Cinders (Horse Diaries Special Edition) Read online

  HORSE DIARIES

  #1: Elska

  #2: Bell’s Star

  #3: Koda

  #4: Maestoso Petra

  #5: Golden Sun

  #6: Yatimah

  #7: Risky Chance

  #8: Black Cloud

  #9: Tennessee Rose

  #10: Darcy

  #11 Special Edition: Jingle Bells

  #12: Luna

  #13 Special Edition: Cinders

  The author and editor would like to thank Russell Lewis, executive vice president and chief historian at Chicago History Museum, for his assistance in the preparation of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Kate Klimo

  Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2016 by Ruth Sanderson

  Photograph credits: © Chicago History Museum, IChi19842 (this page); © Mary Evans Picture Library (this page); © Lenkadan/Shutterstock (this page)

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhousekids.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Klimo, Kate. | Sanderson, Ruth, illustrator.

  Title: Cinders / Kate Klimo ; illustrated by Ruth Sanderson.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Random House, [2016] | Series: Horse diaries, special edition | Summary: “Cinders is a dappled gray Percheron horse during the 1871 Great Chicago Fire” —Provided by publisher. | Includes bibliographical references.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015020129 | ISBN 978-1-101-93690-0 (trade pbk.) | ISBN 978-1-101-93691-7 (lib. bdg.) | ISBN 978-1-101-93692-4 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Percheron horse—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Percheron horse—Fiction. | Horses—Fiction. | Great Fire, Chicago, Ill., 1871—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ10.3.K686 Ci 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  ebook ISBN 9781101936924

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Horse Diaries

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1865: Dekalb, Illinois

  1868: Dark Days

  1869: Man-Killer!

  Summer 1870: Downers Grove

  Fall 1870: Miss Lizzy

  Fall 1870: Chicago

  All Ears and a Dozen Spots

  1871: A Devilish Wind

  The Little Lion

  Burn Out

  Appendix

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  For Karen Kolster,

  the best barn-buddy ever

  —K.K.

  In memory of Paul Moshimer

  —R.S.

  “Oh! if people knew what a comfort to

  horses a light hand is…”

  —from Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell

  There really was a fire station on Maxwell Street. It was the home of the Little Giant, among the city’s first steam engines and the first rig to show up at the scene of the Great Fire. The characters in this story—dog, horse, and human—are figments of this author’s imagination.

  The Little Ones named me. Although I was born black, they were betting that my coat and mane would soon turn as silvery-gray as my dam’s. Sure enough, they did. And so I was called Cinders. My earliest memories are of the Little Ones slipping between the fence boards into our paddock. Under Mother’s watchful eye, they brushed out my coat and kissed my nose and draped me in garlands woven from prairie flowers.

  When I nibbled at the sweet blossoms, they scolded me.

  Farmer Zeke said, “Abigail, Trudy, remember that Cinders is a Percheron. She’s going to grow up to be a big, strong farm horse, not some fancy lady’s mount.”

  The Little Ones sighed. “Oh, Papa! We know that! But she’ll always be our doll baby!”

  No sooner had Mother returned to work in the field than I began following the Little Ones almost everywhere a growing filly could go.

  When Abigail fed the chickens, I carried the feed sack across my back. Newly hatched, the puffs of yellow down scurried around my feet and I had to pick my way through them with the greatest care.

  When Trudy entered the garden to flick the bugs off the leaves, I followed her up and down the rows without treading on a single plant.

  When the Little Ones collected the eggs, I waited for them outside the henhouse. One time, they balanced a row of eggs in the hollow of my back. I bore my fragile cargo all the way to the back door.

  The girls, dancing around me and clapping their hands, cried out, “Mama! Come see!”

  Mrs. Zeke came out onto the porch. “You gals try hard enough and you’ll spoil that horse for real work.”

  By the time the snow was deep, the Little Ones were clambering onto my back from the porch rail. On their own two feet, they sank into the drifts up to their middles. But I held them above it all. A kick of the boot heel or a tug of my mane was all the guidance I needed.

  Sometimes they put a rope around my neck and hitched me to an old blanket. I would drag them around on top of the snow.

  Such was my life—and a finer one no horse could have asked for. Then, in my third spring, Farmer Zeke came to the paddock with a rope and a halter and I sensed change in the air.

  I walked up and leaned into him the way I did when I was hankering for a hug.

  One hand planted firmly on my nose, he pushed me away. “You’ve got your space and I’ve got mine,” he said. “You don’t come into mine unless I invite you.”

  I pulled back and licked my lips. The look in his eyes told me I must watch and listen and keep my distance until I was asked to come closer.

  He slipped the halter over my head, and I followed him meekly to the pen outside the barn.

  The Little Ones perched on the rail. “Can we watch you work with Cinders, Papa?” they asked.

  “Nope. If you’re here, she’ll spend all her time making goo-goo eyes at you and she won’t listen to a thing I say.”

  The Little Ones dropped down and went away.

  Farmer Zeke took an empty feed sack and flapped it at me. I pulled back. I was used to playing games with the Little Ones, but this was new to me.

  Then he held the bag out to me. I thrust my head forward and sniffed. I smelled old corn. I blew out. He took the bag and rubbed it over my ears and around my mouth and between my legs and even under my tail.

  Then he got a blanket and a leather thing and, one after the other, put them under my nose to sniff. I blew out again. They smelled like horse sweat.

  “This is a blanket and a saddle, Cinders.”

  He put the blanket, then the saddle, on my back, and fastened a strap beneath my belly. My blood boiled and my skin seethed. I tried to heave the saddle over my shoulders. When that didn’t work, I ran around trying to buck it off. T
hen I got down on the ground and tried to roll it away.

  Farmer Zeke stood in the middle of the pen and watched me with calm eyes. I carried on until I was all worn out. Then I went to the edge of the pen. I dropped my head and lost myself in the grass. Soon I forgot the saddle was even there. It never bothered me again.

  In the days that followed, I got used to Farmer Zeke digging around in my hooves with a pick. I learned that whenever his hands touched my knee, I was meant to bend my leg and offer him my hoof.

  Another day, he put a hand on my shoulder. His hand pressed into me, harder and harder. Finally, I picked up my hoof and moved away from the pressure. He took his hand away and then patted me. He did the same thing with all four of my legs. After a while, it got so that I could move every which way at a featherlight touch.

  Next, he attached a longer rope to my halter. He stood a ways off and touched my haunch with a stick and said, “Go!”

  I moved around him at the end of the rope. When he placed himself on the other side of my nose, I knew he wanted me to turn and go the other way. This was not new to me. Pointing with her nose, this was how Mother moved me around the paddock. After I had learned to go in both directions at a walk, he drove me into a trot, a canter, and a gallop.

  As for the hard bar, that was no fun at all! The only reason I let him put it in my mouth was that it tasted like molasses. But when I had licked off all the sweetness, I was left with the cold taste of metal. It made my mouth water and my tongue slurp.

  The bit, he called it. It was attached to two leather lines he called reins. When Zeke tugged on the reins, the bar bit into the sides of my mouth.

  It was a few days later when Farmer Zeke put the bit in my mouth and attached a long rope to each side of it. He laid the ropes behind me and went to stand between them some distance behind my tail. I turned and whickered, What are you up to now?

  “You need to get used to my being behind you like this, Cinders.”

  I snorted. This was how Mother sometimes used to herd me, with her nose to my tail. I sighed and smacked my lips, then turned and faced front. I felt him lift the ropes. He sent a gentle wave through the ropes that reached the bit. “Walk on!” he said.

  I started moving. We walked around the pen. His hands spoke through the ropes and told me what he wanted. “Walk on.” “Turn this way.” “Turn that way.” “Trot.” “Back up.” “Whoa.”

  Then one fine day he put me in harness and attached me to the wagon. The Little Ones spilled out of the house and climbed up into the seat with their father.

  Farmer Zeke picked up the reins and said, “Walk on,” and I jogged around the pen in a circle, pulling the wagon. After a few more turns, my heart leaped when Farmer Zeke guided me out the gate and down the barn lane.

  I shook my mane and snorted with pleasure as I broke into a brisk trot. This was the job that I was put on earth to do.

  That winter, the snow lay deep upon the ground. Day after day, Mother and I stood idle in the paddock.

  Farmer Zeke came out twice a day to put down hay. Then he turned around and trudged back to the house. Sometimes a Little One would press her nose to the window and stare at us with the saddest eyes.

  Come and play! I called to her.

  But she shook her head and ducked out of sight.

  Something is not right, Mother said.

  Then one day, Farmer Zeke came and led Mother away. I tried to follow, but he blocked me with a hand.

  “You’ve never pulled a sled before, and this is not the time to train you,” he said.

  I watched as he hitched Mother up to the wagon, whose wheels had been replaced by two sharp metal blades. This, then, was what he called a sled. He took a seat and lifted the reins. With a smooth whoosh of its blades, the sled disappeared over the rise.

  Some time later, the sled returned carrying a stranger in a black coat. Swinging a black bag, he hurried after Farmer Zeke into the house.

  Mother waited out front, still in harness. She stomped and snorted, her breath smoky in the cold air. I could tell from her heaving sides and her sweat-darkened coat that she had run a long distance in a short time.

  She called out to me, Something is terribly wrong!

  I called back to her, You’re frightening me, Mother!

  It wasn’t long before the stranger came out with Farmer Zeke. The stranger put a hand on Zeke’s arm. Zeke bowed his head. From inside the house, I could hear the two Little Ones keening. I paced along the fence line until I had worried a deep muddy groove in the snow.

  After that, people came to the house. They arrived in sleds, on horseback, and on snowshoes. With sad faces, they entered the house carrying dishes of food. The house echoed with the sound of their voices. At long last, the back door opened and the Little Ones burst out.

  I tossed my mane. I was ready to play and learn new tricks! After climbing the fence, they threw their arms around me and burst into tears.

  “Mama is with the angels!” Abigail cried.

  “And we’re going back East to live with Grandmama,” Trudy sobbed.

  “We’re selling the farm and all the equipment and stock—including you!” Abigail gasped.

  “We begged Papa to let us take you, but he told us you’d be miserable on the noisy, dirty streets of New York City,” Trudy bawled.

  I didn’t understand. Why were the Little Ones so sad?

  As the snow thawed, more people came to the farm. They walked around and chatted with Farmer Zeke and left with pieces of his equipment. One man took a plow. Another took some hoes. Yet another took Mother away, hitched to the back of his wagon. Now I was sad!

  I followed her along the fence line until I could go no farther, calling out, Take me with you, Mother!

  Farewell, Cinders, she called back. Just be your good, sweet self and everyone will love you.

  I moped in the paddock. Many people wanted to take me away. Finally, I was sold to Old Man Muller for what Farmer Zeke called “a tidy sum.”

  The Little Ones stomped their feet.

  “How could you, Papa?” said Trudy.

  “Mr. Muller is one of the hardest-working farmers in these parts,” said Farmer Zeke.

  “He’s mean as spit and everybody knows it,” said Abigail.

  “He’ll whip our darling Cinders!” said Trudy.

  “Now, girls, that’s not being very Christian about your neighbor,” said Farmer Zeke.

  “He’ll be mean to our doll baby!” said Abigail.

  “Your doll baby is fifteen hands high and will grow to be seventeen hands,” said Farmer Zeke. “I think she can take care of herself.”

  That last day, the girls clung to me and soaked my mane with their tears. They draped a garland of prairie flowers around my neck. Then I watched as they drove away in a wagon loaded up with all their worldly goods…except for me.

  —

  Old Man Muller worked his horse like he worked his land and his sons: hard and long and without mercy.

  In the early summer, I pulled the harrow so that the old man could get his seeds in. When the grass grew high, I dragged the mower to cut it. Later, I pulled the wagon through the fields and stood while the sons jumped out and bundled the grass into shocks and tossed them into the back.

  In the late summer, the sons toiled at either end of a long, sharp, jagged blade. They sawed down a whole forest of trees. “Timber!” they shouted as the trees came crashing down.

  After all the trees were down, the old man hitched the logs to my harness. I dragged them off to a big pile.

  Then the sons went through and picked out the stones and boulders, which I hauled away on a sled. After many days of sawing and hauling, the field was clear except for the tree stumps.

  The son called Junior said, “There’s only one way to get them stumps out, Daddy, and that’s good old-fashioned elbow grease.”

  The one called Bud shook his head. “Digging them up is way too much work. Get me enough gunpowder and I’ll blast them out for you, Pops.
Boom!” He laughed and slapped his knee.

  I remembered the booms Bud made. When I first heard them, I thought the sky was falling. I ran from one end of the paddock to the other, looking for somewhere to hide. But after I had heard them enough times, I stopped spooking. I knew the noise was just Bud blowing something up.

  “Don’t need elbow grease or gunpowder,” the old man growled. “We got us Cinders.” He smacked me on the haunch, and I jumped in my skin.

  I should have been used to his ways by now. The old man never petted unless he could smack, never spoke unless he could yell, never asked nicely if he could demand.

  “This horse here,” he said with another stinging slap, “could move a mountain if we hitched her up to it and whupped her hard enough!”

  They tied one end of a chain to the tree stump and the other to my harness. The old man got behind me and grabbed the reins. “Pull!”

  I pulled as hard as I could, but I was going nowhere except deeper into the earth up to my fetlocks.

  “Pull!” he roared, and he lay into me with the whip.

  I strained against the harness. He lashed me again and again. Streams of sweat ran down my sides. I pulled until I thought my heart would burst. I felt the roots begin to loosen their grip, one by one. He kept after me with the whip. Then came the loud ripping sound as the last roots gave way. I lunged forward, dragging the tree stump behind me.

  The sons cheered. Then, without pausing to let me rest, they urged me on to the next tree stump. By the time the stumps were all cleared, my body was so sore I hobbled back to the paddock. The sons rubbed me down.

  When I was fit to go back to work, I pulled the wagon through the fields while the men loaded up the harvest to take to market.

  On market day, the air was biting cold, and the sky hung as low and damp as a blanket on a swaybacked mule. There was already snow on the ground, so they hitched me up to the sleigh. And it was a good thing they did, because by the time we got to the city, big flakes of snow were drifting down.