The Black Stallion's Blood Bay Colt (23 page)

And it was then Tom knew he was beaten. Bonfire had had more than enough of this kind of going. Nobody could ask any more of a colt. He touched the lines and Bonfire slowed down.

But even at this slow speed, Sam Kossler didn't make any attempt to take his gelding past them until they came off the back turn into the homestretch. He moved up alongside Tom then, and grinned before going on past. He had known all along he'd had nothing to fear from the others in the race, and they followed in a line directly behind one another. There was no room between any of them for Tom to break through to the good footing; and as each driver and horse passed him, Tom realized that they had known all along what Sam Kossler was doing. They had bided their time with Sam, and only now made any attempt to catch up with and pass him. But Sam Kossler had the race well under control as he went for the finish wire.

When the last horse had gone by, Tom guided his
colt away from the rail. But he made no attempt to catch up with any of the others; it was too late for that, for Sam Kossler was already under the wire. Tom wiped the mud in gobs from his face and silks. Sam Kossler had beaten them this time, but there was still another heat to go—and the next heat would be a different story.

George said, “Clean yourself up, Tom. I'll get the mud off the colt.”

“How long before the next heat? How long, George?” Tom's voice was clipped, eager.

“More'n half an hour. Take it easy.” George removed Bonfire's harness. “The colt needs a rest, if you don't.”

That sobered Tom. “You're right, George,” he said quietly. “He worked hard and got nowhere in that slop.” Removing his sulky cap, he ducked his head in a large tub of rain water. When his head emerged, he said, “I should've dropped back the moment I found myself in that stuff. Don't you think so, George?”

“You shouldn't have gotten in there so close to the rail in the first place,” George said. “But it's my fault as much as yours. I noticed it an' shoulda told you. Jimmy would've told you. We've both got a lot to learn.”

“I should've slowed Bonfire down right away,” Tom insisted. “Let them all pass me and then come around them on the outside. They're not in the same class with Bonfire when it comes to speed. I lost the heat for him.”

Sponging the colt's legs free of the mud, George said, “Your slowin' him down early wouldn't have
worked either, Tom. Sam Kossler would have slowed down, too … and so would've the others, even if you went down to a walk. They jus' figured on keepin' you right up against the rail and in the mud for the whole mile.”

“A dirty trick,” Tom said angrily.

“Not dirty, Tom. Jus' driving smart, that's all, because they knew you had all the speed in front of you. Maybe they taught you your first lesson … and you'll think a little more before doin' what you do after this.”

“They taught me, all right,” Tom said.

George looked up from Bonfire's hoofs to smile. “We can still make expenses by winning the next heat,” he said.

Almost an hour later Tom drove Bonfire onto the track for the second heat. Much to Sam Kossler's surprise, the boy nodded to him and smiled as he passed. They took their warm-up scores, then went back to start. Sam had the inside pole position again, for he was the heat winner; and Tom was on the outside, for he had finished last in the first heat.

Grim-faced, the others turned their horses without so much as a look at Tom or his blood bay colt. It was as though they knew it would be difficult to outsmart the boy and colt again. Once more they came down to the start as one and were off.

There was no sprint by Bonfire for the first turn, for Tom held him close and dropped him behind the others. He kept away from the inside, and the footing, though a little wet, was good. Bonfire liked the feel of the track. His body trembled with his anxiety to be let
loose, and his ears cupped backwards frequently, awaiting Tom's words. But Tom spoke only through the lines, telling him to bide his time.

While rounding the turn, Tom saw Sam Kossler glance back in his direction; every other driver did the same thing. They were worried and wondering when and how Tom would come up to them; they knew the blood bay colt would come. Coming off the turn and going into the backstretch, they left their single-line formation as though to take up as much of the track as possible to prevent Tom's breaking through with Bonfire.

But the track was wide and Tom knew there'd be plenty of room to get by with his colt when he chose to use it. Just now he was content to let them worry and wonder about him.

They went the first lap of the track, the drivers ahead looking back at Tom constantly. They'd wanted him to make a move long since, for their straggling positions halfway across the track meant a longer distance for their horses to go. Only Sam Kossler and Tom were taking the short distance around.

They went into the first turn again and Tom heard George yell, “Good, Tom!”

Bonfire was getting impatient; he didn't pull, but Tom could sense how he felt by the movements in mouth and body. Tom knew that the pace Sam Kossler was setting in front was easy on the colt. It would mean about a 2:20 mile for him, and that was just what Jimmy wanted for Bonfire this early in the season. Tom touched the lines. Bonfire was going to win this time.

And coming off the turn, entering the backstretch of the last lap, it happened. Later, the people who saw it found it difficult to explain exactly what they saw and felt. The nearest they could come was that the colt's speed coming down the stretch and past the others set them afire; never had they seen such sudden power and breath-taking speed. For them, it was like being picked up and carried with him in his almost frightening, whirlwind flight to the finish. Sam Kossler said too that he'd never seen a colt turn on such speed so fast and for so long. Maybe one or two older horses during all the years he'd been racing, but never a two-year-old colt.

Bonfire didn't come out for the third heat. It was to have been a race between Sam Kossler's chestnut gelding and the colt, for each had won a heat, to decide which horse would be the winner. Tom and George had gone to the judges' stand and had conceded the race to Sam Kossler, claiming that another mile would be too much for the colt this early in the season.

They were racing Bonfire as Jimmy Creech would have raced him.

“So we get second money instead of first, Tom,” George said, when they returned to the stable. “Jimmy said not to push the colt just to make money for him. We're off now, Tom. And we're twenty-five dollars to the good.”

But Tom didn't hear George, for he was in the stall with his colt, watching him while he ate his bran mash. He wasn't thinking of the money won or of Jimmy Creech. He was thinking only of his colt and
the speed he'd shown that last time around. He and Bonfire had started their careers together, and the first race was usually the toughest. Next was the Indiana County Fair—and with his colt he looked forward to it eagerly.

Unless a person was a regular reader of the weekly racing publications which devoted some of their space to the results at the smaller fairs, or unless he had attended the Pennsylvania fairs at Indiana, Clearfield, Bedford, Dayton, Mercer and Port Royal during the months of July and August, he never would have known of a blood bay colt by the name of Bonfire. For Tom Messenger never allowed his colt to go faster than a 2:19 mile. And there was nothing exceptional in a two-year-old racing in that time, especially when this was the year of such top ones as Princess Guy and Silver Knight.

The weekly racing publications gave a large portion of their space to summaries of races won by Miss Elsie Topper's black filly, Princess Guy, at the Ohio fairs as she broke one track record after another in amazing times ranging from 2:09 to 2:04. Just as much space was given to the startling speed being displayed by Silver Knight as he improved with each successive
night race at the Roosevelt Raceway and brought his record down to 2:05.

Hoof Beats
was published monthly, and regularly there would be an article discussing “the extreme speed of Silver Knight and Princess Guy.” The magazine hoped that “Miss Elsie Topper and the amateur sportsman, Phillip Cox, would see fit to race their exceptional filly and colt against each other before the season ended … as we feel certain that such a race would lower Titan Hanover's world record of 2:03 ½ for two-year-olds on a half-mile track.”

George snorted, “Humph.”

Tom said, looking at his colt, “If I just let him out once, just once, they'd all know.”

But he never did. At one fair after another, race after race, he rated Bonfire carefully behind the others, trailing the field until near the end of the race when he made his move. And, as in their first race at the Washington Fair, it was these sprints that people talked about long after Bonfire had gone. Yet their talk of the blood bay colt's blinding sprints that “pick you up and set you afire even though you're sitting in the grandstand” stayed within the small-fair circuit and never reached the outer world.

“It's the way Jimmy wants us to do it,” George said. “We're not rushin' him at all.”

And Tom realized as the season progressed the value of Jimmy's orders. Bonfire was stronger than ever, his legs and body were as hard as steel and never was there any sign of lameness or stiffness. Moreover, the colt knew what racing was all about now. He and Tom had learned quickly.

Only twice did Bonfire lose a race, and then only because Tom was outsmarted by the older drivers and couldn't get through in time to win. At every fair except one, the colt raced against aged horses, the same as at Washington. The Dayton Fair had a race solely for two-year-old colts and Tom and Bonfire had the easiest time of all, winning in 2:19.

The purse money won accumulated and George took care of it.

“Eleven races an' nine hundred dollars,” he said, adding it up. “Jimmy never had it this good. And Tom, think what it would be if we were racin' for more'n two- and three-hundred-dollar purses divided up among the first four horses! But no sense thinkin' about that,” he added soberly. “Purses never have been more an' never will be in this circuit.”

From the money won, they deducted their expenses and sent the rest home to Jimmy Creech. They figured that Jimmy should feel a lot better having this money coming in to pay his bills. But he didn't; his letters were few and far between and his handwriting, a weak scrawl difficult to read, was that of a sick man. Dr. Morton's letters to them didn't help either, for he wrote that “Jimmy's condition is the same, but I'm surprised that he isn't in better spirits since Bonfire is doing so well.”

George said, “I figure he's still worried about payin' the doc. Jimmy didn't have no idea he'd be sick this long.”

Tom and George worried about Jimmy even more as they moved farther and farther away from Coronet, going eastward where the fairs were larger and the purses a little better.

It was early September when they arrived at the York Fair. Reading and Uncle Wilmer's farm were less than a hundred miles to the north and east. They would be at the Reading Fair in a week's time and Uncle Wilmer and Aunt Emma were expecting them. Eagerly Tom looked forward to seeing them and the Queen again; he knew too how much his uncle wanted to see Bonfire go.

They found the York Fair to be as large as the fair at Reading; there was a great cement grandstand and bleachers, and there were just as many people milling about the exhibit buildings and stables.

“Just look at this purse we're racin' for today,” George said excitedly. “Six hundred and fifty dollars! Let's see now. That's—” He figured a moment, then went on, “Three hundred and twenty-five bucks to the winner! If we'd known the purses were going to be that big, Tom, we woulda come here earlier in the week. Here it is the last day of the races.”

“There's Reading ahead of us,” Tom reminded him. “The purses will be just as large there.”

The boy turned to look down the long row of stables. He didn't know any of the men here, but they were no different from all the others he'd met and raced against at the fairs. Hardened, well-lined old faces—the Jimmy Creeches of this sport. There were no big stables, no raceway drivers, for the purse money, while good, could not be compared with that given at the night raceways. They had to work harder at the fairs for their money, Tom thought, for each race meant driving two and sometimes three heats, while at the
raceways they went what they called a “dash,” which simply meant just one race of a mile with no heats.

That was another thing Jimmy Creech had against the raceways. He didn't like those “dashes.” He believed a horse should have stamina and endurance as well as speed, and how much he had of both could be decided only by racing in heats—the way it always had been done.

Some people crowded near to look at Bonfire in his stall, and George and Tom talked to them until it was time to get ready for their race. He enjoyed having the people come to their stall, as they had at all the fairs. Most of them knew something about fine breeding and were genuinely interested in the sport. That's what made the fairs, and that was one of the reasons, Tom knew, why Jimmy would never desert them for the raceways. George and Jimmy said it wasn't the same at the raceways, that it couldn't be. Tom didn't know, but he guessed they were right.

They brought Bonfire out of his stall, and his red coat burned bright in the sun while they put the light racing harness on him.

The track marshal came down the row, telling those who were getting their horses ready, “We're going out in a few minutes. Get 'em all set.”

After hooking up the sulky, George stepped back to look critically at Bonfire. “Why don't you take him down to two fifteen today? He's ready for it, easy. An' from what I hear that ought to win for us. That three hundred and twenty-five first-place money looks pretty good.”