The Black Stallion's Blood Bay Colt (14 page)

“Come back here.”

Tom left Symbol's head to join Jimmy. “Take these,” the man said, handing him the long lines.

“Th-the reins?”

“Lines, let's call 'em, Tom,” he said. “You've been wanting to drive, haven't you?” The tiny pinpoints of light flickered in his eyes at the incredulous look on Tom's face. Then Jimmy turned away, saying simply, “We'll start today, then.” He went to Symbol's head to lead him from the barn while Tom, holding the long lines in fumbling hands, walked behind.

Jimmy stopped Symbol outside the shed, and the sharp wind coming across the track was icy cold on their faces. There were three other horses and drivers already circling the track.

Turning to George, Jimmy asked, “You figure Tom has done enough work around these stables to warrant learning to drive now, don't you?”

George smiled. “As his Uncle Wilmer would say,” he replied, “ ‘I believe it.' ”

“You won't mind the cold?” Jimmy asked, turning to Tom.

The boy shook his head without saying anything.

“Get up, then, and go to it,” Jimmy said.

Tom felt awkward lifting a leg over the seat as he'd seen Jimmy and other drivers do thousands of times. The lines, too, felt clumsy in his hands, and he had trouble finding the foot stirrups on the shafts of the cart. But finally he was ready and sat tense and waiting, his eyes on Symbol's black hindquarters and the long tail falling between his outstretched legs.

“Take the hand holds,” Jimmy said, and Tom's
hands moved forward until they had reached the loops in the lines. “Thumb and index finger over the top. That's right, you know that. Got the end of the lines under you? You don't want 'em trailing on the ground to get caught in your wheels.”

“I'm sitting on them good.” Tom spoke for the first time.

“Get goin' then,” Jimmy said. “He's hard mouthed. Keep a good hold, but don't tear his mouth. Just jog him three miles—six laps.”

Tom took Symbol onto the hard track, the light cart bouncing over the ruts. Before his eyes, Symbol's hindquarters quickened and his hind legs moved faster. Tom didn't feel the cold; he felt only a new and surprising sense of power as he looked at the hindquarters of the horse pulling him. He felt small and low, as though Symbol could whisk him and the cart off the ground if he moved much faster. Tom glanced toward the sheds they were passing and only then realized that Symbol wasn't flying but going at a very slow trot. He gave him more line, knowing full well Jimmy wanted to have Symbol worked faster than he was going now. He couldn't see over the high haunches before him, so he looked to the left and then to the right of Symbol to make certain the track was clear. It was, so he sat back in his seat again.

He hadn't gone very far around the track when he realized the lines no longer felt so clumsy in his hands. Even more surprising, he could actually feel Symbol's mouth through the long lines. It seemed he could tell, too, each time the horse took the bit or wanted to go faster. It came to his hands as though the signals
traveled over telegraphic wires instead of leather lines. Self-confidence came with this sensitivity of hands, and his tense body relaxed a little.

Tom clucked to Symbol when they came into the backstretch the first time around; and when they passed Jimmy and George, who had remained in the cold, watching them, Jimmy shouted, “That's good, Tom. Keep him at that speed.”

It took but one more lap for Tom to feel very much at home behind a horse. And he knew for certain that he wanted to make driving and training horses his lifework. He wanted to be like Jimmy Creech. His love for horses and this wonderful sport of harness racing was in him deep, and he knew he'd never change. No more than Jimmy Creech would.

Symbol wanted to go faster; but Tom spoke to him through the lines with a slight touch whenever he felt Symbol's urge to go. The touch at the precise second, he learned, was all that was necessary to control the horse.

When they had gone a mile and a half, Tom found himself taking time to glance at the other horses and drivers on the track. Ahead of him were Si Costa and Frank Lutz; they were men from the same mold as Jimmy and George, just as all the others here were. Men you'd always find wherever there was a county fair.

Turning to the far side of the track, Tom watched the only two-year-old colt on the track. Behind the colt sat Miss Elsie, huddled well within the raccoon coat she wore while driving in the winter. Miss Elsie was one of them in every respect except one—or rather two, Tom corrected himself, since she was a woman.

But Miss Elsie had all the money in the world; that was the big difference. You'd never know it to look at her, though. She drove to the track every single morning, no matter what the weather, in an open jeep. And she'd never been sick in all the thirty years Jimmy and George had known her. The track and stables and the big white house and barn sitting high on the hill overlooking the track—all belonged to Miss Elsie. Her father had built the track, and when he'd died he left Miss Elsie everything, including the coal mines on the other side of Coronet. Miss Elsie didn't care about coal, just horses, like Jimmy and the rest of them here. She must be in her forties, Tom figured. Miss Elsie had ten colts in two sheds, and she worked every one of them, even though she had a lot of help. Next year, she would have a new group of colts from the big barn on the hill where she kept her broodmares and her stallion, Mr. Guy. Mr. Guy had been a famous racehorse ten years ago, and Miss Elsie wanted to breed and raise another like him. But with all her money, she hadn't done it yet. Every year she would sell her two-year-old colts, knowing that in them she didn't have another Mr. Guy. She'd been right, too, for no colts she'd sold ever had become as fast and as famous as Mr. Guy. Miss Elsie knew her horses, all right; everyone was agreed on that.

And they all liked Miss Elsie, for she was one of them; she understood their financial problems even though she did have a lot of money herself. She never loaned money to anyone, and every person at the track knew better than to ask her. But she helped them in other ways that were more important. She charged but
a dollar a month for the use of her stables and track, and that included electricity; she sold them their hay for practically nothing, and it was the best of hay, having been raised on her farm, the only unspoiled land within a radius of twenty miles of Coronet; and there was a building at the track which she had built just for the men, where they could sit and rest, even live there, if they wanted to do so.

Tom was taking Symbol into his last half-mile when Miss Elsie drove her colt alongside. Symbol's ears pricked up at the colt's nearness. Tom touched the lines and the black horse responded by slowing down again.

“Good to see you out here, Tom,” Miss Elsie called.

Tom turned to the fur-coated figure. All he could see of Miss Elsie's sharp-featured face beneath her peaked cap and raised collar were her horn-rimmed glasses and large teeth, even more prominent now since she was smiling. “Thank you, ma'am,” he said. “It's good being out here.”

Miss Elsie flicked the lines and the colt stepped away, with Miss Elsie humming to him; she always hummed to her colts. And as her voice drifted back on the wind, Tom too started humming. Symbol bolted forward, eager to move after the colt. Tom touched the lines just in time to slow him down again. Once more Symbol tried to get away, and again Tom was able to stop him.

When Tom brought Symbol back to the shed, Jimmy Creech said, “You did much better'n I expected, Tom.” Then, taking the boy's hands in his own, he turned the palms upward and slapped them lightly.
“From what I saw you might have the kind of hands most of us would give our eyeteeth for; and you'd be the luckiest kid in the world. You never acquire the feeling in the hands that I'm talkin' about. You're born with that kind, and very few are lucky enough to have them.” His eyes left Tom's hands and traveled to his face. “I'm not saying you have them—so don't get all excited. But I know I couldn't have kept Symbol down to the speed you were goin' without keeping a good hold on him all the time. You didn't have to do that. You touched him at the right time. He knew you had him outguessed; that much I know.”

George reached for Symbol's bridle. “Don't build him up so much, Jimmy,” he said. “Might be different next time.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy replied, “maybe it will. But what I saw looked good.”

Tom followed them into the shed, wondering why Jimmy and George were making so much fuss just because he could tell through the lines exactly what Symbol was going to do. It seemed that anyone should be able to do that; yet Jimmy said
he
couldn't—and that was most surprising of all.

Tom looked forward to the following Saturday and possibly driving again until Jimmy Creech told him that he had made arrangements to send the Queen that day to Uncle Wilmer. He stopped looking forward to Saturday then.

But the day came, and it found him standing quietly beside the Queen while Jimmy blanketed her dark-brown body and got her ready to be loaded into the
van which waited just outside the door. Tom was glad that it was a closed van, for it was very cold that morning. He was glad, too, that the driver was the same man who had taken the Queen to the farm last summer; Tom could depend upon him to take it easy with the Queen.

While Jimmy hooked the straps of the blanket about the Queen, her colt kept close to her side.

“They both know somethin's up,” George said, leaving the stall.

“Yeah,” Jimmy replied, “they know, all right. 'Specially the Queen; the blanket tells her she's going to move.”

Tom was silent, standing close to the mare and colt. He thought he had become reconciled to the Queen's going, but it was much more difficult now that the time was here. Running his hands through the short black mane of the colt, he said, “It's going to be all right, boy.” Then he turned to Jimmy. “He
will
be all right, won't he?”

“He'll miss her today and tomorrow, and the mare will miss him. But in two days they'll have forgotten each other. That's the way it goes, Tom.”

“You're sure, Jimmy?”

“I'm not sure about anything, Tom,” Jimmy said quietly. “But you'll find that the colt will settle down in two days. You'll see for yourself. It's all a part of growing up,” he added when he met the boy's troubled eyes. “The Queen will be better off at the farm, as we both know, and the colt belongs here. Each has a separate life from now on.”

Tom nodded. “You're right, Jimmy. I know that.”

They took the Queen from the stall, closing the door between her and her colt. She nickered several times but obediently followed Jimmy. “You stay with him, Tom,” the man said. “He won't like being left alone and I don't want him to hurt himself. George and I won't have any trouble loading the mare.”

They went out the shed doors and Tom was alone with his colt, whose short, shrill neighs came frequently as he moved back and forth in the large stall, his ears pricked and eyes large and startled. Tom went inside the stall to comfort him, but the colt ignored him.

Outside the shed there were a few neighs from the Queen, then came the sound of her hoofs on the wooden ramp leading into the van. Tom was glad he wasn't out there. He heard the doors close and the Queen's neigh again, now muffled. The van's motor was started.

Frantically the colt moved about the stall, his shrill cries never ending. Tom stood beside the half-door of the stall, wanting to comfort him but knowing he could not take the Queen's place. Suddenly the colt moved quickly to the door and his forelegs rose in an attempt to get over. Tom's arm went beneath the hard body in time to stop him, then held him until he was able to pull the struggling legs from the door. When he had him down once more, Tom hurriedly closed the wire-mesh screen above the half-door.

It was then that Jimmy and George returned to the shed and stood just outside the stall. The shed rang with the colt's incessant neighs while Jimmy went to
the grain box and returned with a quart of oats. “Put this in his box, Tom,” he said.

But the colt would have none of the grain, and his eyes never left the shed's closed door as he watched for the Queen to return.

“You might as well come out an' take it easy, Tom,” Jimmy said. “This will go on all day, and you're not goin' to help him any. We just have to keep our eye on him, that's all, to make sure he doesn't hurt himself.”

But Tom shook his head and stayed with the frantic colt, and finally Jimmy and George left to get Symbol ready for his morning workout.

All day long Tom spent in the stall, leaving it for only a short time around noon, when George told him to come out and have a sandwich with him. He hadn't been able to comfort the colt, just as Jimmy had said he wouldn't. The colt waited only for the Queen.

It was late afternoon when the colt's cries lessened and he turned to Tom. The boy ran his other hand over the red furry winter coat and talked to him softly. Tom took him by the halter and attempted to lead him to the corner feedbox and the rack of hay. For a minute the colt refused to go and his eyes were frightened; he turned his head toward the door and neighed again. Then he followed Tom to the feedbox.

“He'll be all right,” George said, standing outside the stall. “The worst is over for him. You'll see. He won't hurt himself now.”

“But tonight, George?” Tom asked. “What about tonight?”

“I'm sleepin' here,” George returned, shifting his chaw of tobacco. “But he'll be so exhausted from all the moving around he's done that he'll sleep. They all do.”

“I'll stay with you,” Tom said quickly.

“Your folks would worry about you. Besides, we've got only one cot. I promise you he won't get hurt, Tom. There really isn't any need for my bein' here. He'll be quiet.”