The Captain promises to take care of Joey and gives Albert time to say goodbye. Albert arrives at the camp too late to stop the sale, so he offers to join the cavalry to stay with Joey, but he is too young. He sells him for 40 pounds to Captain Nicholls of the British Army. One night, Father sends Albert on an errand so he can lure Joey out of the stall. She asks Albert to “try to see the good in him” (19), but Albert wishes that Father would stop complaining about Joey all the time. Mother says that Father’s worries about the mortgage-secured so Albert could have the farm one day-drive him to drink.

At home, there are long debates, mostly between Albert and his mother, over Father’s drunkenness and irresponsible behavior. At week’s end, the bet is won, and Joey stays.īritain enters World War I, and Albert wants to join the army with Joey at his side. Determined to keep Joey, Albert does what he must: His “gentle words and kindnesses of the past” (14) are replaced with shouts and flashes of a whip “whenever felt giving it best” (14). Infuriated, Father threatens to shoot the horse but instead says that Albert must train the horse in one week or Joey will be sold. When Father raises the whip, Joey kicks him. He tells Joey that he has made a bet that he can tame the horse to plow a field within a week and will do whatever it takes to win. Two years after Joey’s arrival, Father staggers into Joey’s stall with a whip. Father’s drinking continues, and he returns home drunk every Tuesday. When he isn’t at school or working, Albert takes Joey on long walks, and Joey learns “to come at his whistle, not out of obedience, but because always want to be with ” (8).

Mother insists that Joey can’t understand Albert, but the boy believes there is an “immediate and instinctive bond of trust between ” (7). Albert begins to clean the sweat-soaked horse tenderly, talking to him as he does so. The farmer’s wife and his young son, Albert, visit Joey, and Albert and the horse are immediately drawn to one another. Joey doesn’t go without a fight, however, and by the time they arrive at the farm, he is “soaked with sweat, and the halter rubbed face raw” (3). A few years before the start of World War I, a spirited Red Bay colt named Joey is born in Devon, England, and is quickly bought by a drunken farmer.

War horse illustrated book