The Black Stallion's Courage (18 page)

“You're as sensitive to weight as an apothecary's scale,” a reporter in the back shouted.

“I better be,” Henry answered gruffly through the screen door. “No one else is or we wouldn't be assigned more pounds than ever before in the Carter.”

“Maybe he's more horse than ever raced in the Carter,” someone suggested. “After all, Henry, it's the handicapper's job to try to bring all horses down to the wire together.”

“And it's my job and privilege to withdraw my
entry from a race when I think the weight assignment is excessive!” Henry bellowed at the top of his voice.

The Black jumped and Alec had trouble quieting him. The reporters too had jumped and were standing farther away from the door.

“What are you staying in here for?” Alec asked Henry. “You're getting him excited. He just might kick you.”

“Hold him then,” Henry said brusquely without leaving the stall.

A reporter asked quietly but with a sarcastic overtone, “Shall we tell our readers then that the Black's racing will be limited this season because of your aversion to high weights?”

“Tell 'em anything you want,” Henry said, “but I say I won't start any horse when I think the weight assignment is unfair to him.”

“Then the Black won't be meeting Casey this season?”

“That's up to the handicapper,” Henry answered.

“And Eclipse?” another reporter asked. “What about him, Henry? Would you be interested in a special race Aqueduct would like to arrange between Eclipse, Casey and the Black?”

“That's still up to the handicapper,” Henry said. “If he treats Eclipse like an ordinary three-year-old and has him too light-weighted against us I won't accept it. Some horses reach their peak at three years of age and Eclipse is one of 'em. He should not be weighted as a colt.”

A reporter laughed and said kindly, “I agree with
you, Henry, since he broke the Black's seven-furlong record last Saturday. But let's get back to the Carter. You're out of it and there'll be no Casey-Black race on Monday. Is that what you want us to tell our readers?”

“I told you to tell 'em anything you want,” Henry shouted. The Black let go a hind leg against the wooden planking. It unnerved Henry and he jumped for the door.

The reporters laughed and Henry said furiously, “Get on with you now! All of you! Tell your readers that I'm not goin' to start a horse in a race when I think he has no chance to win! Now get out of here, I say!”

The Black snorted and half-reared, then his hind hoofs crashed the wood siding again. Henry left the stall, hurriedly chasing the newsmen from the barn.

When the trainer returned, Alec was kneeling in the straw feeling the Black's legs. He looked up and said, “I don't understand you, Henry. Here you are, more worried about his legs than you should be, and yet you come in here and cause a lot of excitement. We're lucky that he didn't hurt himself.”

Henry said with concern, “I didn't figure on his kicking. He isn't lame, is he, Alec? I'd never forgive myself if he was. I really wouldn't. I mean it.”

Alec shook his head. “No, I'm sure he's okay.” Then he looked again at his friend whose voice a few minutes ago had been like the bellow of an angry bull. Now it was soft and kind, even a little sheepish. “Why'd you stay inside, Henry?”

“So they couldn't get a good look at my face through the screen. If I'd been outside, they'd have seen I was just kidding.”

“You mean you're going to start the Black in the Carter?” Alec asked.

“Sure. Actually I didn't tell them I
wasn't
going to.”

Alec shook his head in bewilderment. Then, trying to reconcile what he'd heard before with what he was now being told, he said, “I guess you're figuring he's certain to be second anyway and that's ten thousand dollars toward the barn. Is that it?”

“No, that isn't it,” Henry answered quietly. “I'm figuring on pickin' up that first money of some forty-five thousand.”

“Carrying one hundred and forty pounds against Casey?” Alec asked incredulously.

“Sure. The weight won't bother 'im at seven-eighths of a mile. He might have some trouble handling it over a mile but not at seven furlongs.”

“Then why'd you make such a fuss?”

“You wouldn't want anyone to think I was
satisfied
with the weights, would you?” Henry asked impatiently. “Gosh, Alec, I'm surprised at you!”

Alec laughed as he straightened the Black's mane. “It's just that I've never heard you beef so much about weights before,” he said. “You sound like a track lawyer. You really do.”

“Sometimes you got to be one to get anywhere in this business,” Henry answered. “Anyway it's goin' to be a hot weekend.”

“With plenty of fireworks,” Alec added, and Henry nodded in complete agreement.

The following Saturday began the long Fourth of July weekend. It was hot, as Henry had forecast, and Eclipse
started off the fireworks. The burly brown horse came onto the track for the running of the Dwyer, which was exclusively for three-year-olds. There were just two others who went to the starting gate with him, and they were there only to pick up the tempting second and third purses.

“I wouldn't do it for any kind of money,” Henry said, watching them. “It would be too humiliating for my colt. I couldn't stand it.”

The fact that no one wanted to make a race of the classic Dwyer Stakes was the final tribute to Eclipse's greatness. He stood alone in his age division and the crowd of more than forty thousand holiday fans knew that this would be his easiest triumph.

The big colt didn't let them down. While they watched a race that was no contest he won it in such a dramatic way that he proved himself once more to be a champion of champions.

Eclipse toyed with his two competitors until the homestretch of the mile-and-a-quarter race. He had let them stay with him most of the way around and his enormous strides made it seem that he was simply loping along. The two other horses began tiring before the end of a mile but even then Eclipse's jockey did not take him to the front. Instead he let the big colt romp alongside while the others staggered wearily down the long homestretch.

Henry muttered angrily at what to him was an ignoble victory by Eclipse. “Those two will never be the same after this,” he told Alec. “I've seen plenty of horses' hearts broken by doin' what he's doin' to them.
Why doesn't Seymour take him on, anyway? What's he trying to prove, that he can win any time he pleases?”

Alec, too, was furious with the way Eclipse was being ridden. “Seymour's probably had orders not to let him go until he sees the white of the finish wire,” he said sarcastically, “against two
outclassed
colts.”

A quarter of a mile from the judges' stand Eclipse made his move. But Seymour did not bring him on immediately. Instead he dropped him behind the others and then took him to the middle of the track. There he let the big colt fly, and Eclipse came forward with the speed of a winged thunderbird in full and awesome flight.

Of all the thousands who were in the stands only Alec and Henry turned away. “If that's the only way I could make thirty-seven thousand bucks,” Henry said, “I wouldn't have it.”

Alec nodded and followed Henry down the aisle. “Well, we've got Monday's forty-five thousand dollars waiting for us in the barn. Let's go see him.”

“Sure,” Henry answered. “But I guess Casey's figuring on pickin' up that same money.”

“Let's hope we get to it first.”

“Of course,” Henry said. “I wouldn't think of it any other way. One thing sure, it's not goin' to be a race like we saw today.”

Monday was hotter and more humid than Saturday had been but more than thirty-five thousand persons filled Aqueduct's stands. They had come to see their own special kind of Fourth of July fireworks, the explosive clash between Casey and the Black in the Carter Handicap.

Alec went from the stable area to the jockeys' room, tiny wisps of dust rising from beneath the soles of his leather moccasins as he walked. Despite the water sprinklers the track, too, would be dry—very sandy and very dry. This racing strip had to be a little wet to be fast. Rain would have helped it and made life a lot more comfortable for everybody.

Alec felt the sweat drip down the back of his neck and decided that if he hurried he'd just have time enough for a shower. He went through the crowded jockey's room and sat down on the bench in front of his locker. He talked to the men around him while he undressed and then he went into the showers. When he came out again a number of the jockeys had left to ride
in the fourth race. Those who remained were reading or playing cards or just sitting. Alec passed Billy Watts, who was studying his red-and-green silks as if he'd never seen them before.

Alec hesitated and then stopped. “Hi, Billy,” he said. He waited, drying himself all over again with his big towel. One never knew quite what to do when a jockey felt as Billy did. It was so easy to say the wrong thing or look the wrong way.

“Hello, Alec.” Billy Watts glanced at Alec and then turned back to his locker. He seemed embarrassed as he quickly withdrew his white nylon pants and started getting into them. The back pocket had a small rip and he fingered it nervously while waiting for Alec to leave.

“You ought to get your girl to mend that for you,” Alec said lightly.

“After today I won't be using them,” Billy said in sudden defiance. “No more worrying about making weights and following riding orders. No more of that stuff for me.”

Alec went on to his own locker.
No more fear of crowding and slamming with steel-shod hoofs all around you
, he thought.
No more fear of violent death. Feeling as you do, you're well out of it, Billy. After today you can just worry about mares and colts
.

He had finished dressing when the riders came back from the fourth race and a few departed for the fifth. Some stripped off their wet silks and headed for the showers, through for the day. But the great majority hung around, resting and rerunning the fourth race, even accusing each other angrily of interference and dangerous riding.

Alec listened but said nothing even though once in a while they asked him for his opinion on a hot point at issue. There was a day not so long ago, he recalled, when instead of turning to him as an experienced rider and arbitrator they'd made him the brunt of their violent verbal attacks.

Their accusations of one another were all part of the game. There had been no fouls committed in the fourth race. There would be no hideous revenge, as was being threatened, the next time out. They all talked a fiercer game than they played, for they knew that every stride of each race was being photographed by the film patrol. If there was a foul the cameras would show it and the guilty jockey would hear of it very, very soon afterward from the judges. But it always helped to be explosive between races even though it was a shock to the nervous system of the inexperienced rider. However, Alec reminded himself, it wouldn't be long before he, too, would speak angry and bitter words in turn.

A tall boy, too tall and heavy to be a jockey much longer, came over and sat down beside Alec.

“Who'd Henry think he was kiddin', anyway?” he asked.

From the caked dust on the boy's face Alec could tell he'd been pretty far back in the previous race. “What do you mean, Skip?” he asked.

“This business of not startin' the Black in the Carter. Everybody knew he was goin' to drop his name in the entry box yesterday. Everybody did, so why'd he do it?”

Alec smiled. “Why does Henry do anything? I don't know. You'd better ask him.”

“Not me. I wouldn't get near that guy with a fifty-foot pole. I wouldn't even ride for him. Not even if he gave me the horse. That's how much I wouldn't get near him. He scares me. I mean it!”

Alec stood up and shoved his goggles in his back pocket. Another boy joined them. He was much smaller than Alec and bowlegged. When he carried a saddle, the girth and stirrups dragged on the ground unless he put the whole thing on top of his head.

“Yeah,” the little jockey remarked, “I agree with what Skip says about Henry always tryin' to be a wise guy. And there's something else he does that ain't very smart, either.”

Alec smiled at the sound of the boy's high, droll voice that went so well with the rest of him. “What is it, Chub?” he asked. Tiny rivulets of sweat were running down the jockey's dust-caked face. It was evident that he hadn't been out in front any more than Skip in the fourth race.

“I mean this business of everybody thinkin' of the Carter as a special race just between Casey an' the Black. What do they think the rest of us will be doin' anyway? That's what I'd like to know. What do they think anyway? Huh?”

Alec shook his head. “I don't know,” he answered quietly. “But I can't see that's Henry's fault. It's a horse race.”

It was time to go. Most of the jockeys had already left the room. Michael Costello tossed the magazine he'd been reading to one side and glanced Alec's way. He didn't say anything to him before leaving. His black eyes were somber.

“Let's go,” Alec told the boys.

“Yeah,” Skip said. “Why not?”

“Sure.” Chub smiled. “Like Alec says, it's a horse race.”

The jockeys' room, now almost empty, was quiet except for the drip of the showers. Sixteen men, not boys any longer, had gone to mount sixteen horses for a winner's purse of forty-five thousand dollars. To them it was more than a special race between two famous stars. Handicap horses didn't scare easily, and neither did their riders.

Something can always happen to the big shots in a big field like this
, they figured.
Didn't some wise guy once count a hundred and fifty ways in which a horse can lose a race? So how're you going to protect Casey and the Black against odds like that? Give us an inch and we'll take a mile. Give us a chance at a buck and we'll take forty-five. Thousand, that is. Our cut is ten percent, that's four thousand five hundred take-home pay. Come on, Jock, get off those scales and get movin'. We got a horse race on our hands
.