The Black Stallion Challenged (2 page)

He studied the youth as he bent over the tack trunk. Alec still weighed only about one hundred and ten pounds and most of the weight was in his arms and chest, making him look like sort of a husky bulldog—except for his face, of course. Alec had a thin, good-looking face, unlined and set off by prominent, even teeth that flashed whenever he smiled, which was a good bit of the time. His hair was cut short and it was more red than ever due to the long time he’d spent in the sun. There were a few strands of hay hanging from his white T-shirt, and his blue Levi’s looked much too hot for Florida weather. Few would have taken him for the successful young rider he was.

When Alec turned to him, the tongs in hand, Henry said, “Take some of that hay off your shirt and out of your hair. You look like you just rolled out of a stall.”

“I did,” Alec said, smiling. “I find I’m spending most of my time there.”

“No need to be untidy, even if you are tending a horse,” the old man answered. But he knew that if Alec was untidy, it was not through inclination but rather that sometimes he was too impatient to take time to clean up. Alec was always in a hurry, always working at new ideas.

“Come on,” Henry said, starting for the door.

It was late morning and the quiet around the stable area was almost tangible. But within an hour or two the barns would come to life again and shortly thereafter the cries of the afternoon racing crowd would be heard beyond Hialeah’s towering Royal palms and Australian pines.

Outside the tack room, Henry stopped to remove the floppy straw hat he wore constantly to shield his head and face from the hot Florida sun. He brushed a bared arm across his forehead to remove the perspiration, then glanced skyward toward the south where the clouds were darkest and held some promise of rain to cool things off.

Alec said, “If the heat bothers you, just remember there are eighteen inches of snow in New York City alone.”

“I know. I saw it on TV this morning. New York could have been Nome, Alaska, the way it looked up there. Cars and buses buried in snow. Airports shut down. It looked real ghostlike.”

“And cold,” Alec said. “Real cold, two degrees above zero. It’s the sixteenth day below freezing they’ve had.”

“The snow and cold I could take, maybe. But not the gales. High winds seem to go right through me these years.”

“Then it wasn’t such a bad idea spending the winter here?”

“Not so bad.”

Alec smiled. Henry might be the bright-eyed, hard-eyed trainer of old but his friends at the northern tracks would hardly approve of his clothes. At least they weren’t in keeping with the Henry they’d known. In addition to the floppy straw hat, he wore a gay red cotton shirt and gray-flecked pants. His gray hair was close-cropped, too, in keeping with his Florida attire. Altogether it made him look younger than he was. He’d sweated off some weight too, now being more portly than fat.

Alec noted a slight, sickly pallor beneath Henry’s heavy leathery tan. It was enough to cause him some concern, for his old friend had not been sleeping well.

“You feel all right today?” he asked cautiously.

“Sure. Why not?”

“I thought you might want to rest a while. I can finish up.” Alec started to say more, shrugged his shoulders and clamped his lips together. He’d started enough things today without getting into any further arguments with Henry.

“Don’t you worry none about me, Alec,” the trainer said. “I’m fine. I don’t need as much sleep as I used to. Besides, race track people are known to be tough and long-lived. You know that as well as I do. It’s all the fresh air we get.”

“You sound as if you’re trying to convince yourself of your good health,” Alec said quietly.

The trainer didn’t answer. He walked down the shed row with a smoothness and certainty to his gait
that were surprising in a man so heavily built. Just ahead was a stall with a large gold star over the door which Hialeah Park had furnished to indicate the domicile of a champion. Sticking his head out of the stall was the Black Stallion, his powerful shoulders shoved against the webbing across the doorway.

“There’s the old boy now,” Henry said.

Old boy nothing
, Alec thought. The Black acted as young and fractious as any colt. If one didn’t know this horse, he’d have to be mighty careful how he approached him. The Black inspected friends and visitors alike as if he were a bird of prey, ready to swoop down on them from great heights. The tall stallion whinnied and shook his head in greeting, the muscles rippling beneath his black sable coat.

There was an unmistakable glow of health about him which prompted Alec to say again, “You won’t find anything wrong with his foot, Henry. Even if we were going in a horse show, he’d be the winner.”

Henry went into the stall without answering and Alec followed quietly, cautioning himself to hold his tongue, to play it wise. He should know by now how best to handle Henry. Slipping on the Black’s halter, he held the stallion in readiness for Henry.

“Give me the tongs,” Henry said.

The trainer raised the Black’s left foreleg. It was cold to the touch, as it should have been. He went over the raised foot with the small tongs, closing the jaws of the instrument at different parts. The horse never flinched. There was no sign of sensitivity from the old injury, yet Henry said, “Never can tell. There might be a nerve pressing somewhere.”

“He’d have come back lame this morning, if there was,” Alec answered. “I think he’s as fit as he’ll ever be.” He hadn’t meant to say anything. It had come out before he could stop himself. When Henry glanced up at him, Alec squared his shoulders and made a gallant attempt to look unconcerned, as if it didn’t matter to him whether or not the Black ever raced at Hialeah Park. He held the old man’s gaze without flinching.

Henry said critically, “You got any idea how many horses stay sound during their racing careers, Alec?”

Alec shook his head.

“Just one-tenth of them,” Henry answered. “Only one-tenth of all the thousands racing. Remember that figure. And I aim to keep the Black sound.”

“You have,” Alec said.

“I think he has an excellent chance of being ready to race, Alec, if that’s what you’re driving at,” Henry went on. “I guess I’d be as disappointed as you if he’s not ready sometime this month. But there are things you can’t control, so we have to be on our guard every minute. When you have a horse like the Black, you don’t want to take any chances racing him when he’s not perfectly fit.”

Alec nodded, his eyes turning again to the Black, who had stopped stalking his stall to munch hay from the corner rack. Henry was right, of course. Only a few months ago it was rumored throughout the racing world that the great champion had broken down. Now he was on his way back and he looked superb, as fit as a horse could be. But was he? Would the injured foot hold up under the pounding it must take when he
raced? For a moment Alec stood beside his horse in troubled silence.

Henry said, “We’ll just keep giving him long, slow works for the time being. If he continues to go well, as we hope he will, and his condition is as good as it should be, he’ll race. Otherwise, he’ll stay in the barn and we’ll have spent a nice quiet winter in sunny Florida. As you said before, that’s not too bad.”

The old man put his arm around Alec’s shoulders. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, hoping to cheer up his young friend. “You’ll get your race yet. I know how you feel.”

Alec turned away, trying to conceal his disappointment.

Watching him, Henry wondered if he really
did
understand Alec’s mounting impatience to race the Black. Alec lived in a different world, one that he himself had not known in a long time and one he would have completely forgotten had it not been for their close friendship.

“Alec,” he said, peering at the youth from beneath his heavy brows, “maybe we can race the Black sooner than I thought. And why don’t you read the rest of that letter you got? What else does that young fellow have to say, anyway?”

Alec said nothing for a moment. He just watched as his old friend stood there, fretting and massaging his cheeks with one hand. Then, “You mean you really want to know?” he asked.

“Sure,” Henry said, a slight, patient smile crossing his face. “Maybe we, I mean
you
, can give him a hand
at that. Maybe it’ll even do you some good to have a young fellow around … one with a problem, I mean.”

When Alec’s hand went to his pocket for the letter, the Black Stallion bent his long, graceful neck, his nostrils quivering and sniffing.

Alec told him, “I have no carrots, not now.”

The Black remained still, his long tail swishing contentedly but not a muscle moving beneath his velvet-soft coat. His gaze had turned to the open doorway and, with his ears cocked, he was listening to low-pitched sounds from the stable area.

Alec’s eyes remained on him. Never was there a more magnificent horse than his own. He was a perfect specimen, perfectly balanced, perfectly muscled. And he was as intelligent as he was well-made.

Alec returned to the letter and read to Henry,
“.… I must convince you that this letter is different from the others. The only way I know how is to tell you what I’ve never told anyone else, not my mother or father or closest friends. Even if I did I don’t think they’d believe me. Neither will you, perhaps—yet I hope it will surprise you enough to see me.”

Henry said, “Pretty dramatic, isn’t he?”

Alec glanced up. “He sounds pretty serious to me.”

“Yeah, I know,” Henry said. “Go on.”

“I have a horse …”

“That’s a relief,” Henry interrupted again. “At least he doesn’t need our help in getting a horse. That’s different from most of the others for sure.”

Alec’s eyes didn’t leave the letter.

“His name is Flame,”
he read.
“I think he is the fastest runner in the world!”

“That’s good,” Henry said. “Everybody’s horse should be the fastest in the world.”

“Faster than the Black.”

“That’s new,” Henry said. “Your fans usually don’t go so far as to say that.”

“Not long ago I clocked him a mile in 1:34.”

“He almost broke the world’s record,” Henry said, smiling. “He must have been carrying an alarm clock.”

“Over a turf course,”
Alec went on.

“That makes it real wild,” Henry said, grinning broadly now. “What an imagination this fellow’s got!” He started for the stall door. “You’ve got an imagination to match his, Alec. You better finish reading it yourself. My mind’s too lazy to keep up with stories like that.”

“I want to race my horse at Hialeah,”
Alec read quickly before Henry could leave.
“Will you help me?”

Henry had reached the doorway, but now he turned around. He said nothing. He just laughed, and his laughter could be heard long after he’d left the stall and was on his way down the shed row.

Alone, Alec re-read the letter. A fellow by the name of Steve Duncan owned a horse named Flame, a horse he claimed could run a mile in world record time. He wanted help in getting him to Hialeah to race.

It sounded pretty fantastic, except that Alec well recalled his own beginning with the Black. That, too, had been hard to believe. Such a story as Steve Duncan’s demanded an imaginative effort which Henry did not care to extend. It was different with Alec. His mind was not lazy. He looked forward to meeting Steve Duncan and his horse Flame.

Alec snapped the lead shank to the Black’s halter. He never liked to keep his horse in a stall too long. The Black was a lover of freedom. He thrived best on the blowing wind and green grass.

“Easy,” Alec said. The Black was already on his toes, knowing where he was being taken. As he left the stall, the sun brought out the highlights of his finely brushed coat. There was no fat on him. Nor did he look drawn, creased, or worn-out. There was a sharpness and spring to every movement that matched the alertness in his eyes. Alec knew he was in perfect racing condition regardless of what Henry had told him.

They walked through the quiet area, many of the stabled horses snorting and whinnying as they went by. Alec would have liked to walk every horse there. If all of them had the opportunity to pick grass in the open air, they’d be less likely to turn sour and sulk. As it was, most of the horses were kept in their stalls except when
they were on the track and, as a result, were either too nervous or bad-natured.

Alec would have preferred turning the Black loose in an open paddock as he and Henry had done at Belmont Park in New York. But letting him graze on a lead shank was the best that could be done in Hialeah’s cramped stable area.

The Black walked on long, springy pasterns, his legs set well beneath him. Suddenly, he bolted forward as if wanting to be free. Alec spoke to him and he stopped, cocking his small ears and listening. Then he whinnied in reply, his long nostrils distended, his eyes bold. The Black was well loved by Alec and he knew it.

Alec thought he had the sharpest horse in the world, and he was anxious to take on all those who would challenge his championship crown. As the veterinarian had said, “I don’t mean the Black is just racing sound, Alec. He’s
completely
sound.”

Henry had been almost convinced by those words. Almost, but not quite. Henry was a worrier. Henry never had intended to race the Black this winter, Alec was certain. But their horse had gotten so tight at Hialeah that the wisest thing to do
was
to race him. Otherwise, they might get into real trouble. Like a drum or a bow, a horse would break if drawn too tight. There had to be some release.

The Black had been away from the races a long time now. But Alec had only to look at him to know he had not forgotten how it had been. There was no doubt in Alec’s mind that a noticeable change had come over his horse once he had achieved success on the racetrack.
Perhaps it was the roar of the crowd, or the rush of other horses alongside. Whatever had accounted for it, it had happened. And if Alec had anything to say about it, not only the public but he, too, would thrill again to the Black’s closing rushes down the home-stretch. It was time his horse went after championship honors once more. Hialeah, early in the new year, was a good place to start.