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Show THE STORY SO FAR: Ten-year-old Ken McLaughlin, given an opportunity to choose any yearling on his family's Wyoming Wy-oming ranch, picks the filly of a "loco" mare named Rocket. His choice merely adds to his father's anger, which Is already al-ready aroused by the fact that Ken has failed his school work and has shown no sense of responsibility. Fllcka, the filly, is badly hurt trying to Jump the corral fence, but even Captain McLaughlin has to admit that she may not be loco after all. While Ken is with Fllcka In the pasture pas-ture he hears cries of pain and finds a neighbor's cow caught In a wire fence. He hurries back to the house to get his wire cutters. Now continue with the story. CHAPTER XIII Ken could hear the sound of the trans-continental traffic. A horn tooting, a car changing gears. The light changed. The shadows fell lengthwise on the grass ... he had the feeling of going off into a daydream day-dream and his eyes wandered . . . but he pulled himself back. Flicka . . . and the cow ... he was caught into the mesh of things . . . he couldn't leave them. Way off on the road there was a little black speck Gus! plodding along, his arms swinging from his wide, bowed shoulders, walking as if his shoes hurt him. Ken leaped off his rock and shot down the road to meet him. He couldn't stand the lonely waiting another an-other minute. Ken wanted Gus to examine Flicka immediately, but nothing could deter de-ter the Swede from getting back lo the bunk house and extricating himself him-self from his city clothes without a moment's delay. As they walked up the road together to-gether Ken told of his day the terrible terri-ble things that had happened, Flicka down and hurt somehow, and Crosby's Cros-by's cow with her udder torn to pieces, and how he thought at first the wildcat had attacked her. As he talked he kept looking up at the face of the big foreman. Gus' pale blue eyes, with pupils as small as pin points, were always full of light. Ken got supper in the bunk house, and when Gus returned, they ate it together up there; cold beefsteak, boiled potatoes, apple sauce with thick yellow cream. Gus washed the dishes and Ken wiped them and put them away. Then Gus took out his pipe and lit it, put his old, torn felt hat on his head, and they walked down through the pasture to see Flicka. Ken carried a can of oats with him, and, halfway down the path, began to call the filly's name and to whistle to her. Suddenly he clutched Gus' arm and stopped walking. He called again there was an answering nicker! "Oh, Gus she's calling to me!" "Yee whiz!" said the Swede, his lips turning up in a smile, "she sure is, Kennie." Ken ran ahead, loping down the path and calling, "Flicka Flicka Flicka " and an eager whinny came again from the little mare. When Gus reached the nursery, the filly was sitting up, eating the oats which Ken had poured into her feed box. "Dot's funny ting," said the man slowly, standing over her. "She's got good appetite. Don't seem sick or hurt." He sat down on the bank, comfortable comfort-able again, and glad to be home, arid drew peace into his soul with long quiet puffs of his pipe. "What do you think it is, Gus?" asked Ken anxiously. "Should we try to make her stand up?" Gus shook his head. "Better wait till your fadder come home. It might be her back, but sittin up like dot eatin her oats I don't know." Ken brought a bucket of water and Flicka put her nose in and drank. "Ay tink dot smart little filly," said the Swede. The family did not get home until after ten. Gus had gone to bed long since, but Ken was waiting for the car on the hill behind the house he and the two dogs watching the empty road. The sky was crowded with stars, and the Milky Way so brilliant that it shed a soft light over woods and fields and stream. When Ken saw the headlights of the car, a happy glow went through him. Chaps began to bark, and both dogs got up and moved around restlessly, wagging their tails and nipping at each other. The car roared up the hill, circled cir-cled around, came to a stop, and Ken jumped on the running board and stuck his hea3 in the front window. His mother's face was right there, smiling at him from under her green turban, and everyone spoke at once. She said, "Hello, darling, here we are were you lonesome?" while Howard yelled from the back seat, "Gee, you missed it! You oughta seen the wild horse race three Indians In-dians fell off." And his father was looking over the seat, handing Tim the keys of the car, and telling him to open up the back and unload the sacks of potatoes and onions. "Howard, you help Tim unload and put away the provisions," he added; then turned to Ken. "Ken I want to see you." "Dad, Flicka" It was the third time Ken had said it. "Come on." His father's hand fell on bis shoulder and pushed him down around the end of the house. "Dad, Flicka " "Ken, I'm proud of you." They were standing on the terrace, and Ken, looking up with his mouth open in surprise, saw his father's face, tired; but showing his big white teeth in a smile of pride. Ken stared. "Crosby's cow," said McLaughlin. McLaugh-lin. "We stopped at Tie Siding on the way home for the mail. Crosby was there getting his mail. He told me how you had cut his cow loose from the wire when her udder was caught, and that Gus rode over and told him." Ken was getting ready to say, "Flicka," again, when his father lifted one of the boy's hands and held the small, helpless, softness in his own hard fist. "I used to think these hands of yours would never be good for anything. They had as much strength to them as wet spaghetti; spa-ghetti; but today they manipulated a pair of wire cutters on a cow that was crazy with pain. You never did anything like that before in your life. What made you do it?" Ken, wondering himself, said, "Well, she bellered so. you could hear something was the matter I thought it might be the wildcat after her; and I remembered you said it Gus washed the dishes and Ken wiped them. was all mine; and I thought, If it had been Flicka" "Flicka, eh?" McLaughlin turned away and walked toward the door, still holding Ken's hand in his. "Well. Now what was it you were going to tell me about Flicka?" Ken rapidly poured out the tale of Flicka's injury and helplessness, and McLaughlin listened gravely. "How do you know she can't get up?" he asked. "Because she tries. She gets her head up and makes a sort of scramble, scram-ble, and then falls back again. She acts like she's hurt her back," he added, his eyes devouring his father's fa-ther's face. "How's she lying?" asked McLaughlin. Mc-Laughlin. "Right on her side, in her place down there," said Ken, and added, "Gus and I didn't try to move her or get her up, we thought you'd know how to do it." "And I suppose she can't eat," said McLaughlin wearily. "Oh, yes, she ate her oats." "How?" "I put the box right by her nose, and she lifted her head up and ate them." "All of them?" "Yes. Cleaned them all up. And then I gave her a bucket of water and she drank some." "Can't be very sick then. I'll wait till morning, Ken." "Oh, Dad, please " "Shut up!" roared McLaughlin, going toward the door. "Can't a man ever have any peace? Time you were in bed too come on." After breakfast next morning Rob went down to the nursery to see Flicka. Nell left her dishes and went too, with the cat on her shoulder. shoul-der. Howard and Ken were already there. Flicka had eaten her breakfast oats and licked the box clean. She lifted her head with ease, she whinnied whin-nied now and then, but she would not get up. Rob's observations were always made rapidly. He said, "Stand back, all of you I'm going to roll her over to the other side." Flicka was lying on her left side. He went behind her, leaned over, got hold of her left legs, one in his left hand, one in his right, then, backing off, he gently hauled her over until she was lying on her right side. The filiy immediately made a scramble, using her two forelegs and the left hind leg to push with, and got up. Everyone laughed. Flicka stood calmly in the center of the group, and when Ken went to her head and put his hands on either side of her face, she remained quiet. "Nothing wrong with her back," said McLaughlin. "It's her leg. That right hind leg. She couldn't use it to push with, and, lying on the left side, she couldn't get up without it." "But she's been using It, Dad," said Ken anxiously. "Yes. It was all healed up, but look at it now. It's swollen. That means infection, and it hurts her worse than it did at first. Look, she's not bearing any weight on it." Ken's face was distraught when he noticed the swelling above the joint. Everyone knew that the worst danger of wire cuts was the infection infec-tion that so often followed. "What do you do for an infection, when it's a horse?" he faltered. Nell answered cheerfully, "Just what you'd do if it was a person. Wet dressings; poultices, so that it will open and drain." Flicka showed no sign of fear or nervousness. When Ken petted her and smoothed her neck, she looked at him with trust and gratitude. "Now that she'll let us get close to her," continued Nell, automatically automati-cally stroking her cat, "there won't be any trouble about it." "Why does she let us, Dad?" asked Ken. "Well," said McLaughlin grimly, "she's only got three legs she can't run away, can she?" He walked off, Howard after him. Ken knew that his father couldn't bear to look at a sick animal. But his mother said, "We'll get that cleared up in no time, Kennie. I'll help you." A load fell from Kennie's shoulders. shoul-ders. At least Flicka wasn't going to die. At least her back was not broken. He went back to the house with his mother, and she boiled some meal and put it in a linen bag, and mixed a disinfectant wash and put it in a bucket for Ken to carry down. When Flicka saw them coming, though Ken carried a bucket and Nell a basin with the poultices and bandages enough to frighten even a well-broken horse she showed no fear. "She has got sense, hasn't she, Mother?" muttered Ken, as they prepared the poultice. "She knows we're helping her, doesn't she?" "Looks like it," said Nell, preoccupied pre-occupied with the bandages. "Now you stand at her head, Ken she's more used to you while I do this" Flicka raised her leg off the ground while Nell bathed it and bandaged on the poultice. It made a comical-looking white knob above the hock. Ken's nights were no longer dreamless. There was no peace for the boy. By day his new responsibility, responsi-bility, his passionate hope, his meticulous me-ticulous care of Flicka; and by night a procession of dream-adventures, sometimes terrible ones. Often his mutterings and cries brought his mother or father to his bedside. Something was ever and ferociously ferocious-ly at his heels. It was an agony; and his appearance appear-ance changed in a way that was noticeable. Both boys usually grew taller during the summer vacations, and put on weight too, but Ken had gained no weight this summer, only height; and his face was strained and anxious. But through the agony ran a thread of something so exciting that he was strung like a taut bow. There was the first, thrilling "whiff of real achievement. It was not only his hands that had changed. All the listlessness of the day-dreamer, the sliding away from reality, had gone. He looked, stood, moved, eagerly ea-gerly and with determination. He was in love. He was in the very core of life, and he wrestled with it as Jacob wrestled with the angel. The achievement was Flicka and the winning of her friendship. He had a horse now. He had her in the same intimate sense that Howard How-ard had Highboy. He couldn't ride her yet, but she was his because she had given herself to him. While she stood eating her oats, his hands smoothed the satin-soft skin under her mane. It had a nap as deep as plush. He played with her long, cream-colored tresses; arranged ar-ranged her forelock neatly between her eyes. She was a bit dish-faced, like an Arab, with eyes set far apart. Ken kept a curry-comb and brush in the crotch of the cotton-wood cotton-wood tree, and lightly groomed and brushed her. Flicka enjoyed this. As he moved about her, first on one side, then the other, kneeling down to brush her legs and polish her small hoofs which had the color and sheen of cream-colored marble, she turned her head to him, and always, if she could rested her muzzle on him. Ken grew used to the feel of the warm, moist lips against his shoulder or back, and his mother complained of all the polo shirts he dirtied tending to Flicka. He spoiled her. Soon she would not step to the stream to drink but he must hold a bucket for her. And she would drink, then lift her dripping drip-ping muzzle, rest it on his shoulder, her golden eyes dreaming off into the distance, then daintily dip her mouth and drink again. (TO BE CONTINUED) |