Mending Horses Read Free Page B

on Daniel.
    The constable’s parlor was jammed with people, some standing on chairs to get a better view, some trying to shove their way in from the hall. Those out in the yard jostled at the open windows, trying to thrust their heads and shoulders into the room.
    Daniel felt as if he stood outside himself, seeing himself as one of the spectators might: a stranger with nothing to say in his own defense. The contents of his bags lay in an untidy sprawlacross the constable’s table. Funny how quickly he’d attached himself to those bits of cloth and leather and metal and paper. It felt as if his guts were laid out there, instead of only his goods.
    â€œWhat’s the charge, Chester?” snapped a sharp-nosed, silver-haired man who sat in an upholstered chair behind the table. He held a candlestick, which he periodically rapped on the table to silence the crowd. From the man’s attitude and the deference everyone showed him, Daniel guessed him to be the justice of the peace.
    The constable showed none of the older man’s poise. Dressed in sweat-dampened work clothes, he slouched in a wooden chair next to the justice. He stared balefully at the goods strewn across his table. He rubbed his eyes and seemed disappointed that neither goods nor crowd had disappeared when he put his hands down. “Damned if I know,” he muttered. “So what is it, Jake?” he said, a little louder. “This fella’s stolen something from you?”
    â€œNot yet.” The blacksmith stepped forward and crossed his burly arms over his chest. “I never gave him the chance.” The crowd mumbled its approval.
    â€œThen why in blazes did you haul all these people into my parlor?” the constable demanded.
    â€œHe stole these goods from someone, that’s why.” The smith grabbed a shirt and waved it under Daniel’s nose. “Now tell me how a boy like you comes to have goods like this?”
    The justice’s and the constable’s stares felt like an ox yoke across Daniel’s shoulders. “Th-they’re mine,” was all the answer he could blurt out.
    The blacksmith picked up the books: the fat little volume of Shakespeare the peddler had given him and Sir Walter Scott’s
Ivanhoe
—a parting gift from Lizzie, the Lymans’ dairymaid. Daniel cringed at the sooty marks the blacksmith made on
Ivanhoe
’s pages as he riffled through them. “I suppose these are his, too?” The blacksmith sniffed. “I doubt the brute can even read.”
    Daniel choked back a retort. Whether dealing with powerful men like George Lyman, his former master, or schoolyard bullies like Joshua Ward and his mates, it had always been safest tobe mute and passive. But now it was time to say something, anything, and he didn’t know what to say. “They’re m-mine, too,” he stammered.
    The room burst into contemptuous laughter. “Yours?” the blacksmith said, echoed by half a dozen others.
“Yours?”
    His mind began to retreat into that safe place inside himself that he’d built when he’d learned that the way to end trouble was to submit and endure. The rapping of the justice’s candlestick pulled him away from the temptation to withdraw and give up.
    He cursed himself for an idiot. His defense was right there in front of him. He’d just been too daft with panic to tell them about the papers Lyman’s son Silas had given him. “I got papers.” He gestured toward the table. “Bills of sale. References. They’re all there in that pocketbook.”
    The blacksmith grabbed the small leather case. He let the papers spill to the floor and trod on them. “Forged, no doubt.”
    Daniel felt as if the blacksmith’s boot heel had ground into his chest. “And how would I be forging ’em, then, if I can’t read?”
    A corner of the constable’s mouth twitched up before the man hid it behind his