BONNIEPRINCE FETLAR

THE STORY OF A PONY AND HIS FRIENDS

BY MARSHALL SAUNDERS AUTHOR OF "BEAUTIFUL JOE," "THE WANDERING DOG," ETC.

NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

[Pg iv]

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

[Pg v]

CHAPTER I THE BOY WITH THE PALE EYES

One day early this last summer I was feeling rather puzzled and surprised.

I am a black Shetland pony brought up mostly in cities and lovely open country places, and here was I shut up in a wild hilly spot miles from any human being except a few settlers.

I wasn't worried. I am a middle-aged pony and have seen enough of life to know that it does not pay to get stirred up about mysteries for invariably time straightens them all out.

I was just curious and amused and a little bored. No one was going to hurt me. I was sure of that. I am worth a great deal of money, but why I had been toted from down South to New York, and from New York to a Canadian stock farm and from the stock farm away up here to this out-of-the-way place in the woods was a problem to me.

I didn't like being shut up this fine day, and I didn't understand the reason for it. In the distance were children, a whole flock of them giggling[Pg 10] and carrying on and probably crazy to get on my back, but they were being kept away from me.

"Well," I thought, "I'd better take a little nap while I'm waiting for this tangle to straighten itself out," and I was just turning my head to the wall of my log-house stable and drooping my head when there was a slight noise from the direction of the doorway.

At first I was not going to look round. I thought, "Oh! it's only one of the calves from the barnyard. They've been gaping at me ever since I came. What's the use of looking at them. Not one of them understands a Shetland pony."

However, I did at last turn my head. Anything to pass away the time in this dull place. To my surprise, it was not a calf but a boy that stood in the doorway, evidently a city boy for he was smartly dressed and not clad in overalls like the children in the distance, or poor clothes like the children in the few log cabins we had passed on the way to this lonely place.

He was a white-faced lad with light brown hair and pale eyes. I never saw such eyes before except in the head of a cat. They were greenish in hue and they grew bigger and darker as he stared at me. He seemed to be looking right through me at something in the background, and, if I hadn't known there wasn't a thing in the cabin except a couple of deer mice that he couldn't possibly see, I would have looked behind me to find out what he was staring at.

His expression was all right. I divide boys into[Pg 11] two classes—kind and cruel. This lad was good-hearted whatever else he might be, and he wouldn't hurt a pony.

If he was from the city he spoke my language, and I advanced a bit toward him and stretched out my neck agreeably.

To my amazement he gave a leap backward.

"Oh! excuse me," he stammered, "I'm a bit cut up. I've had a long trip—I didn't know but what you were going to bite."

I curled my lip in a pony smile. Who was he and where did he come from, not to know that a Shetland pony is the soul of good nature. How different he was from those brown-faced young ones outside who looked as if they feared neither man nor beast.

Well, I could do nothing more. It was for him to make the advances, and I examined him more carefully.

He was very much excited. His hands were clenched, his young breast was heaving, and he had red spots over his cheek bones. I believed that he had run up here because he thought he was going to cry.

I have had many young masters and my rôle is to keep quiet at first and see how they treat me. So I just took a nip of hay, and gave him time to get his nerves together for they seemed to be at pretty loose ends.

He was shuddering now. What was the trouble? I looked over my shoulder and saw that someone had been killing a sheep and had hung up its[Pg 12] streaked skin on the logs. Well, men have to eat sheep and if they kill them mercifully I suppose there is no harm in it, but what a sensitive lad this must be. I rather liked this tenderness in him. It's hard to die, even if you're only a sheep.

I whinnied sympathetically, and he said quite nicely and as if I were a person, "You have a very good place here."

I tried not to curl my lip again. If he could have seen the handsomely appointed quarters I had been used to—the paved floors and fine stalls! Poor lad! where had he been brought up to think this rough log cabin of some early backwoodsman a suitable place for a Shetland pony?

However I was not complaining. I was comfortable enough in the mild July weather. I have been used to roughing it in a nice way with some of my rich masters, but I certainly wouldn't like to put in a winter here with those daylight chinks between the big logs.

I wished the boy would let me out. What a stupid he was not to take me for a good gallop. Advancing very cautiously lest I should frighten him again, I pressed a shoulder against the half door of the cabin.

He understood. Very cautiously he lifted the bar, and creeping like a house mouse, not leaping like my deer mice, I placed myself beside him. Now he could see that I wasn't a lion or a tiger to eat him up.

"Pony-Boy," he said in a trembling voice, "what do you want?"

[Pg 13]

"I want exercise, you young snail," I tried to tell him by starting slowly up the gentle slope of the barnyard, and then turning to look round at him.

The sheep were pasturing away up on the hill. I would lead him toward them for I guessed that he would not be afraid of them. Those lively children in the distance would probably jolly the life out of him.

His green eyes glistened. He understood me once more, and a most beautiful smile broke over his face. That smile was like the opening of a window in his boy soul. He was a queer acting lad, but he had—Oh! I'm only a pony and I can't describe it. Anyway it was something that makes us animals worship certain people. If he chose, he could be my master. I would certainly be his slave.

I tossed my head and acted quite frisky. "Come on, boy," I tried to say to him, "be a sport. Have a little run. 'Twill bring some color to your pale cheeks."

"Stop a minute," he called suddenly, "I want to get my bearings."

I stared at him as he stood—delicate, eager, his pale eyes glistening with some new emotion.

"We are on the borders of a long beautiful lake," he said, "which is shaped like an hour-glass."

I didn't know what an hour-glass was, but I guessed that it was like the egg-glasses I have seen cooks use when I've been looking in kitchen windows to watch them time the boiling of eggs.

[Pg 14]

"We are at the waist of the glass," he said, "and all round us are vast hills clad with forests. Here a clearing has been made, and someone has built a beautiful long low house with ivy-clad verandas."

How nicely the boy talked and how prettily he waved his slender arm, and I kept on gazing at him in admiration.

"Also," he went on, "there is a smooth lawn about the house with flower beds and shrubbery, a driveway leading to the road along the lake and another driveway leading to a big barn painted red with a queer high round thing at the end."

That was a silo to store green food for the cattle, but I could not tell him.

"Beside the big red barn," he said, "is a little brown barn and a number of out-buildings. I don't know what they are. It is a fine place anyway, and must, I think, belong to my father's friend who invited me here—now let us go up to this wide pasture where you were leading me."

I gladly went ahead of him and he was following me quite nicely when suddenly he stopped.

"Pony-Boy," he said, "I hate these forests with their sour-faced trees."

This was a new thought to me and I turned it over in my mind.

"They've got brains in their tossing heads," he said. "They used to be wicked giants and some great power turned them into these wooden things with waving arms that beg us to come in and be choked to death."

What kind of a boy was this, I wondered. He[Pg 15] talked something like a girl and something like a lad who had always had his nose in a story-book. Well, he wasn't dull anyway. I love to have boys talk to me. Some of them treat me as if I were an animated rocking-horse with no brains at all. So I stepped along quite happily while he went on talking to himself.

"I wonder why my father let me come here. This bird of mystery has certainly flown to one queer place. The whole trip was owlish. After I left the cities there were forests like these, then lakes and rivers and more lakes and rivers. Then that awful drive in a democrat over rocks and rills and corduroy roads. My bones are most racked apart."

So that was why he didn't want to ride me, I thought. Poor lad! he was tired.

"Pony-Boy," he said, laying a timid finger on the tip of one of my ears, "I'm not afraid exactly, but I don't like spooky woods and queer silent waiting people. That old settler who drove me in wouldn't open his mouth and his name is Talker—what do you think of that?"

I was amused. This queer man had brought me in the evening before tied to the tail of his cart. He had taken me from a steamer that came to a big lake, and all the way in he had said nothing but "Get up" to his old grey mare, who had not deigned to pass the time of day with me. They were a pair—but I must listen to the boy who was speaking quite earnestly now.

"Why in the name of old King Log did my[Pg 16] father send me to spend the summer in this eerie place? Is there no country air south of these wads of Canadian forest?"

I shook my head. How could I tell anything about his father? I had never seen him. He must be a peculiar man though, if his son did not dare to ask him the reason for things.

The lad was venturing now to lay his hand on my head. "Pony-Boy, I've never had a pet as big as you. I live in a city, and my friends are small creatures like dogs and cats and mice and rats."

As if he thought I was wondering whether he had no boy friends he went on slowly, "My father says that human beings may go back on you, but an animal never does."

I pawed the grass thoughtfully. This boy had been brought up in a queer way. I'm sorry for boys and girls when they're puzzled and unhappy—boys especially because I've been more with them. What this lad wanted to do now was to get his mind off himself. He was travelling about right inside of his little home cage.

I cautiously touched my muzzle to his shoulder, then glanced at the sheep.

He was pretty quick to respond and broke into a nice boyish laugh, but a rather subdued one as if he had been hushed up a good bit.

"Isn't he a caution," he said, pointing to the old ram, who, after one terrified look at us two strangers, was leading the ewes in and out among the magnificent old trees scattered about the hillside.

[Pg 17]

"He's going to hide them in the forest back there," said the boy. "He doesn't trust us. Poor animals—they run no risks."

I was delighted. This boy was a brother to us of the lower creation, but why had he been afraid of me? Possibly it was because he was not used to being with animals, though in his soul he loved them.

"I'm so tired," he said suddenly, and he flopped down on a big flat rock which was very pleasant and warm in the sunshine.

"Squattez vous, Pony," he said, and to be agreeable I lay down, for I have not the objection to doubling my legs under me that some members of the horse family have.

"I'm sure out of the world," he was murmuring as he gazed at the blue waters of the long lake spread out before us. "Of course I've seen mountains and hills in the distance before, but I never got right up among them. Pony-Boy, I'm the queerest kid you ever saw."

"You sure are," I thought, but of course I could say nothing.

His attention wandered from the lake to me. "I've often seen ponies like you in parks and on the streets, but I've never been so near one. Oh! I wish I had a pony of my own, but I suppose you cost a good deal of money."

I certainly did, but there was no reason why he should know just how much. I don't like to hear a lad counting up the cost of everything.

"I shouldn't think a settler away up here could[Pg 18] afford you," he said. "You look like A, number one stock."

I twitched my ears backward and forward as I have a way of doing when I'm puzzled. Old Talker couldn't own this place. I had my suspicions that the whole thing was the fad of some rich man. My log cabin was the only rough thing on the place. The barns, hen-houses, ice-house, root-house, carriage-house and the flower garden in front and the vegetable garden at the back were as up-to-date as if they were right down in my original home in the State of New York.

These sheep running away from us were of standard stock, and the evening before I had seen a fine herd of Holstein cows and some of the best bred pigs I had ever come across.

Someone was trying an experiment up on these Highlands. Perhaps it was the tall man I had just seen coming out of the house and joining the children.

The boy did not see him. He was lying on the rock, his face propped on his hands.

"You're talking with your ears, Pony," he said. "I'll bet you want to know all about me—who I am, where I come from, and why in the mischief I came up here. Well, as I told you, I'm in a class by myself, for my father won't allow me to associate with anyone but himself and our two old servants, John and Margie. Ever since I was a little boy, someone has been trying to kidnap me. Now what do you think of that?"

[Pg 19]

CHAPTER II THE MAN AND THE BOY

I examined the boy carefully. Now I thought of it, though he was stylish, he was not handsomely dressed. His clothes were of good, but not fine material, his shoes were well-worn, his blue belted coat had odd buttons on it. He did not look to me like a rich man's child. He seemed more like the son of some professional man only moderately well off—what did he mean by the kidnapping story?

His green eyes were flashing. "I don't know the reason for it, Pony-Boy, for my father never talks much to me, but he never lets me go out alone, and I'm not allowed to speak to strangers. He's a criminal lawyer you know, and perhaps some bad man he has sent to prison thinks he owes him a grudge."

I was a bit uneasy about this boy. Before this I had had young creatures tell me the story of their lives and it was always because they had no sympathetic human ear turned toward them. So now I took on a thoughtful air as this lad went on.

"Lend me your pony ears—I was born in the great big wonderful country of the United States of America and I'd lay down my life for Old Glory."

[Pg 20]

He scrambled to his feet as he spoke, saluted an imaginary flag and recited the pledge to it.

I, too, got up pretty quick, for I am an American pony and have played many national games with children in which I always bow and scrape whenever the flag is mentioned.

As I stepped gaily round and round doing a march step and whinnying with feeling, the boy fell into an ecstasy.

"Do you mean to say you are a fellow-countryman," he cried, "an American pony citizen in this strange forest land?" and in his emotion he forgot his fear of me and throwing his arms round my neck gave me a good hug.

I was thunderstruck. In all my life before and with all my experience with boys I had never felt the wet tears of any of them against my smooth neck. Poor lad! What could be the matter with him?

He was crying in a queer way—quietly and as if he were afraid someone might hear him. Then in a flash he flung up his head and dashed the tears from his eyes.

"Excuse me, Pony-Boy. You'll find me an utter coward. Let's think of our country. Hurrah for the Stars and Stripes. Let's sing a verse." Then he opened his young mouth,

In amazement, I stopped my processing round the rock. I never in my life had heard such a[Pg 21] sweet even flow of song from the mouth of any living being, and I had once belonged to the son of a famous concert singer and had in her home heard many beautiful voices—why! it was like the lovely upward gush of a fountain—clear, pure and exquisite.

Even a catbird sitting near by in a maple put his head on one side to listen and then turned to a young goldfinch who was about to fly in terror from him and motioned him to remain. Cattie recognised the beauty of the boy's voice, and having no bird of his own kind near wanted to gossip with the goldfinch about it.

As I stood entranced, I noticed that the boy as he sang the whole of this one of our national songs kept looking over his shoulder as if he were afraid someone might interrupt him.

When he dropped on the rock again I went and stood over him.

"Pony-Boy," he said, "I'm not allowed to do that at home. I can only whistle."

Not allowed to sing with a voice like that, and I was just turning this over in my pony mind when my new friend sprang to his feet like a shot, his eyes wild and terrified.

"Pony-Boy—what is that awful sound?"

I rubbed my head against his shoulder. Poor lad! what nerves.

"I know it must be some kind of a bird," he went on, "for the sound came from the lake, but what a yell. You'd think a child was being murdered."

[Pg 22]

I knew loons, for I had seen and heard them on lakes in our own country. Probably the boy had never been in very lonely places. How I wished I could tell him that those were merely two old gossipy daddy loons accompanying their mates to their respective home bays on the lake. They were shrieking the news of the day to each other. Some fish ducks had been trying to settle near them and they had been biting at them and trying to drive them away. Then one Mrs. Loon had lost one of her downy young loonies. She blamed Mr. Red Fox from Merry-Tongue River—and what a blessing it was that there were so few campers about. Their beloved lake was really quite quiet with the settlers only.

They liked solitude, they did, and they yelled till the boy was nearly crazy and whipped his fingers in his ears.

How queer! The average boy likes noise and he had better get his ears unstopped for the big man was coming up the hill.

I tried to warn the boy, but he did not understand me and had to fly into another spasm of fright when the big man touched him on the shoulder.

He was a strapping middle-aged man in corduroys and cowboy hat with holes punched in it. His face was brown and kind and his eyes were black and piercing.

These eyes were fixed on the boy in an extraordinary manner. That boy meant something to him in a heart way. His eyes did not falter, but his[Pg 23] mouth trembled slightly. Suddenly he held out both hands, "Welcome to Devering Farm, my lad."

My pale-eyed boy put both his slim white hands into the man's big brown ones. "You're Mr. Devering, of course—my father's friend."

"And you are Dallas Duff—my boy, I have longed for this day."

"That's very kind in you, Sir," said young Dallas, but the man had turned suddenly to me.

His eyes were quite misty now and I am sure he could not see me very well, though he said feelingly, "And you, Pony, welcome too. I haven't seen you since the day of the Cobourg Races."

Now I knew who he was—the kind man who had felt me all over and stroked me so kindly. So he had remembered me and had had me sent to this lovely cool summer place.

I nuzzled his coat buttons, then I followed his gaze, which was riveted on the boy.

"Sir," our young lad was saying excitedly, "my father told me I could tell you anything. That's the first time he ever said that to me about any living person."

"I appreciate his confidence," said the big man, wrinkling his eyebrows in an amused way.

"First of all, sir, please tell me why my father sent me here. I've never been allowed to leave home before unless John or Margie went with me."

"Suppose you ask him when he comes up here later."

The boy almost shouted. "Is my father coming here?"

[Pg 24]

"I hope so. He needs a rest. He sticks too closely to work."