Gib and the Gray Ghost by Zilpha Keatley Snyder Read Free Book Online Page A

“consider a sale?”
    Even though Gib stretched his ears till they nearly fell off he couldn’t make out how Miss Hooper answered. He was still behind the parlor door with his ear pressed to the crack when the front door shut with a bang and Miss Hooper’s footsteps came back down the hall and turned into the library. Gib was pressed back against the wall, trying to remember exactly what he’d heard, when Livy suddenly reappeared.
    “You can come out now,” she said, peering around the door. “They’ve gone.”
    Gib sighed. He looked around the room. “Hey,” he asked, “where were you? Where were you hiding?”
    “Oh, I wasn’t hiding,” Livy said. “At least not exactly. I was lying there on the sofa pretending to be asleep.” She giggled. “If they’d looked in they would have just said, ‘Oh, look at that. She’s taking a nap. Isn’t that sweet.’ ”
    Gib couldn’t help smiling, but then his grin faded. “Did you hear them? Did you hear what that man was asking Miss Hooper just as he went out the door?” he asked.
    Livy nodded grimly. “Yes, I did. What did I tell you? He wants to get the rest of our land.”
    “Land?” Gib was puzzled. He’d been sure Morrison had been talking about Black Silk. There was no time to argue the point, and for that matter, no reason to. As he knew from experience, arguing with Livy never got you anywhere. Insisting they’d been talking about Silky when Livy was sure it was the ranch would be just like insisting on Patrick Henry instead of Paul Revere. And this time he wouldn’t dare ask Miss Hooper to settle the argument. As they entered the kitchen Livy ran to the window that faced the driveway.
    “He’s coming,” she whispered. “I hear him. See, there he goes.”
    Gib stayed where he was until the pounding of hoofbeats and the jingling of tack faded away. When she turned from the window Livy was frowning fiercely. “About Morrison stealing your mother’s ranch—?” Gib started to say, when she ran right past him and out of the room.
    Gib sighed and shrugged. He really needed to talk to somebody. Hy might have been able to help but he was in Longford. Miss Hooper and Mrs. Thornton were still in the library and Mrs. Perry seemed to have disappeared. He waited around in the kitchen for several minutes before he gave up and headed back out to the barn, where there were better things to do than worry about questions that never got answered.
    It was a good time to get some shoveling done. That way Comet and Caesar could come home to spanking-clean stalls. And probably Silky could use a good grooming too. Actually, the way it turned out, it was Silky herself who got most of the attention.
    She needed it, Gib decided. Earlier there hadn’t been time to give her much more than a lick and a promise what with trying to hurry and having Morrison’s buckskin to deal with. But as Gib curried and brushed, his mind kept going back to Morrison and what he’d said about whether Mrs. Thornton would consider a sale.
    She wouldn’t, he was sure. Well, almost sure. After all, if she’d refused to sell Silky when her husband wanted her to after the accident, surely she wouldn’t do it now when she was the only one who had any say-so.
    “No, she never would,” Gib told Silky as he brushed her forelock. “Like Hy says, Mrs. Thornton’s a real prairie-bred Merrill, and no Merrill would give up owning the most beautiful horse in the whole world. Now, would they?” Silky nodded her head and then shook it violently. The shaking surely did mess up her forelock, but Gib only chuckled. “You tell ’em, Silky,” he said. “Course she wouldn’t. Never in a million years.”

Chapter 8
    A COUPLE OF DAYS later the same old unanswered questions were still hanging around. Hy wasn’t any help whatsoever. The damp, chilly weather had set his broken bones to aching, which always made him silent and extra ornery. So when Gib started in, once or twice, by asking if Hy