Elijah of Buxton Read Online Free PDF

everything, I went back out to Mr. Segee.
    â€œEverything’s done, Mr. Segee.”
    â€œâ€™Lijah, when you says everything’s done, ain’t no need for me to check. Ain’t none the other children look after that stable the way you do. When’s your next day?”
    â€œMonday, sir.”
    â€œWell, then, see you on Monday.”
    â€œYes, sir. Sir, is it gonna be all right if I take Old Flapjack out for a spell?”
    It was the same thing every Friday, and he never said no, but Ma and Pa always say it’s polite and proper to ask and not to make no assumptions.
    â€œWhy, let me think a second, boy, is it all right for you to take that old mule out?”
    Mr. Segee leaned on the rake he was using and kind of stared up into the clouds. Then he said, “I think they done called off the horse racing for this evening, Elijah. Seem like all them horses, even Jingle Boy and Conqueror, done pulled out once they got wind Ol’ Flapjack was running again, figure they ain’t got no chance at whupping that mule. So it don’t seem like you taking him is gunn be a problem.”
    Mr. Segee came up from Mississippi only a year ago, and Ma says we got to give him some allowance for the kind of things he thinks is funny, so I give him a little laugh every time he makes one n’em bad jokes.
    I could tell Flapjack was raring to go, but ’less you knowed what to look for, you might not see it. His raring-to- go look’s a powerful lot like his not-wanting-to-move look.
    Soon’s I led him out of the stable he started off on the road that runs through the main part of the Settlement. I knowed there waren’t no rush to catch him, I knowed exactly where he was going. Once he got out of the stable he’d head straight down the road afore he cut off into the woods heading for the lake he first took me to ’bout a year ago.
    I had plenty of time to put away the tools and the wheelbarrow and gather up my fly pouches and my chunking stones and my net-basket and the strings that I use for holding the fish I catch.
    When I got done, I cut through some fields and caught Old Flapjack just as he passed Miss Carolina’s house. I jumped up on his back and let him carry me to our secret lake.
    Most folks say it’s wrong, but if I had my druthers, I’d ride a mule over a horse any day. Horses do too much shaking of your insides when you ride ’em and they’re a long way up if you lose your grip and fall.
    Mules don’t jar nothing when they walk, they like slow and easy travel. They have a way of rocking you gentle like a baby in a crib. If you don’t fall asleep first, you get a chance to think ’bout things when you ride a mule. With a horse, you don’t get to think ’bout nothing but hoping you don’t fall off and get coldcocked by their hoofs. If you fall off a mule, you’re already close to the ground and got plenty of time to roll outta the way of their feet. Slow as Old Flapjack is, if you fell off him you’d have time enough to take a nap afore you had to worry ’bout him stomping on you.
    Flapjack left the road and turned off into the woods just after we crossed out of the Settlement and passed the Preacher’s house. It didn’t look like the Preacher was home. Not that I’d’ve stopped and called on him, it’s just that lately, since he’s seen Jesus has been giving me gifts, he lets me come with him and watch when he practices shooting off his mystery pistol.
    It just was last month that the Preacher snucked up on me whilst I was out in the Atlas Clearing chunking rocks. He came out from behind a tree and said, “Did I see what I think I saw or are my eyes deceiving me?”
    He sounded so surprised that I looked ’round the clearing expecting something peculiar to be going on.
    â€œWhat did you see, sir?”
    The Preacher said, “I saw
you
, Elijah. I saw what you were doing, and