Read Online The Black Stallion Revolts by Walter Farley - Free Book Online Page B

with his teeth, hoping this new torture would distract him from the old. He kept going, kept climbing.
    A voice from far away said, “It ain’t flat, Joe. It’ll hold up for a while. Let’s keep goin’ until we hit the next station. Ain’t no sense changin’ it out here.”
    Hearing this, he screamed into the night and hung on to the top backboard, afraid to let go, afraid because of his terrible agony. He heard the heavy footsteps that came in answer to his scream. He felt the hands, as heavy as the feet had been, reach up to take him by the belt, and then he was pulled down.
    For a moment he lay upon the road, his eyes closed. When he opened them two pairs of eyes were staring at him, and then two pairs of hands pulled him to his feet. It was hard focusing his eyes, harder still to move his swollen lips. And when he succeeded, his words came in gasps and were incoherent. They made no sense to the men who pulled him to the front of the truck to look at him in the glare of headlights.
    The voice came to him again, an angry voice, rough, like the hands. “How long you hitched a ride with us? How long? Salt Lake City? Ain’tcha got eyes? Ya see that sign?”
    He was pulled to his feet, and lifted brutally until his face was pressed hard against the truck’s windshield. There was a sign there, but he could not read it. The cold glass comforted his throbbing head.
    “No riders, see! An’ it means what it says,y’understan’? Do ya?” The hands shook him roughly. “You hitch a ride with us, an’ we lose our jobs. Y’understan’? The Company’s got spotters. Spotters, y’hear? They see ya, an’ we get canned. Y’know that?”
    The hands kept shaking him, and he knew he could stand no more. He tried to scream, but nothing came. “I … I … need he … help.” His words were only whispers. “I want the police … need the police.”
    The two men were laughing, low, guttural laughs. They set him down on the side of the road, and he clung to the dirt, knowing aloneness again and the peace that came with it.
    Out of the blackness he heard the harsh voice once more. “By the looks of ya I’d keep away from the police, if
I
were in your shoes.”
    The other voice came, “He ain’t even got shoes.
His kind
ain’t gonna be helped by the cops none.”
    The cab door slammed, the engine roared, and they left him there. But he didn’t care, didn’t care at all.
    How long he lay there, waiting for the pain to leave his head, he never knew. When he was able to sit up again he looked once more into darkness. Would this night ever end? Was it to last forever?
    He sat still, knowing that only by keeping quiet would he have peace. He was on a valley road. Cars would come along, and perhaps one of them would stop. Someone would help him. Someone would take him to the police. He’d tell them he couldn’t remember anything, and they’d understand. He’d tell them that somehow he’d been struck on the head, and that was the reason he couldn’t remember his name, or where he was, or what he’d been doing before he washurt. They would help him. They might even be able to tell him who he was. Perhaps they had been looking for him. Perhaps …
    The harsh voice came to him again, “
By the looks of ya I’d keep away from the police.…
” He’d always remember that voice, those words.
    By the looks of me? His torn hands felt his swollen face, felt the rags that should have been clothes, felt the clotted blood on his raw and open flesh. And finally they rested on the bulge in his pocket, and he remembered the large amount of money that was there. How had he come by so much money? Why had he been crawling through the woods, through a mountain wilderness? Had he been afraid? Had he been running from something? From the police?
    Perhaps the police
were
looking for him. A new and terrifying fear gripped his body. Before he had been afraid for his life, afraid that the help he sought would not come. Now he felt