Sea Star: Orphan of Chincoteague Read online

  Now the words were tumbling over each other. “He told about a lady stable owner, too, who was in the perfume business, and she rubbed a mare and an orphan colt with the same perfume, and the mare took on the colt.”

  Maureen halted, nodding to herself as if she had discovered something very wise and secret.

  “Paul! Whiff! Like this.” She drew the pungent odor of the myrtle trees deep into her lungs, and laughed as she blew it out again. “What smells so good and perfumey as our own myrtle leaves?”

  The wind had picked up the fragrance from the thicket of myrtle trees ahead and was blowing it in their faces. Now they both threw back their heads like colts and snuffed it in greedily.

  A muffled, rustling sound! A crackling of brush! A sudden stirring in the clump of myrtles!

  Startled, Maureen touched Paul’s arm and pointed to the swaying branches. They both hung back, motionless, listening. The feathered whish of bird wings? The pawing of a wild deer? An otter? Questions went unasked as the sound faded out, then began again.

  “Might be Grandma’s lesson come true,” whispered Maureen in awe, “might be the angel of the Lord standing among the myrtle trees.”

  “It is!” shouted Paul. “It’s Grandpa Beebe!”

  Chapter 15

  A HAUNTIN’ SMELL O’ MYRTLE LEAVES

  THERE CAME an answering shout, and a familiar face with white, spiky whiskers peered out of the frame of myrtle leaves. The face rimpled into a sudden smile, and a voice rolled out strong:

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

  And never been curried below the knees. . . ”

  “Childern!” laughed Grandpa. “Ye come just in time to help. I got some empty gunny sacks here and I want ’em filled plum full o’ . . . ”

  “Myrtle leaves!” cried Paul and Maureen in the same breath.

  Grandpa nodded in surprise as he gave one sack to Paul and another to Maureen. Then he reached toward a branch, talking as he stripped the leaves. “Once there was a gentleman here from . . . ”

  “Lexington, Kentucky!” Paul filled in the words, grinning.

  Grandpa’s head turned around and his eyes went wide. “And this gentleman had a . . . ”

  “Nurse-mare farm!” Paul and Maureen shouted in unison, like actors in a play.

  Both hands suddenly went up to Grandpa’s ears and he began rubbing the bristles hard. “I ain’t a-pridin’ on myself,” he chuckled, “but now I know fer sure there’s somethin’ of the best of me in the both of ye!” His laughter bubbled low, then rang out in the stillness of the woods.

  It was good to have work to do. Old gnarled fingers and young smooth ones worked swiftly, stripping off the long narrow leaves, filling the bags.

  Grandpa brought out his knife and cut off vines that got in their way. “I couldn’t sleep last night for worritin’ about that little fella,” he said. “Whenever I dropt off, I drempt. I’d be combin’ his curly mane with my fingers and feelin’ of the little ribs stickin’ out like the ribs of Grandma’s bumberella. Then right smack out o’ nowhere came the man from Kentucky nosin’ into my dreams. He tolded all over again how that lady rubbed perfume on a nurse mare and an orphan colt. And next thing I knew, I was sittin’ up in bed a-whisperin’ to myself, ‘What in tunket has a more hauntin’ smell as our own . . . ’ ”

  “Myrtle leaves!” exploded Paul and Maureen.

  Grandpa’s eyes twinkled. “Yes, sir! There’s somethin’ in this mental telegraphy all right.”

  Hands worked faster and faster, filling the bags. Now they were half full.

  “Jumpin’ mullets! I clean forgot to tell ye who the nurse mare’s goin’ to be.” Grandpa’s voice rose and quickened with his fingers. “Last night while the moon was ridin’ high, I snuck out the house in my bare feet, horsebacks over to Wilbur Wimbrow’s and fetches him out o’ bed.

  “ ’Wilbur,’ I says to him, ‘little Sea Star is bad off. He’s gettin’ mighty poor. Won’t eat. How about puttin’ him to the mare that got her heel cut?’ ”

  “What’d he say?” Maureen glanced up, watching Grandpa’s face intently.

  “Wilbur was never one to mince words. He says to me, ‘Clarence, you an’ me is ’bout the oldest roundup men we got in Chincoteague, and we both knows mares is notionate critters. They take a notion they don’t like a colt and they’ll have no truck with it.’ Then he minded me of the time we tried to get a mare to be a foster mamma and she jest skinned back her ears and lit out with her heels and like to a-kilt the little stranger.”

  Maureen gasped.

  “But we took a lantern out to the barn and I made sure that the mare was still favorin’ her near hind leg. Then I looked at her milk bag and saw ’twas swelled with milk. Wilbur, he followed my glance.”

  “What’d he say?” Paul asked, scarcely above a whisper.

  “He just sort of grunted. Had to admit she wasn’t lackin’ for milk. ‘But will she give it?’ he asked.

  “Then I told him how we’d smash up some myrtle leaves and souse the colt all over with the oily smell of ’em, and we’d rub the mare’s nose with it too, and maybe she’d think ’twas her own colt come back to her.”

  Paul and Maureen let out a deep sigh.

  “Stop, childern!” commanded Grandpa. “We got enough leaves here to souse a whole flock of ponies. Let’s git a-goin’.”

  As they hurried back along the path, Grandpa forgot all about breakfast. He was busy with plans. “Maureen, you bareback over to Wilbur Wimbrow’s. He’s waitin’ to help ye with the mare. Me and Paul will fix up the colt till he smells like a whole clump of myrtle. Then we’ll hist him into the truck and bring him to his new mamma.”

  When Maureen was up on Watch Eyes and had gathered the reins in one hand and taken the bag of myrtle under her arm, Grandpa waited a moment before opening the gate for her. He beckoned Paul over to his side. “If you two was jes’ little childern,” he spoke to them slowly, thoughtfully, “I wouldn’t have you to worry. But bein’ as ye’re nigh growed up, I got to tell you this idee might not work.” Then his voice rolled out like a steam calliope. “Git a-goin’, child. What’s keepin’ ye? Are ye glued to the earth?” And he slapped Watch Eyes on the rump.

  Maureen spurred him with her heels. “Giddap, Watch Eyes. Faster! Faster! You can help.”

  Watch Eyes liked the idea. He stretched out as if he were racing his own shadow. It was all Maureen could do to turn him in at Wimbrow’s lane. He wanted to go on and on into the morning.

  The clatter of hooves brought Mr. Wimbrow out of his house, carrying a steaming pail in one hand and a wooden bowl with a potato masher in the other.

  “Morning, Maureen,” he said. “Put Watch Eyes in that stall next to the mare.”

  Maureen looked up into the lean, weathered face of the roundup man. She gave him a small nervous smile as she led Watch Eyes to the empty stall.

  “I’ll need you to grind up the leaves,” Mr. Wimbrow said. “Here’s our potato masher and a bowl. I was just fixing to bathe the mare’s heel. You can sit in the doorway and work. It’ll do the mare good to begin getting a whiff of the myrtle.”

  Maureen pounded and beat the leaves. The fragrance filled her nostrils until it wiped out the smell of the disinfectant Mr. Wimbrow was using.

  Her eyes slid over the mare as she worked. She saw how Mr. Wimbrow had tied her to a corner of the stall to keep her from moving about and using the hurt leg. She saw the mare turn her head to watch what was going on. But there was no sharp interest in the way she watched. It was the same look that Sea Star had—a sad, dulled look as if nothing at all mattered.

  “This cut ain’t healing like it should,” Mr. Wimbrow worried aloud, sloshing the water over it with his hand. “Some say we should put ice packs onto it. Some say we’d ought to plunge it in hot salt water. I’m doing the best I know how.” He sighed, feeling along the tendon. “But what I think is, she’s a-grievin’ so she ain’t even trying to get well.”

  He threw the bu
cket of water out of the door and came back to tie up the heel with a clean bandanna. “Likely it’d be better if you rubbed her nose with the myrtle,” he said. “She’s still got the wildness in her. She thinks of me as someone who keeps bothering that hurt foot. But you, now,” he smiled down at Maureen, “you can be a messenger from the woods, bringing gifts of myrtle.”

  Maureen’s hand trembled a little as she scooped up a mound of crushed leaves and slowly went around to the mare’s head. She held out her hand just far enough away so the mare had to reach for it. Suddenly the nostrils began to quiver. That familiar fragrance! It seemed to stir memories of the warm places, deep in the woods; memories of the life-giving myrtle, green when all the grasses were dried. She lipped a taste of it, and as she rolled it on her tongue Maureen rubbed oily fingers around one of the mare’s nostrils. At the touch of fingers she drew back snorting, her muscles twitching in fright.

  Maureen’s heart was thumping wildly now. She waited for the mare’s fear to pass, waited seconds before the quivering nose reached out again and she could rub the other nostril.

  Back at Pony Ranch every hand was busy. Paul grinding the leaves in Grandma’s clam grinder, Grandma sewing bags of cheesecloth, and Grandpa stuffing them with myrtle.

  “If anybody’d ever said I’d be sewing on the Sabbath day,” Grandma said to herself as her needle flew, “I’d have low’d my head in shame. But here I am, sewing for all I’m worth, and out in a stable against my ruthers. Queer how a young ’un can nudge in and upset all your notions.”

  “That’s the way of it,” Grandpa chuckled softly. He nodded his head in Paul’s direction. “And don’t it beat all how fast Paul’s a-grindin’? The sweat’s rollin’ off him. If ‘twas clams, now, instead of myrtle leaves, he’d be cool as a cowcumber and there’d be mighty few clams grinded.”

  “That’s what I admire about Paul,” Grandma said with certainty. “When something important’s at stake, he pitches in.”

  A look of understanding shuttled between Paul and Grandma.

  All this while Sea Star drowsed in a corner of the stall. The smell of myrtle excited no memories in him. Sometimes he cried in his sleep and woke himself up. Then listlessly he would watch the strange doings of the humans.

  “Now, Paul,” Grandpa said, “ye can grab a bag of myrtle and rub Star from stem to stern whilst I hold him. Mind ye, don’t miss a hair.” Putting one hand under the foal’s muzzle and grasping his tail with the other, Grandpa lifted him to his feet. “Go to it, Paul. I got him steadied.”

  Paul began rubbing, timidly at first, then vigorously.

  “Why, I believe he likes it,” Paul laughed, a little awed, and he began asking questions like sparks bursting from a fire. “Does he look more fawn than colt to you? His star, it shines bright on his forehead, see? What makes colts’ knees so funny and knobby? Reckon he’ll have a left mane like Misty’s?”

  There was no time for Grandma or Grandpa to answer one question before the next fell.

  The boy stopped a moment, standing quietly. Then he squatted on his heels and went to work on the foal’s face. “Look at me, Sea Star,” he said. “When Misty comes back home, you and she can be a team. Misty and Star. Sound pretty to you? And you can run like birds together and you can raise up foals of your own, and Maureen and I can race you both and we won’t care which wins. And . . . I guess I need a fresh bag, Grandma. This one’s all squinched out.”

  Occasionally Sea Star fought for his freedom, but it was a weak little fight, as if he knew he had no place to go if he were free.

  He let Paul rub his colty whiskers with myrtle. He let him put some of it in his mouth, but he neither chewed nor swallowed it.

  “Guess you won’t be needing me any more,” Grandma said, picking up the clam grinder and her spool of thread. “I’ll go in and read over my lesson just once more. Be sure to come back in time to get me to my class,” she called over her shoulder.

  Grandpa nodded absent-mindedly. Then he buried his nose in Sea Star’s coat. “Yep,” he sniffed, “if I closed my eyes, I’d think I was right spang in a clump of myrtle. Now, Paul, carry him to the truck. I’ll hyper on ahead and let down the ramp.”

  All during the ride to Wimbrow’s, Paul quieted Sea Star with his voice. “You just lean up against me,” he said. “Never knew the roads were so bumpity. But I’ll stay close to you for comfort. Once I spent a whole night in a truck with Misty. I’d do it for you, too,” he breathed into the silky ear.

  Chapter 16

  LET’S DO SOMETHING

  INSIDE WILBUR WIMBROW’S gate Paul set the colt down on the grass. To Paul’s surprise, he followed along to the barn as if an invisible lead rope held them together.

  Looking at the weak little colt, Mr. Wimbrow shook his head. “Sure is slab-sided,” he said. “Let’s do something!” He turned to Grandpa. “Ought we to blindfold the mare?”

  “ ’Tain’t no use. Sea Star’s about the color o’ her own colt. We’ll coax in with him and put him right onto her. Maureen and Paul, you kin look on—if you back up against the wall and stay put.”

  Matters were out of Paul’s and Maureen’s hands now. All they could do was to watch the two men wise in the ways of animals.

  The stall came alive with expectancy. Mr. Wimbrow tuned his voice down low. He was trying to make it sound natural, but Paul and Maureen felt a tightness in it. “I’ll hold the mare’s head so she can’t turn round and bite,” he said. “Clarence, you put the little fellow where he belongs.”

  He followed his own directions. He took hold of the halter rope close to the mare’s chin. He stood there, waiting, without speaking any more.

  Grandpa drew in his breath sharply, overcome by the importance of the next few moments. He placed his roughened hand on Sea Star’s neck, urging the little fellow forward, inside the doorway of the stall. He turned him gently around, so that Sea Star’s nose was at the mare’s flanks.

  Then he took his hand away.

  There was no sound, except for a greenhead fly drumming against a water pail. No one moved. Not the two men nor the boy or girl. The world outside did not exist. There was just a dull, spiritless mare, a weak and hungry foal that did not belong to her, and over all, the pungent fragrance of myrtle oil.

  Now the mare filled in the silence. With a sound no bigger than a whisper she began snuffing and blowing and snuffing in again. She tried to turn her head.

  Wilbur Wimbrow looked at Grandpa, his eyebrows asking a question.

  Grandpa Beebe’s head nodded yes.

  Mr. Wimbrow let go the rope. The mare could turn her head now. She brought it around slowly toward Sea Star, looking. Now her breathing was quick, as if she had just come in winded from a gallop. And then in the middle of a breath came a quiver of sound. It was like a plucked violin string. It was pain and joy and hunger and thirst all mixed into one trembling note. She and the colt were one! A high neigh of ecstasy escaped her. Fiercely she began licking Sea Star’s coat, scolding him tenderly with her tongue all the while.

  “My sakes! Look at your coat, will you! Scraggy as anything. No shine to it at all. You been neglected. But I’ll make you shining again!” Her tongue strokes said all that and more. She almost upset Sea Star with her mothering. She was shoving him around to suit herself. He was swaying like a blade of grass in the wind.

  Paul and Maureen could hardly breathe. Every sound, every motion, seemed sharp and clear. The fly buzzing against the pail, and from some distance away a mocking bird weaving a morning song.

  Now Sea Star was questing with his nose, with his lips, moving slowly in toward the mare, drawn in toward her, crying a thin, plaintive mew. Suddenly the crying became a joyous snort—a snort of discovery. He had found the warm bag of milk! He was suckling!

  Excitement ran through the stall like flame. Suck! Suck! Grunt and suck! A little brush of a tail flicking back and forth to the rhythm. It said, more plainly than any words, “This is good, good, good, I tell you.”

  For a lo
ng time no one spoke. It was enough happiness just to listen to the smothered grunting and to watch the flap-pety tail. At last Grandpa heaved a great sigh and smiled from one to the other as if they had all come through a great crisis together.

  “Jest listen to that little fellow goozle,” he said. “That mare gives a lot o’ milk, too. Never knew one to take on a colt like that.”

  “He’ll never be no stunted colt now,” Mr. Wimbrow said.

  “Less’n he drinks so much he’ll get stunted carrying it!” laughed Grandpa, relief written on his face.

  The mare paid no heed to the voices at all. She had so much to do. Licking and brushing Sea Star’s coat to make up for the lost days, and talking all the while in little nickers.

  Paul swallowed two or three times before he could make his voice sound like his own. “Sea Star’s having his Pony Penning dinner today,” he said shakily.

  Maureen nodded happily, “And didn’t that mare have sharp smellers? She put me in mind of Grandma.”

  Grandpa caught his breath at mention of Grandma. He squared his hat on his head. “We got to get on, Wilbur. Ida’s a great one for gettin’ to her Sunday school class on time.” He took a final look at the mare. “Most always ye got to watch a nurse mare and an orphan for two-three days afore ye can leave ’em together, but the way she’s chattin’ over little personal matters with him . . . well, he ain’t no lost star now”

  Mr. Wimbrow nodded. “Soon as I think the mare can hobble along on her own power, I’ll lead ’em both over to Pony Ranch. The children can keep her until Sea Star grows up.”

  Paul walked out of the stall alongside Mr. Wimbrow. “We’ll be glad to pay rent for her like the big racing stables do,” he said. “ ’Course, we can’t pay so much.”