Riding Freedom

A bald man named Ebeneezer Balch stands over Charlotte and demands to know what she is doing in his stable. She explains that she needed a place to sleep, that she just moved to the area, and that she is looking for a job. She explains that she snuck in and has been cleaning the stalls, and that she will continue to work for free if she can eat and sleep there. She offers to make his bridles shine like new. He admits that she did a good job on the stalls and that the bridles do need help, so he agrees to her proposition. However, he tells her not to get too comfortable, as he will soon be moving his stables to Rhode Island. Ebeneezer tells “Charley” that he has been through many stable boys who weren’t hard workers. She is “determined to show him that she was reliable” (56). She works long, hard hours and proves herself to be a fine worker as well as very skilled with the horses: “before long, she could coax even the stubborn ones to do almost anything” (57).

After a few months of this hard work, Ebeneezer calls her aside and tells her that a man came to town looking for a girl who ran away from an orphanage. He says, “she come up missing about the time you showed up here” (57). Ebeneezer didn’t like the “looks or sounds of him one bit,” noting that the man “was ready to punish the girl and wanted to find her in the worst way” (58). So Ebeneezer told the man (who is Mr. Millshark) that he didn’t have a stable boy and didn’t know a thing about this missing girl. It is clear that Ebeneezer knows Charley is the missing girl, but he wants to protect her. He doesn’t say anything directly to Charley, allowing the façade to continue.

Ebeneezer thinks that Mr. Millshark won’t give up easily and will be asking questions about his new prodigy stable boy. So, he comes up with a plan. He has the idea that Charley will be a natural stagecoach driver and puts him to the test. He takes Charley out with a coach and six horses and asks her to drive. She says she can’t because she refuses to whip horses. Ebeneezer explains that he would never whip horses, and that the whips are only for making sounds in the air to guide the horses. She takes the reins and gives it her best effort, but driving six horses is much more difficult than the two that she is used to. Charlotte understands that this is a test, and that if she can prove herself to Ebeneezer, he will find a way to protect her. She tries over and over again, each time failing but learning something new about controlling the ribbons of six horses at once. She thinks of Vern, who “would have never let her get out of that wagon until she figured out the turns…every time she mixed up the reins, she knew what she had done wrong, and she tried not to do it again” (64). Finally, Charlotte gets the hang of it, and Ebeneezer is pleased. He had hoped she would succeed because he wants her to drive this team of horses to his new stables in Rhode Island. There he hopes to train “Charley, or whoever you are” (64) to become first a stock tender and then a coach driver. He says, “you got a lot to learn, but I could train you, if it suits you” (65). Charlotte is thrilled.

Charlotte remains with Ebeneezer for years, “driving hundreds of practice runs” (68). Charley earns a reputation as the finest coach driver and is Ebeneezer’s most sought-after driver. Throughout the years, “Charlotte carried on a masquerade same as an actor in a theatre play” (68). She dresses carefully to conceal her female body, wearing loose-fitting men’s clothes and carrying a snakeskin whip. All her time shouting commands to the horses gives her a raspy voice, which no one identifies as female. No one seems to have any suspicion because “Charlotte was acting, dressing, and talking like a first rate stage driver, so in folk’s eyes, that’s what she was” (69). Charlotte makes sure to protect her identity by always living and sleeping alone, and when she sends letters to Hayward, she has other drivers mail them from various cities. Hayward writes back and often lets her know that he has seen Vern and they send their well wishes. She is now 18 years old and has managed to avoid being found by Mr. Millshark. But if anyone should discover her true identity, at this point she would not be allowed to continue living her life. Her “job could end in a moment’s recognition. And all of her dreams along with it” (69).