Gib and the Gray Ghost Read Online Free PDF Page A

not one of the crazy scenes your mind trots out when you’re too sound asleep to care about making sense. Nope. This room was as real and solid as a rock. There he was in a fancy wooden bed under a slanty roof and surrounded by walls covered in flowery paper. It had to be the truth. He really was back at the Rocking M. Glancing at the clock, he saw that it was five-thirty. Just about the time he and Hy had always started the milking and feeding.
    Sliding out into the cold air from under the heavy warmth of the blankets, he struggled quickly into his clothing. He tiptoed down the stairs, picked up his mackinaw, and was out the door before he had time to think about what the five-thirty alarm meant. What it meant was—nothing had changed. Just like before, Gib Whittaker, orphan farm-out, was expected to be out of bed and out doing morning chores an hour and a half before breakfast was put on the table.
    Hy was already in the barn. “Well, howdy there, pardner,” he said as Gib came in. “I been waiting fer you. Right glad to have you back on the job.” He didn’t have to say that Gib should climb the ladder into the hayloft and throw down the hay while he took care of the water buckets and the oat pails. That was the way it had always been.
    Back in Silky’s stall after the feeding was finished, Gib barely had time to tell her hello and get started with the currycomb before Hy said, “Awright buckaroo, come along now. Grooming can come later. We got to get them chickens fed and the milkin’ done faster’n lightnin’ or we’ll miss out on breakfast.”
    But when Gib left off combing, Silky nudged him away from the stall door. “Look,” he said, “she doesn’t want me to go.”
    Hy chuckled. “Well, you can just tell that fancy blue-blooded lady that you’ll be back later to spruce her up a little. After us two-legged critters git our turn at the feedin’ trough.”
    So everything was back the way it had always been, with the feeding and milking first, and then breakfast. Cleaning up on the back porch, Gib had only a little time to consider what being “back on the job” meant, before he was once again in the good-smelling warmth of Mrs. Perry’s kitchen.
    As Gib had noticed the night before, the kitchen was a lot noisier than it used to be. Mrs. Perry was scolding Hy for snitching a piece of bacon right off the grill, and Miss Hooper was looking out the window and announcing to anyone in earshot that, for once, Hy’s aching bones had been right about the weather. There definitely was a storm blowing up. Missus Julia and Livy, who were already at the table, were busy talking to each other. When Gib walked in everybody stopped long enough to say hello, before they went back to what they’d been doing and saying.
    But now Gib talked too. As he ate eggs and bacon and pancakes instead of lumpy oatmeal for the first time in almost four months, he also found himself answering questions. And to his surprise Livy did a lot of the asking. Questions like “How come that headmistress woman let you stay at Lovell House when my father took you back? I thought you said she never let anybody come back once they’d been adopted or farmed out. How come you were different?”
    “I don’t rightly know,” Gib said. “Miss Offenbacher always said no one could come back. I didn’t think she’d let me back in either. But when Mr. Thornton ... He paused, wondering how to go on. But then Miss Hooper took over.
    As Gib smiled inwardly, thinking about all the times she’d come to his rescue lately, she said, “The difference was money. Mr. Thornton offered that Offenbacher woman a good-sized monthly payment if she’d let Gib back into the orphanage. It’s as simple as that.”
    The mention of Mr. Thornton, particularly in the tone of voice Miss Hooper was using, made Gib uneasy. But neither Missus Julia nor Livy seemed upset, so he guessed that it was all right, even though it had sounded pretty much like speaking ill of