THE RED PONY
by John Steinbeck

*END*

I THE GIFT
II THE GREAT MOUNTAINS
III THE PROMISE
IV THE LEADER OF THE PEOPLE


THE RED PONY

I. THE GIFT

AT DAYBREAK Billy Buck emerged from the bunkhouse 
and stood for a moment on the porch looking up at the 
sky. He was a broad, bandy-legged little man with a wal-
rus mustache, with square hands, puffed and muscled on 
the palms. His eyes were a contemplative, watery grey 
and the hair which protruded from under his Stetson hat 
was spiky and weathered Billy was still stuffing his shirt 
into his blue jeans as he stood on the porch. He un-
buckled his belt and tightened it again. The belt showed, 
by the worn shiny places opposite each hole, the gradual 
increase of Billy's middle over a period of years. When 
he had seen to the weather, Billy cleared each nostril by 
holding its mate closed with his forefinger and blowing 
fiercely. Then he walked down to the barn, rubbing his 
hands together. He curried and brushed two saddle 
horses in the stalls, talking quietly to them all the time; 
and he had hardly finished when the iron triangle started 
ringing at the ranch house. Billy stuck the brush and 
currycomb together and laid them on the rail, and went 
up to breakfast. His action had been so deliberate and 
yet so wasteless of time that he came to the house while 
Mrs. Tiflin was still ringing the triangle. She nodded her 
grey head to him and withdrew into the kitchen. Billy 
Buck sat down on the steps, because he was a cow hand, 
and it wouldn't be fitting that he should go first into the
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John Steinbeck
dining-room. He heard Mr. Tiflin in the house, stamping 
his feet into his boots.
The high jangling note of the triangle put the boy 
Jody in motion. He was only a little boy, ten years old, 
with hair like dusty yellow grass and with shy polite grey 
eyes, and with a mouth that worked when he thought. 
The triangle picked him up out of sleep. It didn't occur 
to him to disobey the harsh note. He never had: no one 
he knew ever had. He brushed the tangled hair out of his 
eyes and skinned his nightgown off. In a moment he was 
dressed-blue chambray shirt and overalls. It was late in 
the summer, so of course there were no shoes to bother 
with. In the kitchen he waited until his mother got from 
in front of the sink and went back to the stove. Then he 
washed himself and brushed back his wet hair with his 
fingers. His mother turned sharply on him as he left the 
sink. Jody looked shyly away.
"I've got to cut your hair before long," his mother said. 
"Breakfast's on the table. Go on in, so Billy can come." 
Jody sat at the long table which was covered with 
white oilcloth washed through to the fabric in some 
places. The fried eggs lay in rows on their platter. Jody 
took three eggs on his plate and followed with three 
thick slices of crisp bacon. He carefully scraped a spot of 
blood from one of the egg yolks.
Billy Buck clumped in. "That won't hurt you," Billy 
explained. "That's only a sign the rooster leaves."
Jody's tall stern father came in then and Jody knew 
from the noise on the floor that he was wearing boots, 
but he looked under the table anyway, to make sure. His 
father turned off the oil lamp over the table, for plenty 
of morning light now came through the windows.
Jody did not ask where his father and Billy Buck were 
riding that day, but he wished he might go along. His 
father was a disciplinarian. Jody obeyed him in every-
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The Red Pony
thing without questions of any kind. Now, Carl Tiflin 
sat down and reached for the egg platter.
"Got the cows ready to go, Billy?" he asked.
"In the lower corral," Billy said. "I could just as well 
take them in alone."
"Sure you could. But a man needs company. Besides 
your throat gets pretty dry." Carl Tiflin was jovial this 
morning.
Jody's mother put her head in the door. "What time 
do you think to be back, Carl?"
"I can't tell. I've got to see some men in Salinas. Might 
be gone till dark."
The eggs and coffee and big biscuits disappeared rap-
idly. Jody followed the two men out of the house. He 
watched them mount their horses and drive six old milk 
cows out of the corral and start over the hill toward 
Salinas. They were going to sell the old cows to the 
butcher.
When they had disappeared over the crown of the 
ridge Jody walked up the hill in back of the house. The 
dogs trotted around the house corner hunching their 
shoulders and grinning horribly with pleasure. Jody pat-
ted their heads-Doubletree Mutt with the big thick tail 
and yellow eyes, and Smasher, the shepherd, who had 
killed a coyote and lost an ear in doing it. Smasher's one 
good ear stood up higher than a collie's ear should. Billy 
Buck said that always happened. After the frenzied greet-
ing the dogs lowered their noses to the ground in a 
businesslike way and went ahead, looking back now and 
then to make sure that the boy was coming. They walked 
up through the chicken yard and saw the quail eating 
with the chickens. Smasher chased the chickens a little to 
keep in practice in case there should ever be sheep to 
herd. Jody continued on through the large vegetable 
patch where the green corn was higher than his head.
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John Steinbeck
The cow-pumpkins were green and small yet. He went 
on to the sagebrush line where the cold spring ran out 
of its pipe and fell into a round wooden tub. He leaned 
over and drank close to the green mossy wood where the 
water tasted best. Then he turned and looked back on 
the ranch, on the low, whitewashed house girded with 
red geraniums, and on the long bunkhouse by the cypress 
tree where Billy Buck lived alone. Jody could see the 
great black kettle under the cypress tree. That was where 
the pigs were scalded. The sun was coming over the ridge 
now, glaring on the whitewash of the houses and barns, 
making the wet grass blaze softly. Behind him, in the tall 
sagebrush, the birds were scampering on the ground, 
making a great noise among the dry leaves; the squirrels 
piped shrilly on the side-hills. Jody looked along at the 
farm buildings. He felt an uncertainty in the air, a feel-
ing of change and of loss and of the gain of new and un-
familiar things. Over the hillside two big black buzzards 
sailed low to the ground and their shadows slipped 
smoothly and quickly ahead of them. Some animal had 
died in the vicinity. Jody knew it. It might be a cow or it 
might be the remains of a rabbit. The buzzards over-
looked nothing. Jody hated them as all decent things 
hate them, but they could not be hurt because they made 
away with carrion.
After a while, the boy sauntered down hill again. The 
dogs had long ago given him up and gone into the brush 
to do things in their own way. Back through the vegetable 
garden he went, and he paused for a moment to smash a 
green muskmelon with his heel, but he was not happy 
about it. It was a bad thing to do, he knew perfectly well. 
He kicked dirt over the ruined melon to conceal it.
Back at the house his mother bent over his rough 
hands, inspecting his fingers and nails. It did little good 
to start him clean to school for too many things could
6
The Red Pony 
happen on the way. She sighed over the black cracks on
his fingers, and then gave him his books and his lunch 
and started him on the mile walk to school. She noticed 
that his mouth was working a good deal this morning.
Jody started his journey. He filled his pockets with 
little pieces of white quartz that lay in the road, and 
every so often he took a shot at a bird or at some rabbit 
that had stayed sunning itself in the road too long. At 
the crossroads over the bridge he met two friends and the 
three of them walked to school together, making ridicu-
lous strides and being rather silly. School had just opened 
two weeks before. There was still a spirit of revolt among 
the pupils.
It was four o'clock in the afternoon when Jody topped 
the hill and looked down on the ranch again. He looked 
for the saddle horses, but the corral was empty. His 
father was not back yet. He went slowly, then, toward 
the afternoon chores. At the ranch house, he found his 
mother sitting on the porch, mending socks.
"There's two doughnuts in the kitchen for you," she 
said. Jody slid to the kitchen, and returned with half of 
one of the doughnuts already eaten and his mouth full. 
His mother asked him what he had learned in school 
that day, but she didn't listen to his doughnut-muffled 
answer. She interrupted, "Jody, tonight see you fill the 
wood-box clear full. Last night you crossed the sticks and 
it wasn't only about half full. Lay the sticks flat tonight. 
And Jody, some of the hens are hiding eggs, or else the 
dogs are eating them. Look about in the grass and see if 
you can find any nests"
': Jody, still eating, went out and did his chores. He saw 
the quail come down to eat with the chickens when he 
threw out the grain. For some reason his father was 
proud to have them come. He never allowed any shoot-
ing near the house for fear the quail might go away.
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John Steinbeck
When the wood-box was full, Jody took his twenty-two 
rifle up to the cold spring at the brush line. He drank 
again and then aimed the gun at all manner of things, 
at rocks, at birds on the wing, at the big black pig kettle 
under the cypress tree, but he didn't shoot for he had no 
cartridges and wouldn't have until he was twelve. If his 
father had seen him aim the rifle in the direction of the 
house he would have put the cartridges off another year. 
Jody remembered this and did not point the rifle down 
the hill again. Two years was enough to wait for car-
tridges. Nearly all of his father's presents were given with 
reservations which hampered their value somewhat. It 
was good discipline.
The supper waited until dark for his father to return. 
When at last he came in with Billy Buck, Jody could 
smell the delicious brandy on their breaths. Inwardly he 
rejoiced, for his father sometimes talked to him when he 
smelled of brandy, sometimes even told things he had 
done in the wild days when he was a boy.
After supper, Jody sat by the fireplace and his shy 
polite eyes sought the room corners, and he waited for 
his father to tell what it was he contained, for Jody knew 
he had news of some sort. But he was disappointed. His 
father pointed a stern finger at him.
"You'd better go to bed, Jody. I'm going to need you 
in the morning."
That wasn't so bad. Jody liked to do the things he had 
to do as long as they weren't routine things. He looked 
at the floor and his mouth worked out a question before 
he spoke it. "What are we going to do in the morning, 
kill a pig?" he asked softly.
"Never you mind. You better get to bed."
When the door was closed behind him, Jody heard his 
father and Billy Buck chuckling and he knew it was a 
joke of some kind. And later, when he lay in bed, trying
8
The Red Pony
to make words out of murmurs in the other room, he 
heard his father protest, "But, Ruth, I didn't give much 
for him."
Jody heard the hoot-owls hunting mice down by the 
barn, and he heard a fruit tree limb tap-tapping against 
the house. A cow was lowing when he went to sleep.
When the triangle sounded in the morning, Jody 
dressed more quickly even than usual. In the kitchen, 
while he washed his face and combed back his hair, his 
mother addressed him irritably. "Don't you go out until 
you get a good breakfast in you."
He went into the dining-room and sat at the long white 
table. He took a steaming hotcake from the platter, ar-
ranged two fried eggs on it, covered them with another 
hotcake and squashed the whole thing with his fork.
His father and Billy Buck came in. Jody knew from 
the sound of the floor that both of them were wearing 
flatheeled shoes, but he peered under the table to make 
sure. His father turned off the oil lamp, for the day had 
arrived, and he looked stern and disciplinary, but Billy 
`Buck didn't look at Jody at all. He avoided the shy ques-
tioning eyes of the boy and soaked a whole piece of toast 
in his coffee.
Carl Tiflin said crossly, "You come with us after break 
fast!"
Jody had trouble with his food then, for he felt a kind 
of doom in the air. After Billy had tilted his saucer and 
drained the coffee which had slopped into it, and had 
wiped his hands on his jeans, the two men stood up from 
the table and went out into the morning light together, 
and Jody respectfully followed a little behind them. He 
tried to keep his mind from running ahead, tried to keep 
it absolutely motionless.
His mother called, "Carl! Don't you let it keep him 
from school."
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John Steinbeck
They marched past the cypress, where a singletree 
hung from a limb to butcher the pigs on, and past the 
black iron kettle, so it was not a pig killing. The sun 
shone over the hill and threw long, dark shadows of the 
trees and buildings. They crossed a stubble-field to short-
cut to the barn. Jody's father unhooked the door and 
they went in. They had been walking toward the sun 
on the way down. The barn was black as night in con-
trast and warm from the hay and from the beasts. Jody's 
father moved over toward the one box stall. "Come 
herel" he ordered. Jody could begin to see things now. 
He looked into the box stall and then stepped back 
quickly.
A red pony colt was looking at him out of the stall. 
Its tense ears were forward and a light of disobedience 
was in its eyes. Its coat was rough and thick as an aire-
dale's fur and its mane was long and tangled. Jody's 
throat collapsed in on itself and cut his breath short.
"He needs a good currying," his father said, "and if I 
ever hear of you not feeding him or leaving his stall 
dirty, I'll sell him off in a minute."
Jody couldn't bear to look at the pony's eyes any more. 
He gazed down at his hands for a moment, and he asked 
very shyly, "Mine?" No one answered him. He put his 
hand out toward the pony. Its grey nose came close, sniff 
ing loudly, and then the lips drew back and the strong 
teeth closed on Jody's fingers. The pony shook its head 
up and down and seemed to laugh with amusement. 
Jody regarded his bruised fingers. "Well," he said with 
pride- "Well, I guess he can bite all right." The two 
men laughed., somewhat in relief. Carl Tiflin went out 
of the barn and walked up a side-hill to be by himself, 
for he was embarrassed, but Billy Buck stayed. It was 
easier to talk to Billy Buck. Jody asked again-"Mine?" 
Billy became professional in tone. "Surel That is, if
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The Red Pony
you look out for him and break him right. I'll show you 
how. He's just a colt. You can't ride him for some time." 
Jody put out his bruised hand again, and this time the 
red pony let his nose be rubbed. "I ought to have a car-
rot," Jody said. "Where'd we get him, Billy?"
"Bought him at a sheriff's auction," Billy explained. 
"A show went broke in Salinas and had debts. The 
sheriff was selling off their stuff."
The pony stretched out his nose and shook the fore-
lock from his wild eyes. Jody stroked the nose a little. 
He said softly, "There isn't a-saddle?"
Billy Buck laughed. "I'd forgot. Come along."
In the harness room he lifted down a little saddle of 
red morocco leather. "It's just a show saddle," Billy 
Buck said disparagingly. "It isn't practical for the brush, 
but it was cheap at the sale."
Jody couldn't trust himself to look at the saddle either, 
and he couldn't speak at all. He brushed the shining red 
leather with his fingertips, and after a long time he said, 
"It'll look pretty on him though." He thought of the 
grandest and prettiest things he knew. "If he hasn't a 
name already, I think I'll call him Gabilan Mountains," 
he said.
Billy Buck knew how he felt. "It's a pretty long name. 
Why don't you just call him Gabilan? That means hawk. 
That would be a fine name for him." Billy felt glad. "If 
you will collect tail hair, I might be able to make a hair 
rope for you sometime. You could use it for a hacka-
more."
Jody wanted to go back to the box stall. "Could I lead 
him to school, do you think-to show the kids?"
But Billy shook his head. "He's not even halter-broke 
yet. We had a time getting him here. Had to almost drag 
him. You better be starting for school though."
John Steinbeck
"I'll bring the kids to see him here this afternoon," 
Jody said.
Six boys came over the hill half an hour early that 
afternoon, running hard, their heads down, their fore-
arms working, their breath whistling. They swept by the 
house and cut across the stubble-field to the barn. And 
then they stood self-consciously before the pony, and 
then they looked at Jody with eyes in which there was 
a new admiration and a new respect. Before today Jody 
had been a boy, dressed in overalls and a blue shirt-
quieter than most, even suspected of being a little cow-
ardly. And now he was different. Out of a thousand 
centuries they drew the ancient admiration of the foot-
man for the horseman. They knew instinctively that a 
man on a horse is spiritually as well as physically bigger 
than a man on foot. They knew that Jody had been mi-
raculously lifted out of equality with them, and had been 
placed. over them. Gabilan put his head out of the stall 
and sniffed them.
"Why'nt you ride him?" the boys cried. "Why'nt you 
braid his tail with ribbons like in the fair?" "When you 
going to ride him?"
Jody's courage was up. He too felt the superiority of 
the horseman. "He's not old enough. Nobody can ride 
him for a long time. I'm going to train him on the long 
halter. Billy Buck is going to show me how."
"Well, can't we even lead him around a little?"
"He isn't even halter broke," Jody said. He wanted to 
be completely alone when he took the pony out the first 
time. "Come and see the saddle."
They were speechless at the red morocco saddle, com-
pletely shocked out of comment. "It isn't much use in 
the brush," Jody explained. "It'll look pretty on him
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The Red Pony
though. Maybe I'll ride bareback when I go into the 
brush."
"How you going to rope a cow without a saddle horn?" 
"Maybe I'll get another saddle for every day. My 
father might want me to help him with the stock." He let 
them feel the red saddle, and showed them the brass 
chain throat-latch on the bridle and the big brass but-
tons at each temple where the headstall and brow band 
crossed. The whole thing was too wonderful. They had 
to go away after a little while, and each boy, in his 
mind, searched among his possessions for a bribe worthy 
of offering in return for a ride on the red pony when the 
time should come.
Jody was glad when they had gone. He took brush 
and currycomb from the wall, took down the barrier of 
the box stall and stepped cautiously in. The pony's eyes 
glittered, and he edged around into kicking position. But 
Jody touched him on the shoulder and rubbed his high 
arched neck as he had always seen Billy Buck do, and 
he crooned, "So-o-o Boy," in a deep voice. The pony 
gradually relaxed his tenseness. Jody curried and brushed 
until a pile of dead hair lay in the stall and until the 
pony's coat had taken on a deep red shine. Each time 
he finished he thought it might have been done better. 
He braided the mane into a dozen little pigtails, and he 
braided the forelock, and then he undid them and 
brushed the hair out straight again.
Jody did not hear his mother enter the barn. She was 
angry when she came, but when she looked in at the 
pony and at Jody working over him, she felt a curious 
pride rise up in her. "Have you forgot the wood-box?" 
she asked gently. "It's not far off from dark and there's 
not a stick of wood in the house, and the chickens aren't 
fed."
Jody quickly put up his tools. "I forgot, ma'am."
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John Steinbeck
"Well, after this do your chores first. Then you won't 
forget. I expect you'll forget lots of things now if I don't 
keep an eye on you."
"Can I have carrots from the garden for him, ma'am?" 
She had to think about that. "Oh-I guess so, if you 
only take the big tough ones."
"Carrots keep the coat good," he said, and again she 
felt the curious rush of pride.
Jody never waited for the triangle to get him out of 
bed after the coming of the pony. It became his habit 
to creep out of bed even before his mother was awake, to 
slip into his clothes and to go quietly down to the barn 
to see Gabilan. In the grey quiet mornings when the 
land and the brush and the houses and the trees were 
silver-grey and black like a photograph negative, he stole 
toward the barn, past the sleeping stones and the sleep-
ing cypress tree. The turkeys, roosting in the tree out of 
coyotes' reach, clicked drowsily. The fields glowed with 
a grey frost-like light and in the dew the tracks of rab-
bits and of field mice stood out sharply. The good dogs 
came stiffly out of their little houses, hackles up and deep 
growls in their throats. Then they caught Jody's scent, 
and their stiff tails rose up and waved a greeting-
Doubletree Mutt with the big thick tail, and Smasher, the 
incipient shepherd-then went lazily back to their warm 
beds.
It was a strange time and a mysterious journey, to Jody 
-an extension of a dream. When he first had the pony 
he liked to torture himself during the trip by thinking 
Gabilan would not be in his stall, and worse, would 
never have been there. And he had other delicious little 
self-induced pains. He thought how the rats had gnawed 
ragged holes in the red saddle, and how the mice had 
nibbled Gabilan's tail until it was stringy and thin. He
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The Red Pony
usually ran the last little way to the barn. He unlatched 
the rusty hasp of the barn door and stepped in, and no 
matter how quietly he opened the door, Gabilan was 
always looking at him over the barrier of the box stall 
and Gabilan whinnied softly and stamped his front foot, 
and his eyes had big sparks of red fire in them like oak-
wood embers.
Sometimes, if the work horses were to be used that 
day, Jody found Billy Buck in the barn harnessing and 
currying. Billy stood with him and looked long at Gabi-
Ian and he told Jody a great many things about horses. 
He explained that they were terribly afraid for their feet, 
so that one must make a practice of lifting the legs and 
patting the hoofs and ankles to remove their terror. He 
told Jody how horses love conversation. He must talk to 
the pony all the time, and tell him the reasons for every-
thing. Billy wasn't sure a horse could understand every-
thing that was said to him, but it was impossible to say 
how much was understood. A horse never kicked up a 
fuss if some one he liked explained things to him. Billy 
could give examples, too. He had known, for instance, a 
horse nearly dead beat with fatigue to perk up when 
told it was only a little farther to his destination. And he 
had known a horse paralyzed with fright to come out of 
it when his rider told him what it was that was frighten-
ing him. While he talked in the mornings, Billy Buck 
cut twenty or thirty straws into neat three-inch lengths 
and stuck them into his hatband. Then during the whole 
day, if he wanted to pick his teeth or merely to chew 
4n something, he had only to reach up for one of them.
Jody listened carefully, for he knew and the whole 
country knew that Billy Buck was a fine hand with 
horses. Billy's own horse was a stringy cayuse with a 
hammer head, but he nearly always won the first prizes 
at the stock trials. Billy could rope a steer, take a double
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John Steinbeck
half-hitch about the horn with his riata, and dismount, 
and his horse would play the steer as an angler plays a 
fish, keeping a tight rope until the steer was down or 
beaten.
Every morning, after Jody had curried and brushed the 
pony, he let down the barrier of the stall, and Gabilan 
thrust past him and raced down the barn and into the 
corral. Around and around he galloped, and sometimes 
he jumped forward and landed on stiff legs. He stood 
quivering, stiff ears forward, eyes rolling so that the 
whites showed, pretending to be frightened. At last he 
walked snorting to the water-trough and buried his nose 
in the water up to the nostrils. Jody was proud then, 
for he knew that was the way to judge a horse. Poor 
horses only touched their lips to the water, but a fine 
spirited beast put his whole nose and mouth under, and 
only left room to breathe.
Then Jody stood and watched the pony, and he saw 
things he had never noticed about any other horse, the 
sleek, sliding flank muscles and the cords of the buttocks, 
which flexed like a closing fist, and the shine the sun put 
on the red coat. Having seen horses all his life, Jody had 
never looked at them very closely before. But now he 
noticed the moving ears which gave expression and even 
inflection of expression to the face. The pony talked with 
his ears. You could tell exactly how he felt about every-
thing by the way his ears pointed. Sometimes they were 
stiff and upright and sometimes lax and sagging. They 
went back when he was angry or fearful, and forward 
when he was anxious and curious and pleased; and their 
exact position indicated which emotion he had.
Billy Buck kept his word. In the early fall the training 
began. First there was the halter-breaking, and that was 
the hardest because it was the first thing. Jody held a 
carrot and coaxed and promised and pulled on the rope.
16
The Red Pony
The pony set his feet like a burro when he felt the strain. 
But before long he learned. Jody walked all over the 
ranch leading him. Gradually he took to dropping the 
rope until the pony followed him unled wherever he 
went.
And then came the training on the long halter. That 
was slower work. Jody stood in the middle of a circle, 
holding the long halter. He clucked with his tongue and 
the pony started to walk in a big circle, held in by the long 
rope. He clucked again to make the pony trot, and again 
to make him gallop. Around and around Gabilan went 
thundering and enjoying it immensely. Then he called, 
"Whoa," and the pony stopped. It was not long until 
Gabilan was perfect at it. But in many ways he was a bad 
pony. He bit Jody in the pants and stomped on Jody's 
feet. Now and then his ears went back and he aimed a 
tremendous kick at the boy. Every time he did one of 
these bad things, Gabilan settled back and seemed to 
laugh to himself.
Billy Buck worked at the hair rope in the evenings 
before the fireplace. Jody collected tail hair in a bag, 
and he sat and watched Billy slowly constructing the 
rope, twisting a few hairs to make a string and rolling 
two strings together for a cord, and then braiding a num-
ber of cords to make the rope. Billy rolled the finished 
rope on the floor under his foot to make it round and 
hard.
The long halter work rapidly approached perfection. 
Jody's father, watching the pony stop and start and trot 
and gallop, was a little bothered by it.
"He's getting to be almost a trick pony," he com-
plained. "I don't like trick horses. It takes all the-dig 
nity out of a horse to make him do tricks. Why, a trick 
horse is kind of like an actor-no dignity, no character of
17
John Steinbeck
his own." And his father said, "I guess you better be get-
ting him used to the saddle pretty soon."
Jody rushed for the harness-room. For some time he 
had been riding the saddle on a sawhorse. He changed 
the stirrup length over and over, and could never get it 
just right. Sometimes, mounted on the sawhorse in the 
harness-room, with collars and hames and tugs hung all 
about him, Jody rode out beyond the room. He carried 
his rifle across the pommel. He saw the fields go flying 
by, and he heard the beat of the galloping hoofs.
It was a ticklish job, saddling the pony the first time. 
Gabilan hunched and reared and threw the saddle off 
before the cinch could be tightened. It had to be replaced 
again and again until at last the pony let it stay. And the 
cinching was difficult, too. Day by day Jody tightened 
the girth a little more until at last the pony didn't mind 
the saddle at all.
Then there was the bridle. Billy explained how to use 
a stick of licorice for a bit until Gabilan was used to hav-
ing something in his mouth. Billy explained, "Of course 
we could force-break him to everything, but he wouldn't 
be as good a horse if we did. He'd always be a little bit 
afraid, and he wouldn't mind because he wanted to"
The first time the pony wore the bridle he whipped his 
head about and worked his tongue against the bit until 
the blood oozed from the corners of his mouth. He tried 
to rub the headstall off on the manger. His ears pivoted 
about and his eyes turned red with fear and with gen-
eral rambunctiousness. Jody rejoiced, for he knew that 
only a mean-souled horse does not resent training.
And Jody trembled when he thought of the time when 
he would first sit in the saddle. The pony would prob-
ably throw him off. There was no disgrace in that. The 
disgrace would come if he did not get right up and
18
The Red Pony
mount again. Sometimes he dreamed that he lay in the 
dirt and cried and couldn't make himself mount again. 
The shame of the dream lasted until the middle of the day.
Gabilan was growing fast. Already he had lost the 
long-leggedness of the colt; his mane was getting longer 
and blacker. Under the constant currying and brushing 
his coat lay as smooth and gleaming as orange-red 
lacquer. Jody oiled the hoofs and kept them carefully 
trimmed so they would not crack.
The hair rope was nearly finished. Jody's father gave 
him an old pair of spurs and bent in the side bars and 
cut down the strap and took up the chainlets until they 
fitted. And then one day Carl Tiflin said:
"The pony's growing faster than I thought. I guess you 
can ride him by Thanksgiving. Think you can stick on?" 
"I don't know," Jody said shyly. Thanksgiving was 
only three weeks off. He hoped it wouldn't rain, for rain 
would spot the red saddle.
Gabilan knew and liked Jody by now. He nickered 
when Jody came across the stubble-field, and in the pas-
ture he came running when his master whistled for him. 
There was always a carrot for him every time.
Billy Buck gave him riding instructions over and over. 
"Now when you get up there, just grab tight with your 
knees and keep your hands away from the saddle, and if 
you get throwed, don't let that stop you. No matter how 
good a man is, there's always some horse can pitch him. 
You just climb up again before he gets to feeling smart 
about it. Pretty soon, he won't throw you no more, and 
pretty soon he can't throw you no more. That's the way 
to do it."
"I hope it don't rain before," Jody said.
"Why not? Don't want to get throwed in the mud?" 
That was partly it, and also he was afraid that in the 
flurry of bucking Gabilan might slip and fall on him and
19
John Steinbeck
break his leg or his hip. He had seen that happen to 
men before, had seen how they writhed on the ground 
like squashed bugs, and he was afraid of it.
He practiced on the sawhorse how he would hold the 
reins in his left hand and a hat in his right hand. If he 
kept his hands thus busy, he couldn't grab the horn if 
he felt himself going off. He didn't like to think of what 
would happen if he did grab the horn. Perhaps his father 
and Billy Buck would never speak to him again, they 
would be so ashamed. The news would get about and his 
mother would be ashamed too. And in the school yard-
it was too awful to contemplate.
He began putting his weight in a stirrup when Gabi-
lan was saddled, but he didn't throw his leg over the 
pony's back. That was forbidden until Thanksgiving.
Every afternoon he put the red saddle on the pony 
and cinched it tight. The pony was learning already to 
fill his stomach out unnaturally large while the cinching 
was going on, and then to let it down when the straps 
were fixed. Sometimes Jody led him up to the brush line 
and let him drink from the round green tub, and some-
times he led him up through the stubble-field to the 
hilltop from which it was possible to see the white town 
of Salinas and the geometric fields of the great valley, 
and the oak trees clipped by the sheep. Now and then 
they broke through the brush and came to little cleared 
circles so hedged in that the world was gone and only the 
sky and the circle of brush were left from the old life. 
Gabilan liked these trips and showed it by keeping his 
head very high and by quivering his nostrils with interest. 
When the two came back from an expedition they 
smelled of the sweet sage they had forced through.
Time dragged on toward Thanksgiving, but winter 
came fast. The clouds swept down and hung all day over
20
The Red Pony
the land and brushed the hilltops, and the winds blew 
shrilly at night. All day the dry oak leaves drifted down 
from the trees until they covered the ground, and yet the 
trees were unchanged.
Jody had wished it might not rain before Thanks-
giving, but it did. The brown earth turned dark and the 
trees glistened. The cut ends of the stubble turned black 
with mildew; the haystacks grayed from exposure to the 
damp, and on the roofs the moss, which had been all 
summer as grey as lizards, turned a brilliant yellow-green. 
During the week of rain, Jody kept the pony in the box 
stall out of the dampness, except for a little time after 
school when he took him out for exercise and to drink 
at the water-trough in the upper corral. Not once did 
Gabilan get wet.
The wet weather continued until little new grass ap-
peared. Jody walked to school dressed in a slicker and 
short rubber boots. At length one morning the sun came 
out brightly. Jody, at his work in the box stall, said to 
Billy Buck, "Maybe I'll leave Gabilan in the corral when 
I go to school today."
"Be good for him to be out in the sun," Billy assured 
him. "No animal likes to be cooped up too long. Your 
father and me are going back on the hill to clean the 
leaves out of the spring." Billy nodded and picked his 
teeth with one of his little straws.
"If the rain comes, though" Jody suggested.
"Not likely to rain today. She's rained herself out." 
Billy pulled up his sleeves and snapped his arm bands. 
"If it comes on to rain-why a little rain don't hurt a 
horse."
"Well, if it does come on to rain, you put him in, will 
you, Billy? I'm scared he might get cold so I couldn't 
ride him when the time comes."
21
John Steinbeck
"Oh sure! I'll watch out for him if we get back in 
time. But it won't rain today."
And so Jody, when he went to school left Gabilan 
standing out in the corral.
Billy Buck wasn't wrong about many things. He 
couldn't be. But he was wrong about the weather that 
day, for a little after noon the clouds pushed over the 
hills and the rain began to pour down. Jody heard it 
start on the schoolhouse roof. He considered holding up 
one finger for permission to go to the outhouse and, once 
outside, running for home to put the pony in. Punish-
ment would be prompt both at school and at home. He 
gave it up and took ease from Billy's assurance that rain 
couldn't hurt a horse. When school was finally out, he 
hurried home through the dark rain. The banks at the 
sides of the road spouted little jets of muddy water. The 
rain slanted and swirled under a cold and gusty wind. 
Jody dog-trotted home, slopping through the gravelly 
mud of the road.
From the top of the ridge he could see Gabilan stand 
ing miserably in the corral. The red coat was almost 
black, and streaked with water. He stood head down 
with his rump to the rain and wind. Jody arrived run 
ning and threw open the barn door and led the wet 
pony in by his forelock. Then he found a gunny sack and 
rubbed the soaked hair and rubbed the legs and ankles. 
Gabilan stood patiently, but he trembled in gusts like 
the wind.
When he had dried the pony as well as he could, Jody 
went up to the house and brought hot water down to the 
barn and soaked the grain in it. Gabilan was not very 
hungry. He nibbled at the hot mash, but he was not very 
much interested in it, and he still shivered now and then. 
A little steam rose from his damp back.
It was almost dark when Billy Buck and Carl Tiflin
22
The Red Pony
came home. "When the rain started we put up at Ben 
Herche's place, and the rain never let up all afternoon," 
Carl Tiflin explained. Jody looked reproachfully at Billy 
Buck and Billy felt guilty.
"You said it wouldn't rain," Jody accused him.
Billy looked away. "It's hard to tell, this time of year," 
he said, but his excuse was lame. He had no right to be 
fallible, and he knew it.
"The pony got wet, got soaked through." 
"Did you dry him off?"
"I rubbed him with a sack and I gave him hot grain." 
Billy nodded in agreement.
"Do you think he'll take cold, Billy?"
"A little rain never hurt anything," Billy assured him. 
Jody's father joined the conversation then and lectured 
the boy a little. "A horse," he said, "isn't any lap-dog 
kind of thing." Carl Tiflin hated weakness and sickness, 
and he held a violent contempt for helplessness.
Jody's mother put a platter of steaks on the table and 
boiled potatoes and boiled squash, which clouded the 
room with their steam. They sat down to eat. Carl Tiflin 
still grumbled about weakness put into animals and men 
by too much coddling.
Billy Buck felt bad about his mistake. "Did you blanket 
him?" he asked.
"No. I couldn't find any blanket. I laid some sacks 
over his back"
"We'll go down and cover him up after we eat, then." 
Billy felt better about it then. When Jody's father had 
gone in to the fire and his mother was washing dishes, 
Billy found and lighted a lantern. He and Jody walked 
through the mud to the barn. The barn was dark and 
warm and sweet. The horses still munched their evening 
hay. "You hold the lantern!" Billy ordered. And he felt 
the pony's legs and tested the heat of the flanks. He put
23
John Steinbeck
his cheek against the pony's grey muzzle and then he 
rolled up the eyelids to look at the eyeballs and he lifted 
the lips to see the gums, and he put his fingers inside the 
ears. "He don't seem so chipper," Billy said. "I'll give 
him a rub-down."
Then Billy found a sack and rubbed the pony's legs 
violently and he rubbed the chest and the withers. Gabi-
lan was strangely spiritless. He submitted patiently to the 
rubbing. At last Billy brought an old cotton comforter 
from the saddle-room, and threw it over the pony's back 
and tied it at neck and chest with string.
"Now he'll be all right in the morning," Billy said.
Jody's mother looked up when he got back to the 
house. "You're late up from bed," she said. She held his 
chin in her hard hand and brushed the tangled hair out 
of his eyes and she said, "Don't worry about the pony. 
He'll be all right. Billy's as good as any horse doctor in 
the country."
Jody hadn't known she could see his worry. He pulled 
gently away from her and knelt down in front of the 
fireplace until it burned his stomach. He scorched him-
self through and then went in to bed, but it was a hard 
thing to go to sleep. He awakened after what seemed a 
long time. The room was dark but there was a greyness 
in the window like that which precedes the dawn. He got 
up and found his overalls and searched for the legs, and 
then the clock in the other room struck two. He laid his 
clothes down and got back into bed. It was broad day-
light when he awakened again. For the first time he 
had slept through the ringing of the triangle. He leaped 
up, flung on his clothes and went out of the door still 
buttoning his shirt. His mother looked after him for a 
moment and then went quietly back to her work. Her eyes 
were brooding and kind. Now and then her mouth
24
The Red Pony
smiled a little but without changing her eyes at all. 
Jody ran on toward the barn. Halfway there he heard 
the sound he dreaded, the hollow rasping cough of a 
horse. He broke into a sprint then. In the barn he found 
Billy Buck with the pony. Billy was rubbing his legs with 
his strong thick hands. He looked up and smiled gaily. 
"He just took a little cold," Billy said. "We'll have him 
out of it in a couple of days."
Jody looked at the pony's face. The eyes were half 
closed and the lids thick and dry. In the eye corners a 
crust of hard mucus stuck. Gabilan's ears hung loosely 
sideways and his head was low. Jody put out his hand, 
but the pony did not move close to it. He coughed again 
and his whole body constricted with the effort. A little 
stream of thin fluid ran from his nostrils.
Jody looked back at Billy Buck. "He's awful sick, 
Billy"
"Just a little cold, like I said," Billy insisted. "You go 
get some breakfast and then go back to school. I'll take 
care of him."
"But you might have to do something else. You might 
leave him."
"No, I won't. I won't leave him at all. Tomorrow's 
Saturday. Then you can stay with him all day." Billy had 
failed again, and he felt badly about it. He had to cure 
the pony now.
Jody walked up to the house and took his place list-
lessly at the table. The eggs and bacon were cold and 
greasy, but he didn't notice it. He ate his usual amount. 
He didn't even ask to stay home from school. His mother 
pushed his hair back when she took his plate. "Billy'll 
take care of the pony," she assured him.
He moped through the whole day at school. He 
couldn't answer any questions nor read any words. He 
couldn't even tell anyone the pony was sick, for that
25
John Steinbeck
might make him sicker. And when school was finally out 
he started home in dread. He walked slowly and let the 
other boys leave him. He wished he might continue walk-
ing and never arrive at the ranch.
Billy was in the barn, as he had promised, and the 
pony was worse. His eyes were almost dosed now, and his 
breath whistled shrilly past an obstruction in his nose. A 
film covered that part of the eyes that was visible at all. 
It was doubtful whether the pony could see any more. 
Now and then he snorted, to dear his nose, and by the 
action seemed to plug it tighter. Jody looked dispiritedly 
at the pony's coat. The hair lay rough and unkempt and 
seemed to have lost all of its old luster. Billy stood quietly 
besides the stall. Jody hated to ask, but he had to know. 
"Billy, is he-is he going to get well?"
Billy put his fingers between the bars under the pony's 
jaw and felt about. "Feel here," he said and he guided 
Jody's fingers to a large lump under the jaw. "When that 
gets bigger, I'll open it up and then he'll get better."
Jody looked quickly away, for he had heard about that 
lump. "What is it the matter with him?"
Billy didn't want to answer, but he had to. He couldn't 
be wrong three times. "Strangles," he said shortly, "but 
don't you worry about that. I'll pull him out of it. I've 
seen them get well when they were worse than Gabilan 
is. I'm going to steam him now. You can help."
"Yes," Jody said miserably. He followed Billy into the 
grain room and watched him make the steaming bag 
ready. It was a long canvas nose bag with straps to go 
over a horse's ears. Billy filled it one-third full of bran 
and then he added a couple of handfuls of dried hops. 
On top of the dry substance he poured a little carbolic 
acid and a little turpentine. `I'll be mixing it all up 
while you run to the house for a kettle of boiling water," 
Billy said.
26
The Red Pony
When Jody came back with the steaming kettle, Billy 
buckled the straps over Gabilan's head and fitted the bag 
tightly around his nose. Then through a little hole in the 
side of the bag he poured the boiling water on the mix-
ture. The pony started away as a cloud of strong steam 
rose up, but then the soothing fumes crept through his 
nose and into his lungs, and the sharp steam began to 
clear out the nasal passages. He breathed loudly. His legs 
trembled in an ague, and his eyes closed against the 
biting cloud. Billy poured in more water and kept the 
steam rising for fifteen minutes. At last he set down the 
kettle and took the bag from Gabilan's nose. The pony 
looked better. He breathed freely, and his eyes were open 
wider than they had been.
"See how good it makes him feel," Billy said. "Now 
we'll wrap him up in the blanket again. Maybe he'll be 
nearly well by morning."
"I'll stay with him tonight," Jody suggested.
"No. Don't you do it. I'll bring my blankets down here 
and put them in the hay. You can stay tomorrow and 
steam him if he needs it."
The evening was falling when they went to the house 
for their supper. Jody didn't even realize that some one 
else had fed the chickens and filled the wood-box. He 
walked up past the house to the dark brush line and took 
a drink of water from the tub. The spring water was so 
cold that it stung his mouth and drove a shiver through 
him. The sky above the hills was still light. He saw a 
hawk flying so high that it caught the sun on its breast 
and shone like a spark. Two blackbirds were driving him 
down the sky, glittering as they attacked their enemy. in 
the west, the clouds were moving in to rain again.
Jody's father didn't speak at all while the family ate 
supper, but after Billy Buck had taken his blankets and 
gone to sleep in the barn, Carl Tiff in built a high fire in
27
John Steinbeck
the fireplace and told stories. He told about the wild 
man who ran naked through the country and had a tail 
and ears like a horse, and he told about the rabbit-cats 
of Moro Cojo that hopped into the trees for birds. He 
revived the famous Maxwell brothers who found a vein 
of gold and hid the traces of it so carefully that they 
could never find it again.
Jody sat with his chin in his hands; his mouth worked 
nervously, and his father gradually became aware that he 
wasn't listening very carefully. "Isn't that funny?" he 
asked.
Jody laughed politely and said, "Yes, sir" His father 
was angry and hurt, then. He didn't tell any more stories. 
After a while, Jody took a lantern and went down to the 
barn. Billy Buck was asleep in the hay, and, except that 
his breath rasped a little in his lungs, the pony seemed 
to be much better. Jody stayed a little while, running his 
fingers over the red rough coat, and then he took up the 
lantern and went back to the house. When he was in bed, 
his mother came into the room.
"Have you enough covers on? It's getting winter." 
"Well, get some rest tonight" She hesitated to go out, 
stood uncertainly. "The pony will be all right," she said.
Jody was tired. He went to sleep quickly and didn't 
awaken until dawn. The triangle sounded, and Billy 
Buck came up from the barn before Jody could get out 
of the house.
"How is he?" Jody demanded.
Billy always wolfed his breakfast. "Pretty good. I'm 
going to open that lump this morning. Then he'll be 
better maybe."
After breakfast, Billy got out his best knife, one with a 
needle point. He whetted the shining blade a long time
28
The Red Pony
on a little carborundum stone. He tried the point and the 
blade again and again on his calloused thumb-ball, and 
at last he tried it on his upper lip.
On the way to the barn, Jody noticed how the young 
grass was up and how the stubble was melting day by day 
into the new green crop of volunteer. It was a cold sunny 
morning.
As soon as he saw the pony, Jody knew he was worse. 
His eyes were closed and sealed shut with dried mucus. 
His head hung so low that his nose almost touched the 
straw of his bed. There was a little groan in each breath, 
a deep-seated, patient groan.
Billy lifted the weak head and made a quick slash with 
the knife. Jody saw the yellow pus run out. He held up 
the head while Billy swabbed out the wound with weak 
carbolic acid salve.
"Now he'll feel better," Billy assured him. "That yellow 
poison is what makes him sick."
Jody looked unbelieving at Billy Buck. "He's awful 
sick."
Billy thought a long time what to say. He nearly tossed 
off a careless assurance, but he saved himself in time. 
"Yes, he's pretty sick," he said at last. "I've seen worse 
ones get well. If he doesn't get pneumonia, we'll pull 
him through. You stay with him. If he gets worse, you 
can come and get me."
For a long time after Billy went away, Jody stood be-
side the pony, stroking him behind the ears. The pony 
didn't flip his head the way he had done when he was 
well. The groaning in his breathing was becoming more 
hollow.
Doubletree Mutt looked into the barn, his big tail wav-
ing provocatively, and Jody was so incensed at his health 
that he found a hard black clod on the floor and de-

29
John Steinbeck
liberately threw it. Doubletree Mutt went yelping away 
to nurse a bruised paw.
In the middle of the morning, Billy Buck came back 
and made another steam bag. Jody watched to see 
whether the pony improved this time as he had before. 
His breathing eased a little, but he did not raise his head.
The Saturday dragged on. Late in the afternoon Jody 
went to the house and brought his bedding down and 
made up a place to sleep in the hay. He didn't ask per-
mission. He knew from the way his mother looked at him 
that she would let him do almost anything. That night 
he left a lantern burning on a wire over the box stall. 
Billy had told him to rub the pony's legs every little 
while.
At nine o'clock the wind sprang up and howled around 
the barn. And in spite of his worry, Jody grew sleepy. He 
got into his blankets and went to sleep, but the breathy 
groans of the pony sounded in his dreams. And in his 
sleep he heard a crashing noise which went on and on 
until it awakened him. The wind was rushing through 
the barn. He sprang up and looked down the lane of 
stalls. The barn door had blown open, and the pony was 
gone.
He caught the lantern and ran outside into the gale, 
and he saw Gabilan weakly shambling away into the 
darkness, head down, legs working slowly and mechan-
ically. When Jody ran up and caught him by the fore-
lock, he allowed himself to be led back and put into his 
stall. His groans were louder, and a fierce whistling came 
from his nose. Jody didn't sleep any more then. The 
hissing of the pony's breath grew louder and sharper.
He was glad when Billy Buck came in at dawn. Billy 
looked for a time at the pony as though he had never 
seen him before. He felt the ears and flanks. "Jody," he
30
The Red Pony
said, "I've got to do something you won't want to see. 
You run up to the house for a while."
Jody grabbed him fiercely by the forearm. "You're not 
going to shoot him?"
Billy patted his hand. "No. I'm going to open a little 
hole in his windpipe so he can breathe. His nose is filled 
up. When he gets well, we'll put a little brass button in 
the hole for him to breathe through."
Jody couldn't have gone away if he had wanted to. 
It was awful to see the red hide cut, but infinitely more 
terrible to know it was being cut and not to see it. "I'll 
stay right here," he said bitterly. "You sure you got to?"
"Yes. I'm sure. If you stay, you can hold his head. If it 
doesn't make you sick, that is"
The fine knife came out again and was whetted again 
just as carefully as it had been the first time. Jody held 
the pony's head up and the throat taut, while Billy felt 
up and down for the right place. Jody sobbed once as 
the bright knife point disappeared into the throat. The 
pony plunged weakly away and then stood still, trem-
bling violently. The blood ran thickly out and up the 
knife and across Billy's hand and into his shirtsleeve: The 
sure square hand sawed out a round hole in the flesh, 
and the breath came bursting out of the hole, throwing 
a fine spray of blood. With the rush of oxygen, the pony 
took a sudden strength. He lashed out with his hind feet 
and tried to rear, but Jody held his head down while 
Billy mopped the new wound with carbolic salve. It was 
a good job. The blood stopped flowing and the air 
puffed out of the hole and sucked it in regularly with a 
little bubbling noise.
The rain brought in by the night wind began to fall 
on the barn roof. Then the triangle rang for breakfast. 
"You go up and eat while I wait," Billy said. "We've 
got to keep this hole from plugging up."
31
John Steinbeck
Jody walked slowly out of the barn. He was too dis-
pirited to tell Billy how the barn door had blown open 
and let the pony out. He emerged into the wet grey 
morning and sloshed up to the house, taking a perverse 
pleasure in splashing through all the puddles. His mother 
fed him and put dry clothes on. She didn't question him. 
She seemed to know he couldn't answer questions. But 
when he was ready to go back to the barn she brought 
him a pan of steaming meal. "Give him this," she said.
But Jody did not take the pan. He said, "He won't 
eat anything," and ran out of the house. At the barn, 
Billy showed him how to fix a ball of cotton on a stick, 
with which to swab out the breathing hole when it be-
came clogged with mucus.
Jody's father walked into the barn and stood with 
them in front of the stall. At length he turned to the boy. 
"Hadn't you better come with me? I'm going to drive 
over the hill" Jody shook his head. "You better come on, 
out of this," his father insisted.
Billy turned on him angrily. "Let him alone. It's his 
pony, isn't it?"
Carl Tiflin walked away without saying another word. 
His feelings were badly hurt.
All morning Jody kept the wound open and the air 
passing in and out freely. At noon the pony lay wearily 
down on his side and stretched his nose out.
Billy came back. "If you're going to stay with him to. 
night, you better take a little nap," he said. Jody went 
absently out of the barn. The sky had cleared to a hard 
thin blue. Everywhere the birds were busy with worms 
that had come to the damp surface of the ground.
Jody walked to the brush line and sat on the edge of 
the mossy tub. He looked down at the house and at the 
old bunkhouse and at the dark cypress tree. The place 
was familiar, but curiously changed. It wasn't itself any
32
The Red Pony
more, but a frame for things that were happening. A cold 
wind blew out of the east now, signifying.that the rain 
was over for a little while. At his feet Jody could see the 
little arms of new weeds spreading out over the ground. 
In the mud about the spring were thousands of quail 
tracks.
Doubletree Mutt came sideways and embarrassed up 
through the vegetable patch, and Jody, remembering 
how he had thrown the clod, put his arm about the dog's 
neck and kissed him on his wide black nose. Doubletree 
Mutt sat still, as though he knew some solemn thing was 
happening. His big tail slapped the ground gravely. Jody 
pulled a swollen tick out of Mutt's neck and popped it 
dead between his thumb-nails. It was a nasty thing. He 
washed his hands in the cold spring water.
Except for the steady swish of the wind, the farm was 
very quiet. Jody knew his mother wouldn't mind if he 
didn't go in to eat his lunch. After a little while he went 
slowly back to the barn. Mutt crept into his own little 
house and whined softly to himself for a long time.
Billy Buck stood up from the box and surrendered the 
cotton swab. The pony still lay on his side and the 
wound in his throat bellowed in and out. When Jody 
saw how dry and dead the hair looked, he knew at last 
that there was no hope for the pony. He had seen the 
dead hair before on dogs and on cows, and it was a sure 
sign. He sat heavily on the box and let down the barrier 
of the box stall. For a long time he kept his eyes on the 
moving wound, and at last he dozed, and the afternoon 
passed quickly. Just before dark his mother brought a 
deep dish of stew and left it for him and went away. Jody 
ate a little of it, and, when it was dark, he set the lantern 
on the floor by the pony's head so he could watch the 
wound and keep it open. And he dozed again until the
33
John Steinbeck
night chill awakened him. The wind was blowing fierce-
y, bringing the north cold with it. Jody brought a 
blanket from his bed in the hay and wrapped himself in 
it. Gabilan's breathing was quiet at last; the hole in his 
throat moved gently. The owls flew through the hayloft, 
shrieking and looking for mice. Jody put his hands down 
on his head and slept. In his sleep he was aware that the 
wind had increased. He heard it slamming about the 
barn.
It was daylight when he awakened. The barn door had 
swung open. The pony was gone. He sprang up and ran 
out into the morning light.
The pony's tracks were plain enough, dragging through 
the frostlike dew on the young grass, tired tracks with 
little lines between them where the hoofs had dragged. 
They headed for the brush line halfway up the ridge. 
Jody broke into a run and followed them. The sun shone 
on the sharp white quartz that stuck through the ground 
here and there. As he followed the plain trail, a shadow 
cut across in front of him. He looked up and saw a high 
circle of black buzzards, and the slowly revolving circle 
dropped lower and lower. The solemn birds soon disap-
peared over the ridge. Jody ran faster then, forced on by 
panic and rage. The trail entered the brush at last and 
followed a winding route among the tall sage bushes.
At the top of the ridge Jody was winded. He paused, 
puffing noisily. The blood pounded in his ears. Then he 
saw what he was looking for. Below, in one of the little 
clearings in the brush, lay the red pony. In the distance, 
Jody could see the legs moving slowly and convulsively. 
And in a circle around him stood the buzzards, waiting 
for the moment of death they know so well.
Jody leaped forward and plunged down the hill. The 
wet ground muffled his steps and the brush hid him. 
When he arrived, it was all over. The first buzzard sat
34
The Red Pony
on the pony's head and its beak had just risen dripping 
with dark eye fluid. Jody plunged into the circle like a 
cat. The black brotherhood arose in a cloud, but the big 
one on the pony's head was too late. As it hopped along 
to take off, Jody caught its wing tip and pulled it down. 
It was nearly as big as he was. The free wing crashed into 
his face with the force of a club, but he hung on. The 
claws fastened on his leg and the wing elbows battered 
his head on either side. Jody groped blindly with his 
free hand. His fingers found the neck of the struggling 
bird. The red eyes looked into his face, calm and fearless 
and fierce; the naked head turned from side to side. 
Then the beak opened and vomited a stream of putrified 
fluid. Jody brought up his knee and fell on the great bird. 
He held the neck to the ground with one hand while his 
other found a piece of sharp white quartz. The first blow 
broke the beak sideways and black blood spurted from 
the twisted, leathery mouth corners. He struck again and 
missed. The red fearless eyes still looked at him, imper-
sonal and unafraid and detached. He struck again and 
again, until the buzzard lay dead, until its head was a 
red pulp. He was still beating the dead bird when Billy 
Buck pulled him off, and held him tightly to calm his 
shaking.
Carl Tiflin wiped the blood from the boy's face with a 
red bandana. Jody was limp and quiet now. His father 
moved the buzzard with his toe. "Jody," he explained, 
"the buzzard didn't kill the pony. Don't you know that?" 
"I know it," Jody said wearily.
It was Billy Buck who was angry. He had lifted Jody 
in his arms, and had turned to carry him home. But he 
turned back on Carl Tiflin. "'Course he knows it," Billy 
said furiously, "Jesus Christl man, can't you see how 
he'd feel about it?"
35
John Steinbeck
II. THE GREAT MOUNTAINS
IN THE humming heat of a midsummer afternoon the 
little boy Jody listlessly looked about the ranch for some-
thing to do. He had been to the barn, had thrown rocks 
at the swallows' nests under the eaves until every one 
of the little mud houses broke open and dropped its 
lining of straw and dirty feathers. Then at the ranch 
house he baited a rat trap with stale cheese and set it 
where Doubletree Mutt, that good big dog, would get his 
nose snapped. Jody was not moved by an impulse of 
cruelty; he was bored with the long hot afternoon. 
Doubletree Mutt put his stupid nose in the trap and 
got it smacked, and shrieked with agony and limped 
away with blood on his nostrils. No matter where he was 
hurt, Mutt limped It was just a way he had. Once when 
he was young, Mutt got caught in a coyote trap, and 
always after that he limped, even when he was scolded.
When Mutt yelped, Jody's mother called from inside 
the house, "Jodyl Stop torturing that dog and find some-
thing to do."
Jody felt mean then, so he threw a rock at Mutt. Then 
he took his slingshot from the porch and walked up to-
ward the brush line to try to kill a bird. It was a good 
slingshot, with store-bought rubbers, but while Jody had 
often shot at birds, he had never hit one. He walked up 
through the vegetable patch, kicking his bare toes into 
the dust. And on the way he found the perfect slingshot 
stone, round and slightly flattened and heavy enough to 
carry through the air. He fitted it into the leather pouch 
of his weapon and proceeded to the brush line. His eyes 
narrowed, his mouth worked strenuously; for the first
36
The Red Pony
time that afternoon he was intent. In the shade of the 
sagebrush the little birds were working, scratching in the 
leaves, flying restlessly a few feet and scratching again. 
Jody pulled back the rubbers of the sling and advanced 
cautiously. One little thrush paused and looked at him 
and crouched, ready to fly. Jody sidled nearer, moving 
one foot slowly after the other. When he was twenty feet 
away, he carefully raised the sling and aimed. The stone 
whizzed; the thrush started up and flew right into it. 
And down the little bird went with a broken head. Jody 
ran to it and picked it up.
"Well, I got you," he said.
The bird looked much smaller dead than it had alive. 
Jody felt a little mean pain in his stomach, so he took 
out his pocket-knife and cut off the bird's head. Then he 
disemboweled it, and took off its wings; and finally he 
threw all the pieces into the brush. He didn't care about 
the bird, or its life, but he knew what older people would 
say if they had seen him kill it; he was ashamed because 
of their potential opinion. He decided to forget the 
whole thing as quickly as he could, and never to men-
tion it.
The hills were dry at this season, and the wild grass 
was golden, but where the spring-pipe filled the round 
tub and the tub spilled over, there lay a stretch of fine 
green grass, deep and sweet and moist. Jody drank from 
the mossy tub and washed the bird's blood from his 
hands in cold water. Then he lay on his back in the grass 
and looked up at the dumpling summer clouds. By 
closing one eye and destroying perspective he brought 
them down within reach so that he could put up his 
fingers and stroke them. He helped the gentle wind push 
them down the sky; it seemed to him that they went 
faster for his help. One fat white cloud he helped clear 
to the mountain rims and pressed it firmly over, out of
37
John Steinbeck
sight. Jody wondered what it was seeing, then. He sat 
up the better to look at the great mountains where they 
went piling back, growing darker and more savage until 
they finished with one jagged ridge, high up against the 
west. Curious secret mountains; he thought of the little 
he knew about them.
"What's on the other side?" he asked his father once. 
"More mountains, I guess. Why?"
"And on the other side of them?" 
"More mountains. Why?" 
"More mountains on and on?" 
"Well, no. At last you come to the ocean" 
"But what's in the mountains?"
"Just cliffs and brush and rocks and dryness." 
"Were you ever there?"
"No."
"Has anybody ever been there?"
"A few people, I guess. It's dangerous, with cliffs and 
things. Why, I've read there's more unexplored country 
in the mountains of Monterey County than any place in 
the United States." His father seemed
should be so.
"And at last the ocean?" 
"At last the ocean." 
"But," the boy insisted, 
knows?"
"Oh, a few people do, I guess. 
there to get. And not much water. 
and greasewood. Why?"
"It would be good to go.,,
"What for? There's nothing there."
Jody knew something was there, something very won 
derful because it wasn't known, something secret and 
mysterious. He could feel within himself that this was so.
proud that this
"but in between? No one
But there's nothing 
just rocks and cliffs
38
The Red Pony
He said to his mother, "Do you know what's in the big 
mountains?"
She looked at him and then back at the ferocious 
range, and she said, "Only the bear, I guess"
"What bear?"
"Why the one that went over the mountain to see 
what he could see"
Jody questioned Billy Buck, the ranch hand, about the 
possibility of ancient cities lost in the mountains, but 
Billy agreed with Jody's father.
"It ain't likely," Billy said. "There'd be nothing to eat 
unless a kind of people that can eat rocks live there." 
That was all the information Jody ever got, and it 
made the mountains dear to him, and terrible. He 
thought often of the miles of ridge after ridge until at 
last there was the sea. When the peaks were pink in the 
morning they invited him among them: and when the 
sun had gone over the edge in the evening and the moun-
tains were a purple-like despair, then Jody was afraid 
of them; then they were so impersonal and aloof that 
their very imperturbability was a threat.
Now he turned his head toward the mountains of the 
east, the Gabilans, and they were jolly mountains, with 
hill ranches in their creases, and with pine trees growing 
on the crests. People lived there, and battles had been 
fought against the Mexicans on the slopes. He looked 
back for an instant at the Great Ones and shivered a 
little at the contrast. The foothill cup of the home ranch 
below him was sunny and safe. The house gleamed with 
white light and the barn was brown and warm. The red 
cows on the farther hill ate their way slowly toward the 
north. Even the dark cypress tree by the bunkhouse was 
usual and safe. The chickens scratched about in the dust 
of the farmyard with quick waltzing steps.
39
John Steinbeck
Then a moving figure caught Jody's eye. A man 
walked slowly over the brow of the hill, on the road from 
Salinas, and he was headed toward the house. Jody stood 
up and moved down toward the house too, for if some-
one was coming, he wanted to be there to see. By the 
time the boy had got to the house the walking man was 
only halfway down the road, a lean man, very straight in 
the shoulders. Jody could tell he was old only because his 
heels struck the ground with hard jerks. As he ap-
proached nearer, Jody saw that he was dressed in blue 
jeans and in a coat of the same material. He wore clod-
hopper shoes and an old flat-brimmed Stetson hat. Over 
his shoulder he carried a gunny sack, lumpy and full. In 
a few moments he had trudged close enough so that his 
face could be seen. And his face was as dark as dried beef. 
A mustache, blue-white against the dark skin, hovered 
over his mouth, and his hair was white, too, where it 
showed at his neck. The skin of his face had shrunk back 
against the skull until it defined bone, not flesh, and 
made the nose and chin seem sharp and fragile. The eyes 
were large and deep and dark, with eyelids stretched 
tightly over them. Irises and pupils were one, and very 
black, but the eyeballs were brown. There were no wrin-
kles in the face at all. This old man wore a blue denim 
coat buttoned to the throat with brass buttons, as all 
men do who wear no shirts. Out of the sleeves came 
strong bony wrists and hands gnarled and knotted and 
hard as peach branches. The nails were flat and blunt 
and shiny.
The old man drew close to the gate and swung down 
his sack when he confronted Jody. His lips fluttered a 
little and a soft impersonal voice came from between 
them.
"Do you live here?"
40
The Red Pony
Jody was embarrassed. He turned and looked at the 
house, and he turned back and looked toward the barn 
where his father and Billy Buck were. "Yes," he said, 
when no help came from either direction.
"I have come back," the old man said. "I am Gitano, 
and I have come back."
Jody could not take all this responsibility. He turned 
abruptly, and ran into the house for help, and the screen 
door banged after him. His mother was in the kitchen 
poking out the clogged holes of a colander with a hair-
pin, and biting her lower lip with concentration.
"It's an old man," Jody cried excitedly. "It's an old 
paisano man, and he says he's come back."
His mother put down the colander and stuck the hair-
pin behind the sink board. "What's the matter now?" 
she asked patiently.
"It's an old man outside. Come on out."
"Well, what does he want?" She untied the strings of 
her apron and smoothed her hair with her fingers.
"I don't know. He came walking."
His mother smoothed down her dress and went out, 
and Jody followed her. Gitano had not moved.
"Yes?" Mrs. Tiflin asked.
Gitano took off his old black hat and held it with 
both hands in front of him. He repeated, "I am Gitano, 
and I have come back."
"Come back? Back where?"
Gitano's whole straight body leaned forward a little. 
His right hand described the circle of the hills, the sloping 
fields and the mountains, and ended at his hat again. 
"Back to the rancho. I was born here, and my father, 
too."
"Here?" she demanded. "This isn't an old place" 
"No, there," he said, pointing to the western ridge. 
"On the other side there, in a house that is gone."
41
John Steinbeck
At last she understood. "The old 'dobe that's washed 
almost away, you mean?"
"Yes, senora. When the rancho broke up they put no 
more lime on the 'dobe, and the rains washed it down." 
Jody's mother was silent for a little, and curious home-
sick thoughts ran through her mind, but quickly she 
cleared them out. "And what do you want here now, 
Gitano?"
"I will stay here," he said quietly, "until I die." 
"But we don't need an extra man here."
"I can not work hard any more, senora. I can milk a 
cow, feed chickens, cut a little wood; no more. I will stay 
here." He indicated the sack on the ground beside him. 
"Here are my things."
She turned to Jody. "Run down to the barn and call 
your father."
Jody dashed away, and he returned with Carl Tiflin 
and Billy Buck behind him. The old man was standing 
as he had been, but he was resting now. His whole body 
had sagged into a timeless repose.
"What is it?" Carl Tiflin asked. "What's Jody so ex-
cited about?"
Mrs. Tiflin motioned to the old man. "He wants to 
stay here. He wants to do a little work and stay here.,, 
"Well, we can't have him. We don't need any more 
men. He's too old. Billy does everything we need." 
They had been talking over him as though he did not 
exist, and now, suddenly, they both hesitated and looked 
at Gitano and were embarrassed
He cleared his throat. "I am too old to work. I come 
back where I was born."
"You weren't born here," Carl said sharply.
"No. In the 'dobe house over the hill. It was all one 
rancho before you came."
"In the mud house that's all melted down?"
42
The Red Pony
"Yes, I and my father. I will stay here now on the 
rancho."
"I tell you you won't stay," Carl said angrily. "I don't 
need an old man. This isn't a big ranch. I can't afford 
food and doctor bills for an old man. You must have 
relatives and friends. Go to them. It is like begging to 
come to strangers."
"I was born here," Gitano said patiently and in-
flexibly.
Carl Tiflin didn't like to be cruel, but he felt he must. 
"You can eat here tonight," he said. "You can sleep in 
the little room of the old bunkhouse. We'll give you your 
breakfast in the morning, and then you'll have to go 
along. Go to your friends. Don't come to die with 
strangers"
Gitano put on his black hat and stooped for the sack. 
"Here are my things," he said.
Carl turned away. "Come on, Billy, we'll finish down 
at the barn. Jody, show him the little room in the bunk-
house."
He and Billy turned back toward the barn. Mrs. Tiflin 
went into the house, saying over her shoulder, "I'll send 
some blankets down."
Gitano looked questioningly at Jody. "I'll show you 
where it is," Jody said.
There was a cot with a shuck mattress, an apple box 
holding a tin lantern, and a backless rocking-chair in the 
little room of the bunkhouse. Gitano laid his sack care-
fully on the floor and sat down on the bed. Jody stood 
shyly in the room, hesitating to go. At last he said,
"Did you come out of the big mountains?"
Gitano shook his head slowly. "No, I worked down 
the Salinas Valley."
The afternoon thought would not let Jody go. "Did 
you ever go into the big mountains back there?"
43
John Steinbeck
The old dark eyes grew fixed, and their light turned 
inward on the years that were living in Gitano's head. 
"Once-when I was a little boy. I went with my father:' 
"Way back, clear into the mountains?"
"Yes."
"What was there?" Jolly cried. "Did you see any people 
or any houses?"
"No."
"Well, what was there?"
Gitano's eyes remained inward. A little wrinkled strain 
came between his brows.
"What did you see in there?" Jolly repeated.
"I don't know," Gitano said. "I don't remember." 
"Was it temble and dry?"
"I don't remember."
In his excitement, Jolly had lost his shyness. "Don't 
you remember anything about it?"
Guano's mouth opened for a word, and remained open 
while his brain sought the word. "I think it was quiet-
I think it was nice."
Guano's eyes seemed to have found something back in 
the years, for they grew soft and a little smile seemed to 
come and go in them.
"Didn't you ever go back in the mountains again?" 
Jolly insisted.
"No."
"Didn't you ever want to?"
But now Guano's face became impatient. "No," he said 
in a tone that told Jody he didn't want to talk about it 
any more. The boy was held by a curious fascination. He 
didn't want to go away from Gitano. His shyness re-
turned.
"Would you like to come down to the barn and see 
the stock?" he asked.
The Red Pony
Gitano stood up and put on his hat and prepared to 
follow.
It was almost evening now. They stood near the water-
ing trough while the horses sauntered in from the hill-
sides for an evening drink. Gitano rested his big twisted 
hands on the top rail of the fence. Five horses came down 
and drank, and then stood about, nibbling at the dirt or 
rubbing their sides against the polished wood of the 
fence. Long after they had finished drinking an old horse 
appeared over the brow of the hill and came painfully 
down. It had long yellow teeth; its hoofs were flat and 
sharp as spades, and its ribs and hip-bones jutted out 
under its skin. It hobbled up to the trough and drank 
water with a loud sucking noise.
"That's old Easter," Jolly explained. "That's the first 
horse my father ever had. He's thirty years old." He 
looked up into Gitano's old eyes for some response.
"No good any more," Gitano said.
Jody's father and Billy Buck came out of the barn and 
walked over.
"Too old to work," Gitano repeated. "Just eats and 
pretty soon dies."
Carl Tiflin caught the last words. He hated his brutal-
ity toward old Gitano, and so he became brutal again. 
"It's a shame not to shoot Easter," he said. "It'd save 
him a lot of pains and rheumatism." He looked secretly 
at Gitano, to see whether he noticed the parallel, but the 
big bony hands did not move, nor did the dark eyes turn 
from the horse. "Old things ought to be put out of their 
misery," Jody's father went on. "One shot, a big noise, 
one big pain in the head maybe, and that's all. That's 
better than stiffness and sore teeth."
Billy Buck broke in. "They got a right to rest after 
they worked all their life. Maybe they like to just walk 
around."
45
John Steinbeck
Carl had been looking steadily at the skinny horse. 
"You can't imagine now what Easter used to look like," 
he said softly. "High neck, deep chest, fine barrel. He 
could jump a five-bar gate in stride. I won a flat race on 
him when I was fifteen years old. I could of got two hun-
dred dollars for him any time. You wouldn't think how 
pretty he was." He checked himself, for he hated soft-
ness. "But he ought to be shot now," he said.
"He's got a right to rest," Billy Buck insisted.
Jody's father had a humorous thought. He turned to 
Gitano. "If ham and eggs grew on a side-hill I'd turn 
you out to pasture too," he said. "But I can't afford to 
pasture you in my kitchen."
He laughed to Billy Buck about it as they went on 
toward the house. "Be a good thing for all of us if ham 
and eggs grew on the side-hills."
Jody knew how his father was probing for a place to 
hurt Gitano. He had been probed often. His father knew 
every place in the boy where a word would fester.
"He's only talking," Jody said. "He didn't mean it 
about shooting Easter. He likes Easter. That was the first 
horse he ever owned."
The sun sank behind the high mountains as they stood 
there, and the ranch was hushed. Gitano seemed to be 
more at home in the evening. He made a curious sharp 
sound with his lips and stretched one of his hands over 
the fence. Old Easter moved stiffly to him, and Gitano 
rubbed the lean neck under the mane.
"You like him?" Jody asked softly. 
"Yes-but he's no damn good."
The triangle sounded at the ranch house. "That's 
supper," Jody cried. "Come on up to supper."
As they walked up toward the house Jody noticed 
again that Gitano's body was as straight as that of a 
young man. Only by a jerkiness in his movements and
46
The Red Pony
by the scuffling of his heels could it be seen that he was 
old.
The turkeys were flying heavily into the lower branches 
of the cypress tree by the bunkhouse. A fat sleek ranch 
cat walked across the road carrying a rat so large that its 
tail dragged on the ground. The quail on the side-hills 
were still sounding the clear water call.
Jody and Gitano came to the back steps and Mrs. 
Tiflin looked out through the screen door at them. 
"Come running, Jody. Come in to supper, Gitano." 
Carl and Billy Buck had started to eat at the long 
oilcloth-covered table. Jody slipped into his chair with-
out moving it, but Gitano stood holding his hat until 
Carl looked up and said, "Sit down, sit down. You might 
as well get your belly full before you go on." Carl was 
afraid he might relent and let the old man stay, and so 
he continued to remind himself that this couldn't be. 
Gitano laid his hat on the floor and diffidently sat 
down. He wouldn't reach for food. Carl had to pass it to 
him. "Here, fill yourself up." Gitano ate very slowly, 
cutting tiny pieces of meat and arranging little pats of 
mashed potato on his plate.
The situation would not stop worrying Carl Tiflin. 
"Haven't you got any relatives in this part of the coun-
try?" he asked.
Gitano answered with some pride, "My brother-in-law 
is in Monterey. I have cousins there, too."
"Well, you can go and live there, then."
"I was born here," Gitano said in gentle rebuke.
Jody's mother came in from the kitchen, carrying a 
large bowl of tapioca pudding.
Carl chuckled to her, "Did I tell you what I said to 
him? I said if ham and eggs grew on the side-hills I'd 
put him out to pasture, like old Easter." 
Gitano stared unmoved at his plate.
47
John Steinbeck
"It's too bad he can't stay," said Mrs. Tiflin. 
"Now don't you start anything," Carl said crossly. 
When they had finished eating, Carl and Billy Buck 
and Jody went into the living-room to sit for a while, 
but Gitano, without a word of farewell or thanks, walked 
through the kitchen and out the back door. Jody sat and 
secretly watched his father. He knew how mean his 
father felt.
"This country's full of these old paisanos," Carl said 
to Billy Buck.
"They're damn good men," Billy defended them. 
"They can work older than white men. I saw one of them 
a hundred and five years old, and he could still ride a 
horse. You don't see any white men as old as Gitano 
walking twenty or thirty miles."
"Oh, they're tough all right," Carl agreed. "Say, are 
you standing up for him too? Listen, Billy," he explained, 
"I'm having a hard enough time keeping this ranch out 
of the Bank of Italy without taking on anybody else to 
feed. You know that, Billy"
"Sure, I know," said Billy. "If you was rich, it'd be 
different"
"That's right, and it isn't like he didn't have relatives 
to go to. A brother-in-law and cousins right in Monterey. 
Why should I worry about him?"
Jody sat quietly listening, and he seemed to hear 
Gitano's gentle voice and its unanswerable, "But I was 
born here." Gitano was mysterious like the mountains. 
There were ranges back as far as you could see, but be-
hind the last range piled up against the sky there was a 
great unknown country. And Gitano was an old man, 
until you got to the dull dark eyes. And in behind them 
was some unknown thing. He didn't ever say enough 
to let you guess what was inside, under the eyes. Jody 
felt himself irresistibly drawn toward the bunkhouse. He
48
The Red Pony
slipped from his chair while his father was talking and 
he went out the door without making a sound.
The night was very dark and far-off noises carried in 
clearly. The hamebells of a wood team sounded from way 
over the hill on the country road. Jody picked his way 
across the dark yard. He could see a light through the 
window of the little room of the bunkhouse. Because the 
night was secret he walked quietly up to the window and 
peered in. Gitano sat in the rocking-chair and his back 
was toward the window. His right arm moved slowly back 
and forth in front of him. Jody pushed the door open 
and walked in. Gitano jerked upright and, seizing a piece 
of deerskin, he tried to throw it over the thing in his lap, 
but the skin slipped away. Jody stood overwhelmed by 
the thing in Gitano's hand, a lean and lovely rapier with 
a golden basket hilt. The blade was like a thin ray of 
dark light. The hilt was pierced and intricately carved. 
"What is it?" Jody demanded.
Gitano only looked at him with resentful eyes, and he 
picked up the fallen deerskin and firmly wrapped the 
beautiful blade in it.
Jody put out his hand. "Can't I see it?"
Gitano's eyes smoldered angrily and he shook his head. 
"Where'd you get it? Where'd it come from?"
Now Gitano regarded him profoundly, as though he 
pondered. "I got it from my father."
"Well, where'd he get it?"
Gitano looked down at the long deerskin parcel in his 
hand. "I don' know?"
"Didn't he ever tell you?" 
"No."
"What do you do with it?"
Gitano looked slightly surprised. "Nothing. I just keep 
iv,
"Can't I see it again?"
49
John Steinbeck
The old man slowly unwrapped the shining blade and 
let the lamplight slip along it for a moment. Then he 
wrapped it up again. "You go now. I want to go to bed." 
He blew out the lamp almost before Jody had closed the 
door.
As he went back toward the house, Jody knew one 
thing more sharply than he had ever known anything. 
He must never tell anyone about the rapier. It would be 
a dreadful thing to tell anyone about it, for it would de-
stroy some fragile structure of truth. It was a truth that 
might be shattered by division.
On the way across the dark yard Jody passed Billy 
Buck. "They're wondering where you are," Billy said. 
Jody slipped into the living-room, and his father 
turned to him. "Where have you been?"
"I just went out to see if I caught any rats in my new 
trap."
"It's time you went to bed," his father said.
Jody was first at the breakfast table in the morning. 
Then his father came in, and last, Billy Buck. Mrs. Tiflin 
looked in from the kitchen.
"Where's the old man, Billy?" she asked.
"I guess he's out walking," Billy said. "I looked in his 
room and he wasn't there."
"Maybe he started early to Monterey," said Carl. "It's 
a long walk."
"No," Billy explained. "His sack is in the little room." 
After breakfast Jody walked down to the bunkhouse. 
Flies were flashing about in the sunshine. The ranch 
seemed especially quiet this morning. When he was sure 
no one was watching him, Jody went into the little room, 
and looked into Gitano's sack. An extra pair of long 
cotton underwear was there, an extra pair of jeans and 
three pairs of worn socks. Nothing else was in the sack.
50
The Red Pony
A sharp loneliness fell on Jody. He walked slowly back 
toward the house. His father stood on the porch talking 
to Mrs. Tiflin.
"I guess old Easter's dead at last," he said. "I didn't 
see him come down to water with the other horses"
In the middle of the morning Jess Taylor from the 
ridge ranch rode down.
"You didn't sell that old gray crowbait of yours, did 
you, Carl?"
"No, of course not. Why?"
"Well," Jess said. "I was out this morning early, and 
I saw a funny thing. I saw an old man on an old horse, 
no saddle, only a piece of rope for a bridle. He wasn't 
on the road at all. He was cutting right up straight 
through the brush. I think he had a gun. At least I saw 
something shine in his hand."
"That's old Gitano," Carl Tiflin said. "I'll see if any 
of my guns are missing." He stepped into the house for 
a second. "Nope, all here. Which way was he heading, 
Jess?„
"Well, that's the funny thing. He was heading straight 
back into the mountains."
Carl laughed. "They never get too old to steal," he 
said. "I guess he stole old Easter."
"Want to go after him, Carl?"
"Hell no, just save me burying that horse. I wonder 
where he got the gun. I wonder what he wants back 
there"
Jody walked up through the vegetable patch, toward 
the brush line. He looked searchingly at the towering 
mountains-ridge after ridge after ridge until at last 
there was the ocean. For a moment he thought he could 
see a black speck crawling up the farthest ridge. Jody 
thought of the rapier and of Gitano. And he thought 
of the great mountains. A longing caressed him, and it
51
John Steinbeck
was so sharp that he wanted to cry to get it out of his 
breast. He lay down in the green grass near the round 
tub at the brush line. He covered his eyes with his crossed 
arms and lay there a long time, and he was full of a 
nameless sorrow.
III. THE PROMISE
IN A mid-afternoon of spring, the little boy Jody walked 
martially along the brush-lined road toward his home 
ranch. Banging his knee against the golden lard bucket 
he used for school lunch, he contrived a good bass drum, 
while his tongue fluttered sharply against the teeth to 
fill in snare drums and occasional trumpets. Some time 
back the other members of the squad that walked so 
smartly from the school had turned into the various little 
canyons and taken the wagon roads to their own home 
ranches. Now Jody marched seemingly alone, with high-
lifted knees and pounding feet; but behind him there 
was a phantom army with great flags and swords, silent 
but deadly.
The afternoon was green and gold with spring. Under-
neath the spread branches of the oaks the plants grew 
pale and tall, and on the hills the feed was smooth and 
thick. The sagebrushes shone with new silver leaves and 
the oaks wore hoods of golden green. Over the hills there 
hung such a green odor that the horses on the flats gal-
loped madly, and then stopped, wondering; lambs, and 
even old sheep jumped in the air unexpectedly and 
landed on stiff legs, and went on eating; young clumsy 
calves butted their heads together and drew back and 
butted again.
As the grey and silent army marched past, led by Jody, 
the animals stopped their feeding and their play and 
watched it go by.
52
The Red Pony
Suddenly Jody stopped. The grey army halted, bewil-
dered and nervous. Jody went down on his knees. The 
army stood in long uneasy ranks for a moment, and then, 
with a soft sigh of sorrow, rose up in a faint grey mist 
and disappeared. Jody had seen the thorny crown of a 
horny-toad moving under the dust of the road. His grimy 
hand went out and grasped the spiked halo and held 
firmly while the little beast struggled. Then Jody turned 
the horny-toad over, exposing its pale gold stomach. With 
a gentle forefinger he stroked the throat and chest until 
the horny-toad relaxed, until its eyes closed and it lay 
languorous and asleep.
Jody opened his lunch pail and deposited the first 
game inside. He moved on now, his knees bent slightly, 
his shoulders crouched; his bare feet were wise and silent. 
In his right hand there was a long grey rifle. The brush 
along the road stirred restively under a new and unex-
pected population of grey tigers and grey bears. The 
hunting was very good, for by the time Jody reached the 
fork of the road where the mail box stood on a post, he 
had captured two more horny-toads, four little grass 
lizards, a blue snake, sixteen yellow-winged grasshoppers 
and a brown damp newt from under a rock. This assort-
ment scrabbled unhappily against the tin of the lunch 
bucket.
At the road fork the rifle evaporated and the tigers and 
bears melted from the hillsides. Even the moist and un-
comfortable creatures in the lunch pail ceased to exist, 
for the little red metal flag was up on the mail box, 
signifying that some postal matter was inside. Jody set 
his pail on the ground and opened the letter box. There 
was a Montgomery Ward catalog and a copy of the 
Salinas Weakly Journal. He slammed the box, picked up 
his lunch pail and trotted over the ridge and down into 
the cup of the ranch. Past the barn he ran, and past the
53
John Steinbeck
used-up haystack and the bunkhouse and the cypress tree. 
He banged through the front screen door of the ranch 
house calling, "Ma'am, ma'am, there's a catalog."
Mrs. Tiflin was in the kitchen spooning clabbered milk 
into a cotton bag. She put down her work and rinsed 
her hands under the tap. "Here in the kitchen, Jody. 
Here I am."
He ran in and clattered his lunch pail on the sink. 
"Here it is. Can I open the catalog, ma'am?"
Mrs. Tiflin took up the spoon again and went back to 
her cottage cheese. "Don't lose it, Jody. Your father will 
want to see it." She scraped the last of the milk into 
the bag. "Oh, Jody, your father wants to see you before 
you go to your chores.- She waved a cruising fly from the 
cheese bag.
Jody closed the new catalog in alarm. "Ma'am?" 
"Why don't you ever listen? I say your father wants to 
see you."
The boy laid the catalog gently on the sink board. 
"Do you-is it something I did?"
Mrs. Tiflin laughed. "Always a bad conscience. What 
did you do?"
"Nothing, ma'am," he said lamely. But he couldn't 
remember, and besides it was impossible to know what 
action might later be construed as a crime.
His mother hung the full bag on a nail where it could 
drip into the sink. "He just said he wanted to see you 
when you got home. He's somewhere down by the barn."
Jody turned and went out the back door. Hearing his 
mother open the lunch pail and then gasp with rage, a 
memory stabbed him and he trotted away toward the 
barn, conscientiously not hearing the angry voice that 
called him from the house.
Carl Tiflin and Billy Buck, the ranch hand, stood 
against the lower pasture fence. Each man rested one
54
The Red Pony
foot on the lowest bar and both elbows on the top bar. 
They were talking slowly and aimlessly. In the pasture 
half a dozen horses nibbled contentedly at the sweet 
grass. The mare, Nellie, stood backed up against the gate, 
rubbing her buttocks on the heavy post.
Jody sidled uneasily near. He dragged one foot to give 
an impression of great innocence and nonchalance. When 
he arrived beside the men he put one foot on the lowest 
fence rail, rested his elbows on the second bar and looked 
into the pasture too. The two men glanced sideways at 
him.
"I wanted to see you," Carl said in the stern tone he 
reserved for children and animals.
"Yes, sir," said Jody guiltily.
"Billy, here, says you took good care of the pony before 
it died."
No punishment was in the air. Jody grew bolder. "Yes, 
sir, I did."
"Billy says you have a good patient hand with horses" 
Jody felt a sudden warm friendliness for the ranch 
hand.
Billy put in, "He trained that pony as good as anybody 
I ever seen."
Then Carl Tiflin came gradually to the point. "If you 
could have another horse would you work for it?"
Jody shivered. "Yes, sir."
Well, look here, then. Billy says the best way for you 
to be a good hand with horses is to raise a colt"
"It's the only good way," Billy interrupted.
"Now, look here, Jody," continued Carl. "Jess Taylor, 
up to the ridge ranch, has a fair stallion, but it'll cost five 
dollars. I'll put up the money, but you'll have to work 
it out all summer. Will you do that?"
Jody felt that his insides were shriveling. "Yes, sir," he 
said softly.
55
John Steinbeck
"And no complaining? And no forgetting when you're 
told to do something?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, all right, then. Tomorrow morning you take 
Nellie up to the ridge ranch and get her bred. You'll have 
to take care of her, too, till she throws the colt."
"Yes, sir"
"You better get to the chickens and the wood now." 
Jody slid away. In passing behind Billy Buck he very 
nearly put out his hand to touch the blue-jeaned legs. 
His shoulders swayed a little with maturity and im-
portance.
He went to his work with unprecedented seriousness. 
This night he did not dump the can of grain to the 
chickens so that they had to leap over each other and 
struggle to get it. No, he spread the wheat so far and so 
carefully that the hens couldn't find some of it at all. 
And in the house, after listening to his mother's despair 
over boys who filled their lunch pails with slimy, suffo-
cated reptiles, and bugs, he promised never to do it again. 
Indeed, Jody felt that all such foolishness was lost in the 
past He was far too grown up ever to put horny-toads in 
his lunch pail any more. He carried in so much wood 
and built such a high structure with it that his mother 
walked in fear of an avalanche of oak. When he was done, 
when he had gathered eggs that had remained hidden 
for weeks, Jody walked down again past the cypress tree, 
and past the bunkhouse toward the pasture. A fat warty 
toad that looked out at him from under the watering 
troughs had no emotional effect on him at all.
Carl Tiflin and Billy Buck were not in sight, but from 
a metallic ringing on the other side of the barn Jody 
knew that Billy Buck was just starting to milk a cow.
The other horses were eating toward the upper end of 
the pasture, but Nellie continued to rub herself nervously
56
The Red Pony
against the post. Jody walked slowly near, saying, "So, 
girl, so-o, Nellie." The mare's ears went back naughtily 
and her lips drew away from her yellow teeth. She turned 
her head around; her eyes were glazed and mad. Jody 
climbed to the top of the fence and hung his feet over 
and looked paternally down on the mare.
The evening hovered while he sat there. Bats and 
nighthawks flicked about. Billy Buck, walking toward 
the house carrying a full milk bucket, saw Jody and 
stopped. "It's a long time to wait," he said gently. "You'll 
get awful tired waiting."
"No I won't, Billy. How long will it be?" 
"Nearly a year."
"Well, I won't get tired."
The triangle at the house rang stridently. Jody climbed 
down from the fence and walked to supper beside Billy 
Buck. He even put out his hand and took hold of the 
milk bucket to help carry it.
The next morning after breakfast Carl Tiflin folded a 
five-dollar bill in a piece of newspaper and pinned the 
package in the bib pocket of Jody's overalls. Billy Buck 
haltered the mare Nellie and led her out of the pasture.
"Be careful now," he warned. "Hold her up short here 
so she can't bite you. She's crazy as a coot"
Jody took hold of the halter leather itself and started 
up the hill toward the ridge ranch with Nellie skittering 
and jerking behind him. In the pasturage along the road 
the wild oat heads were just clearing their scabbards. 
The warm morning sun shone on Jody's back so sweetly 
that he was forced to take a serious stiff-legged hop now 
and then in spite of his maturity. On the fences the shiny 
blackbirds with red epaulets clicked their dry call. The 
meadowlarks sang like water, and the wild doves, con-
cealed among the bursting leaves of the oaks, made a 
sound of restrained grieving. In the fields the rabbits sat
57
John Steinbeck
sunning themselves, with only their forked ears showing 
above the grass heads.
After an hour of steady uphill walking, Jody turned 
into a narrow road that led up a steeper hill to the ridge 
ranch. He could see the red roof of the barn sticking up 
above the oak trees, and he could hear a dog barking 
unemotionally near the house.
Suddenly Nellie jerked back and nearly freed herself. 
From the direction of the barn Jody heard a shrill whis-
tling scream and a splintering of wood, and then a man's 
voice shouting. Nellie reared and whinnied. When Jody 
held to the halter rope she ran at him with bared teeth. 
He dropped his hold and scuttled out of the way, into 
the brush The high scream came from the oaks again, 
and Nellie answered it. With hoofs battering the ground 
the stallion appeared and charged down the hill trailing 
a broken halter rope. His eyes glittered feverishly. His 
stiff, erected nostrils were as red as flame. His black, sleek 
hide shone in the sunlight. The stallion came on so fast 
that he couldn't stop when he reached the mare. Nellie's 
ears went back; she whirled and kicked at him as he went 
by. The stallion spun around and reared. He struck the 
mare with his front hoof, and while she staggered under 
the blow, his teeth raked her neck and drew an ooze of 
blood.
Instantly Nellie's mood changed. She became coquet-
tishly feminine. She nibbled his arched neck with her 
lips. She edged around and rubbed her shoulder against 
his shoulder. Jody stood half-hidden in the brush and 
watched. He heard the step of a horse behind him, but 
before he could turn, a hand caught him by the overall 
straps and lifted him off the ground. Jess Taylor sat the 
boy behind him on the horse.
"You might have got killed," he said. "Sundog's a
58
The Red Pony
mean devil sometimes. He busted his rope and went right 
through a gate."
Jody sat quietly, but in a moment he cried, "He'll hurt 
her, he'll kill her. Get him away!"
Jess chuckled. "She'll be all right. Maybe you'd better 
climb off and go up to the house for a little. You could 
get maybe a piece of pie up there."
But Jody shook his head. "She's mine, and the colt's 
going to be mine. I'm going to raise it up"
Jess nodded. "Yes, that's a good thing. Carl has good 
sense sometimes"
In a little while the danger was over. Jess lifted Jody 
down and then caught the stallion by its broken halter 
rope. And he rode ahead, while Jody followed, leading 
Nellie.
It was only after he had unpinned and handed over 
the five dollars, and after he had eaten two pieces of 
pie, that Jody started for home again. And Nellie fol-
lowed docilely after him. She was so quiet that Jody 
climbed on a stump and rode her most of the way home.
The five dollars his father had advanced reduced Jody 
to peonage for the whole late spring and summer. When 
the hay was cut he drove a rake. He led the horse that 
pulled on the Jackson-fork tackle, and when the baler 
came he drove the circling horse that put pressure on the 
bales. In addition, Carl Tiflin taught him to milk and 
put a cow under his care, so that a new chore was added 
night and morning.
The bay mare Nellie quickly grew complacent. As she 
walked about the yellowing hillsides or worked at easy 
tasks, her lips were curled in a perpetual fatuous smile. 
She moved slowly, with the calm importance of an em-
press. When she was put to a team, she pulled steadily 
and unemotionally. Jody went to see her every day. He
59
John Steinbeck
studied her with critical eyes and saw no change what-
ever.
One afternoon Billy Buck leaned the many-tined 
manure fork against the barn wall. He loosened his belt 
and tucked in his shirt-tail and tightened the belt again. 
He picked one of the little straws from his hatband and 
put it in the corner of his mouth. Jody, who was helping 
Doubletree Mutt, the big serious dog, to dig out a gopher, 
straightened up as the ranch hand sauntered out of the 
barn.
"Let's go up and have a look at Nellie," Billy suggested. 
Instantly Jody fell into step with him. Doubletree 
Mutt watched them over his shoulder; then he dug furi-
ously, growled, sounded little sharp yelps to indicate that 
the gopher was practically caught. When he looked over 
his shoulder again, and saw that neither Jody nor Billy 
was interested, he climbed reluctantly out of the hole 
and followed them up the hill.
The wild oats were ripening. Every head bent sharply 
under its load of grain, and the grass was dry enough so 
that it made a swishing sound as Jody and Billy stepped 
through it Halfway up the hill they could see Nellie and 
the iron-grey gelding, Pete, nibbling the heads from the 
wild oats. When they approached, Nellie looked at them 
and backed her ears and bobbed her head up and down 
rebelliously. Billy walked to her and put his hand under 
her mane and patted her neck, until her ears came for-
ward again and she nibbled delicately at his shirt.
Jody asked, "Do you think she's really going to have a 
colt?"
Billy rolled the lids back from the mare's eyes with his 
thumb and forefinger. He felt the lower lip and fin-
gered the black, leathery teats. "I wouldn't be surprised," 
he said.
"Well, she isn't changed at all. It's three months gone."
60
The Red Pony
Billy rubbed the mare's flat forehead with his knuckle 
while she grunted with pleasure. "I told you you'd get 
tired waiting. It'll be five months more before you can 
even see a sign, and it'll be at least eight months more 
before she throws the colt, about next January."
Jody sighed deeply. "It's a long time, isn't it?"
"And then it'll be about two years more before you can 
ride"
Jody cried out in despair, "I'll be grown up." 
"Yep, you'll be an old man," said Billy. 
"What color do you think the colell be?"
"Why, you can't ever tell. The stud is black and the 
dam is bay. Colt might be black or bay or grey or dap-
pled. You can't tell. Sometimes a black dam might have a 
white colt."
"Well, I hope it's black, and a stallion."
"If its a stallion, we'll have to geld it Your father 
wouldn't let you have a stallion."
"Maybe he would," Jody said. "I could train him not 
to be mean."
Billy pursed his lips, and the little straw that had been 
in the corner of his mouth rolled down to the center. 
"You can't ever trust a stallion," he said critically. 
"They're mostly fighting and. making trouble. Sometimes 
when they're feeling funny they won't work. They make 
the mares uneasy and kick hell out of the geldings. Your 
father wouldn't let you keep a stallion."
Nellie sauntered away, nibbling the drying grass. Jody 
skinned the grain from a grass stem and threw the hand-
ful into the air, so that each pointed, feathered seed 
sailed out like a dart. "Tell me how it'll be, Billy. Is it 
like when the cows have calves?"
"Just about. Mares are a little more sensitive. Some-
times you have to be there to help the mare. And some-
times if it's wrong, you have to-" he paused
61
John Steinbeck
"Have to what, Billy?"
"Have to tear the colt to pieces to get it out, or the 
mare'll die."
"But it won't be that way this time, will it, Billy?" 
"Oh, no. Nellie's thrown good colts"
"Can I be there, Billy? Will you be certain to call me? 
It's my colt."
"Sure, I'll call you. Of course I will" 
"Tell me how it'll be."
"Why, you've seen the cows calving. It's almost the 
same. The mare starts groaning and stretching, and then, 
if it's a good right birth, the head and forefeet come out, 
and the front hoofs kick a hole just the way the calves do. 
And the colt starts to breathe. It's good to be there, 'cause 
if its feet aren't right maybe he can't break the sack, 
and then he might smother."
Jody whipped his leg with a bunch of grass. "We'll 
have to be there, then, won't we?"
"Oh, we'll be there, all right."
They turned and walked slowly down the hill toward 
the barn. Jody was tortured with a thing he had to say, 
although he didn't want to. "Billy," he began miserably, 
"Billy, you won't let anything happen to the colt, will 
you?"
And Billy knew he was thinking of the red pony, 
Gabilan, and of how it died of strangles. Billy knew he 
had been infallible before that, and now he was capable 
of failure. This knowledge made Billy much less sure of 
himself than he had been. "I can't tell," he said roughly. 
"All sorts of things might happen, and they wouldn't be 
my fault. I can't do everything." He felt badly about his 
lost prestige, and so he said meanly, "I'll do everything 
I know, but I won't promise anything. Nellie's a good 
mare. She's thrown good colts before. She ought to this
62
The Red Pony
time." And he walked away from Jody and went into the 
saddle-room beside the barn, for his feelings were hurt.
Jody traveled often to the brushline behind the house. 
A rusty iron pipe ran a thin stream of spring water into 
an old green tub. Where the water spilled over and sank 
into the ground there was a patch of perpetually green 
grass. Even when the hills were brown and baked in the 
summer that little patch was green. The water whined 
softly into the trough all the year round. This place had 
grown to be a center-point for Jody. When he had been 
punished the cool green grass and the singing water 
soothed him. When he had been mean the biting acid 
of meanness left him at the brushline. When he sat in 
the grass and listened to the purling stream, the barriers 
set up in his mind by the stern day went down to ruin.
On the other hand, the black cypress tree by the bunk-
house was as repulsive as the water-tub was dear; for to 
this tree all the pigs came, sooner or later, to be slaugh-
tered. Pig killing was fascinating, with the screaming and 
the blood, but it made Jody's heart beat so fast that it 
hurt him. After the pigs were scalded in the big iron 
tripod kettle and their skins were scraped and white, 
Jody had to go to the water-tub to sit in the grass until 
his heart grew quiet. The water-tub and the black cypress 
were opposites and enemies.
When Billy left him and walked angrily away, Jody 
turned up toward the house. He thought of Nellie as he 
walked, and of the little colt. Then suddenly he saw that 
he was under the black cypress, under the very singletree 
where the pigs were hung. He brushed his dry-grass hair 
off his forehead and hurried on. It seemed to him an un-
lucky thing to be thinking of his colt in the very slaugh-
ter place, especially after what Billy had said. To coun-
teract any evil result of that bad conjunction he walked
63
John Steinbeck
quickly past the ranch house, through the chicken yard, 
through the vegetable patch, until he came at last to the 
brushline.
He sat down in the green grass. The trilling water 
sounded in his ears. He looked over the farm buildings 
and across at the round hills, rich and yellow with grain. 
He could see Nellie feeding on the slope. As usual the 
water place eliminated time and distance. Jody saw a 
black, long-legged colt, butting against Nellie's flanks, de-
manding milk. And then he saw himself breaking a large  
colt to halter. All in a few moments the colt grew to be a 
magnificent animal, deep of chest, with a neck as high 
and arched as a sea-horse's neck, with a tail that tongued 
and rippled like black flame. This horse was terrible to 
everyone but Jody. In the schoolyard the boys begged 
rides, and Jody smilingly agreed. But no sooner were 
they mounted than the black demon pitched them off. 
Why, that was his name, Black Demon! For a moment 
the trilling water and the grass and the sunshine came 
back, and then ...
Sometimes in the night the ranch people, safe in their 
beds, heard a roar of hoofs go by. They said, "It's Jody, 
on Demon. He's helping out the sheriff again." And 
then ...
The golden dust filled the air in the arena at the 
Salinas Rodeo. The announcer called the roping contests. 
When Jody rode the black horse to the starting chute the 
other contestants shrugged and gave up first place, for it 
was well known that Jody and Demon could rope and 
throw and tie a steer a great deal quicker than any roping 
team of two men could. Jody was not a boy any more, 
and Demon was not a horse. The two together were one 
glorious individual. And then ...
The President wrote a letter and asked them to help 
catch a bandit in Washington. Jody settled himself com-

64
The Red Pony
fortably in the grass. The little stream of water whined 
into the mossy tub.
The year passed slowly on. Time after time Jody gave 
up his colt for lost. No change had taken place in Nellie. 
Carl Tiflin still drove her to a light cart, and she pulled 
on a hay rake and worked the Jackson-fork tackle when 
the hay was being put into the barn.
The summer passed, and the warm bright autumn. 
And then the frantic morning winds began to twist along 
1	the ground, and a chill came into the air, and the poison 
oak turned red. One morning in September, when he had 
finished his breakfast, Jody's mother called him into the 
kitchen. She was pouring boiling water into a bucket full 
of dry midlings and stirring the materials to a steaming 
paste.
"Yes, ma'am?" Jody asked.
"Watch how I do it. You'll have to do it after this 
every other morning.,'
"Well, what is it?"
"Why, it's warm mash for Nellie. It'll keep her in good 
shape "
Jody rubbed his forehead with a knuckle. "Is she all 
right?" he asked timidly.
Mrs. Tiflin put down the kettle and stirred the mash 
with a wooden paddle. "Of course she's all right, only 
you've got to take better care of her from now on. Here, 
take this breakfast out to her!"
Jody seized the bucket and ran, down past the bunk-
house, past the barn, with the heavy bucket banging 
against his knees. He found Nellie playing with the water 
in the trough, pushing waves and tossing her head so that 
the water slopped out on the ground.
Jody climbed the fence and set the bucket of steaming 
mash beside her. Then he stepped back to look at her.
65
John Steinbeck
And she was changed. Her stomach was swollen. When 
she moved, her feet touched the ground gently. She 
buried her nose in the bucket and gobbled the hot break-
fast. And when she had finished and had pushed the 
bucket around the ground with her nose a little, she 
stepped quietly over to Jody and rubbed her cheek 
against him.
Billy Buck came out of the saddle-room and walked 
over. "Starts fast when it starts, doesn't it?"
"Did it come all at once?"
"Oh, no, you just stopped looking for a while." He 
pulled her head around toward Jody. "She's goin' to be 
nice, too. See how nice her eyes are! Some mares get 
mean, but when they turn nice, they just love every-
thing." Nellie slipped her head under Billy's arm and 
rubbed her neck up and down between his arm and 
his side. "You better treat her awful nice now," Billy said. 
"How long will it be?" Jody demanded breathlessly.
The man counted in whispers on his fingers. "About 
three months," he said aloud. "You can't tell exactly. 
Sometimes it's eleven months to the day, but it might be 
two weeks early, or a month late, without hurting any-
thing."
Jody looked hard at the ground. "Billy," he began 
nervously, "Billy, you'll call me when it's getting born, 
won't you? You'll let me be there, won't you?"
Billy bit the tip of Nellie's ear with his front teeth. 
"Carl says he wants you to start right at the start. That's 
the only way to learn. Nobody can tell you anything. 
Like my old man did with me about the saddle blanket. 
He was a government packer when I was your size, and 
I helped him some. One day I left a wrinkle in my saddle 
blanket and made a saddle-sore. My old man didn't give 
me hell at all. But the next morning he saddled me up 
with a forty-pound stock saddle. I had to lead my horse
66
The Red Pony
and carry that saddle over a whole damn mountain in 
the sun. It darn near killed me, but I never left no 
wrinkles in a blanket again. I couldn't. I never in my life 
since then put on a blanket but I felt that saddle on 
my back."
Jody reached up a hand and took hold of Nellie's 
mane. "You'll tell me what to do about everything, won't 
you? I guess you know everything about horses, don't 
you?"
Billy laughed. "Why I'm half horse myself, you see," 
he said. "My ma died when I was born, and being my 
old man was a government packer in the mountains, and 
no cows around most of the time, why he just gave me 
mostly mare's milk." He continued seriously, "And 
horses know that. Don't you know it, Nellie?"
The mare turned her head and looked full into his 
eyes for a moment, and this is a thing horses practically 
never do. Billy was proud and sure of himself now. He 
boasted a little. "I'll see you get a good colt. I'll start you 
right. And if you do like I say, you'll have the best horse 
in the county."
That made Jody feel warm and proud, too; so proud 
that when he went back to the house he bowed his legs 
and swayed his shoulders as horsemen do. And he whis-
pered, "Whoa, you Black Demon, you! Steady down 
there and keep your feet on the ground."
The winter fell sharply. A few preliminary gusty 
showers, and then a strong steady rain. The hills lost 
their straw color and blackened under the water, and the 
winter streams scrambled noisily down the canyons. The 
mushrooms and puffballs popped up and the new grass 
started before Christmas.
But this year Christmas was not the central day to 
Jody. Some undetermined time in January had become
67
John Steinbeck
the axis day around which the months swung. When the 
rains fell, he put Nellie in a box stall and fed her warm 
food every morning and curried her and brushed her.
The mare was swelling so greatly that Jody became 
alarmed. "She'll pop wide open," he said to Billy.
Billy laid his strong square hand against Nellie's 
swollen abdomen. "Feel here," he said quietly. "You can 
feel it move. I guess it would surprise you if there were 
twin colts."
"You don't think so?" Jody cried. "You don't think it 
will be twins, do you, Billy?"
"No, I don't, but it does happen, sometimes." 
During the first two weeks of January it rained 
steadily. Jody spent most of his time, when he wasn't in 
school, in the box stall with Nellie. Twenty times a day 
he put his hand on her stomach to feel the colt move. 
Nellie became more and more gentle and friendly to him. 
She rubbed her nose on him. She whinnied softly when 
he walked into the barn.
Carl Tiflin came to the barn with Jody one day. He 
looked admiringly at the groomed bay coat, and he felt 
the firm flesh over ribs and shoulders. "You've done a 
good job," he said to Jody. And this was the greatest 
praise he knew how to give. Jody was tight with pride 
for hours afterward.
The fifteenth of January came, and the colt was not 
born. And the twentieth came; a lump of fear began to 
form in Jody's stomach. "Is it all right?" he demanded 
of Billy.
"Oh, sure"
And again, "Are you sure it's going to be all right?" 
Billy stroked the mare's neck. She swayed her head 
uneasily. "I told you it wasn't always the same time, Jody. 
You just have to wait"
When the end of the month arrived with no birth,
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The Red Pony
Jody grew frantic. Nellie was so big that her breath came 
heavily, and her ears were close together and straight up, 
as though her head ached Jody's sleep grew restless, and 
his dreams confused.
On the night of the second of February he awakened 
crying. His mother called to him, "Jody, you're dreaming. 
Wake up and start over again."
But Jody was filled with terror and desolation. He lay 
quietly a few moments, waiting for his mother to go back 
to sleep, and then he slipped his clothes on, and crept 
out in his bare feet.
The night was black and thick. A little misting rain 
fell. The cypress tree and the bunkhouse loomed and then 
dropped back into the mist. The barn door screeched 
as he opened it, a thing it never did in the daytime. Jody 
went to the rack and found a lantern and a tin box of 
matches. He lighted the wick and walked down the long 
straw-covered aisle to Nellie's stall. She was standing up. 
Her whole body weaved from side to side. Jody called to 
her, "So, Nellie, so-o, Nellie," but she did not stop her 
swaying nor look around. When he stepped into the stall 
and touched her on the shoulder she shivered under his 
hand. Then Billy Buck's voice came from the hayloft 
right above the stall.
"Jody, what are you doing?"
Jody started back and turned miserable eyes up toward 
the nest where Billy was lying in the hay. "Is she all 
right, do you think?"
"Why sure, I think so"
"You won't let anything happen, Billy, you're sure you 
won't?"
Billy growled down at him, "I told you I'd call you, 
and I will. Now you get back to bed and stop worrying 
that mare. She's got enough to do without you worrying 
her."
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John Steinbeck
Jody cringed, for he had never heard Billy speak in 
such a tone. "I only thought I'd come and see," he said 
"I woke up."
Billy softened a little then. "Well, you get to bed. I 
don't want you bothering her. I told you I'd get you a 
good colt. Get along now."
Jody walked slowly out of the barn. He blew out the 
lantern and set it in the rack. The blackness of the night, 
and the chilled mist struck him and enfolded him. He 
wished he believed everything Billy said as he had before 
the pony died. It was a moment before his eyes, blinded 
by the feeble lantern-flame, could make any form of the 
darkness. The damp ground chilled his bare feet. At the 
cypress tree the roosting turkeys chattered a little in 
alarm, and the two good dogs responded to their duty 
and came charging out, barking to frighten away the 
coyotes they thought were prowling under the tree.
As he crept through the kitchen, Jody stumbled over 
a chair. Carl called from his bedroom, "Who's there? 
What's the matter there?"
And Mrs. Tiflin said sleepily, "What's the matter, 
Carl?"
The next second Carl came out of the bedroom carry-
ing a candle, and found Jody before he could get into 
bed. "What are you doing out?"
Jody turned shyly away. "I was down to see the mare." 
For a moment anger at being awakened fought with 
approval in Jody's father. "Listen," he said, finally, 
"there's not a man in this country that knows more about 
colts than Billy. You leave it to him."
Words burst out of Jody's mouth. "But the pony 
died-"
"Don't you go blaming that on him," Carl said sternly. 
"If Billy can't save a horse, it can't be saved."
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The Red Pony
Mrs. Tiflin called, "Make him clean his feet and go 
to bed, Carl. He'll be sleepy all day tomorrow."
It seemed to Jody that he had just closed his eyes to 
try to go to sleep when he was shaken violently by the 
shoulder. Billy Buck stood beside him, holding a lantern 
in his hand. "Get up," he said. "Hurry up." He turned 
and walked quickly out of the room.
Mrs. Tiflin called, "What's the matter? Is that you, 
Billy?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Is Nellie ready?" 
"Yes, ma'am."
"All right, I'll get up and heat some water in case you 
need it."
Jody jumped into his clothes so quickly that he was 
out the back door before Billy's swinging lantern was 
halfway to the barn. There was a rim of dawn on the 
mountain-tops, but no light had penetrated into the cup 
of the ranch yet. Jody ran frantically after the lantern 
and caught up to Billy just as he reached the barn. Billy 
hung the lantern to a nail on the stall-side and took off 
his blue denim coat Jody saw that he wore only a sleeve-
less shirt under it.
Nellie was standing rigid and stiff. While they watched, 
she crouched. Her whole body was wrung with a spasm. 
The spasm passed. But in a few moments it started over 
again, and passed.
Billy muttered nervously, "There's something wrong." 
His bare hand disappeared. "Oh, Jesus," he said "It's 
wrong.
The spasm came again, and this time Billy strained, 
and the muscles stood out on his arm and shoulder. He 
heaved strongly, his forehead beaded with perspiration. 
Nellie cried with pain. Billy was muttering, "It's wrong.
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John Steinbeck
I can't turn it. It's way wrong. It's turned all around 
wrong."
He glared wildly toward Jody. And then his fingers 
made a careful, careful diagnosis. His cheeks were grow-
ing tight and grey. He looked for a long questioning 
minute at Jody standing back of the stall. Then Billy 
stepped to the rack under the manure window and 
picked up a horseshoe hammer with his wet right hand. 
"Go outside, Jody," he said.
The boy stood still and stared dully at him. 
"Go outside, I tell you. It'll be too late." 
Jody didn't move.
Then Billy walked quickly to Nellie's head. He cried, 
"Turn your face away, damn you, turn your face"
This time Jody obeyed. His head turned sideways. He 
heard Billy whispering hoarsely in the stall. And then he 
heard a hollow crunch of bone. Nellie chuckled shrilly. 
Jody looked back in time to see the hammer rise and fall 
again on the flat forehead. Then Nellie fell heavily to 
her side and quivered for a moment.
Billy jumped to the swollen stomach; his big pocket-
knife was in his hand. He lifted the skin and drove the 
knife in. He sawed and ripped at the tough belly. The 
air filled with the sick odor of warm living entrails. The 
other horses reared back against their halter chains and 
squealed and kicked.
Billy dropped the knife. Both of his arms plunged into 
the terrible ragged hole and dragged out a big, white, 
dripping bundle. His teeth tore a hole in the covering. A 
little black head appeared through the tear, and little 
slick, wet ears. A gurgling breath was drawn, and then 
another. Billy shucked off the sac and found his knife 
and cut the string. For a moment he held the little black 
colt in his arms and looked at it. And then he walked 
slowly over and laid it in the straw at Jody's feet.
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The Red Pony
Billy's face and arms and chest were dripping red. His 
body shivered and his teeth chattered. His voice was 
gone; he spoke in a throaty whisper. "There's your colt. 
I promised. And there it is. I had to do it-had to." He 
stopped and looked over his shoulder into the box stall. 
"Go get hot water and a sponge," he whispered. "Wash 
him and dry him the way his mother would. You'll have 
to feed him by hand. But there's your colt, the way I 
promised."
Jody stared stupidly at the wet, panting foal. It 
stretched out its chin and tried to raise its head. Its blank 
eyes were navy blue.
"God damn you," Billy shouted, "will you go now for 
the water? Will you go?"
Then Jody turned and trotted out of the barn into the 
dawn. He ached from his throat to his stomach. His legs 
were stiff and heavy. He tried to be glad because of the 
colt, but the bloody face, and the haunted, tired eyes of 
Billy Buck hung in the air ahead of him.
IV. THE LEADER OF THE PEOPLE
ON SATURDAY afternoon Billy Buck, the ranch-hand, 
raked together the last of the old year's haystack and 
pitched small forkfuls over the wire fence to a few mildly 
interested cattle. High in the air small clouds like puffs 
of cannon smoke were driven eastward by the March 
wind. The wind could be heard whishing in the brush 
on the ridge crests, but no breath of it penetrated down 
into the ranch-cup.
The little boy, Jody, emerged from the house eating a 
thick piece of buttered bread. He saw Billy working on 
the last of the haystack. Jody tramped down scuffing his
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John Steinbeck
shoes in a way he had been told was destructive to good 
shoe-leather. A flock of white pigeons flew out of the 
black cypress tree as Jody passed, and circled the tree 
and landed again. A half-grown tortoise-shell cat leaped 
from the bunkhouse porch, galloped on stiff legs across 
the road, whirled and galloped back again. Jody picked 
up a stone to help the game along, but he was too late, 
for the cat was under the porch before the stone could be 
discharged. He threw the stone into the cypress tree and 
started the white pigeons on another whirling flight.
Arriving at the used-up haystack, the boy leaned 
against the barbed wire fence. "Will that be all of it, do 
you think?" he asked.
The middle-aged ranch-hand stopped his careful rak-
ing and stuck his fork into the ground. He took off his 
black hat and smoothed down his hair. "Nothing left of 
it that isn't soggy from ground moisture," he said. He 
replaced his hat and rubbed his dry leathery hands to-
gether.
"Ought to be plenty mice," Jody suggested.
"Lousy with them," said Billy. "Just crawling with 
mice."
"Well, maybe, when you get all through, I could call 
the dogs and hunt the mice."
"Sure, I guess you could," said Billy Buck. He lifted a 
forkful of the damp ground-hay and threw it into the 
air. Instantly three mice leaped out and burrowed franti-
cally under the hay again.
Jody sighed with satisfaction. Those plump, sleek, ar-
rogant mice were doomed. For eight months they had 
lived and multiplied in the haystack. They had been im-
mune from cats, from traps, from poison and from Jody. 
They had grown smug in their security, overbearing and 
fat. Now the time of disaster had come; they would not 
survive another day.
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The Red Pony
Billy looked up at the top of the hills that surrounded 
the ranch. "Maybe you better ask your father before you 
do it," he suggested.
"Well, where is he? I'll ask him now."
"He rode up to the ridge ranch after dinner. He'll be 
back pretty soon."
Jody slumped against the fence post. "I don't think 
he'd care"
As Billy went back to his work he said ominously, 
"You'd better ask him anyway. You know how he is." 
Jody did know. His father, Carl Tiflin, insisted upon 
giving permission for anything that was done on the 
ranch, whether it was important or not. Jody sagged far-
ther against the post until he was sitting on the ground. 
He looked up at the little puffs of wind-driven cloud. 
"Is it like to rain, Billy?"
"It might. The wind's good for it, but not strong 
enough."
"Well, I hope it don't rain until after I kill those damn 
mice." He looked over his shoulder to see whether Billy 
had noticed the mature profanity. Billy worked on with-
out comment.
Jody turned back and looked at the side-hill where the 
road from the outside world came down. The hill was 
washed with lean March sunshine. Silver thistles, blue 
lupins and a few poppies bloomed among the sage 
bushes. Halfway up the hill Jody could see Doubletree 
Mutt, the black dog, digging in a squirrel hole. He pad-
dled for a while and then paused to kick bursts of dirt 
out between his hind legs, and he dug with an earnest-
ness which belied the knowledge he must have had that 
no dog had ever caught a squirrel by digging in a hole.
Suddenly, while Jody watched, the black dog stiffened, 
and backed out of the hole and looked up the hill toward 
the cleft in the ridge where the road came through. Jody
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John Steinbeck
looked up too. For a moment Carl Tiflin on horseback 
stood out against the pale sky and then he moved down 
the road toward the house. He carried something white 
in his hand.
The boy started to his feet. "He's got a letter," Jody 
cried. He trotted away toward the ranch house, for the 
letter would probably be read aloud and he wanted to be 
there. He reached the house before his father did, and 
ran in. He heard Carl dismount from his creaking saddle 
and slap the horse on the side to send it to the barn 
where Billy would unsaddle it and turn it out.
Jody ran into the kitchen. "We got a letter!" he cried. 
His mother looked up from a pan of beans. "Who 
has?"
"Father has. I saw it in his hand."
Carl strode into the kitchen then, and Jody's mother 
asked, "Who's the letter from, Carl?"
He frowned quickly. "How did you know there was a 
letter?"
She nodded her head in the boy's direction. "Big-
Britches Jody told me"
Jody was embarrassed.
His father looked down at him contemptuously. "He 
is getting to be a Big-Britches," Carl said. "He's mind-
ing everybody's business but his own. Got his big nose 
into everything."
Mrs. Tiflin relented a little. "Well, he hasn't enough 
to keep him busy. Who's the letter from?"
Carl still frowned on Jody. "I'll keep him busy if he 
isn't careful." He held out a sealed letter. "I guess it's 
from your father."
Mrs. Tiflin took a hairpin from her head and slit open 
the flap. Her lips pursed judiciously. Jody saw her eyes 
snap back and forth over the lines. "He says," she trans-
lated, "he says he's going to drive out Saturday to stay
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The Red Pony
for a little while. Why, this is Saturday. The letter must 
have been delayed." She looked at the postmark. "This 
was mailed day before yesterday. It should have been 
here yesterday." She looked up questioningly at her hus-
band, and then her face darkened angrily. "Now what 
have you got that look on you for? He doesn't come 
often."
Carl turned his eyes away from her anger. He could be 
stern with her most of the time, but when occasionally 
her temper arose, he could not combat it.
"What's the matter with you?" she demanded again. 
In his explanation there was a tone of apology Jody 
himself might have used. "It's just that he talks," Carl 
said lamely. "Just talks"
"Well, what of it? You talk yourself."
"Sure I do. But your father only talks about one 
thing."
"Indians!" Jody broke in excitedly. "Indians and cross-
ing the plains!"
Carl turned fiercely on him. "You get out, Mr. Big-
Britchesl Go on, novel Get out!"
Jody went miserably out the back door and closed the 
screen with elaborate quietness. Under the kitchen win-
dow his shamed, downcast eyes fell upon a curiously 
shaped stone, a stone of such fascination that he squatted 
down and picked it up and turned it over in his hands.
The voices came clearly to him through the open 
kitchen window. "Jody's damn well right," he heard his 
father say. "Just Indians and crossing the plains. I've 
heard that story about how the horses got driven off 
about a thousand times. He just goes on and on, and he 
never changes a word in the things he tells."
When Mrs. Tiflin answered her tone was so changed 
that Jody, outside the window, looked up from his study 
of the stone. Her voice had become soft and explanatory.
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John Steinbeck
Jody knew how her face would have changed to match 
the tone. She said quietly, "Look at it this way, Carl. 
That was the big thing in my father's life. He led a 
wagon train clear across the plains to the coast„ and when 
it was finished, his life was done. It was a big thing to 
do, but it didn't last long enough. Look!" she continued, 
"it's as though he was born to do that, and after he fin-
ished it, there wasn't anything more for him to do but 
think about it and talk about it. If there'd been any far-
ther west to go, he'd have gone. He's told me so himself. 
But at last there was the ocean. He lives right by the 
ocean where he had to stop."
She had caught Carl, caught him and entangled him 
in her soft tone.
"I've seen him," he agreed quietly. "He goes down and 
stares off west over the ocean." His voice sharpened a 
little. "And then he goes up to the Horseshoe Club in 
Pacific Grove, and he tells people how the Indians drove 
off the horses."
She tried to catch him again. "Well, it's everything to 
him. You might be patient with him and pretend to 
listen."
Carl turned impatiently away. "Well, if it gets too bad, 
I can always go down to the bunkhouse and sit with 
Billy," he said irritably. He walked through the house 
and slammed the front door after him.
Jody ran to his chores. He dumped the grain to the 
chickens without chasing any of them. He gathered the 
eggs from the nests. He trotted into the house with the 
wood and interlaced it so carefully in the wood-box that 
two armloads seemed to fill it to overflowing.
His mother had finished the beans by now. She stirred 
up the fire and brushed off the stove-top with a turkey 
wing. Jody peered cautiously at her. to see whether any
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The Red Pony
rancor toward him remained. "Is he coming today?" 
Jody asked.
"That's what his letter said."
"Maybe I better walk up the road to meet him"
Mrs. Tiflin clanged the stove-lid shut. "That would be 
nice," she said. "He'd probably like to be met."
"I guess I'll just do it then."
Outside, Jody whistled shrilly to the dogs. "Come on 
up the hill," he commanded. The two dogs waved their 
tails and ran ahead. Along the roadside the sage had 
tender new tips. Jody tore off some pieces and rubbed 
them on his hands until the air was filled with the sharp 
wild smell. With a rush the dogs leaped from the road 
and yapped into the brush after a rabbit. That was the 
last Jody saw of them, for when they failed to catch the 
rabbit, they went back home.
Jody plodded on up the hill toward the ridge top. 
When he reached the little cleft where the road came 
through, the afternoon wind struck him and blew up his 
hair and ruffled his shirt. He looked down on the little 
hills and ridges below and then out at the huge green 
Salinas Valley. He could see the white town of Salinas 
far out in the flat and the flash of its windows under the 
waning sun. Directly below him, in an oak tree, a crow 
congress had convened. The tree was black with crows 
all cawing at once.
Then Jody's eyes followed the wagon road down from 
the ridge where he stood, and lost it behind a hill, and 
picked it up again on the other side. On that distant 
stretch he saw a cart slowly pulled by a bay horse. It dis-
appeared behind the hill. Jody sat down on the ground 
and watched the place where the cart would reappear 
again. The wind sang on the hilltops and the puff-ball 
clouds hurried eastward.
Then the cart came into sight and stopped. A man
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John Steinbeck
dressed in black dismounted from the seat and walked to 
the horse's head. Although it was so far away, Jody knew 
he had unhooked the check-rein, for the horse's head 
dropped forward. The horse moved on, and the man 
walked slowly up the hill beside it. Jody gave a glad cry 
and ran down the road toward them. The squirrels 
bumped along off the road, and a road-runner flirted its 
tail and raced over the edge of the hill and sailed out 
like a glider.
Jody tried to leap into the middle of his shadow at 
every step. A stone rolled under his foot and he went 
down. Around a little bend he raced, and there, a short 
distance ahead, were his grandfather and the cart. The 
boy dropped from his unseemly running and approached 
at a dignified walk.
The horse plodded stumble-footedly up the hill and 
the old man walked beside it. In the lowering sun their 
giant shadows flickered darkly behind them. The grand-
father was dressed in a black broadcloth suit and he wore 
kid congress gaiters and a black tie on a short, hard 
collar. He carried his black slouch hat in his hand. His 
white beard was cropped close and his white eyebrows 
overhung his eyes like mustaches. The blue eyes were 
sternly merry. About the whole face and figure there was 
a granite dignity, so that every motion seemed an impos-
sible thing. Once at rest, it seemed the old man would 
be stone, would never move again. His steps were slow 
and certain. Once made, no step could ever be retraced; 
once headed in a direction, the path would never bend 
nor the pace increase nor slow.
When Jody appeared around the bend, Grandfather 
waved his hat slowly in welcome, and he called, "Why, 
Jodyl Come down to meet me, have you?"
Jody sidled near and turned and matched his step to 
the old man's step and stiffened his body and dragged
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The Red Pony
his heels a little. "Yes, sir," he said. "We got your letter 
only today."
"Should have been here yesterday," said Grandfather. 
"It certainly should. How are all the folks?"
"They're fine, sir." He hesitated and then suggested 
shyly. "Would you like to come on a mouse hunt tomor-
row, sir?"
"Mouse hunt, Jody?" Grandfather chuckled. "Have 
the people of this generation come down to hunting mice? 
They aren't very strong, the new people, but I hardly 
thought mice would be game for them."
"No, sir. It's just play. The haystack's gone. I'm going 
to drive out the mice to the dogs. And you can watch, 
or even beat the hay a little."
The stern, merry eyes turned down on him. "I see. 
You don't eat them, then. You haven't come to that yet." 
Jody explained, "The dogs eat them, sir. It wouldn't 
be much like hunting Indians, I guess."
"No, not much-but then later, when the troops were 
hunting Indians and shooting children and burning tee-
pees, it wasn't much different from your mouse hunt"
They topped the rise and started down into the ranch 
cup, and they lost the sun from their shoulders. "You've 
grown," Grandfather said "Nearly an inch, I should 
say."
"More," Jody boasted. "Where they mark me on the 
door, I'm up more than an inch since Thanksgiving 
even."
Grandfather's rich throaty voice said, "Maybe you're 
getting too much water and turning to pith and stalk. 
Wait until you head out, and then we'll see."
Jody looked quickly into the old man's face to see 
whether his feelings should be hurt, but there was no will 
to injure, no punishing nor putting-in-your-place light
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John Steinbeck
in the keen blue eyes. "We might kill a pig," Jody sug-
gested.
"Oh, no! I couldn't let you do that. You're just humor-
ing me. It isn't the time and you know it."
"You know Riley, the big boar, sir?" 
"Yes, I remember Riley well."
"Well, Riley ate a hole into that same haystack, and 
it fell down on him and smothered him."
"Pigs do that when they can," said Grandfather. 
"Riley was a nice pig, for a boar, sir. I rode him some-
times, and he didn't mind."
A door slammed at the house below them, and they 
saw Jody's mother standing on the porch waving her 
apron in welcome. And they saw Carl Tiflin walking up 
from the barn to be at the house for the arrival.
The sun had disappeared from the hills by now. The 
blue smoke from the house chimney hung in flat layers in 
the purpling ranch-cup. The puff-ball clouds, dropped 
by the falling wind, hung listlessly in the sky.
Billy Buck came out of the bunkhouse and flung a 
wash basin of soapy water on the ground. He had been 
shaving in mid-week, for Billy held Grandfather in rever-
ence, and Grandfather said that Billy was one of the few 
men of the new generation who had not gone soft. Al-
though Billy was in middle age, Grandfather considered 
him a boy. Now Billy was hurrying toward the house 
too.
When Jody and Grandfather arrived, the three were 
waiting for them in front of the yard gate.
Carl said, "Hello, sir. We've been looking for you." 
Mrs. Tiflin kissed Grandfather on the side of his beard, 
and stood still while his big hand patted her shoulder. 
Billy shook hands solemnly, grinning under his straw 
mustache. "I'll put up your horse," said Billy, and he led 
the rig away.
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The Red Pony
Grandfather watched him go, and then, turning back 
to the group, he said as he had said a hundred times 
before, "There's a good. boy. I knew his father, old Mule-
tail Buck. I never knew why they called him Mule-tail 
except he packed mules."
Mrs. Tiflin turned and led the way into the house. 
"How long are you going to stay, Father? Your letter 
didn't say."
"Well, I don't know. I thought I'd stay about two 
weeks. But I never stay as long as I think I'm going to." 
In a short while they were sitting at the white oilcloth 
table eating their supper. The lamp with the tin reflector 
hung over the table. Outside the dining-room windows 
the big moths battered softly against the glass.
Grandfather cut his steak into tiny pieces and chewed 
slowly. "I'm hungry," he said. "Driving out here got my 
appetite up. It's like when we were crossing. We all got 
so hungry every night we could hardly wait to let the 
meat get done. I could eat about five pounds of buffalo 
meat every night."
"It's moving around does it," said Billy. "My father 
was a government packer. I helped him when I was a 
kid. Just the two of us could about clean up a deer's 
ham."
"I knew your father, Billy,". said Grandfather. "A fine 
man he was. They called him Mule-tail Buck. I don't 
know why except he packed mules."
"That was it," Billy agreed. "He packed mules." 
Grandfather put down his knife and fork and looked 
around the table. "I remember one time we ran out of 
meat---" His voice dropped to a curious low singsong, 
dropped into a tonal groove the story had worn for itself. 
"There was no buffalo, no antelope, not even rabbits. 
The hunters couldn't even shoot a coyote. That was the 
time for the leader to be on the watch. I was the leader,
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John Steinbeck
and I kept my eyes open. Know why? Well, just the 
minute the people began to get hungry they'd start 
slaughtering the team oxen. Do you believe that? I've 
heard of parties that just ate up their draft cattle. Started 
from the middle and worked toward the ends. Finally 
they'd eat the lead pair, and then the wheelers. The 
leader of a party had to keep them from doing that "
In some manner a big moth got into the room and 
circled the hanging kerosene lamp. Billy got up and tried 
to clap it between his hands. Carl struck with a cupped 
palm and caught the moth and broke it. He walked to 
the window and dropped it out.
"As I was saying," Grandfather began again, but Carl 
interrupted him. "You'd better eat some more meat. All 
the rest of us are ready for our pudding."
Jody saw a flash of anger in his mother's eyes. Grand-
father picked up his knife and fork. "I'm pretty hungry, 
all right," he said. "I'll tell you about that later."
When supper was over, when the family and Billy 
Buck sat in front of the fireplace in the other room, Jody 
anxiously watched Grandfather. He saw the signs he 
knew. The bearded head leaned forward; the eyes - lost 
their sternness and looked wonderingly into the fire; the 
big lean fingers laced themselves on the black knees. "I 
wonder," he began, "I just wonder whether I ever told 
you how those thieving Piutes drove off thirty-five of 
our horses"
"I think you did," Carl interrupted. "Wasn't it just 
before you went up into the Tahoe country?" 
Grandfather turned quickly toward his son-in-law. 
"That's right. I guess I must have told you that story." 
"Lots of times," Carl said cruelly, and he avoided his 
wife's eyes. But he felt the angry eyes on him, and he 
said, "Course I'd like to hear it again"
Grandfather looked back at the fire. His fingers un-

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The Red Pony
laced and laced again. Jody knew how he felt, how his 
insides were collapsed and empty. Hadn't Jody been 
called a Big-Britches that very afternoon? He arose to 
heroism and opened himself to the term Big-Britches 
again. "Tell about Indians," he said softly.
Grandfather's eyes grew stern again. "Boys always want 
to hear about Indians. It was a job for men, but boys 
want to hear about it. Well, let's see. Did I ever tell you 
how I wanted each wagon to carry a long iron plate?"
Everyone but Jody remained silent. Jody said, "No. 
You didn't "
"Well, when the Indians attacked, we always put the 
wagons in a circle and fought from between the wheels. 
I thought that if every wagon carried a long plate with 
rifle holes, the men could stand the plates on the outside 
of the wheels when the wagons were in the circle and 
they would be protected. It would save lives and that 
would make up for the extra weight of the iron. But of 
course the party wouldn't do it. No party had done it 
before and they couldn't see why they should go to the 
expense. They lived to regret it, too."
Jody looked at his mother, and knew from her expres-
sion that she was not listening at all. Carl picked at a 
callus on his thumb and Billy Buck watched a spider 
crawling up the wall.
Grandfather's tone dropped into its narrative groove 
again. Jody knew in advance exactly what words would 
fall. The story droned on, speeded up for the attack, grew 
sad over the wounds, struck a dirge at the burials on the 
great plains. Jody sat quietly watching Grandfather. The 
stern blue eyes were detached. He looked as though he 
were not very interested in the story himself.
When it was finished, when the pause had been po-
litely respected as the frontier of the story, Billy Buck 
stood up and stretched and hitched his trousers. "I guess
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John Steinbeck
I'll turn in," he said. Then he faced Grandfather. "I've 
got an old powder horn and a cap and ball pistol down 
to the bunkhouse. Did I ever show them to you?"
Grandfather nodded slowly. "Yes, I think you did, 
Billy. Reminds me of a pistol I had when I was leading 
the people across." Billy stood politely until the little 
story was done, and then he said, "Good night," and 
went out of the house.
Carl Tiflin tried to turn the conversation then. "How's 
the country between here and Monterey? I've heard it's 
pretty dry."
"It is dry," said Grandfather. "There's not a drop of 
water in the Laguna Seca. But it's a long pull from '87. 
The whole country was powder then, and in '61 I believe 
all the coyotes starved to death. We had fifteen inches 
of rain this year."
"Yes, but it all came too early. We could do with some 
now." Carl's eyes fell on Jody. "Hadn't you better be get-
ting to bed?"
Jody stood up obediently. "Can I kill the mice in the 
old haystack, sir?"
"Mice? Oh! Sure, kill them all off. Billy said there 
isn't any good hay left."
Jody exchanged a secret and satisfying look with 
Grandfather. "I'll kill every one tomorrow," he promised. 
Jody lay in his bed and thought of the impossible 
world of Indians and buffaloes, a world that had ceased 
to be forever. He wished he could have been living in the 
heroic time, but he knew he was not of heroic timber. 
No one living now, save possibly Billy Buck, was worthy 
to do the things that had been done. A race of giants had 
lived then, fearless men, men of a staunchness unknown 
in this day. Jody thought of the wide plains and of the 
wagons moving across like centipedes. He thought of 
Grandfather on a huge white horse, marshaling the peo-

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The Red Pony
ple. Across his mind marched the great phantoms, and 
they marched off the earth and they were gone.
He came back to the ranch for a moment, then. He 
heard the dull rushing sound that space and silence make. 
He heard one of the dogs, out in the doghouse, scratch-
ing a flea and bumping his elbow against the floor with 
every stroke. Then the wind arose again and the black 
cypress groaned and Jody went to sleep.
He was up half an hour before the triangle sounded 
for breakfast. His mother was rattling the stove to make 
the flames roar when Jody went through the kitchen. 
"You're up early," she said. "Where are you going?"
"Out to get a good stick. We're going to kill the mice 
today."
"Who is "we'?"
"Why, Grandfather and I."
"So you've got him in it. You always like to have some-
one in with you in case there's blame to share"
"I'll be right back," said Jody. "I just want to have a 
good stick ready for after breakfast"
He closed the screen door after him and went out into 
the cool blue morning. The birds were noisy in the dawn 
and the ranch cats came down from the hill like blunt 
snakes. They had been hunting gophers in the dark, and 
although the four cats were full of gopher meat, they sat 
in a semi-circle at the back door and mewed piteously 
for milk. Doubletree Mutt and Smasher moved sniffing 
along the edge of the brush, performing the duty with 
rigid ceremony, but when Jody whistled, their heads 
jerked up and their tails waved. They plunged down to 
him, wriggling their skins and yawning. Jody patted their 
heads seriously, and moved on to the weathered scrap 
pile. He selected an old broom handle and a short piece 
of inch-square scrap wood. From his pocket he took a 
shoelace and tied the ends of the sticks loosely together
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John Steinbeck
to make a flail. He whistled his new weapon through the 
air and struck the ground experimentally, while the dogs 
leaped aside and whined with apprehension.
Jody turned and started down past the house toward 
the old haystack ground to look over the field of slaugh-
ter, but Billy Buck, sitting patiently on the back steps, 
called to him, "You better come back. It's only a couple 
of minutes till breakfast."
Jody changed his course and moved toward the house. 
He leaned his flail against the steps. "That's to drive the 
mice out," he said. "I'll bet they're fat, I'll bet they don't 
know what's going to happen to them today."
"No, nor you either," Billy remarked philosophically, 
"nor me, nor anyone."
Jody was staggered by this thought. He knew it was 
true. His imagination twitched away from the mouse 
hunt. Then his mother came out on the back porch and 
struck the triangle, and all thoughts fell in a heap.
Grandfather hadn't appeared at the table when they 
sat down. Billy nodded at his empty chair. "He's all 
right? He isn't sick?"
"He takes a long time to dress," said Mrs. Tiflin. "He 
combs his whiskers and rubs up his shoes and brushes his 
clothes."
Carl scattered sugar on his mush. "A man that's led a 
wagon train across the plains has got to be pretty careful 
how he dresses."
Mrs. Tiflin turned on him. "Don't do that, Carl! Please 
don't!" There was more of threat than of request in her 
tone. And the threat irritated Carl.
"Well, how many times do I have to listen to the story 
of the iron plates, and the thirty-five horses? That time's 
done. Why can't he forget it, now it's done?" He grew 
angrier while he talked and his voice rose. "Why does he 
have to tell them over and over? He came across the
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The Red Pony
plains. All right! Now it's finished. Nobody wants to hear 
about it over and over."
The door into the kitchen closed softly. The four at 
the table sat frozen. Carl laid his mush spoon on the 
table and touched his chin with his fingers.
Then the kitchen door opened and Grandfather 
walked in. His mouth smiled tightly and his eyes were 
squinted. "Good morning," he said, and he sat down and 
looked at his mush dish.
Carl could not leave it there. "Did-did you hear 
what I said?"
Grandfather jerked a little nod.
"I don't know what got into me, sir. I didn't mean it 
I was just being funny."
Jody glanced in shame at his mother, and he saw that 
she was looking at Carl, and that she wasn't breathing. 
It was an awful thing that he was doing. He was tearing 
himself to pieces to talk like that. It was a terrible thing 
to him to retract a word, but to retract it in shame was 
infinitely worse.
Grandfather looked sidewise. "I'm trying to get right 
side up," he said gently. "I'm not being mad. I don't 
mind what you said, but it might be true, and I would 
mind that."
"It isn't true," said Carl. "I'm not feeling well this 
morning. I'm sorry I said it."
"Don't be sorry, Carl. An old man doesn't see things 
sometimes. Maybe you're right. The crossing is finished. 
Maybe it should be forgotten, now it's done."
Carl got up from the table. "I've had enough to eat. 
I'm going to work. Take your time, Billy!" He walked 
quickly out of the dining-room. Billy gulped the rest of 
his food and followed soon after. But Jody could not 
leave his chair.
"Won't you tell any more stories?" Jody asked.
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John Steinbeck
"Why, sure I'll tell them, but only when-I'm sure 
people want to hear them"
"I like to hear them, sir:'
"Oh! Of course you do, but you're a little boy. It was 
a job for men, but only little boys like to hear about it " 
Jody got up from his place. "I'll wait outside for you, 
sir. I've got a good stick for those mice:'
He waited by the gate until the old man came out on 
the porch. "Let's go down and kill the mice now," Jody 
called.
"I think I'll just sit in the sun, Jody. You go kill the 
mice."
"You can use my stick if you like." 
"No, I'll just sit here a while."
Jody turned disconsolately away, and walked down 
toward the old haystack. He tried to whip up his enthu-
siasm with thoughts of the fat juicy mice. He beat the 
ground with his flail. The dogs coaxed and whined about 
him, but he could not go. Back at the house he could see 
Grandfather sitting on the porch, looking small and thin 
and black.
Jody gave up and went to sit on the steps at the old 
man's feet.
"Back already? Did you kill the mice?" 
"No, sir. I'll kill them some other day."
The morning flies buzzed close to the ground and the 
ants dashed about in front of the steps. The heavy smell 
of sage slipped down the hill. The porch boards grew 
warm in the sunshine.
Jody hardly knew when Grandfather started to talk. 
"I shouldn't stay here, feeling the way I do." He exam 
fined his strong old hands. "I feel as though the crossing 
wasn't worth doing." His eyes moved up the side-hill and 
stopped on a motionless hawk perched on a dead limb. 
"I tell those old stories, but they're not what I want to
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The Red Pony
tell. I only know how I want people to feel when I tell 
them.
"It wasn't Indians that were important, nor adven-
tures, nor even getting out here. It was a whole bunch of 
people made into one big crawling beast. And I was the 
head. It was weltering and weltering. Every man wanted 
something for himself, but the big beast that was all of 
them wanted only weltering. I was the leader, but if I 
hadn't been there, someone else would have been the 
head. The thing had to have a head.
"Under the little bushes the shadows were black at 
white noonday. When we saw the mountains at last, we 
cried-all of us. But it wasn't getting here that mattered, 
it was movement and weltering.
"We carried life out here and set it down the way 
those ants carry eggs. And I was the leader. The welter-
ing was as big as God, and the slow steps that made the 
movement piled up and piled up until the continent was 
crossed.
""I hen we came down to the sea, and it was done." He 
stopped and wiped his eyes until the rims were red. 
"That's what I should be telling instead of stories"
When Jody spoke, Grandfather started and looked 
down at him. "Maybe I could lead the people some 
day," Jody said.
The old man smiled. "There's no place to go. There's 
the ocean to stop you. There's a line of old men along 
the shore hating the ocean because it stopped them." 
"In boats I might, sir."
"No place to go, Jody. Every place is taken. But that's 
not the worst-no, not the worst. Weltering has died out 
of the people. Weltering isn't a hunger any more. It's 
all done. Your father is right. It is finished." He laced 
his fingers on his knee and looked at them.
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John Steinbeck
Jody felt very sad. "If you'd like a glass of lemonade 
I could make it for you."
Grandfather was about to refuse, and then he saw 
Jody's face. "That would be nice," he said. "Yes, it would 
be nice to drink a lemonade"
Jody ran into the kitchen where his mother was wiping 
the last of the breakfast dishes. "Can I have a lemon to 
make a lemonade for Grandfather?"
His mother mimicked- "And another lemon to make 
a lemonade for you."
"No, ma'am. I don't want one,
"Jody You're sick!" Then she stopped suddenly. 
"Take a lemon out of the cooler," she said softly. "Here, 
I'll reach the squeezer down to you."
JUNIUS MALTBY
JUNIUS MALTBY was a small young man of good and cul-
tured family and decent education. When his father died 
bankrupt, Junius got himself inextricably entangled in a 
clerkship, against which he feebly struggled for ten years.
After work Junius retired to his furnished room, pat-
ted the cushions of his morris chair and spent the eve-
ning reading. Stevenson's essays he thought nearly the 
finest things in English: he read Travels with a Donkey 
many times.
One evening soon after his thirty-fifth birthday, Junius 
fainted on the steps of his boarding house. When he re-
covered consciousness, he noticed for the first time that 
his breathing was difficult and unsatisfactory. He won-
dered how long it had been that way. The doctor whom 
he consulted was kind and even hopeful.
"You're by no means too far gone to get well," he said. 
"But you really must take those lungs out of San Fran-
cisco. If you stay here in the fog, you won't live a year. 
Move to a warm, dry climate"
The accident to his health filled Junius with pleasure, 
for it cut the strings he had been unable to sever for him-
self. He had five hundred dollars, not that he ever saved 
any money; he had simply forgotten to spend it. "With 
that much," he said, "I'll either recover and make a 
clean, new start, or else I'll die and be through with the 
whole business."
A man in his office told him of the warm, protected
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John Steinbeck
valley, the Pastures of Heaven, and Junius went there 
immediately. The name pleased him. "It's either an omen 
that I'm not going to live," he thought, "or else it's a nice 
symbolic substitute for death." He felt that the name 
meant something personal to him, and he was very glad, 
because for ten years nothing in the world had been per-
sonal to him.
There were, in the Pastures of Heaven, several families 
who wanted to take boarders. Junius inspected each one, 
and finally went to live on the farm of the widow 
Quaker. She needed the money, and besides, he could 
sleep in a shed separated from the farmhouse. Mrs. 
Quaker had two small boys and kept a hired man to 
work the farm.
The warm climate worked tenderly with Junius' lungs. 
Within the year his colour was good and he had gained 
in weight. He was quiet and happy on the farm, and 
what pleased him more, he had thrown out the ten years 
of the office and had grown superbly lazy. Junius' thin 
blond hair went uncombed; he wore his glasses far down 
on his square nose, for his eyes were getting stronger and 
only the habit of feeling spectacles caused him to wear 
them. Throughout the day he had always some small 
stick protruding from his mouth, a habit only the laziest 
and most ruminative of men acquire. This convalescence 
took place in 1910.
In 1911, Mrs. Quaker began to worry about what the 
neighbours were saying. When she considered the impli-
cation of having a single man in her house, she became 
upset and nervous. As soon as Junius' recovery seemed 
sure beyond doubt, the widow confessed her trepidations. 
He married her, immediately and gladly. Now he had a 
home and a golden future, for the new Mrs. Maltby 
owned two hundred acres of grassy hillside and five acres 
of orchard and vegetable bottom. Junius sent for his
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Junius Maltby
books, his morris chair with the adjustable back, and his 
good copy of Velasquez' Cardinal. The future was a 
pleasant and sunshiny afternoon to him.
Mrs. Maltby promptly discharged the hired man and 
tried to put her husband to work; but in this she en-
countered a resistance the more bewildering because it 
presented no hard front to strike at. During his con-
valescence, Junius had grown to love laziness. He liked 
the valley and the farm, but he liked them as they were: 
he didn't want to plant new things, nor to tear out old. 
When Mrs. Maltby put a hoe in his hand and set him to 
work in the vegetable garden, she found him, likely 
enough, hours later, dangling his feet in the meadow 
stream and reading his pocket copy of Kidnapped. He 
was sorry; he didn't know how it had happened. And 
that was the truth.
At first she nagged him a great deal about his laziness 
and his sloppiness of dress, but he soon developed a 
faculty for never listening to her. It would be impolite, 
he considered, to notice her when she was not being a 
lady. It would be like staring at a cripple. And Mrs. 
Maltby, after she had battered at his resistance of fog for 
a time, took to sniveling and neglecting her hair.
Between I911, and I917, the Maltbys grew very poor. 
Junius simply would not take care of the farm. They even 
sold a few acres of pasture land to get money for food 
and clothing, and even then there was never enough to 
eat. Poverty sat cross-legged on the farm, and the Maltbys 
were ragged. They had never any new clothes at all, but 
Junius had discovered the essays of David Grayson. He 
wore overalls and sat under the sycamores that lined the 
meadow stream. Sometimes he read Adventures in Con-
tentment to his wife and two sons.
Early in I917, Mrs. Maltby found that she was going to 
have a baby, and late in the same year the wartime in-

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John Steinbeck
fluenza epidemic struck the family with a dry vicious-
ness. Perhaps because they were undernourished the two 
boys were stricken simultaneously. For three days the 
house seemed filled to overflowing with flushed, feverish 
children whose nervous fingers strove to cling to life by 
the threads of their bed clothes. For three days they 
struggled weakly, and on the fourth, both of the boys 
died. Their mother didn't know it, for she was confined, 
and the neighbours who came to help in the house hadn't 
the courage nor the cruelty to tell her. The black fever 
came upon her while she was in labour and killed her 
before she ever saw her child.
The neighbour women who helped at the birth told 
the story throughout the valley that Junius Maltby read 
books by the stream while his wife and children died. 
But this was only partly true. On the day of their seizure, 
he dangled his feet in the stream, because he didn't know 
they were ill, but thereafter he wandered vaguely from 
one to the other of the dying children, and talked non-
sense to them. He told the eldest boy how diamonds are 
made. At the bedside of the other, he explained the 
beauty, the antiquity and the symbolism of the swastika. 
One life went out while he read aloud the second chapter 
of Treasure Island, and he didn't even know it had hap-
pened until he finished the chapter and looked up. 
During those days he was bewildered. He brought out 
the only things he had and offered them, but they had 
not potency with death. He knew in advance they 
wouldn't have, and that made it all the more terrible 
to him.
When the bodies were all gone, Junius went back to 
the stream and read a few pages of Travels with a 
Donkey. He chuckled uncertainly over the obstinacy of 
Modestine. Who but Stevenson could have named a 
donkey "Modestine"?
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Junius Maltby
One of the neighbour women called him in and 
cursed him so violently that he was embarrassed and 
didn't listen. She put her hands on her hips and glared 
at him with contempt. And then she brought his child, 
a son, and laid it in his arms. When she looked back at 
him from the gate, he was standing with the howling 
little brute in his arms. He couldn't see any place to put 
it down, so he held it for a long time.
The people of the valley told many stories about Ju-
nius. Sometimes they hated him with the loathing busy 
people have for lazy ones, and sometimes they envied his 
laziness; but often they pitied him because he blundered 
so. No one in the valley ever realized that he was happy.
They told how, on a doctor's advice, Junius bought a 
goat to milk for the baby. He didn't inquire into the sex 
of his purchase nor give his reason for wanting a goat. 
When it arrived he looked under it, and very seriously 
asked, "Is this a normal goat?"
"Sure," said the owner.
"But shouldn't there be a bag or something immedi-
ately behind the hind legs?-for the milk, I mean." 
The people of the valley roared about that. Later, 
when a new and better goat was provided, Junius fiddled 
with it for two days and could not draw a drop of milk. 
He wanted to return this goat as defective until the 
owner showed him how to milk it. Some people claimed 
that he held the baby under the goat and let it suck its 
own milk, but this was untrue. The people of the valley 
declared they didn't know how he ever reared the child.
One day Junius went into Monterey and hired an old 
German to help him on the farm. He gave his new serv-
ant five dollars on account, and never paid him again. 
Within two weeks the hired man was so entangled in 
laziness that he did no more work than his employer. 
The two of them sat around the place together discussing
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John Steinbeck
things which interested and puzzled them-how colour 
comes to flowers-whether there is a symbology in nature 
-where Atlantis lay-how the Incas interred their dead.
In the spring they planted potatoes, always too late, 
and without a covering of ashes to keep the bugs out. 
They sowed beans and corn and peas, watched them for 
a time, and then forgot them. The weeds covered every-
thing from sight. It was no unusual thing to see Junius 
burrow into a perfect thicket of mallow weeds and 
emerge carrying a pale cucumber. He had stopped wear-
ing shoes because he liked the feeling of the warm earth 
on his feet, and because he had no shoes.
In the afternoon Junius talked to Jakob Stutz a great 
deal. "You know," he said, "when the children died, I 
thought I had reached a peculiar high peak of horror. 
Then, almost while I thought it, the horror turned to 
sorrow and the sorrow dwindled to sadness. I didn't 
know my wife nor the children very well, I guess. Per-
haps they were too near to me. It's a strange thing, this 
knowing. It is nothing but an awareness of details. There 
are long visioned minds and short visioned. I've never 
been able to see things that are close to me. For instance, 
I am much more aware of the Parthenon than of my 
own house over there." Suddenly Junius' face seemed to 
quiver with feeling, and his eyes brightened with en-
thusiasm. "Jakob," he said, "have you ever seen a pic-
ture of the frieze of the Parthenon?"
"Yes, and it is good, too," said Jakob.
Junius laid a hand on his hired man's knee. "Those 
horses," he said. "Those lovely horses-bound for a ce-
lestial pasture. Those eager and yet dignified young men 
setting out for an incredible fiesta that's being cele-
brated just around the cornice. I wonder how a man 
can know what a horse feels like when it is very happy;
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Junius Maltby
and that sculptor must have known or he couldn't have 
carved them so."
That was the way it went. Junius could not stay on a 
subject. Often the men went hungry because they failed 
to find a hen's nest in the grass when it came suppertime.
The son of Junius was named Robert Louis. Junius 
called him that when he thought of it, but Jakob Stutz 
rebelled at what he considered a kind of literary pre-
ciousness. "Boys must be named like dogs," he main-
tained. "One sound is sufficient for the name. Even 
Robert is too long. He should be called `Bob."' Jakob 
nearly got his way.
"I'll compromise with you," said Junius. "We'll call 
him Robbie. Robbie is really shorter than Robert, don't 
you think?"
He often gave way before Jakob, for Jakob continually 
struggled a little against the webs that were being spun 
about him. Now and then, with a kind of virtuous fury, 
he cleaned the house.
Robbie grew up gravely. He followed the men about, 
listening to their discussions. Junius never treated him 
like a little boy, because he didn't know how little boys 
should be treated. If Robbie made an observation the 
two men listened courteously and included the remark 
in their conversation, or even used it as the germ of an 
investigation. They tracked down many things in the 
course of an afternoon. Every day there were several raids 
on Junius' Encyclopedia.
A huge sycamore put out a horizontal limb over the 
meadow stream, and on it the three sat, the man hang-
ing their feet into the water and moving pebbles with 
their toes while Robbie tried extravagantly to imitate 
them. Reaching the water was one of his criteria of man-
hood. Jakob had by this time given up shoes; Robbie 
had never worn any in his life.
John Steinbeck
The discussions were erudite. Robbie couldn't use 
childish talk, for he had never heard any. They didn't 
make conversation; rather they let a seedling of thought 
sprout by itself, and then watched with wonder while it 
sent out branching limbs. They were surprised at the 
strange fruit their conversation bore, for they didn't di-
rect their thinking, nor trellis nor trim it the way so 
many people do.
There on the limb the three sat. Their clothes were 
rags and their hair was only hacked off to keep it out of 
their eyes. The men wore long, untrimmed beards. They 
watched the water-skaters on the surface of the pool be-
low them, a pool which had been deepened by idling 
toes. The giant tree above them whisked softly in the 
wind, and occasionally dropped a leaf like a brown hand-
kerchief. Robbie was five years old.
"I think sycamore trees are good," he observed when a 
leaf fell in his lap. Jakob picked up the leaf and stripped 
the parchment from its ribs.
"Yes," he agreed, "they grow by water. Good things 
love water. Bad things always been dry."
"Sycamores are big and good," said Junius. "It seems 
to me that a good thing or a kind thing must be very 
large to survive. Little good things are always destroyed 
by evil little things. Rarely is a big thing poisonous or 
treacherous. For this reason, in human thinking, bigness 
is an attribute of good and littleness of evil. Do you see 
that, Robbie?"
"Yes," said Robbie. "I see that. Like elephants" 
"Elephants are often evil, but when we think of them, 
they seem gentle and good"
"But water," Jakob broke in. "Do you see about water 
too?P9
:"No, not about water"
"But I see," said Junius. "You mean that water is the
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Junius Maltby
seed of life. Of the three elements water is the sperm, 
earth the womb and sunshine the mould of growth." 
Thus they taught him nonsense.
The people of the Pastures of Heaven recoiled from 
Junius Maltby after the death of his wife and his two 
boys. Stories of his callousness during the epidemic grew 
to such proportions that eventually they fell down of 
their own weight and were nearly forgotten. But al-
though his neighbours forgot that Junius had read while 
his children died, they could not forget the problem he 
was becoming. Here in the fertile valley he lived in fear-
ful poverty. While other families built small fortunes, 
bought Fords and radios, put in electricity and went 
twice a week to the moving pictures in Monterey or 
Salinas, Junius degenerated and became a ragged savage. 
The men of the valley resented his good bottom land, all 
overgrown with weeds, his untrimmed fruit trees and his 
fallen fences. The women thought with loathing of his 
unclean house with its littered dooryard and dirty win-
dows. Both men and women hated his idleness and his 
complete lack of pride. For a while they went to visit 
him, hoping by their neat examples to drag him from his 
slothfulness. But he received them naturally and with 
the friendliness of equality. He wasn't a bit ashamed of 
his poverty nor of his rags. Gradually his neighbours 
came to think of Junius as an outcast. No one drove up 
the private road to his house any more. They outlawed 
him from decent society and resolved never to receive 
him should be visit them.
Junius knew nothing about the dislike of his neigh-
bours. He was still gloriously happy. His life was as un-
eal, as romantic and as unimportant as his thinking. He 
Vas content to sit in the sun and to dangle his feet in 
the stream. If he had no good clothes, at least he had no 
place to go which required good clothes.
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John Steinbeck
Although the people almost hated Junius, they had 
only pity for the little boy Robbie. The women told one 
another how horrible it was to let the child grow up in 
such squalor. But, because they were mostly good people, 
they felt a strong reluctance for interfering with Junius' 
affairs.
"Wait until he's school age," Mrs. Banks said to a 
group of ladies in her own parlour. "We couldn't do any-
thing now if we wanted to. He belongs to that father of 
his. But just as soon as the child is six, the county'll have 
something to say, let me tell you."
Mrs. Allen nodded and closed her eyes earnestly. "We 
keep forgetting that he's Mamie Quaker's child as much 
as Maltby's. I think we should have stepped in long ago. 
But when he goes to school we'll give the poor little fel-
low a few things he never had."
"The least we can do is to see that he has enough 
clothes to cover him," another of the women agreed.
It seemed that the valley lay crouched in waiting for 
the time when Robbie should go to school. When, at 
term opening, after his sixth birthday, he did not appear, 
John Whiteside, the clerk of the school board, wrote a 
letter to Junius Maltby.
"I hadn't thought of it," Junius said when he read it. 
"I guess you'll have to go to school."
"I don't want to go," said Robbie.
"I know. I don't much want you to go, either. But we 
have laws. The law has a self-protective appendage 
called penalty. We have to balance the pleasure of break-
ing the law against the punishment. The Carthaginians 
punished even misfortune. If a general lost a battle 
through bad luck, he was executed. At present we punish 
people for accidents of birth and circumstance in much 
the same manner."
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Junius Maltby
In the ensuing discussion they forgot all about the 
letter. John Whiteside wrote a very curt note.
"Well, Robbie, I guess you'll have to go," said Junius, 
when he received it. "Of course they'll teach you a great 
many useful things"
"Why don't you teach me?" Robbie pleaded.
"Oh, I can't. You see I've forgotten the things they 
teach"
"I don't want to go at all. I don't want to learn 
things."
"I know you don't, but I can't see any other way out." 
And so one morning Robbie trudged to school. He was 
clad in an ancient pair of overalls, out at the knees and 
seat, a blue shirt from which the collar was gone, and 
nothing else. His long hair hung over his grey eyes like 
the forelock of a range pony.
The children made a circle around him in the school 
yard and stared at him in silence. They had all heard of 
the poverty of- the Maltbys and of Junius' laziness. The 
boys looked forward to this moment when they could tor-
ture Robbie. Here was the time come; he stood in their 
circle, and they only stared at him. No one said, "Where'd 
you get them clothes," or, "Look at his hair," the way 
they had intended to. The children were puzzled by their 
failure to torment Robbie.
As for Robbie, he regarded the circle with serious eyes. 
He was not in the least frightened. "Don't you play 
games?" he asked. "My father said you'd play games."
And then the circle broke up with howls. "He doesn't 
know any games.,,-"Let's teach him pewee."- "No, 
nigger-baby." "Listen! Listen! Prisoner's base fast."-
"He doesn't know any games."
And, although they didn't know why, they thought it 
rather a fine thing not to know games. Robbie's thin 
face was studious. "We'll try pewee fast," he decided He
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John Steinbeck
was clumsy at the new games, but his teachers did not 
hoot at him. Instead they quarreled for the privilege of 
showing him how to hold the pewee stick. There are sev-
eral schools of technique in pewee. Robbie stood aside 
listening for a while, and at last chose his own instructor.
Robbie's effect on the school was immediate. The 
older boys let him entirely alone, but the younger ones 
imitated him in everything, even tearing holes in the 
knees of their overalls. When they sat in the sun with 
their backs to the school wall, eating their lunches, Rob-
bie told them about his father and about the sycamore 
tree. They listened intently and wished their fathers were 
lazy and gentle, too.
Sometimes a few of the boys, disobeying the orders of 
their parents, sneaked up to the Maltby place on a Sat-
urday, Junius gravitated naturally to the sycamore limb, 
and, while they sat on both sides of him, he read Treasure 
Island to them, or described the Gallic wars or the 
battle of Trafalgar. In no time at all, Robbie, with the 
backing of his father, became the king of the school 
yard.. This is demonstrated by the facts that he had no 
chum, that they gave him no nickname, and that he 
arbitrated all the disputes. So exalted was his station 
that no one even tried to fight with him.
Only gradually did Robbie come to realize that he was 
the leader of the younger boys of the school. Something 
self-possessed and mature about him made his compan-
ions turn to him for leadership. It wasn't long before his 
was the voice which decided the game to be played. In 
baseball he was the umpire for the reason that no other 
boy could make a ruling without causing a riot. And 
while he played the games badly himself, questions of 
rules and ethics were invariably referred to him.
After a lengthy discussion with Junius and Jakob, 
Robbie invented two vastly popular games, one called
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Junius Maltby
Slinkey Coyote, a local version of Hare and Hounds, and 
the other named Broken Leg, a kind of glorified tag. For 
these two games he made rules as he needed them.
Miss Morgan's interest was aroused by the little boy, 
for he was as much a surprise in the schoolroom as he 
was in the yard. He could read perfectly and used a 
man's vocabulary, but he could not write. He was fa-
miliar with numbers, no matter how large, yet he refused 
to learn even the simplest arithmetic. Robbie learned to 
write with the greatest of difficulty. His hand wavered 
crazy letters on his school pad. At length Miss Morgan 
tried to help him.
"Take one thing and do it over and over until you get 
it perfectly," she suggested. "Be very careful with each 
letter."
Robbie searched his memory for something he liked. 
At length he wrote, "There is nothing so monsterous but 
we can belief it of ourselfs." He loved that monsterous. 
It gave timbre and profundity to the thing. If there were 
words, which through their very sound-power could drag 
unwilling genii from the earth, `monsterous' was surely 
one of them. Over and over he wrote the sentence, put-
ting the greatest of care and drawing on his `monsterous.' 
At the end of an hour, Miss Morgan came to see how he 
was getting on.
"Why, Robert, where in the world did you hear that?" 
"It's from Stevenson, ma'am. My father knows it by 
heart almost "
Of course Miss Morgan had heard all the bad stories 
of Junius, and in spite of them had approved of him. 
But now she began to have a strong desire to meet him.
Games in the school yard were beginning to fall off in 
interest. Robbie lamented the fact to Junius one morn-
ing before he started off to school Junius scratched his
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John Steinbeck
beard and thought. "Spy is a good game," he said at last. 
"I remember I used to like Spy."
"Who shall we spy on, though?"
"Oh, anyone. It doesn't matter. We used to spy on 
Italians."
Robbie ran off excitedly to school, and that afternoon, 
following a lengthy recourse to the school dictionary, he 
organized the B.A.S.S.F.E.A.J. Translated, which it never 
was above a whisper, this was the Boys' Auxiliary Secret 
Service For Espionage Against The Japanese. If for no 
other reason, the very magnificence of the name of this 
organization would have made it a force to be reckoned 
with. One by one Robbie took the boys into the dim 
greenness under the school yard willow tree, and there 
swore them to secrecy with an oath so ferocious that it 
would have done credit to a lodge. Later, he brought the 
group together. Robbie explained to the boys that we 
would undoubtedly go to war with Japan some day.
"It behoofs us to be ready," he said. "The more we 
can find out about the nefarious practices of this ne-
farious race, the more spy information we can give our 
country when war breaks out."
The candidates succumbed before this glorious diction. 
They were appalled by the seriousness of a situation 
which required words like these. Since spying was now 
the business of the school, little Takashi Kato, who was 
in the third grade, didn't spend a private moment from 
then on. If Takashi raised two fingers in school, Robbie 
glanced meaningly at one of the Boy Auxiliaries, and a 
second hand sprung frantically into the air. When Taka-
shi walked home after school, at least five boys crept 
through the brush beside the road. Eventually, however, 
Mr. Kato, Takashi's father, fired a shot into the dark 
one night, after seeing a white face looking in his win-
dow. Robbie reluctantly called the Auxiliary together
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Junius Maltby
and ordered that espionage be stopped at sundown. 
"They couldn't do anything really important at night," 
he explained.
In the long run Takashi did not suffer from the es-
pionage practised on him, for, since the Auxiliaries had 
to watch him, they could make no important excursions 
without taking him along. He found himself invited 
everywhere, because no one would consent to be left 
behind to watch him.
The Boy Auxiliaries received their death blow when 
Takashi, who had in some way learned of their existence, 
applied for admittance.
"I don't see how we can let you in," Robbie explained 
kindly. "You see you're a Japanese, and we hate them." 
Takashi was almost in tears. "I was born here, the 
same as you," he cried. "I'm just as good American as 
you, ain't I?"
Robbie thought hard. He didn't want to be cruel to 
Takashi. Then his brow cleared. "Say, do you speak 
Japanese?" he demanded.
"Sure, pretty good."
"Well, then you can be our interpreter and figure out 
secret messages"
Takashi beamed with pleasure. "Sure I can," he cried 
enthusiastically. "And if you guys want, we'll spy on my 
old man."
But the thing was broken. There was no one left to 
fight but Mr. Kato, and Mr. Kato was too nervous with 
his shotgun.
Hallowe'en went past, and Thanksgiving. In that time 
Robbie's effect on the boys was indicated by a growth 
in their vocabularies, and by a positive hatred for shoes 
or of any kind of good clothing for that matter. Although 
he didn't realize it, Robbie had set a style, not new, per-
haps, but more rigid than it had been. It was unmanly to
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John Steinbeck
wear good clothes, and even more than that, it was con-
sidered an insult to Robbie.
One Friday afternoon Robbie wrote fourteen notes, 
and secretly passed them to fourteen boys in the school 
yard. The notes were all the same. They said: "A lot 
of indians are going to burn the Pres. of the U.S. to the 
stake at my house tomorrow at ten o'clock. Sneak out 
and bark like a fox down by our lower field. I will come 
and lead you to the rescue of this poor soul."
For several months Miss Morgan had intended to call 
upon Junius Maltby. The stories told of him, and her 
contact with his son, had raised her interest to a high 
point. Every now and then, in the schoolroom, one of the 
boys imparted a piece of astounding information. For 
example, one child who was really famous for his stupid-
ity, told her that Hengest and Horsa invaded Britain. 
When pressed he admitted that the information came 
from Junius Maltby, and that in some way it was a kind 
of a secret. The old story of the goat amused the teacher 
so much that she wrote it for a magazine, but no maga-
zine bought it. Over and over she had set a date to walk 
out to the Maltby farm.
She awakened on a December Saturday morning and 
found frost in the air and a brilliant sun shining. After 
breakfast she put on her corduroy skirt and her hiking 
boots, and left the house. In the yard she tried to per-
suade the ranch dogs to accompany her, but they only 
flopped their tails and went back to sleep in the sun.
The Maltby place lay about two miles away in the 
little canyon called Gato Amarillo. A stream ran beside 
the road, and sword ferns grew rankly under the alders. 
It was almost cold in the canyon, for the sun had not yet 
climbed over the mountain. Once during her walk Miss 
Morgan thought she heard footsteps and voices ahead of 
her, but when she hurried around the bend, no one was
Junius Maltby
in sight. However, the brush beside the road crackled 
mysteriously.
Although she had never been there before, Miss Mor-
gan knew the Maltby land when she came to it. Fences 
reclined tiredly on the ground under an overload of 
bramble. The fruit trees stretched bare branches clear 
of a forest of weeds. Wild blackberry vines clambered up 
the apple trees; squirrels and rabbits bolted from under 
her feet, and soft voiced doves flew away with whistling 
wings. In a tall wild pear tree a congress of bluejays 
squawked a cacophonous argument. Then, beside an elm 
tree which wore a shaggy coat of frost-bitten morning 
glory, Miss Morgan saw the mossy, curled shingles of the 
Maltby roof. The place, in its quietness, might have been 
deserted for a hundred years. "How rundown and sloven-
ly," she thought. "How utterly lovely and slipshod(" 
She let herself into the yard through a wicket gate which 
hung to its post by one iron band. The farm buildings 
were grey with weathering, and, up the sides of the 
walls, outlawed climbers pushed their fingers. Miss Mor-
gan turned the corner of the house and stopped in her 
tracks; her mouth fell open and a chill shriveled on her 
spine. In the center of the yard a stout post was set up, 
and to it an old and ragged man was bound with many 
lengths of rope. Another man, younger and smaller, but 
even more ragged, piled brush about the feet of the cap-
tive. Miss Morgan shivered and backed around the house 
corner again. "Such things don't happen," she insisted. 
"You're dreaming. Such things just can't happen" And 
then she heard the most amiable of conversations going 
on between the two men.
"It's nearly ten," said the torturer.
The captive replied, "Yes, and you be careful how you 
put fire to that brush. You be sure to see them coming 
before you light it."
John Steinbeck
Miss Morgan nearly screamed with relief. She walked 
a little unsteadily toward the stake. The free man turned 
and saw her. For a second he seemed surprised, but im-
mediately recovering, he bowed. Coming from a man 
with torn overalls and a matted beard, the bow was 
ridiculous and charming.
"I'm the teacher," Miss Morgan explained breathlessly. 
"I was just out for a walk, and I saw this house. For a 
moment I thought this auto-da-f~ was serious."
Junius smiled. "But it u serious. It's more serious than 
you think. For a moment I thought you were the rescue. 
The relief is due at ten o'clock, you know."
A savage barking of foxes broke out below the house 
among the willows. "That will be the relief," Junius con-
tinued. "Pardon me, Miss Morgan, isn't it? I am Junius 
Maltby and this gentleman on ordinary days is Jakob 
Stutz. Today, though, he is President of the United 
States being burned by Indians. For a time we thought 
he'd be Guenevere, but even without the full figure, he 
makes a better President than a Guenevere, don't you 
think? Besides he refused to wear a skirt."
"Damn foolishness," said the President complacently. 
Miss Morgan laughed. "May I watch the rescue, Mr. 
Maltby?"
"I'm not Mr. Maltby, I'm three hundred Indians" 
The barking of foxes broke out again. "Over by the 
steps," said the three hundred Indians. "You won't be 
taken for a redskin and massacred over there." He gazed 
toward the stream. A willow branch was shaking wildly. 
Junius scratched a match on his trousers and set fire to 
the brush at the foot of the stake. As the $ame leaped 
up, the willow trees seemed to burst into pieces and each 
piece became a shrieking boy. The mass charged forward, 
armed as haphazardly and as terribly as the French peo-
ple were when they stormed the Bastille. Even as the fire
Junius Maltby
licked toward the President, it was kicked violently aside. 
The rescuers unwound the ropes with fervent hands, and 
Jakob Stutz stood free and happy. Nor was the following 
ceremony less impressive than the rescue. As the boys 
stood at salute, the President marched down the line and 
to each overall bib pinned a leaden slug on which the 
word HERO Was deeply scratched. The game was over.
"Next Saturday we hang the guilty villians who have 
attempted this dastardly plot," Robbie announced. 
"Why not now? Let's hang 'em novel" the troop 
screamed.
"No, my men. There are lots of things to do. We have 
to make a gallows" He turned to his father. "I guess 
we'll have to hang both of you," he said. For a moment 
he looked covetously at Miss Morgan, and then reluc-
tantly gave her up.
That afternoon was one of the most pleasant Miss 
Morgan had ever spent. Although she was given a seat 
of honour on the sycamore limb, the boys had ceased to 
regard her as the teacher.
"It's nicer if you take off your shoes," Robbie invited 
her, and it was nicer she found, when her boots were off 
and her feet dangled in the water.
That afternoon Junius talked of cannibal societies 
among the Aleutian Indians. He told how the merce-
naries turned against Carthage. He described the Lace-
daemonians combing their hair before they died at Ther-
mopylae. He explained the origin of macaroni, and told 
of the discovery of copper as though he had been there. 
Finally when the dour Jakob opposed his idea of the 
eviction from the Garden of Eden, a mild quarrel broke 
out, and the boys started for home. Miss Morgan allowed 
them to distance her, for she wanted to think quietly 
about the strange gentleman.
The day when the school board visited was looked
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John Steinbeck
forward to with terror by both the teacher and her 
pupils. It was a day of tense ceremony. Lessons were re-
cited nervously and the misspelling of a word seemed a 
capital crime. There was no day on which the children 
made more blunders, nor on which the teacher's nerves 
were thinner worn.
The school board of the Pastures of Heaven visited on 
the afternoon of December 15. Immediately after lunch 
they filed in, looking sombre and funereal and a little 
ashamed. First came John Whiteside, the clerk, old and 
white haired, with an easy attitude toward education 
which was sometimes criticised in the valley. Pat Hum-
bert came after him. Pat was elected because he wanted 
to be. He was a lonely man who had no initiative in 
meeting people, and who took every possible means to be 
thrown into their contact. His clothes were as uncom-
promising, as unhappy as the bronze suit on the seated 
statue of Lincoln in Washington. T. B. Allen followed, 
dumpily rolling up the aisle. Since he was the only mer-
chant in the valley, his seat on the board belonged to 
him by right. Behind him strode Raymond Banks, big 
and jolly and very red of hands and face. Last in the 
line was Bert Munroe, the newly elected member. Since 
it was his first visit to the school, Bert seemed a little 
sheepish as he followed the other members to their seats 
at the front of the room.
When the board was seated magisterially, their wives 
came in and found seats at the back of the room, behind 
the children. The pupils squirmed uneasily. They felt that 
they were surrounded, that escape, should they need to 
escape, was cut off. When they twisted in their seats, 
they saw that the women were smiling benevolently on 
them. They caught sight of a large paper bundle which 
Mrs. Munroe held on her lap.
School opened. Miss Morgan, with a strained smile on
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Junius Maltby
her face, welcomed the school board. "We will do noth-
ing out of the ordinary, gentlemen," she said. "I think it 
will be more interesting to you in your official capacities, 
to see the school as it operates every day" Very little 
later, she wished she hadn't said that. Never within her 
recollection, had she seen such stupid children. Those 
who did manage to force words past their frozen palates, 
made the most hideous mistakes. Their spelling was 
abominable. Their reading sounded like the gibbering of 
the insane. The board tried to be dignified, but they 
could not help smiling a little from embarrassment for 
the children. A light perspiration formed on 'bliss Mor-
gan's forehead. She had visions of being dismissed from 
her position by an outraged board. The wives in the rear 
smiled on, nervously, and time dripped by. When the 
arithmetic had been muddled and travestied, John White-
side arose from his chair.
"Thank you, Miss Morgan," he said "If you'll allow 
it, I'll just say a few words to the children, and then you 
can dismiss them. They ought to have some payment for 
having us here."
The teacher sighed with relief. "Then you do under-
stand they weren't doing as well as usual? I'm glad you 
know that."
John Whiteside smiled. He had seen so many nervous 
young teachers on school board days. "If I thought they 
were doing their best, I'd close the school," he said. Then 
he spoke to the children for five minutes-told them they 
should study hard and love their teacher. It was the 
short and painless little speech he had used for years. 
The older pupils had heard it often. When it was done, 
he asked the teacher to dismiss the school. The pupils 
filed quietly out, but once in the air, their relief was 
too much for them. With howls and shrieks they did
John Steinbeck
their best to kill each other by disembowelment and de-
capitation.
John Whiteside shook hands with Miss Morgan. 
"We've never had a teacher who kept better order," he 
said kindly. "I think if you knew how much the children 
like you, you'd be embarrassed."
"But they're good children," 
"They're awfully good children."
"Of course," John Whiteside agreed. "By the way, how 
is the little Maltby boy getting along?"
"Why, he's a bright youngster, a curious child. I think 
he has almost a brilliant mind."
"We've been talking about him in board meeting, Miss 
Morgan. You know, of course, that his home life isn't all 
that it ought to be. I noticed him this afternoon es-
pecially. The poor child's hardly clothed."
"Well, it's a strange home." Miss Morgan felt that she 
had to defend Junius. "It's not the usual kind of home, 
but it isn't bad"
"Don't mistake me, Miss Morgan. We aren't going 
to interfere. We just thought we ought to give him a few 
things. His father's very poor, you know."
"I know," she said gently.
"Mrs. Munroe bought him a few clothes. If you'll call 
him in, we'll give them to him"
"Oh. No, I wouldn't-P she began.
"Why not? We only have a few little shirts and a pair 
of overalls and some shoes"
"But Mr. Whiteside, it might embarrass him. He's 
quite a proud little chap"
"Embarrass him to have decent clothes? Nonsense! I 
should think it would embarrass him more not to have 
them. But aside from that, it's too cold for him to go 
barefoot at this time of year. There's been frost on the 
ground every morning for a week."
she insisted loyally.
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Junius Maltby
"I wish you wouldn't," she said helplessly. "I really 
wish you wouldn't do it"
"Miss Morgan, don't you think you're making too 
much of this? Mrs. Munroe has been kind enough to buy 
the things for him. Please call him in so she can give 
them to him."
A moment later Robbie stood before them. His un-
kempt hair fell over his face, and his eyes still glittered 
with the fierceness of the play in the yard. The group 
gathered at the front of the room regarded him kindly, 
trying not to look too pointedly at his ragged clothes. 
Robbie gazed uneasily about.
"Mrs. Munroe has something to give you, Robert," 
Miss Morgan said.
Then Mrs. Munroe came forward and put the bundle 
in his arms. "What a nice little boy!"
Robbie placed the package carefully on the floor and 
put his hands behind him.
"Open it, Robert," T. B. Allen said sternly. "Where 
are your manners?"
Robbie gazed resentfully at him. "Yes, sir," he said, 
and untied the string. The shirts and the new overalls 
lay open before him, and he stared at them uncompre-
hendingly. Suddenly he seemed to realize what they were. 
His face flushed warmly. For a moment he looked about 
nervously like a trapped animal, and then he bolted 
through the door, leaving the little heap of clothing be-
hind him. The school board heard two steps on the 
porch, and Robbie was gone.
Mrs. Munroe turned helplessly to the teacher. "What's 
wrong with him, anyway?"
"I think he was embarrassed," said Miss Morgan. 
"But why should he be? We were nice to him." 
The teacher tried to explain, and became a little angry
117
John Steinbeck
with them in trying. "I think, you see-why I don't think 
he ever knew he was poor until a moment ago."
"It was my mistake," John Whiteside apologized. "I'm 
sorry, Miss Morgan"
"What can we do about him?" Bert Munroe asked. 
"I don't know. I really don't know."
Mrs. Munroe turned to her husband. "Bert, I think if 
you went out and had a talk with Mr. Maltby it might 
help. I don't mean you to be anything but kind. Just tell 
him little boys shouldn't walk around in bare feet in the 
frost. Maybe just a word like that'll help. Mr. Maltby 
could tell little Robert he must take the clothes. What 
do you think, Mr. Whiteside?"
"I don't like it. You'll have to vote to overrule my 
objection. I've done enough harm."
"I think his health is more important than his feel-
ings," Mrs. Munroe insisted.
School closed for Christmas week on the twentieth of 
December. Miss Morgan planned to spend her vacation 
in Los Angeles. While she waited at the crossroads for a 
bus to Salinas, she saw a man and a little boy walking 
down the Pastures of Heaven road toward her. They 
were dressed in cheap new clothes, and both of them 
walked as though their feet were sore. As they neared her, 
Miss Morgan looked closely at the little boy, and saw 
that it was Robbie. His face was sullen and unhappy.
"Why, Robert," she cried. "What's the matter? Where 
are you going?"
The man spoke. "We're going to San Francisco, Miss 
Morgan."
She looked up quickly. It was Junius shorn of his 
beard. She hadn't realized that he was so old. Even his 
eyes, which had been young, looked old. But of course he 
was pale because the beard had protected his skin from
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Junius Maltby
sunburn. On his face there was a look of deep puzzle-
ment.
"Are you going up for the Holidays?" Miss Morgan 
asked. "I love the stores in the city around Christmas. I 
could look in them for days"
"No," Junius replied slowly. "I guess we're going to be 
up there for good. I am an accountant, Miss Morgan. At 
least I was an accountant twenty years ago. I'm going to 
try to get a job" There was pain in his voice.
"But why do you do that?" she demanded.
"You see," he explained simply. "I didn't know I was 
doing an injury to the boy, here. I hadn't thought about 
it. I suppose I should have thought about it. You can 
see that he shouldn't be brought up in poverty. You can 
see that, can't you? I didn't know what people were say-
ing about us."
"Why don't you stay on the ranch? It's a good ranch, 
isn't it?"
"But I couldn't make a living on it, Miss Morgan. I 
don't know anything about farming. Jakob is going to 
try to run the ranch, but you know, Jakob is very lazy. 
Later, when I can, I'll sell the ranch so Robbie can have 
a few things he never had."
Miss Morgan was angry, but at the same time she felt 
she was going to cry. "You don't believe everything silly 
people tell you, do you?"
He looked at her in surprise. "Of course not. But you 
can see for yourself that a growing boy shouldn't be 
brought up like a little animal, can't you?"
The bus came into sight on the highway and bore 
down on them. Junius pointed to Robbie. "He didn't 
want to come. He ran away into the hills. Jakob and I 
caught him last night. He's lived like a little animal too 
long, you see. Besides, Miss Morgan, he doesn't know 
how nice it will be in San Francisco."
John Steinbeck
The bus squealed to a stop. Junius and Robbie climbed 
into the back seat Miss Morgan was about to get in 
beside them. Suddenly she turned and took her seat 
beside the driver. "Of course," she said to herself. "Of 
course, they want to be alone."

THE END.