Orphan of Creation Read Online Free Page B

cart brought their cage up from Gowrie Landing . . .
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    Barbara suddenly felt as if she were no longer simply reading this story. Some part of it gripped her soul, as if she were seeing it, living it. It had happened to her a thousand times as a child. She felt again the sensation of being drawn down into the tale, the words transforming themselves into sights, smells, sounds. As the words marched in front of her eyes, with the stern countenance of the writer staring down at her, with his very blood coursing through her veins, with the wild storm chasing itself madly around the darkened landscape outside, the images of those elder days flashed before her eyes. She knew how it must have been . . . .
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Young Zeb looked on the beasts in outright terror. They seemed huge, monstrous, the denizens of a nightmare. They were perhaps no larger than a grownup, but their shrieking, screaming, maddened yelling, the wild way they flung themselves at the bars of their cage, the banging and clanging of all the bars and locks that set the cart to bouncing wildly about, all this made them seem far larger than they really were.
The pair of horses drawing the cart were just as fearful, snorting and whinnying, pawing the ground in their fright, the well-muscled sinews rippling beneath their perfect chestnut hides. Zeb found himself staring at the horses instead of the beasts, for at least the horses seemed real, normal, of this world.
But real or not, the horses too were terrified, and it was all the ostler could do to keep them from stampeding. The cart was backing and starting, threatening to pitch over on its side altogether. Finally, the drayman, adding to the chaos with a stream of shouted curses, brought his team to a full halt, and leapt gracefully down from the rig and stood at a respectful distance. At least the horses suffered themselves to stand still, wild-eyed, with their nostrils flared, their flanks twitching and flecked with foam. Zeb didn’t know where he got the courage to step in and hold the leads, but he did, and stood between the heads of the frightened horses, speaking soft soothing words to them as he watched the proceedings at the back end of the cart.
Gowrie himself was there, a tall, rangy man with a small black goatee and a fierce enthusiasm of expression. He was standing by the rear of the cart, grinning wildly, looking over his new chattels with great pleasure. “Joe, Will, let’s get that cage open and welcome our new friends,” he said, holding out the key to the cage and gesturing to two of his slaves.
“Massah Gowrie,” Will said in his soft plantation creole, “This ain’t no time to let them things out.” Will worked in the stables and barns, caring for the farm animals, and knew a lot about most live things. “Let ‘em set a bit, calm down a mite. They’s scared half to death from the ride, and someone sure to get hurt if they come out now—else they just go over the horizon in a flash.”
“Will, I said to open the cage!” Gowrie growled. “You fixing to get whipped?”
“No suh. But I’d druther be whipped than bitten and clawed. Them things is fierce right now!”
“Joe—get up there and—” Gowrie began, but Joe just shook his head. “Damn you both, then!” Gowrie shouted, and leapt up on the cart bed. He set the key in the lock—and two hairy arms reached out for him. He suddenly found himself thrown to the ground, his clothing ripped and the flesh in his arm badly scratched. He was shocked, infuriated, swore incoherently. He got up, grabbed a whip from the drayman, and lashed it savagely against the bars of the cages, setting the beasts into new paroxysms of hysteria, panicking the horses anew. Zeb was almost thrown off his feet and trampled before the drayman came to his rescue and helped calm the animals.
“To the devil with all of you!” Gowrie thundered ineffectually, flinging down the whip. “Leave them there caged up on the cart overnight, then, and see how they like