The Black Stallion's Courage (10 page)

Henry slapped the man on the shoulder before starting the van. “ 'Tis the truth ye speak,” he said, mimicking the other's accent. “Ye didn't fool me, old boy, with that yellow-bowled pipe in your mouth and that gay-lookin' cap on your head.” Henry swept off the man's cap, exposing a shiny, hairless skull.

“Cover me head!” cried the man sharply, grabbing for his cap.

Henry chuckled and returned the cap. “Now I'm sure it's you, Mike,” he said in his normal voice. “Alec, meet the man who back in my ridin' days was the best Irishman in the business. Meet Michael Costello, ex-jock!”

The man extended a large hand to Alec. “Belmont be a long way off and the bus late,” he said wearily. “ 'Tis a good turn I'm owin' ye both.”

Henry drove the van out into the traffic again. “Don't be so formal, Mike. What're you doin' here anyway? The last time I saw you you were trainin' a stable on the Coast.”

“ 'Tis the truth ye speak, Henry. But I near bored meself to death with it.”

“Bored?” Henry asked incredulously, taking his eyes for a second off the busy thoroughfare.

“So I took to ridin' again,” the wiry man went on. “Sure, an' why not? What ails ye, Henry? Why do ye look at me with such grand surprise in your eyes? Why should I quit ridin' for good? I get just as much of a kick
out of it as I iver did, ye know. And if I do say so meself 'tis not the touch I've lost with the reins. Yesterday I rode the great Casey in the best race of me life. 'Tis not forgettin' it I'll be!”

Henry pulled the van over to the side of the street and stopped. Then he turned slowly to Michael Costello. “C-Casey … you rode Casey in the Metropolitan?”

The wiry man shut his eyes, then opened them. “Henry, what ails ye? Why do ye stop while Belmont still be a long way off?”

“But you rode Casey …” Henry repeated.

“Sure, and a great horse he's makin' of himself,” the man said while filling his pipe. His round, wrinkled face with its very black eyes turned to Alec. “ 'Tis the truth I speak about Casey, for Henry will bear me out that once I rode Man o' War. There never was a horse like him until yesterday. I'm expectin' great things from Casey.”

When Alec said nothing the man turned back to Henry and added, “From Casey
and me
. 'Tis likin' the ride I gave him they are and no one else will sit on him but me. Now 'tis later in the mornin' than I like to be gettin' to work even for a Sunday. So please get on with you.”

Henry started the van but remained silent a long time while Alec and Michael Costello talked to each other. Finally the trainer said without taking his gaze from the road, “Alec—”

“Yes, Henry?”

“Forget what I said about changin' the name of the farm, will you? It seems there's a lot of run left in some
of the old boys. That had better include me if I'm goin' to look Mike in the eye from now on.”

Joy swept over Alec and he grabbed Michael Costello's thick arm in gratitude.

“ 'Tis too tight ye are holdin' me arm,” the wiry man shouted.

Henry looked at his old friend and chuckled. Just ahead loomed the great grandstand of Belmont Park.

The first light of morning seeped between the slats of the Venetian blinds as Alec reached for the ringing alarm clock beside his bed and snapped it off. He lay in bed for another minute, resenting these early-morning risings and yet fully aware that it wouldn't be the same wonderful life without them.

He turned and looked at Henry, who was in the other bed, asleep and snoring. Alec knew how much his friend appreciated clean-smelling sheets and a comfortable bed after many nights of sleeping in the van. Henry had good accommodations at Belmont and that was one reason the trainer was glad to be back.

They
had a good deal at Belmont was more like it, Alec thought.

He heard someone stirring in the kitchen downstairs. Don or Mrs. Conover must be getting breakfast. He'd better be up and out, too. But he remained in bed, still half-asleep and wondering why he'd had such an
awful night. It wasn't like him to toss nervously about for so many hours before finally going to sleep.

Wednesday. This
was
Wednesday, wasn't it? They'd arrived Sunday and had settled in. Monday he'd walked the filly and galloped the Black. Tuesday he'd breezed him a slow four furlongs and the Black had fought his snug hold every inch of the way. The filly wasn't going to be breezed until the latter part of the week. Henry had decided to give her a short rest after the Preakness, maybe in the hope that she'd forget Wintertime if she didn't join him on the track.

Alec rolled over to the edge of the bed and sat up. He was still a little groggy from the last hour's deep sleep. So this had to be Wednesday, he decided.

Then it was race day for the Black!

The cold, bare facts woke him up as nothing else would have done. The Speed Handicap at seven-eighths of a mile. There would be ten starters, with the Black having been assigned top weight of 130 pounds. Henry hadn't liked giving as much as 20 pounds to the nearest weighted horse but he'd kept the Black in the race.

“Only seven furlongs,” the trainer had said, “so he ought to be able to handle it and still beat 'em.”

A purse of $8,950 would go to the winner. That amount plus what Black Minx had earned in the Preakness would make a grand total of $20,200, Alec figured. Still a long way from the necessary $100,000 for the new barn but they were on their way.

He went to the window. “Stop counting purses before we've won them,” he grunted.

Now that Alec realized what day it was he knew the reason for his bad night. He never slept well the night before a race. It was due to all the excitement preceding an important contest. Every rider, every athlete, knew it well. There was nothing unique about it.

Alec never for a moment considered the grim possibilities of sudden injury and even death as the reason for his sleeplessness. Jockeys never thought along those lines if they wanted to stay in the saddle. They got down fast and became anything but jockeys, knowing full well that a nervous race rider was very close to being a dead or injured one.

Only the spectators standing on the rail near the first turn had any idea what it was really like. They were the ones who could see the crowding of horses and men as racers slammed hard against one another and riders grabbed anything to keep from going down under tons of steel-shod hoofs. But a jockey never thought about that.

Alec stood quietly in the grayness of his room and thought
,
This is the big day, and I'm as ready to go as he is. All I've lost is a few hours' sleep. It's happened before. It'll happen again
.

Whoever was in the kitchen below had the radio on and was getting the weather report. “Fair and mild today with a high of sixty-five.…”

May 26. A perfect spring day. A dry, fast track for the Black.

Alec quietly raised the Venetian blinds and the light poured into the room. Henry stirred, grunted, and Alec said, “It's six.”

Henry turned over and went back to sleep.

It doesn't matter this morning. So sleep, Henry, sleep. The Black isn't going anywhere until this afternoon. The filly can be galloped later in the morning. Just feed and talk and muck out stalls. That's all we have to do
.

Looking out the window, Alec saw Wintertime being turned out in the small paddock between the house and barn. The blood bay colt had been a little off his feed, so Don Conover had started giving him a few hours of freedom in the small paddock every morning. He didn't want Wintertime to go track sour on him with the rich Belmont Stakes coming up.

Alec wondered if the trouble might be that the colt missed Black Minx, who was stabled on the other side of the barn. Silly notion, of course. Maybe his thoughts about the whole affair were ridiculous. Still, weren't horses supposed to be treated like people? Wasn't that what Henry always said?

Alec watched Peek-a-Boo, the Shetland pony owned by Don's six-year-old daughter, being led into the paddock to join Wintertime.

From the kitchen window below came the smells of coffee and bacon and toast. Alec was hungry but the appetizing aroma of good food didn't bother him as it did some of the riders he knew. And he knew too that once a jockey starts fighting his appetite and the scales he'd better start looking for another job.

His eyes left the small chestnut pony for the stablemen who were already raking the ground around the barn. Everything here was neat and clean and freshly painted. Like the tack trunks, the pails, brooms and rakes were painted red and green, the colors of Jean Parshall's racing stable. So were the big sliding
doors to the barn as well as the paddock fencing. This was
permanent
headquarters for Miss Parshall's stable. Unlike Alec and Henry, she had no farm of her own and her horses seldom left Belmont Park to race outside the New York area. The exceptions, of course, were the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness.

“I'm a city girl,” Alec had heard her tell Henry once, “and Belmont is far enough out in the country to keep my horses. I'll let you fellows run the farms.”

In a way, Alec decided, she had just about everything here that one could have at a farm except for the broodmares and young stock. There were acres upon acres of lovely towering shade trees, and at all times of the year the wonderful smell of hay and horses. Many stables made Belmont their permanent home and had quarters such as these.

Alec went into the bathroom and washed. Yes, as Henry had said, “It was good to be back at Belmont.” And it was good of Don Conover to take them and their horses into his home and barn. They would not have been so comfortable stabled in transient quarters.

After dressing in jeans and a light sweater, Alec left the room without awakening Henry. He went down the back stairs and outside. Usually Alec had coffee with Don and Mrs. Conover but this morning was different. He preferred being alone as much as possible today—alone with his horse.

Wintertime and the Shetland pony came to the fence when they saw him. Alec parted the pony's heavy forelock so he could see her bright eyes. “Peek-a-boo yourself,” he said, smiling.

Going on to the barn, he slid open the red-and-green trimmed door and went inside.

“ 'Morning, Ray,” he called. The man he greeted had a rub rag swinging from his left back pocket and he was raking the walking turf under the shed.

“ 'Morning, Alec. The boss comin' along?”

“Pretty soon now. He was having breakfast when I left the house.” Alec went down the corridor, and some of the horses stretched their heads over the stall doors so he could pat them.

The stableman called after him, “I ‘spect you got no taste for breakfast this morning?”

“Never knew a morning that I couldn't eat, Ray,” Alec answered without turning around. But he knew he wasn't fooling Ray or himself. He wasn't hungry at all.

An exercise boy turned from the training sheet posted outside the tack stall. “With the Black carrying a hundred and thirty pounds this afternoon, I guess you can eat all you want,” he said. His remark was made jokingly but there was great respect in his voice as well. He looked upon Alec Ramsay as his ideal. Someday he hoped to be as good a rider.

Alec stopped at the tack room. “Sam,” he said, smiling, “you and I could ride him together and still make that weight.”

“Plus two seven-course meals,” Ray called from down the corridor.

The exercise boy said, “That would be the day, the day I put a leg up on the Black!”

Alec went to the other side of the barn and there he found the filly with her head above the half-door. He
refilled her water pail and then went into the next stall. “Hello,” he said quietly. “This is your day.”

The tall stallion came quickly to him and Alec's eyes swept approvingly over his great body. The Black had lost what little extra weight he'd had upon his return to the track. Now he was in fine trim, the embodiment of a sleek and powerful machine. He would give a good account of himself today. There was some straw in his thick mane and tail, evidence that he'd been down on the floor during the night. That was good. It rested him to have the weight taken off his feet. He'd need all the energy he had today. His eyes were clear and quiet, reflecting the calmness of his whole being. Not until he was on his way to the paddock would the first marks of perspiration appear on his body.

As Alec picked the straw from the Black's mane he couldn't help thinking how everything about his horse spelled greatness
—true
greatness and not something labeled “great” one season and forgotten the next. That was why Sam had spoken with awe at just the thought of riding him. And that was why everybody called the Black by his right name and not some nickname. It was unusual around a stable for a horse to be called by the name that appeared on his registration papers and in racing programs. For example, Eclipse was “Pops”; Wintertime was “Red”; Black Minx was “Baby”; Golden Vanity was “Sunny”; and Silver Jet was “Bud.”

“Only Casey is ‘Casey,' “ Alec said aloud. “I wonder if that means anything. But that's enough. I'd better get to work.”

A short time later Alec left the barn, going out by another door to avoid meeting anybody. Beyond the high hedge that guarded the track he could hear the muffled thunder of a horse coming down the stretch. Closing his ears to it he walked still faster, scarcely seeing the men and horses who passed him on their way to the big track. He nodded only when friends called to him.

On another morning it would have been different. But this was race day. Even more important, it was
the Black's day
. Alec felt the nervous perspiration trickle down the sides of his chest and he chided himself. “At least the Black waits until he's on the way to the paddock before sweating. Take it easy. The race is still hours away.”