Gib Rides Home by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Author:Zilpha Keatley Snyder [Snyder, Zilpha Keatley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: C429, Extratorrents, Kat
ISBN: 978-1-4532-7191-9
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 2012-10-23T01:19:00+00:00

Chapter 20

GIB LEARNED AN AWFUL lot during the next few days, but only about some subjects. Mrs. Thornton hadn’t invited him back for another visit, so he hadn’t learned anything more from her, and after that first day Hy had pretty much refused to talk about past history. At least about Gib’s history. But among the subjects Hy didn’t seem to mind talking about were some things about his own past. Like how his leg got busted.

“Durned motorcar did it,” Hy said when Gib finally got up the nerve to ask.

Gib was impressed. “You were ... No, it couldn’t be. “You weren’t driving one, were you?” He’d heard all about motorcars, of course, and how dangerous they could be. And he’d even seen a few in Harristown, sputtering down Main Street, amazing all the people and scaring horses right out of their wits. But Gib couldn’t imagine that Hy would have anything to do with a newfangled thing like that.

Hy snorted. “Not on your life,” he said. “Wouldn’t catch me touchin’ one of those devil wagons with a ten-foot pole. But Edgar Appleton, down at what used to be the Longford Livery Stable, he’s been tryin’ to sell them noisy, stinkin’ machines lately, and he’s been thinkin’ to get the boss to buy one. Been workin’ on him for a long time. I reckon he’s got it in his mind that if a big-shot Longford banker like Henry Thornton was to start ridin’ around in one of them contraptions, everybody in the county would buy one, even if they had to sell off half their stock and five or six kids to do it.”

Hy stretched out his busted leg and rested it on the apple box he’d been using as a footstool. He stared off into space again, leaving Gib shuffling from one foot to the other, fretting to hear the rest of the story.

Finally Hy blinked, caught his breath like someone just waking up from a catnap, and took up right where he left off. “Well sir, just last month, soon as the roads dried out a bit, old Appleton took it into his head to drive out here in one of them things and take the Thorntons for a ride. And, just my luck, when he rode that smokin’, rattlin’, backfirin’ bucket of bolts down our driveway I happened to be out in front of the house untyin’ the boss’s team from the hitchin’ rail. And you can just bet it scared the holy hallelujah out of them old buggy horses. Specially Caesar. Spooky bonehead’s always been real noise-shy.” Hy sighed again and went quiet, gazing off into the past.

“And so what happened?” Gib prodded him.

“Ran right over me, they did,” he said at last. “Buggy and all. Busted my leg in two places.”

“The team ran over you!” Gib couldn’t keep the shock and consternation out of his voice. “That’s awful.”

“Surely is,” Hy said mournfully, but then he grinned. “But on the good side”—he rolled his eyes meaningfully—“it

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