Now, the night riders were white folks who dressed up in sheets and such and rode around threatening colored folks and white folks too who started up schools for colored folks and taught colored folks anything other than what they figured colored folks needed to know. The night riders were certainly to be feared, but I wasn’t worried about them, and I knew Mitchell really wasn’t either. Neither of us had ever seen them and after all, this teaching thing would be just between Mitchell and me. I shrugged. “No need for them to find out. I’m not opening any school, just teaching you.”
“And what you ’spect me t’ do for you?” he asked.
The truth was, all I expected from Mitchell Thomas was for him to stop beating up on me, but I was realizing now with those words that Mitchell was more than just a bully. There was a pride in him too, and there’d have to be an exchange of learning for this truce I was proposing to work. “You could teach me to fight,” I said.
“Can’t teach you to win,” he returned.
“Well, that’d be up to me,” I replied.
Mitchell took his time in making up his mind. “All right then,” he finally agreed. “You teach me how t’ read and write and figure, and I’ll teach you how t’ fight, but I wants ya t’ know one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I still don’t like ya.”
“Well, I don’t like you either,” I admitted quite truthfully.
He nodded, accepting my honesty, and the deal was struck. So that’s how things began between Mitchell and me. After that, Mitchell and I held our truce. We didn’t become friends, but at least he wasn’t beating up on me anymore. I taught him and he taught me. He wasn’t the best student, but then again I wasn’t a great fighter either. I learned how to defend myself, and maybe just as important, once the other colored boys saw Mitchell and me together without Mitchell picking on me and bopping me upside the head, they pretty much backed off and left me alone. I don’t know if at the time Mitchell was aware of it or not, but though he never declared himself as such, his presence alone made him my protector.
The Stallion
A couple of years after Mitchell and I had come to our understanding, my daddy took himself a real interest in a stallion by the name of Ghost Wind. Now, my daddy loved horses and in particular fast horses, and he’d recently heard about Ghost Wind, who some folks claimed was the fastest thing on four legs. Since my daddy didn’t own Ghost Wind, the fastest thing on four legs, he soon took steps to rectify that fact. After corresponding with the owner of that stallion, a man by the name of Waverly who lived in the neighboring county, he announced that he was going to take a look at the horse for himself, and if that stallion was as fast as everybody said, he intended to buy him. He decided to take all of us boys with him.
The Waverly farm was several hours away, so on the day my daddy went to bargain for the stallion, we started early, long before dawn. The night before, my daddy had chosen five of our best horses for us to ride. He said he wanted Jim Waverly to know he already had the best, so a stallion named Ghost Wind, though he wanted him, was not the only horse out there. He had gotten the best before, and even if he couldn’t settle on a fair price for the stallion, he’d get the best somewhere else.
The only problem with his decision about taking his best five horses was Robert. Now, the thing was, Robert had always been skittish around horses. He had once been thrown by a horse, and his leg and ribs were broken. That fall had put a great fear into him, and he had never gotten over it, so it was difficult even to get him near a horse, let alone on one unless he was riding double with someone else. Robert much preferred to walk to get to where he was going or, if the distance proved too much, to ride in a buggy. My daddy, though, being the horseman he was, wasn’t about to let Robert ride in a buggy to another horseman’s farm. He was particularly proud of these five horses, and he wasn’t going to have one of them hitched to a buggy. The concession he finally made to Robert was to replace one of the five with a lesser horse, but still of fine quality. This horse was slower and less spirited, and he figured even Robert shouldn’t have a problem with him.
“Just keep a tight hold on the reins, let him know who’s in charge,” said my daddy to Robert, “and you’ll do fine.”
Robert looked at me mounted beside him, and I could tell he was figuring the horse was in charge, not him. Still, he said, “Yes, sir,” to our daddy and made the ride, though he looked uncomfortable all the way. Now, I was just the opposite of Robert. I was eleven by then and could sit a horse well. In fact, I was good with horses and could handle most of them. My daddy said it seemed like to him I’d been born on one. So, while my daddy, Hammond, and George rode on ahead, I stayed behind with Robert, talking most of the way to the Waverly farm, keeping Robert’s mind off his fear and his horse in line with my own.