,” Paul said.

  Chapter 5

  CAUGHT IN THE PONY-WAY

  ON THE dawn of the roundup day, Paul tiptoed to his window. He crouched on the floor, his arms resting on the sill. A full yellow moon, flat as a tiddlywink, hung low in the western sky. A grayness was rising in the east and the sea, too, was a ball of gray cotton. It was the hour the roundup men would be leaving Chincoteague, loading their mounts onto the scow that would ferry them over to the island of the wild things.

  In his mind Paul could hear the sound of the motor and the waves slapping against the heavy timbers of the scow. He could hear the blowing and snorting of the horses, the clipped, nervous speech of the men. Once he had been one of them. Single-handed, he had captured the wild Phantom and her baby, Misty. How long ago that seemed! He wondered if the Phantom would be caught this year. His body broke out in sweat just thinking about her. How beautiful she was! How hard he and Maureen had worked to tame the wildness out of her! But in the end they had given her back her freedom.

  “Some critters is made to be wild,” a voice said behind him.

  Paul scrambled to his feet, startled.

  It was Grandpa Beebe in his nightshirt. “I couldn’t sleep for thinkin’ about Misty’s mamma,” he said. “So I tipped to yer room. Figured ye might be awake.”

  “Grandpa!”

  “Yes, boy.”

  Paul’s words came in a rush. “Grandpa! If you hopped Watch Eyes and galloped to the mooring place, you could stop the scow. You could join the roundup. You could,” Paul whispered tensely, “you could make sure the Phantom escaped.”

  The little bedroom was very still. Paul could not see Grandpa’s face, but he could hear his troubled sigh.

  “ ’Tain’t like ye, Paul,” Grandpa said at last. “ ’Twould be downright dishonest. Besides, when the roundup men comes upon the Phantom, they’ll be puny as dustin’ straws in a blow. Ye can almost count on her escapin’ this year. She’s been caught oncet. She ain’t goin’ to let it happen again. Now slip on your pants,” he said. “Ye can help me do the chores afore ye have to meet the movie men.”

  Sharp at seven-thirty Paul was waiting at Old Dominion Point. A few early visitors from the mainland were tramping about expectantly, asking questions of each other.

  “How did the wild ponies get to Assateague in the first place?”

  “When was the first Pony Penning held?”

  “I heard it’s the oldest roundup in the United States and the biggest wild west show of the east!” said a man with a kodak in his hands and three children at his heels. “It’s different, too. They swim the wild ponies across to Chincoteague.”

  Paul walked away. He could not bring himself to talk about the roundup and Pony Penning. “It’s sacred, kind of,” he said to himself. “And it takes somebody like Grandpa or Miss Vic to make folks understand about it.” He was glad when he heard the chugging of a motor and caught sight of Joe Selby’s oyster boat with Mr. Jacobs and a stranger aboard. He rolled his pants above his knees and waded out into the water.

  “Halloo-oo-oo,” he shouted, waving his arms. “I’m here!”

  The boat nosed over and he clambered aboard. Mr. Jacobs was barefoot, too, and he was ripping open cartons of films.

  “Paul,” he said, “this is Mr. Winter, one of our cameramen, who came down to Chincoteague last night.”

  Paul looked up at the lean, serious young man. His shy “how do” was lost in the sputter of the engine as the boat turned and headed out into the channel.

  “And you know Joe here,” Mr. Jacobs nodded toward the man at the tiller.

  Paul smiled at the weather-creased face of Joe Selby. Many a time he had gone oystering in this very boat.

  “I hear Grandpa Beebe is a pretty good weather prophet. What did he say, Paul? Clear skies?” asked Mr. Jacobs, squinting anxiously at the clouds.

  Paul blushed. “I didn’t ask him.” How could he explain that he and Grandpa had been more concerned with Misty’s mother?

  “Well, Joe here thinks it won’t rain. Never has rained on Pony Penning Day. Never will, he says.”

  The talk stopped.

  The wind dried Paul’s wet legs. He shivered a little from cold and excitement. He watched the people on Chincoteague blur into a cloud, then watched the cloud slowly wisp out until it stretched far up the beach.

  Ahead of him lay the waving grasses of Assateague, and on and beyond the pine woods and the sea. If he half-closed his eyes, the tops of the pines became the mane of a horse and the White Hill the cap of a rider, and the whole island was riding in advance of their boat, looking after her like any outrider, protecting her from the mighty waves of the Atlantic.

  Suddenly the motor went quiet, cutting off his thoughts.

  “We’re in the shallows now,” Joe called out. “Close as we can get to Tom’s Cove.”

  Camera on shoulders, film held high above the water, the two movie men jumped overboard.

  Paul followed. The soft bottom squinched up between his toes. How different this was from going on the roundup! Instead of pounding over the marshland, shouting and driving the wild ponies, here he was, splashing ashore, as peaceful as on a Sunday school picnic.

  But Mr. Jacobs was not calm and qu
iet, and his eyes were no longer dark and cool. They threw sparks like horseshoes on a pavement.

  “Paul,” he said sharply, “from which direction will the ponies come? We want to set our cameras close enough to catch the wild look in their eyes.”

  Paul thought carefully before replying. “The roundup men drive ’em down to that little grazing ground yonder. But they come from”—he wheeled around and pointed a finger to the deep woods that formed the backbone of the island—“they come from . . . ”

  Paul’s sentence hung in mid air. A rolling boom of noise! Dust clouds swirling! And hulking out of the woods some dark misshapen thing! It might have been a prehistoric monster or a giant kicking up clods of earth for all the form it had. But whatever it was, it hugged along the ground like puffs of smoke on a windless day. Now the shape fell apart! It was the men on horseback driving the wild herds to Tom’s Cove. They were coming earlier than anyone had expected. Much earlier.

  Paul and the two men were blocking the pony-way! The ponies would be coming right at them. How could he get the men and the camera to safety?

  A daring thought crossed his mind. Let them stay in the pony-way! Let them stay! Let the wild things come dead-heat at the camera. “They got horse sense,” he thought. “They’ll split around us.”

  He skinned off his white shirt and buried it in the sand. The ponies must not shy away from a billowing white object.

  “Follow me!” he shouted, running directly toward the noisy, swirling mass.

  The cameraman was young. He could run almost as fast as Paul, even with a clumsy camera to carry. Along the hard-packed sand, across the meadow marsh, up a little rise the three of them ran.

  “Here!” shouted Paul, pointing to the camera.

  It was too late to explain his plan. The dark racing monster was no longer a nebulous thing. Wild ponies and men on mounts were taking shape, coming around the horseshoe curve of Tom’s Cove, splitting the air with yells and whinnies and pounding hooves, like thunder rolling nearer and nearer.