The Black Stallion and the Girl (20 page)

“I’ll be down to Maryland,” he shouted after her.

He caught a last glimpse of her face beneath the floppy cowboy hat. Her mouth held a queer smile as if she had looked into the future and knew what would happen. Her final words reached him, carried on the wind as free as she. “I’ll look for you, Alec. I love you.… Remember, I love you.”

The new colt, Blackjack, stopped grazing as the car went past. Then he began following it, running along the fence with majestic, unrestrained power. Watching him, Alec thought of the black riderless horse that symbolized a lost leader in the ancient days of mounted warriors, a sign that his master had fallen and would ride no more.

Alec’s eyes left the horse to follow the red rear lights of the car as it turned down the highway. Pam had not fallen but was going on to other adventures. He wouldn’t let her get away. He would follow no matter where she went until, finally, the day would come when she’d return with him to Hopeful Farm, and they would be together always.

Alec climbed the fence and walked across the paddock. He would make sure his days were well occupied until he saw Pam again. He would plunge into his work and many hours would pass without his thinking of her. But there would be times when his thoughts of
her would escape and run rampant, especially at night; when he would walk the fields, knowing he would not find what he was looking for. He might be able to think of all sorts of remedies but there was no chance of amputating the past completely until Pam walked at his side again.

Alec came to a stop when Blackjack saw him. The colt would be a good one, just as he’d told Pam, being over sixteen hands and sired by the Black. He decided he would ride him in the morning, early, before anyone else was up. Afterward, he would return to Aqueduct and join the rest of the world, as Pam had done.

Blackjack came over to him hesitantly, unsure of himself and of Alec. He stopped a short distance away, his eyes large and bright in the starshine.

Alec waited for him to come all the way, making no move, not hurrying him at all. He felt a new sense of patience, of sureness, of rightness. It was real and here to stay. It was the result of his love for Pam and for what she had taught him. She had softness yet resilience, gaiety yet earnestness, a need for solitude yet an outpouring of love for her fellow man and, most of all, she had faith in a beloved world. She had touched him with her magic and he hoped that in some way he had returned the gift.

A soft breeze swept his face, and his eyes turned to the star-lit heavens. Whenever he wasn’t with her, her fingers would be the wind and the wind her fingers, and all space would be the smile of her.

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. He eventually finished it, and 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 two 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 the 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.