Jingle Bells (Horse Diaries Special Edition) Read online

  HORSE DIARIES

  #1: Elska

  #2: Bell’s Star

  #3: Koda

  #4: Maestoso Petra

  #5: Golden Sun

  #6: Yatimah

  #7: Risky Chance

  #8: Black Cloud

  #9: Tennessee Rose

  #10: Darcy

  Special Edition: Jingle Bells

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2014 by Catherine Hapka

  Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2014 by Ruth Sanderson

  Photograph credits: © Bob Langrish (this page); © Chad Ehlers/Alamy (this page); Library of Congress (this page)

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hapka, Cathy.

  Jingle Bells / Catherine Hapka; illustrated by Ruth Sanderson. pages cm. — (Horse diaries)

  Summary: In 1915 Wisconsin, a farm horse named Jingle Bells worries that his family will replace him when the older son brings home a brand new Model T Ford car. Includes facts about Clydesdale horses.

  ISBN 978-0-385-38484-1 (pbk.) — ISBN 978-0-385-38485-8 (lib. bdg.) —

  ISBN 978-0-385-38486-5 (ebook)

  1. Clydesdale horse—Juvenile fiction. [1. Clydesdale horse—Fiction.

  2. Horses—Fiction. 3. Farm life—Fiction.] I. Sanderson, Ruth, illustrator. II. Title.

  PZ10.3.H2258 Ji 2014 [Fic]—dc23 2013033336

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  For Gerri and Annabelle and Suzie and Claire and all the other good, hardworking draft horses I’ve known

  —C.H.

  With thanks to Blue Star Equiculture, a draft horse rescue facility in Palmer, Massachusetts

  —R.S.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1

  Wisconsin, Summer, 1915

  2

  The Letter

  3

  An October Sunday

  4

  News

  5

  Christmas Hunting

  6

  Martin’s Mystery

  7

  Christmas Eve

  8

  In the Barn

  9

  Dashing Through the Snow

  10

  Jingle All the Way

  Appendix

  Activities

  About the Author

  About The Illustrator

  “Oh! if people knew what a comfort to horses a light hand is …”

  —from Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell

  Wisconsin, Summer, 1915

  My muscles strained against the harness as the hay wagon reached the spot where the ground sloped up on the way to the barn. The heavy summer air was filled with sounds—the wagon’s wooden wheels creaked, a fly buzzed near my eyes, cows lowed in the distance, the mare harnessed beside me breathed in and out. But I ignored all except my master’s voice as he spoke behind me.

  “Good man, Jingle!” he called out. “There’s a good horse.”

  My master, known as Lars, was a lean, weather-beaten man with kind eyes and gentle hands. I flicked an ear back at the sound of my name, then leaned forward, throwing my massive weight against the load. Sweat dripped down my sides as my hooves dug into the hard-packed dirt road. It was a hot day, close and still. On the horizon beyond the cow pasture, dark rain clouds were gathering.

  Beside me, my harness partner sucked back. She was a young mare known as Millie—Silly Millie, the humans sometimes called her. The load is too heavy, she complained. I can’t pull any harder.

  Yes, you can, I replied. We can always pull harder.

  Millie merely snorted in return. But I continued to put one feathered hoof in front of the other, and after a moment she leaned forward against her collar again, taking on her share of the load. The wagon rolled steadily up the hill.

  We had been working hard all day, trying to bring in the last of the hay crop before the rain came. Lars and his second-eldest son, Jonas, had loaded the sweet-smelling greenish-gold bales into the wooden wagon. Millie and I had done our part, standing and waiting patiently between stops.

  It was easy for me to be patient, but it was harder for Millie. She was only half draft, and her light horse side sometimes made her flighty. Then again, perhaps she was merely young. Even I had sometimes been silly in my youth. And I was all draft, a purebred Clydesdale—stout of limb, strong of heart, steady of temperament.

  “Come up, Millie!” Jonas called, striding beside us. “Steady on, Jingle!” He was nearly as tall as his father, with the same pale hair and strong shoulders.

  Finally we reached the top of the hill. From there, it was easy pulling to the large wooden barn. The farm dogs raced to greet us, barking and wagging their tails. The family’s half-grown black-and-white kitten tumbled along behind the dogs. Millie snorted as a dog dashed beneath her feet, but I ignored its antics. Dogs were odd creatures, preferring to run when they could walk, and bark when they could be silent. But I was used to them and found little they did surprising anymore.

  Two more of our master’s children were rushing toward us, slower than the dogs but just as lively. One was Anders, the third son. But my gaze was trained on the other child, a bright-eyed girl called Kari. While I was fond of Lars and the rest of his family, his youngest daughter was special to me, and I to her. Sometimes Kari said that was because she’d given me my name: Jingle Bells. At other times, she claimed it was because we were the same age, eleven years.

  I didn’t know about any of that. But I knew that I especially liked the sight and sound and smell of Kari over all the others. I loved to feel her soft, gentle hands rubbing my nose or picking the knots out of my thick black mane.

  “Careful, Mittens!” Anders scooped up the kitten as it batted at the feathers on my foreleg. “You’ll get stepped on.”

  “Jingle would never,” Kari informed him. “He’s careful.”

  Lars hopped down from the wagon. “Leave that cat alone, and let’s get to work,” he said, casting an anxious glance at the sky. “Who knows how much longer the rain will hold off, and there’s still the evening milking to do.”

  “Yes, Papa.” Anders set the kitten down and hurried toward the wagon.

  Kari followed. She was the only one of the family’s three daughters who spent much time in the barn and fields, where she did her best to work just as hard as the boys. She was too small to lift a full bale of hay herself, but she could help Anders push them off the wagon so that Lars and Jonas could stack them.

  As the humans worked, Millie shifted her weight constantly from one foreleg to the other. When will they finish? she complained. I’m hungry!

  They’ll finish when the work is done, I replied. I cocked one hind foot and waited, ignoring the mare’s fidgeting.

  Finally the hay was where it was supposed to be. Lars and Jonas
drove the wagon out of the way and unhitched us. Kari reached up toward my face as her father led me out of the traces, and I lowered my head and waited for her to grab the noseband of my bridle. She led me first to the water trough outside the barn, where I took a long drink. Anders brought Millie over, too, and we stood there together sucking in the cool water. A vibrant blue dragonfly buzzed past and I lifted my head to watch it, water dripping from my muzzle. Then the colorful insect was gone, and I drank again.

  “I’ll give Jingle a good grooming, all right?” Kari said to her father.

  “And I’ll groom Millie,” Anders offered.

  “Thank you. The horses certainly earned their keep today.” Lars removed his hat and swiped the sweat from his forehead with his arm. “Come, Jonas. Let’s sweep out the wagon.”

  Kari tugged on my noseband again. I stepped away from the trough, following her into the barn and across to my stall. My steps were slow and deliberate, and I was careful to hold my head low, well below my withers. That was partly to avoid pulling Kari off the floor as she gripped my noseband—she weighed little more than that kitten, or so it seemed to me—and partly so I wouldn’t step on her heels, or on the hens pecking for stray bits of grain on the floor, or on the kitten or the dogs, who as usual seemed to be everywhere at once as they accompanied us inside.

  My stall felt shaded and cool compared to the heat outdoors. It was good to stand still and let the day’s work seep out of my tired muscles. I lowered my head again so Kari could pull the collar off my neck, though she had to stand on a milking stool to peel the rest of the harness from my back and hindquarters. She staggered under the weight of the huge mound of leather and brass as she carried it out of the stall.

  “Be right back, Jingle,” she called over her shoulder.

  She returned shortly with a grooming kit and climbed onto the milking stool again so she could reach my broad back with her stiff-bristled brush. She scrubbed the itchy sweat marks left by the collar and straps. It felt so good! My eyes drooped half-shut, and my lower lip flopped with pleasure.

  “Poor Jingle—you’re extra sweaty today! I wonder if this heat will ever end,” Kari said. “It’s terrible!”

  Anders peeped through the plank wall separating my stall from Millie’s. “Mama says the rain will help,” he said. “But I’d rather have snow!”

  Kari giggled. “Snow in summer? That will never happen!”

  “Not here, maybe.” Anders grinned, his blue eyes dancing. “But maybe in Norway it could happen. Mormor and Morfar’s stories make it sound like it snowed there all year long when they were our age! Anyway, I’m only joking. Summer is better than winter any day.”

  “No way,” Kari said. “I like winter better.”

  “You’re crazy,” Anders retorted. “Summer is the best! We go berry picking, catch fireflies, cool off in the swimming hole.…”

  “And Papa never gets to sit down because he’s so busy with the plowing and the haying and the calving and all the rest,” Kari shot back. “The poor horses work just as hard, and we all spend our days sweating and miserably hot.”

  Anders snorted, sounding so much like a horse that I looked over in surprise. “Well, you can move to Norway and live with Great-Aunt Inga, then,” he said. “I still like summer. So there.”

  Kari climbed down from the stool. Kicking it away, she kneeled in the straw to scrub at the long white hair that grew down my legs and over my hooves, known by the humans as feathers.

  “I bet you like winter better, too, don’t you, Jingle?” Kari said. “There’s less work for you in the fields. You get to rest unless you’re driving us to town or church. And of course there are lots of extra carrots for Christmas.…”

  I was half dozing as she picked the dirt out of my feathers. But I perked up as I heard that familiar word: Christmas.

  Lars was passing by on his way to put the double tree away, and he heard the word, too. “It’s a long time to Christmas, young ones,” he said, pausing in front of my stall. “Or are you talking about how our Jingle Bells got his name?”

  He reached in to give me a pat. Anders let out a groan.

  “Don’t encourage her, Papa!” he exclaimed. “She tells that story every chance she gets!”

  “That’s because it’s a good story,” Kari informed her brother.

  Their father chuckled. “Indeed, it is. Kari always was a precocious thing—she was just three years old when we bought Jingle, who was much the same age at the time.”

  “I remember.” Kari sat back on her heels, looking up at her father. “I was smaller then, but he was nearly as big as he is now!”

  I stayed very still, not wanting to bump into her and hurt her. But hearing that human word—Christmas—had set my mind wandering as I thought back to my arrival on the farm. It was the first time I’d left the place where I was born. Until that day, I hadn’t realized how big the world was. I had never really believed that there was anything beyond the green fields of my home and the dirt roads nearby where I’d been taught to drive, though my dam and the other adult horses had tried to tell me otherwise.

  Then one day, my former master had tied me to the back of his carriage. I followed along behind it as I’d been taught. We proceeded at a trot down one road after another until we left everything familiar behind. Suddenly every tree, every cow, every stone in the road was strange. I eyed the new sights with suspicion.

  What is happening? I’d called to the horse pulling the carriage, a burly Clydesdale gelding. Will we ever stop?

  I don’t know, the other horse had replied. It’s better not to wonder about the ways of humans.

  I hadn’t been sure that was true at the time, though I understood it better now. Still, I’d tried to be good and behave as I’d been taught while my former master untied me and led me up a strange, new drive past a tidy, gabled frame house.

  Lars and several of his children were waiting near the barn. Standing behind them was another horse, a stoutly built older mare. Everything looked new and strange, but it was good to see another horse, especially as we’d left the other Clydesdale out of sight by the road. I let out an anxious whinny to let the mare know I was there and willing to be friends. The mare snorted kindly in response. She was already hitched to the wagon, and almost before I knew what was happening, I was in the harness beside her.

  Steady, young one, she told me in her wise, calm way. These humans will treat you well if you work hard.

  I can do that, I said, though I still felt nervous.

  When the mare stepped forward, I did as well. I knew how to do this—my previous master had been training me to drive for quite some time already. The familiar feeling of the collar against my shoulders steadied me, and I threw myself into the work with relief.

  Suddenly there came a peal of laughter. It startled me, and I jumped in place, causing the small silver bells on the harness to jingle loudly. It was Kari, much smaller then, grinning ear to ear.

  “Jingle bells! Jingle bells!” she cried, running toward me.

  “Kari, no!” Her mother, Frida, dashed forward.

  But she was too slow. The tiny girl had flung her arms around my knee. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I stood stock-still. A moment later, Frida pulled little Kari away.

  Lars let out a long breath and smiled. “I think we’ve got a good one here,” he said, giving me a pat on the neck. He turned to my former master. “What do you call him?”

  The man shrugged. “Haven’t really settled on a name,” he said. “We just call him the tall colt, mostly.”

  Just then I shifted my weight, setting the bells jingling again.

  “Jingle bells!” little Kari yelped with delight.

  Lars raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps he’s found his name already.”

  “… and that’s how our Jingle Bells got his name,” Kari was saying now, smiling smugly at Anders.

  Lars chuckled. “All right. I suppose Jonas and I had better go bring in the cows before the rain starts.” He whistl
ed for the dogs. They bounded after the two men, their excited barking fading into the distance and leaving the barn quiet and peaceful.

  Kari finished her grooming and then brought me my dinner. The kitten came with her, leaping and pouncing in the hay after imaginary mice. I stepped carefully toward my feed bucket, watching where I placed my hooves. Kari leaned against my shoulder and hummed a pretty tune as I dipped my nose into the bucket. In the next stall, I could hear Millie slurping her grain.

  Suddenly there was an excited cry from the barn door. It was Hanne, one of Kari’s older sisters.

  “A letter!” she cried, rushing in. “A letter has arrived from Martin!”

  The Letter

  “From Martin?” Kari exclaimed. “What does it say?”

  Anders rushed in from the direction of the tack room. “Did it come all the way from Detroit?” he added, sounding excited.

  “Where do you think it came from?” Hanne retorted in her tart way. “That’s where he and Pearl live, isn’t it? Now, where’s Papa?”

  “He and Jonas just left to bring the cows in for milking,” Anders said. “I suppose he can see the letter when he comes in for supper later.”

  “No! There’s big news,” Hanne said. “Mama wants him to see it right away.”

  Hearing the urgency in the older girl’s voice, I pulled my nose out of the bucket, though I continued chewing steadily. The name Hanne had mentioned—Martin—was one I knew. It was the name of the family’s eldest son, who had left the farm several years earlier. At first I’d thought he was gone forever, much like the old mare, who had died at around the same time Martin had gone away.

  But one day the following year Martin had returned for a visit, bringing a young woman with him. The woman had a soft, quick voice, pale skin, dark hair, and very red lips. When Martin showed her around the barnyard, she’d seemed rather fearful of Millie and me, though I didn’t understand why, especially since Millie had pulled her home in the family’s small buggy earlier that very day.

  Kari stepped forward. “I’ll fetch Papa,” she told Hanne. “Jingle can take me to find him.”