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By Root 1778 0

ran to him with some other men, and when they reached him, the rider jumped off. I could see his grin from where I stood. All the men clapped him on the back. Frank reached out for the horse’s reins, and the rider handed them to him. I decided to get a little closer, so I kicked the mule. I was still in a state of pleased excitement just at the sight of it, as Frank had predicted. The mule trotted toward the group of men, and I saw someone, the Reverend Moss, I realized, throw the blanket he was wearing over Jeremiah. But then the Reverend Moss looked up and around, and when he saw me, he began hurrying the horse, hurrying him a bit carefully and cautiously in my direction. Momentarily he stopped to throw Frank up onto his back, then Roger, who was grinning. They came up to me a few moments later. The reverend was smiling, but he wasn’t grinning.

"Well, ma’am, I’d say that was exceptional, and I thank you. Best take the horse on home now. He’s bushed—that filly gave him a run. I don’t expect"—he glanced over his shoulder—"he thought he would have to try so hard, but she’s a tough one and experienced. Hiram’s raced her all over. He makes money on her, as a rule." He reached up the reins to me. "You’re a fine lady, ma’am, and words of praise for your name will be on the tongues of many this Sabbath evening. Now you’d best be getting off home, ma’am." He thrust the reins into my hand, though I was happy to take them, and then he gave the mule a little slap, and off we went. Jeremiah came along willingly enough, only a little tired from his exertions. Frank and Roger were more than pleased, until I made them dismount and walk.

Frank exclaimed, "They gave a prize, you know. The bettors who won passed the hat and gave me fourteen dollars."

"No!"

"I gave the rider two fifty. He said he’d ride the horse anytime."

"Frank!"

He glanced at me. "You never know, Lidie! Jeremiah is a gold mine!"

"Thomas will never allow it! I don’t know what to tell him now!"

"It’s true he don’t understand horses. It’s like farming with him...." He shook his head.

"Please don’t. You are in sufficient difficulties already."

We continued toward home without speaking further, but I felt the warmth of what I’d seen all the way there.

My misgivings with regard to my husband proved well founded, and he was seriously displeased with Frank’s activities and with mine. He and Charles had looked for the horse until finally giving him up for lost or stolen. They were now a day late for the mail, and at any rate, they would have to hire another horse for that trip, since it would be far too much for Jeremiah now. Frank handed over his winnings—sixteen dollars and fifty cents—and Thomas ordered Frank to stay with the horse, making sure he was kept moving and warm. A dollar would go to Mr. Smith for extra prairie hay. All in all, horse racing certainly qualified in my husband’s eyes as a frivolous and dangerous and inconvenient enterprise that sixteen dollars and fifty cents didn’t begin to pay for.

I agreed with him, but that didn’t make me any less culpable in his eyes. I wasn’t favored with any conversation at all. When Charles and Louisa tried to rally me about the incident, Thomas remarked that he would prefer not to hear about it.

That I knew I was culpable, and had known the entire time that I’d allowed Frank to persuade me to race the horse that I was culpable, did not go far toward resigning me to my husband’s coldness. Try as I might, I could not help a few resentful thoughts, a swell of resistant feelings. Frank, I knew, was unrepentant. I wondered what that felt like. In everything, Frank endured his punishment without taking it personally and then went his own way. I had, I thought, once been the same—with my father, with my sisters, with those whose punishments were arbitrary and, you might say, selfish. I had cultivated my own selfishness, I thought, to protect myself against theirs. But now I had been selfish, and my husband was both hurt and angry, and all with good reason. Or so the argument within went. But then a new argument began, this