The Crowstarver (12 page)

‘Round 'em up and corral them, eh?' said Mister.‘Like the cowboys do in the movies!'

‘Don't know about that, sir,' said Ephraim. ‘I never bin to the talkies. I only ever went once to the cinema in Warminster, to see that Charlie Chaplin. But the lambing-pens'd be the only place.'

Out of the lambing season, Tom Sparrow did not use the stone-walled yard in which he set up his pens, except perhaps to house the occasional sick ewe, and often the shepherd's hut, with Flower in the shafts, would be hauled out to some handier location. So now it was an easy matter to stack the hurdles of the pens to make space for the broncos within the walled enclosure. But first they must be rounded up.

Mister planned this operation with military precision, to be undertaken by cavalry, supported by infantry. All the farm staff would take part. It would be spearheaded by three mounted men, himself on Sturdiboy, and Ephraim Stanhope and his soldier son Albie, who chanced to be home on leave, riding the two ex-hunters, Em'ly and Jack.

They would enter the Far Hanging and between them drive the broncos out through the gate that led into the drove. Above this gateway, to turn the animals down, would be stationed the poultryman and his two sons. Towards the lower end of the drove Percy Pound and Tom Sparrow
and Spider and the three Butts would bar the further progress of the broncos and turn them in through the gate of the walled yard.

At first the operation looked doomed to failure. Hard as Mister and the two Stanhopes galloped, the six wild horses ran rings round them, but eventually, by good luck, the riders herded them close enough to the open gate for them to see it, and to see it as a place of escape. Through it they dashed, to be greeted by a wild chorus of yells from the three Ogles, and away they galloped down the drove, till they met the other section of the infantry and another loud hullabaloo that turned them into the yard. Then the gate was slammed shut behind them. When the horsemen and the Ogles arrived, it was to find the broncos standing bunched and blowing, flanks heaving, the steam rising from their odd-colored coats.

They had circled the yard at speed, trying madly to find an escape route. But the stone wall was too high, and on the top bar of the gate, over which they might have been able to jump, Tom and the others sat and so barred that way out.

Once the cavalry had dismounted and tethered their horses, the scene was set for the strangest confrontation ever to take place on
Outoverdown Farm. Inside the yard were six American-bred broncos. Outside it, eleven men and a boy looked on.

‘Right,' said Mister. ‘Let's get a halter on one of them, and then we can tie him up, and catch the rest one at a time.'

There was a moment's silence, all hoping that someone else would be chosen to go in among those snorting wild-eyed brutes, and then Billy Butt voiced the thoughts of all.

‘Begging your pardon, sir,' he squeaked, ‘but I don't want to go in with they baggers. Now years ago, when I were a young chap, I might have risked me life and me limb in amongst they bleddy things, but I bain't so quick on me feet as I was, thees know, and I don't want to make our Martha a widder.'

‘What we need, sir, is some kind of crush to run them into,' said Percy. ‘Otherwise someone's going to get killed.'

‘Tis they baggers want killing,' said Billy to his nephews while farmer and foreman were talking. ‘There's only one proper place for they bleddy mad-headed things and that's the knacker's yard. The dear Lord only knows what Mister were a-thinking about, buying they. Cats' meat, that's all they'm fit for.'

‘Save thy breath, Billy,' said Ephraim. ‘This here's my job,' and, halter in hand, he advanced upon the six, who immediately erupted in a wild explosion of movement and noise, bucking and neighing. Hooves flashed everywhere as they lashed out at the horseman. Suddenly, struck by the rump of one of the broncos as it whirled round, the horseman lost his footing and fell and lay on the ground in imminent danger of being trampled.

Before anyone else could move, Spider got down from the gate on which he had been sitting beside Tom, and shambled, splay-footed, out towards the squealing, clattering horses.

Instantly they drew back from the fallen man, and stood watching the boy, every head turned towards him. They trembled a little and blew, and some hooves stamped, but ears were pricked, not laid back, and teeth were not bared. All the watchers were shouting, at Spider to come back, at Ephraim, now on his feet again, to get out of harm's way, which he did.

‘Keep quiet, all of you,' said Tom. ‘Don't shout no more, don't start ‘em off,' and in the silence that followed his words, Mister and his men could hear the noise the boy was making. It was a soft snickering noise such as one horse
makes on greeting another, and a couple of the wild horses snickered in reply.

Then Spider reached the foremost of the six, a big flashily-marked pinto, and reached out a hand to its muzzle and began to stroke it, at the same time making the bubbly blowing sound that a horse makes through its nostrils.

‘Good un!' said Spider softly to the horse as he stroked, and at the sound of his voice the other three pintos and the sorrel and the buckskin pushed gently forwards, seemingly anxious for their share of attention.

It was left to Billy Butt to encapsulate – in a few words, for once – the feelings of all.

‘Well, I'm baggered!' he said softly. ‘Well I'm bleddy well baggered!'

M
ister used more moderate language when describing the event to his wife. (On her return, he'd made a clean breast of his purchases and had, he hoped, been partially forgiven).

‘Never have
I
seen such an astonishing thing,' he said now. ‘Talk about Daniel walking into the lions' den. He saved Ephraim from serious injury, no doubt of it. Handicapped and backward that boy may be, but he has this extraordinary gift with animals.'

‘An
idiot savant
, 'Mrs Yorke said, pronouncing the French phrase in a proper accent.

‘Eh? What's that mean?'

‘Someone who is mentally subnormal but yet displays outstanding talent in a particular area.'

‘Yes, right, that's it exactly,' said Mister. ‘With
young Spider's help I'm sure we shall be able to break those animals.'

‘I've never liked the term ‘break' when talking of horses,' his wife said. ‘By what you've described, the boy is not going to break but to ‘gentle' these broncos – which I still think you were extremely foolish to buy.'

‘I was, my dear, I was.'

‘And if he succeeds, by kindness, then I think you will owe him a great debt of gratitude.'

‘I certainly shall. Though it's not much good giving the boy money, and if I gave it to the Sparrows, that'd be rather missing the point, wouldn't it? What d'you suggest I should do?'

‘I'll think of something,' said Mrs Yorke.

Next day Mister had a word with Percy and Percy spoke to Ephraim and Ephraim talked to Tom.

The upshot of their discussion was that the broncos should remain in the yard – lambing would not start for six weeks or so yet – and there be hand-fed. Spider would spend as much time as possible with them, in this gap between his winter and his spring crowstarving, but the horseman would be on hand in case the boy needed help or advice. So began a quite new routine for the crowstarver.

Each morning after he had finished essential stable work, Ephraim would put Em'ly or Jack in the Scotch cart, and he and Spider would ride up the drove to the lambing-pen yard. Then the broncos would be fed and watered, by Spider – for they were still very suspicious of Ephraim – and then he would spend some hours among them, touching, stroking, patting, in fact, as Mrs Yorke had said, ‘gentling' them, all the while communicating with them either in his few staccato phrases or by making comfortable horse sounds.

He always carried a rope halter, which Ephraim had taught him how to use, and he showed this to the broncos, letting them sniff at it, laying it against each neck in turn, until the day came when he was able to slip it over the head of one. It was, once again, the biggest of the pintos, the dominant animal in the little herd, and as Spider led him around, the others all followed, as though anxious to be next. Within a couple of hours all the rest, the sorrel, the buckskin and the other three pintos had submitted to the halter.

Within a couple of weeks the broncos would allow Ephraim to come amongst them, though at first only if accompanied by Spider, but before too long the horseman was permitted to lead
them about, and it was becoming plain that the six wild horses were wild no longer, but would, in due course, make biddable tractable mounts, each happy to carry upon its back one of those humans that now, thanks to Spider, they did not any more fear or hate.

Then the time arrived when Spider's reward for all this was decided upon. Mrs Yorke thought of the idea, as she'd said she would, and Major Yorke thoroughly approved, as did Tom and Kathie when he told them, out of Spider's hearing, what the proposed gift was to be.

Fate, which was to play a part in the life of Spider Sparrow just as it does in the lives of normal people, decreed that, early in 1941, one of the Yorkes' many dogs, an Irish setter bitch, escaped from custody whilst in season, and made her way down to the village. Here she must have encountered some rustic swain, identity unknown, for nine weeks later she gave birth to a litter of puppies.

By the time that the broncos had begun to trust Ephraim, the pups were eight weeks old, and one of them, the pick of the litter indeed, was to be offered to Spider. Good red Irish blood they may have had in part, but from the look of things their father had been some sort of hairy Wiltshire
cowdog. A day was fixed, a Sunday it was, when Tom and Kathie were to bring their boy along to make his choice.

Spider knew nothing of all this until that morning. Then, at breakfast, his parents decided it best to prepare him for the coming treat.

‘Spider,' said Tom.‘This morning we're going to see Mister. He's got something for you.'

‘Mister?' said Spider. He took out his knife. ‘Mister!' he said.‘Find knife! Spider give fish!'

‘That's right,' said Tom.

Busy with the broncos, Spider had not had so much time for carving recently, but he had made one model, his biggest yet, of the shire mare Flower, for his friend Ephraim.

‘Mister's got a present for you,' Kathie said.

‘For being such a good boy with the broncos,' said Tom.

‘Good broncos!' said Spider, and he whinnied loudly.

‘He's not going to ask what it is,' said Kathie. ‘Shall we tell him? We're going to look silly if we get there and he doesn't want one.'

‘Don't be daft, Kath,' said Tom, and they smiled at one another. As instructed, they did not go to the house but to the Yorkes' stables, where Mister and his wife met them after church.

Inside, they went along to a loose-box at the door of which Mister stopped.

‘Spider,' he said. ‘I'm very grateful indeed to you for all the wonderful work you've done with those broncos.'

Spider nodded and grinned widely, whinnying once more, to be answered from their stalls by Sturdiboy and the Yorkes' other two horses.

Mister opened the door. Inside were four droop-eared, long-tailed, ginger-haired puppies, that came bumbling up, whining and wagging eagerly.

‘Lurchers you'd have to call them, I suppose,' said Mister to the shepherd, ‘but they're a nice healthy lot. All four of them are bitches, but I don't suppose that'll worry the boy. Let him have his pick. Which one d'you fancy, Spider?'

‘Pup-pies,' Spider said and he held up four fingers. ‘Four pup-pies.'

‘Only one of them is for you,' said Tom, and he held up one finger and then pointed it at Spider.

The four adults watched the boy struggling to understand what was happening. He looked at each of them in turn, he looked at the pups, he held up one finger and prodded himself in the chest with it.

‘For Spider?' he said.‘Pup-py, for Spider?'

‘Yes!' they all chorused, watching the play of emotion on his face as the truth of the matter dawned upon him.

‘You must choose one,' Kathie said. ‘Which one d'you want?'

In looks the four puppies were very alike. Crossbred they might be but they all promised to grow into attractive dogs. The only discernible difference in their behaviour at this particular moment was that three of them were playing around the feet of the farmer and the shepherd and their wives, jumping up and asking to be petted, while the fourth puppy seemed to have eyes only for Spider. She sat in front of the boy, gazing up at him, and then she gave one little puppy yap. ‘Pick me,' she was saying as plain as could be, and Spider dropped on his knees and took her in his arms, and rubbed his cheek against the top of her hairy head.