The Black Stallion Legend (6 page)

Across the Texas plains, he drove for several hundred
miles. Westward, ever westward into the sun. The next day he crossed the border into New Mexico and saw the mountain peaks beyond. Was that where he needed to go? America’s wilderness? All that was left for him was in the West, the great open spaces for a lonely man.

When night came again, he drove through the inky darkness, stopping only to care for his horse, then going on. All alone on the road, he had endless thoughts as he held the truck to the white center line. Where was he going? Would he find out? When?

By dawn the truck was zooming across Arizona deserts, great dry stretches leading north to the cliff towns of the Arizona mountains. Every bump in the road, every stretch of it, increased his longing for his Promised Land, wherever it was,
whatever
it was. The stones of old Indian ruins were all he saw on either side of the road. No people. No people at all.

Finally he turned off the state highway, again without question, and drove over a narrow gravel road that took him across a flat desert with ghostly shapes of yucca cactus on either side. It was wilder country than he’d known before. For a moment he closed his eyes in the heat of the sun coming through the windshield and pounded the wheel with his fists, uttering,
“Why? Why? Why?”

Hours later he passed through a small Indian town, its streets full of holes. He slowed the truck while barefoot children watched him from the street and their families stood in doorways of dilapidated huts. No one waved or spoke to him as he carefully drove by.

On the outskirts of the town, burros walked with
packs on their backs, their handlers usually straw-hatted old men with switch sticks in their hands. Only one spoke to him as he went by. “Where you go?”

Alec wished he knew. He bent over the wheel and went on, leaving the village behind.

Great mountains rose snow-capped in the distance, and he drove toward them, not knowing why but not questioning, not caring. Soon the truck began climbing, leaving the desert and gopher holes and cactus and mesquite behind. The air became cool as he drove ever upward through a narrow pass with sheer walls of stone on either side of him. He met nobody on the high road as the truck climbed until, finally, he reached a vast plateau at the top. Still beyond were the snow-capped peaks, but on either side of him were red mountainsides with long valleys.

Alec spent hours driving across the great plateau, occasionally seeing strange Indians in tattered rags, walking along with knives hanging from their belts. But they paid little attention to him as he drove by, watching with no expression on their beaten, brown faces. He knew his own eyes were as empty as theirs. At last he had found people as lost as himself.

The road became rutty, making the truck and trailer bounce as never before. He slowed until he was barely moving, avoiding the ruts as much as he could, thinking of his horse.

At sunset he began climbing again into the heights of the mountain range before him. He passed another village as he climbed higher, the Indians wearing heavy shawls and watching him closely from under wide hatbrims. Some turned their eyes up to him as he
passed close by, their eyes like hawks’, their hands outstretched. Was it in friendship or for alms? He didn’t know. Their world was dark, ancient and, he knew, where he’d wanted to be all along. How else had he found his way here?

Alec kept going, ever upward. The last rays of the sun were golden on the high peaks, and the air was keen and blue and cold. He stopped the truck to put on his warm goose-down jacket again. All that he knew of his world was far behind him now. What lay ahead? He didn’t know. But soon, yes, very soon, he would have the answers to all his questions. His mind told him so.

In the jeweled, star-studded sky of early evening, he came to the end of the dirt road and stopped the truck. Stretched before him, between two mountain ranges, was another vast, arid plain. He felt the cold snap of night in the air as he gazed at the high plateau, which appeared to him as a great, empty sea. He was looking at a far, far country and yet it had a familiar, dreamlike quality. It was here he wanted to be. But
why?

“All right,” he told himself, “think. You must have answers.”

He found he had none. His mind wandered between reality and a dream. What had brought him here was not real to him. Neither was his own self nor his own past. Half of himself had been left behind at Hopeful Farm and the other half was still ahead of him. He knew only that he wanted something and that he resented something. He resented what he had become and the cruelty of a world that had taken Pam from him.

Alec left the truck to care for his horse. Then, totally spent, he stretched out in the straw beside the great stallion. In the chilly dark he huddled in his warm jacket and hoped for sleep. At last he was far away from everything he had known except his horse.

In the dead silence of the night he felt the Black’s warm breath on his face. It seemed to say to him, “Don’t worry. Go to sleep. I’ll look after you.”

It was as if life flowed from the stallion’s nostrils into his own tortured body and mind. For the first time Alec relaxed and felt safe. He began to go to sleep, really to sleep.

Alec awakened and looked east into the sun. The morning light was intensely strong, all fine gold and flooding the dry earth. He turned to the high mountains in the west and they, too, seemed to be melting in the fierce rays of the rising sun.

His mind felt at peace for the first time, and he knew that this day was to be like no other. He had come to the end of the line, and perhaps that’s what he had wanted all along.

With no thought of his own physical needs or well-being, he cared for his horse as he had done every other morning. Then, when the Black had finished his feed and water, Alec backed him out of the trailer.

Outside, the stallion stood quietly while Alec unsnapped the lead shank from the halter ring. Only the Black’s eyes moved as the horse surveyed the seemingly endless miles of open land about him.

Alec removed the halter, dropping it and the lead shank to the ground; then he wrapped his arms around
the stallion’s neck, holding him tight as he had done so long ago on a lonely island. He wondered if this was what he had meant to do since he had left Hopeful Farm. Was this his answer—to go back to the way it had been at the very beginning? But to what end? For what purpose? To forget Pam, as if she had never been part of his life?
Was that his answer?

Despite being free of halter and lead shank, the Black remained still, as quiet as the morning, proud and long-limbed and waiting. Finally Alec withdrew his arms from about the stallion’s neck and looked at the pricked ears. His horse talked with his ears. They flicked east, and Alec knew it was in that direction they should go.

He felt the stallion’s breath against his face as he stepped back beside the horse’s head. Then he took two short, springy steps forward and swung his legs up while pulling on the mane at the same time. His body rolled and twisted in the air, reaching for seventeen hands of horse. Once astride, his balance secure, he turned the Black free!

The stallion’s strides came swift and easy, and Alec moved with him as if riding him for the first time. Here he had no other existence. Here he could begin all over again. He cued the Black to greater speed, the horse running beautifully over ground that had known no other hoofs but his, galloping and putting more miles between them and the painful world they had left behind.

Alec rode with a fervor that he never had displayed on the racetrack, hurling himself and his horse into the vastness of the desert. He did not try to guide
the stallion, but let him choose his own way. Swift and light, the Black ran in one direction after another, taking Alec through scrub and in and out of deep gullies. The great horse seemed to gather himself from time to time, changing direction at will, his excitement mounting as he felt no guiding hands, no control.

Alec’s own excitement grew as he rode on. No machine could give this sense of motion, far greater than anything felt inside the fastest car or fastest plane. He rode a powerful horse whose heart drummed against his own, and he absorbed all the Black’s energy and vitality into his own body, trying to forget his loss of Pam.

Alec screamed wildly into the wind, urging the Black on to still greater speed, more reckless than he had ever been, and knowing that his very wildness was creating problems he had never before faced with the black stallion.

Alec wrapped his muscular thighs about the Black, determined to stay on. He knew he would be thrown if he made but one mistake. Not that he cared what happened to him. If he was to be killed, he would be killed riding the Black. He welcomed the danger in order to forget everything he had known. But more than anything else, Alec was a professional horseman, and he adjusted his seat to a horse no longer his, but one gone wild with freedom.

The Black twisted and bucked. Alec felt the passion of the horse and gave in to his power. Instinct told him what the Black would do next, no matter how fast he did it.

The Black plunged and pawed for the sky. He ran into gullies, twisting among boulders and jumping over
mesquite, his back kinked. He was forked lightning, streaking one way and then another. He stopped only to rear up on his hind legs and pitch straight down with his head between rigid forelegs. Then he bolted like the wind, rushing up gullies while Alec held on by iron knees and superb balance. Once in the open the stallion sprang forward, bucking and kicking and running, as if he had never felt a human on him before. Alec stayed on him, the lower half of his body like a vise about his horse, knowing he must never relax the hold of his legs or he was dead.

Alec felt as if his head were being jerked from his shoulders as the Black whirled on his hind legs. Then the stallion bolted and was on his way again. Alec tightened his legs on the body of live fire beneath him. His bones rattled and he felt the stinging lashes of the Black’s mane against his face. They were like hot wires, searing his face until he felt he could no longer stand the pain. To escape it, he lowered his head farther down on the foamed neck of his horse.

Finally the Black ran straight and true, and Alec’s heart beat high from the challenge he had faced and won, staying on the stallion,
his
stallion, gone wild. His body felt shaken to pieces. He had been frightened but wildly excited. That was the way he had wanted it, and the Black seemed to have known.

Alec felt the magnificent surge of power as the stallion stretched his long legs to their fullest extent. He lowered his hands on the wet, steaming neck and felt the desert wind sweep over him, furlong after furlong, as it might have on a racetrack. But he did not want to think of the racetrack ever again.

There was no sound but the rhythm of racing hoofs over the earth. The Black was running at full speed, all fire over the scorched, parched land. And Alec was one with him again, sharing the stallion’s swiftness and strength as he raised and lowered his body to the racing strides of his horse.

Now that the Black was no longer fighting him, Alec was certain the stallion knew where he was going. His ears were pricked and his wet nostrils blown out. He had scented something. Only once did he stop to change direction, then resume his headlong flight. In another mile he came to a dead stop, head up, eyes surveying the land.

When the Black moved forward again, it was only at a slow gallop. Within a mile, Alec made out a brown pool in the rock outcroppings of the desert floor. It was a waterhole, and it was water that the Black had scented from far away. Only then did Alec realize how thirsty he was and what the water meant to both of them.

The stallion went directly to the pool and, lowering his head, swept away the brown scum that floated on top to reach the clearer water below.

Alec slipped off the stallion’s back, breathing heavily. The wild ride had knocked him about so much that blood was running out of his mouth and nostrils. He fell to his knees, then flat on his stomach in the mud beside the pool. His clothes were torn to shreds. He lay still, in a deep state of exhaustion, his face in the torpid water.

Moments later Alec lifted his head from the water to find the Black standing quietly beside him. The stallion had turned to the east, his ears cocked and wet nostrils blown out. Following his gaze, Alec saw what had attracted his attention. Something was coming from the east, creating a cloud of dust fuming from the earth. The cloud gradually grew larger until, finally, Alec could make out the shadowy figures of a large herd of horses racing toward them!

The Black’s eyes followed the fast-moving herd, his body arched back against stiffened forelegs, his neck defiantly curved. Sweat poured from his body.

Rapidly the horses came closer, spread out in a line across the plateau. Alec recognized them as wild mustangs. Were they coming in from the desert to drink at the waterhole?

The huge herd slowed when they saw the black stallion and sniffed the wind for danger. Finally they
halted. Alec saw only beauty in their wildness, their suspicions, their unbounded freedom. But, actually, their bodies were raw, rough, scrawny and knob-headed. Alec realized that it was only their dominant will to be free of all restraint that made them appear so beautiful to him.

They moved closer to the waterhole, tossing their heads high with nostrils dilated. The bright sun brought out details of prominent eyes, tapered noses, small bodies and slender legs. They came in all shapes and sizes. Their coats were of varied colors—brown, bay, sorrel, roan, dun, gray, white and paint—and covered with scars.

The mustangs came to an abrupt halt again, eyeing the black stallion and sniffing his scent. Suddenly they broke the stillness with loud snorts, wheeled and dashed away, speeding once more over the desert, an earth-skimming mass of horseflesh.