King of the Wind (2 page)

The crowds swept onto the track, throwing walking sticks, hats, handkerchiefs, high in the air. They forgot whether they were Canadians or Americans. They had never seen a race like this. They surged toward the judges’ platform where Man o’ War was standing proudly by, while Samuel Riddle was accepting the gold trophy cup that the big horse had won.

“Your horse can’t be beaten!” Sir Barton’s owner exclaimed as he shook Mr. Riddle’s hand.

Suddenly Big Red shied. He had heard the popping of the cork of a champagne bottle. Then his curiosity overcame him.
He nosed closer, watching as the wine bubbled into the trophy cup. He was thirsty. He strained toward the cup. Mr. Riddle smiled.

“Bring me some water that is not too cold,” he directed.

While the crowd murmured in surprise, Mr. Riddle poured the champagne out on the turf. He wiped the cup with a clean handkerchief. Then he filled it with water. He held it toward the horse, and Man o’ War drank out of the great gold cup.

“He won it, didn’t he?” Mr. Riddle asked, his voice strangely husky.

A cheer went up from thirty thousand throats. It was a good ending to a good race!

Sir Barton’s owner was right. Big Red could
not
be beaten. Already the three-year-old colt had made five American records and two world records. He had proved himself a terrific sprinter over short distances and a powerful stayer over long ones. Even more remarkable, he had carried a handicap of more than 130 pounds while his rivals carried 114 pounds, 108 pounds, 104 pounds.

No wonder the crowds took this great colt to their hearts! There was no telling what the future held in store for him.

Friends had urged Mr. Riddle to send Man o’ War to England after the Windsor race. They wanted him to run in the famous Newmarket races where his great ancestors had run. A victory at Newmarket would mean more to Big Red’s admirers than all his smashing victories in America. For they had experienced a deep hurt when their favorite horse was excluded from the British Stud Book because he was not all
Thoroughbred. To have him win at Newmarket would ease the hurt.

But Big Red was never to race again. Mr. Riddle had come to a most important decision. On a night not long before the race in Canada; he had visited in New York with the judge who determined how much weight each horse should carry to make a race evenly matched.

“Man o’ War will soon be a four-year-old,” Mr. Riddle said. “What weight will you give him then?”

The reply came without hesitation. “I’ll have to give him more weight than ever a race horse carried,” the judge said. “Man o’ War is the greatest horse alive.”

Samuel Riddle knew Man o’ War was so strong and swift that he had to carry more weight than other horses. He accepted the decision as fair. But he knew, too, that more weight might weaken Man o’ War’s legs, might break his great fighting heart as well. It would be better to retire him in perfect condition, without a mark on him. Mr. Riddle made up his mind. After the match race with Sir Barton, he would withdraw Big Red from racing.

Telling no one of his decision, he masked his sorrow in silence. Neither his trainer, nor his jockey, nor Man o’ War’s thousands of friends at the Canadian race suspected the truth. Alone, in that crowd of thirty thousand, Mr. Riddle knew that he was watching Big Red run his last race.

When the roar and the tumult were over, he quietly gave out the news. Followers of Big Red were stunned. After Newmarket it would have seemed all right to retire Man o’ War.
His victory there would have been a fitting ending-post to a great career. But now . . .

Friends, and strangers, too, tried to persuade Man o’ War’s owner to change his mind.

Mr. Riddle only smiled in that quiet way of his. He knew that Big Red did not need victories at Newmarket to prove his pedigree. What did it matter if one of his great-great-grand-dams was a carthorse and had less than royal blood in her veins? What did it matter that she had kept him out of the Who’s Who of the horse world? In male descent Man o’ War’s blood was traceable in unbroken line to the great Godolphin Arabian himself!

And then Mr. Riddle began to think about the Godolphin Arabian. He had not raced at Newmarket, either. And he had no pedigree at all. It had been lost. He had to write a new one with his own blood, the blood that flowed in the veins of his sons and daughters.

Man o’ War could do that, too. The Great Son could follow in the footsteps of his famous ancestor. He could live on in his colts and grand-colts. They could win the races at Newmarket.

But it was not easy for Mr. Riddle to convince his friends that this plan was the right one. Often he had to go back two hundred years and tell them the story of the Godolphin Arabian.

I
N THE northwestern slice of Africa known as Morocco, a horseboy stood, with broom in hand, in the vast courtyard of the royal stables of the Sultan. He was waiting for dusk to fall.

All day long he had eaten nothing. He had not even tasted the jujubes tucked in his turban nor the enormous purple grapes that spilled over the palace wall into the stable yard. He had tried not to sniff the rich, warm fragrance of ripening pomegranates. For this was the sacred month of Ramadan when, day after day, all faithful Mohammedans neither eat nor drink from the dawn before sunrise until the moment after sunset.

The boy Agba had not minded the fast for himself. It was part of his religion. But when Signor Achmet, Chief of the Grooms, commanded that the horses, too, observe the fast, Agba’s dark eyes smouldered with anger.

“ It is the order of the Sultan! ” the Signor had announced to the horseboys. And he had cuffed Agba on the head when the boy showed his disapproval.

Of the twelve thousand horses in the Sultan’s stables, Agba had charge of ten. He fed and watered them and polished their coats and cleaned their stalls. Best of all, he wheeled the whole string into the courtyard at one time for their exercise.

There was one of the ten horses to whom Agba had lost his heart. She was a bay mare, as fleet as a gazelle, with eyes that studied him in whatever he did. The other nine horses he would lead out to the common water trough to drink. But for his bright bay he would fill a water cask from a pure spring beyond the palace gates. Then he would hold it while the mare sucked the water, her eyelashes brushing his fingers as she drank. For long moments after she had drunk her fill, she would gaze at him while the cool water dribbled from her muzzle onto his hands.

It was the mare that worried Agba now as he worked to fill in the time until the hour of sunset. The courtyard was already swept clean but Agba pushed his palm-leaf broom as if he were sweeping all his thoughts into a little mound for the wind to carry away.

At last he hung his broom on an iron hook, alongside an endless row of brooms, and went to the mare. Her stall door was closed so that the fragrance of late clover would not drift in to prick her appetite. He found her asleep, lying on her side, her great belly distended by the little colt soon to be born. Agba noticed, with a heavy feeling in his chest, that the fast was telling on the mare. He could read it in the sunken places above each eye, in the harshness of her coat.

But soon the fast would be over. It was the last day of the month, and even now the sun was sinking below the gray-green olive trees that fringed the courtyard.

There was no sound anywhere, not from the palace walls beyond, nor from the quarters over the stables where the horseboys lived. The whole world seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for dusk to fall. Small voices of insects and birds were beginning to pierce the quiet. Twilight toads piping on their bassoons. Crickets chirping. Wood doves cooing. And afar off in the Atlas Mountains a hyena began to laugh. These were forerunners of the darkness. It would be only a short time now.

Agba turned toward the east, his eyes on the minaret of the mosque. It was a sharp needle pricking the blood-red reflection of the sun. He gazed fixedly at it until his eyes smarted. At last a figure in white robes emerged from the tower. It was the public crier. He was sounding his trumpet. He was crying four times to the four winds of heaven. The fast of Ramadan was at an end!

The air went wild with noise. Twelve thousand horses recognized the summons and neighed their hunger. The royal stables seethed like an ant hill. Horseboys swarmed out of the corridors and into the courtyard. From the hoods of their cloaks, from waistbands and vests, they took dates and raisins and almonds and popped them noisily into their mouths. They stripped the grapes from their vines. They ate with boisterous abandon. Some plunged their faces into the troughs and sucked the water as if they were horses.

Agba did not join the other horseboys. He returned to the mare. Moving slowly so as not to frighten her, he reached under
the saddle hung on the wall and found the water vessel he had filled and hidden there an hour ago. He poured the water into a basin and waited for the mare to awaken.

As if she had heard in her dreams the sound made by the water, she woke with a jerk and struggled to her feet. She came to Agba and drank. Then she raised her head, letting the water slobber from her lips.