The Black Stallion's Filly (26 page)

She was straining her utmost, trying to maintain her speed, trying to respond again to his urging to keep on. She was running on heart alone.

The stands were one continuous shattering roar, and suddenly they became a screaming madhouse. Alec saw the white, pushing face on his right.
Eclipse! Watch Eclipse
, Henry had said. Watch him! Watch him! Watch him!
Oh, filly. More, more, more!
Head and head they bobbed as one. Eye and eye. She kept going. She never fell back. She took the challenge, met it, staved it off and went on. She pushed her head in front of Eclipse. Now she was a neck ahead! The burly brown
colt was beaten—with the wire less than twenty-five yards away.

Courage. The greatest test of all is to repel challenges from behind
.

Henry's words flashed through Alec's brain as he saw the wire so close and Eclipse beaten. But he never got a chance to breathe, to think about winning.
A red-hooded head was far on the outside of the track
. A head that pushed relentlessly forward until it inched ahead of them with only a few strides to go.
Wintertime
, being moved by Billy Watts in the final surging sprint of a champion!

Alec let out a yell, strained forward, lifted, pleaded. And from deep within the black filly came a last response. She rallied, her muscles and heart gathering in one final effort. She won back the inches lost to Wintertime in those last few strides. Then she and the blood bay colt swept as one beneath the finish wire.

Alec collapsed in his saddle, his hands flat on the filly's wet, throbbing neck. He let her slow down as she pleased. He didn't know if she'd won. Neither did young Billy Watts on Wintertime, nor the screaming, shrieking thousands who had watched, nor the judges whose job it was to decide. The camera alone would give the answer, and the electric signboard flashed the words
PHOTO FINISH
.

Alec knew only that his filly was as game as they come,
as game as her great sire
.

Alec turned her around and came back with the others. But only Billy Watts and Wintertime stayed on the track with him and the filly to accept the tremendous ovation of the crowd. Neither rider approached the runway to the presentation stand where a small group, including the Governor of the state, was awaiting the winner of the Kentucky Derby.

Alec kept Black Minx in the middle of the track and away from the packed rails. The stands were quieting down. The screams that had risen with the mounting excitement of the race were over. There was a stunned silence. All eyes turned to the great board, where the number of the winner would be posted any second.

Billy Watts rode Wintertime in a circle, coming within a few feet of Alec. Watts's face was streaked with dirt that had been thrown up at him by front-running horses for a mile and a quarter. And no longer was it so boyish. Regardless of the results of the race, he had
become a hardened, experienced rider with a Derby behind him. And if his number 9 flashed on the board he would ride Wintertime into the circle, one of the youngest jockeys ever to win the classic.

He tried unsuccessfully to smile. “We knew we could beat the chestnut and the gray, but we didn't figure on your filly being up there,” he said to Alec. “We raced just the way we'd planned except for you and the filly.” His eyes left Alec for Black Minx, and he saw her bleeding leg. “She's hurt in the left fore. Did you know that?”

Quickly Alec leaned sideways in his saddle. He saw the dark-red stain with some blood still trickling from the wound. He could not tell how deep or how serious it was. She wasn't limping, for she was too tired to feel anything.

He couldn't dismount until the results were announced, and besides, he could do nothing for her while he remained on the track. Turning to the jam-packed rails, he looked for Henry. But it was a futile search. No one, not even Henry, could get through to him before the photograph of the finish was developed and the results were posted.

Suddenly he heard a deafening roar. Alec turned to the board.
Number 5 was on top!
It was over now, officially over, and Black Minx had managed to get her nose in front of Wintertime after all!

He rode toward the presentation stand, thinking of the many times he had criticized her for her lack of courage and will to win. And she had raced as she had with an injured leg!

Henry came down the runway and took hold of her bridle. Alec said, “She's hurt. It's the left fore.”

“I know. I saw it happen at the gate when she ran into Silver Jet. You didn't know.” Henry looked down at the leg. “And she doesn't yet.”

“We ought to get her right back to the vet,” Alec said. He couldn't stand any long presentation ceremony now, knowing the filly was hurt.

Henry continued leading her toward the group awaiting them, toward the Gold Cup being held by the Governor, toward the television cameras and the waiting press,
toward the world
. “We're not going to cheat her out of this,” he said. “She rates it as much as any Derby winner ever did. Maybe more. She broke the record, Alec. Did you know that?
She won in two minutes one second flat
.”

“You mean …” But Alec had no chance to say more. They were in the winner's circle and a blanket of roses was being placed about Black Minx's neck. Countless photographers were taking her picture, and the television cameras were on her as she stood quietly in the ring, almost posing, as if she knew full well the place she was taking in Kentucky Derby history.

Henry and Alec managed to keep their part in the ceremony as brief as possible. So it was only a short time later that they were back in the barn and the stable veterinarian was taking care of Black Minx.

The area outside the barn was roped off. The press, who had been deprived of their interviews by the short presentation ceremony, waited anxiously for the famous trainer and rider to leave the barn.

It was quiet in the stall. Neither Alec nor Henry mentioned the race. They only watched the doctor and
waited. Black Minx had begun limping on the way back to the barn, and now was holding her toe off the straw bedding. Mingled with the smell of sweat and leather was the sharp odor of medication. A tub of hot water steamed beside the veterinarian while he worked, his hands in rubber gloves. Finally he bandaged her leg and stood up.

Alec was afraid to speak but Henry thrust out his jaw and asked, “How bad is it, Doc?”

“Not bad.”

“How bad is that?” Henry persisted. The veterinarian was removing his gloves, putting them away. “Don't hedge on me, Doc. We've been friends too long for that.”

The veterinarian's steady blue eyes were neither grave nor sad. “You always expect the worst, Henry, don't you?”

“Then I never get let down.”

The veterinarian smiled. “I guess you're right, at that.” He turned to the filly, putting his hand on her blanketed body. “You've still got a fine filly. She's all right, and it won't take long for her to heal and be …”

Alec felt his muscles go limp. He had been tense so long, and now … 
now he could let go
. She was going to be all right. He went to her head, stroking it softly. He never heard Henry and the doctor as they left the stall.

Sometime later Henry appeared at the half-door. “Alec,” he called. “Bring her over here. They want some head pictures of you two.”

Alec turned her around. He wanted only to rest,
to relax—and he was certain she did too. But this was part of it all; it wouldn't end until they left Churchill Downs.

The photographers took their pictures of Alec and the filly. They took pictures of Henry as he sat in the old canvas chair before the stall.

“Cross your knees and look sly,” they told Henry. “Look as if you knew all week that you had the Derby winner in your barn.”

Henry smiled. “But I didn't,” he said. “I'm as surprised as you are.”

“We're not so surprised,” they insisted.

While the pictures were being taken, Alec asked Henry, “How did the others finish?”

“Eclipse was up behind Wintertime. Silver Jet was fourth, then came Long Hope, Break-up …”

“But Golden Vanity?” Alec interrupted.

“I'm coming to him. Olympus finished three lengths behind Break-up. Then came Golden Vanity and last of all, Rampart.”

“Boy, Golden Vanity must have stopped cold in that last furlong.”

“He certainly did,” a reporter told him. “He broke every record from the half to a mile and an eighth. Then he was so burned out he finished in a cakewalk. We had a feeling all along he couldn't go a mile and a quarter.”

Sure
, Alec thought,
you knew it all along
. Before the Derby they were acclaiming Golden Vanity as the greatest colt of all time. Now they were disowning him.
How fleeting can fame be?

The reporters had turned to Henry again. “What do you plan to do with that big purse, Henry?”

From his chair Henry looked up at Alec. “We'll be buying some more mares, among other things,” he answered. “Hopeful Farm is on its way.”

The press turned to look at Black Minx. “Will you race her in the Preakness and Belmont Stakes? A filly's never won the Triple Crown, you know.”

“I can't answer that,” Henry replied. “It depends upon how fast her leg heals and how things look to us. We're not thinking about the Triple Crown now. We got the
big one
today, and that's all that matters.”

“Yes,” they agreed, “it's all that matters. We're going to say in our papers that never before have we seen such great heart and courage as Black Minx displayed today by holding herself together and turning back Eclipse and then Wintertime in those last few strides … and all with a bad leg. Will you like that, Henry?”

“You couldn't put it better, boys. I like that very much, and she deserves every good thing you have to say about her.”

They turned to Alec. “Do you have any last comment to make, Alec? When did you know you had the race won?”

“I didn't know,” Alec said. “Not until our number went up on the board.”

“Do you have anything to say about a filly winning the Derby?” they asked. “It's happened only once before—and never in such record-breaking time, of course.”

“Just that anything can happen in the Derby
,” Alec answered.

They scowled, disappointed and in need of a better comment for their papers. “But that's been said before.”

Alec smiled. “I know. You're the ones who've said it. You knew it all the time.”

The filly blew out her nostrils, snorting, as though to add emphasis to his remark. He touched her head and she snorted again.

Henry got to his feet. “That's all, boys. The Derby's over for another year.”

They were alone again, just the three of them in the stall. Alec stood at Black Minx's side and Henry in front of her. The old trainer put his hand in his pocket and withdrew a carrot. He offered it to her.

Alec smiled. “You told me never to do that. You said no hand-feeding, ever.”

Henry's eyes never left Black Minx. “It's different this time,” he said softly. “This is the exception to the rule.”

For a moment the filly only sniffed the carrot, her eyes leaving it to look puzzledly at Henry. Then she looked at it again. Finally she took it.

Alec asked, “Do you have any more?”

Henry nodded and put a carrot in Alec's hand.

Alec offered it to her, and she took the carrot more readily this time. “I've waited a long while to do that,” he said.

Henry straightened her forelock, then stroked her head. “You did it,” he told her. “You really did. You're
the gamest filly, the best little filly in the whole wide world.”

Alec's hand moved lovingly across her neck. “She's that, all right, Henry. She sure is.”

Black Minx didn't move. She seemed to know what this was all about. She accepted their offerings, their embraces, in a very queenly way. Her manner indicated that she was getting only what was long due her, and that she had known all along no colt would beat her in the Kentucky Derby.

Perhaps she had known. Alec and Henry wouldn't have been surprised. She was that kind of girl.

Walter Farley's love for horses began when he was a small boy living in Syracuse, New York, and continued as he grew up in New York City, where his family moved. Unlike most city children, he was able to fulfill this love through an uncle who was a professional horseman. Young Walter spent much of his time with this uncle, learning about the different kinds of horse training and the people associated with them.

Walter Farley began to write his first book,
The Black Stallion
, while he was a student at Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High School and Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania. It was published in 1941 while he was still an undergraduate at Columbia University.

The appearance of
The Black Stallion
brought such an enthusiastic response from young readers that Mr. Farley went on to create more stories about the Black, and about other horses as well. In his life he wrote a total of thirty-four books, including
Man o' War
, the story of America's greatest Thoroughbred, and two
photographic storybooks based on the Black Stallion movies. His books have been enormously popular in the United States and have been published in twenty-one foreign countries.

Mr. Farley and his wife, Rosemary, had four children, whom they raised on a farm in Pennsylvania and at a beach house in Florida. Horses, dogs and cats were always a part of the household.

In 1989 Mr. Farley was honored by his hometown library in Venice, Florida, which established the Walter Farley Literary Landmark in its children's wing. Mr. Farley died in October 1989, shortly before publication of
The Young Black Stallion
, the twenty-first book in the Black Stallion series. Mr. Farley co-authored
The Young Black Stallion
with his son, Steven.