The Black Stallion's Blood Bay Colt (25 page)

At Reading, it was like coming home for Tom. It was the fair he knew best, and a warm, homey feeling glowed within him while he walked the tree-lined avenues. In the same barns and buildings were the same sleek brown-and-white Herefords, the black-and-white Holsteins, the short-necked coal-black Angus steers—all mooing or bellowing as they had done at previous fairs. And there were the goats and the pigs, the chickens and the roosters, the giant Percheron horses—all groomed glistening clean.

All was the same, yet each year people came with the same amount of anticipation and eagerness. Never were they disappointed and they looked upon everything as though this was their very first fair. It had been that way at each and every fair Tom had attended during this long season. He knew it would never change.

From the long outdoor restaurants not far from the high grandstand came the smells of roast beef and pork and sauerkraut—Pennsylvania Dutch cooking at its best.
The men in front of the restaurants pleaded with people walking by to “Get your tickets for the races, then come in and enjoy the best hot roast beef and mashed potatoes you've ever eaten!

“This is the place to meet your friends, folks. Come in, sit down and rest. See that lady leaving? She just told me she's full right up to the ears! She never tasted such good pork and sauerkraut. That's what we like to hear, folks! And that's what you'll be saying, too! It's cool and clean, inside. So come along. Join us!”

And there were the calls of the barkers of other concessions. Tom listened to them all.

“Thirsty? Step right up here for some of our old-fashioned root beer made the way you like it! Hungry? Try our hot franks!”

“Guess your age within two years, lady … or you get your pick of any of these valuable prizes!”

“Hey! Hey! Hey!
BINGO
. We're ready to start the next game, folks. Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! You may be the big winner this game. Come in and try your luck!”

The fairs get right inside of you
, Tom thought,
just as Jimmy and George said they did
. Turning to the track, he saw the horses working out. And far on the other side was the fair's midway with its red trucks and spinning Ferris wheels making a vivid-colored background for the bare racing strip of the track's backstretch.

And, of course, Uncle Wilmer and Aunt Emma were there, making the Reading Fair seem even more like home.

They had come early this morning, the day of George's and Tom's arrival with the colt. They planned to come to the fair every day, Uncle Wilmer had told
Tom, and “to hang” with the money it would cost them. This year was extra-special to them. Besides, just to look at that colt standing in his stall was worth every cent of admission to the fair.

And when Tom had worked Bonfire, Uncle Wilmer said, “Just watchin' him is something nobody could set no price on! He's a real ‘goer,' that colt is!”

That night, Tom and George went back to the farm with Uncle Wilmer and Aunt Emma. When they went over the bumpy road leading to the farm, Tom stuck his head out the window of the car, watching for the Queen in the pasture.

It was dark and he couldn't see her; but she neighed repeatedly at the sound of the car. When Uncle Wilmer stopped at the gate, Tom ran to the pasture fence and whistled. From far down in the pasture came the sound of hoofs and he knew the Queen was on her way to him.

“You men stay with the mare,” Aunt Emma said. “I just need to warm things up on the stove. I got everything ready.”

Tom heard the Queen jump over the small stream that cut the center of the pasture; then she was coming up the slight slope leading up from the stream. Tom heard her grunt as she plunged over the crest of the embankment; then he saw her, the white blaze that split her dark face standing out in the darkness. He ran forward to meet her, and George and Uncle Wilmer left him alone with the Queen.

An hour later they sat down to another of Aunt Emma's sumptuous meals, and ate hungrily and long. When it was over and the dishes were done, Aunt
Emma left the men alone. “You'll be talkin' horses,” she said. “And I've seen enough of them for one day.”

Uncle Wilmer scratched the top of his egg-shaped head. “You heard any more about Jimmy?” he asked.

Tom shook his head, then said, “Not since he went to the hospital.”

“The doc said he'd let us know as soon as they found out anything,” George added. “I'm afraid he's really sick this time, Wilmer.”

“I believe it,” Uncle Wilmer said soberly.

They were quiet a long while, then Uncle Wilmer asked, “Why are you waitin' until Friday to race the colt? Why you doin' that if you need money to pay Jimmy's hospital bills?”

“It's a classified race—the only one we can get Bonfire in,” George shouted.

“How much money will he win?” Uncle Wilmer asked.

“Three hundred and twenty-five dollars,
if
he wins,” George replied.

“He'll win, all right,” Uncle Wilmer said. “Ain't so much money, though, when y'got hospital bills.”

“We know that,” Tom said.

Uncle Wilmer turned to the boy, looked at him for a while, then rose to go to the corner cupboard; on top of a pile of copies of
Hoof Beats
was a list of activities at the Reading Fair, and he brought this back to the table.

“Why don't you put the colt in this race for two-year-olds on Wednesday? That's a good purse, all right, eighteen hundred dollars.” Uncle Wilmer stopped talking to figure to himself, then added, “That'd be nine
hundred dollars, when you won it. That kind of money would be a big help to Jimmy, all right.”

“It would,” George agreed. “But that race is a Futurity.”

“Heh?” Uncle Wilmer cupped his ear.

Tom was closer to him, so he said, “George says that two-year-old race on Wednesday is a Futurity. That means every colt racing in it was nominated for the race even before he was foaled. The owners nominated the foal that was to come of their mares. Jimmy didn't do that.”

“And it cost money to nominate the foal,” George added, shouting. “Then you have to keep your colt eligible for the Futurity by paying more payments right along until he becomes a two-year-old and goes in the race. Jimmy didn't have that kind of money!”

Uncle Wilmer nodded his head understandingly. “Too bad,” he said. “The colt would win, all right. There's only one top colt in that race he'd have to beat, from what I read.” Reaching for the local newspaper, he drew it toward him and adjusted his glasses. “Yep, here it is,” he added. “The colt I meant is a filly. Princess Guy, they call her. Says here that she's owned and driven by Miss Elsie Topper.” He looked up from the newspaper. “That must be the Princess Guy I been reading so much about in
Hoof Beats
.” Turning to the paper once more, he nodded. “Yep, it must be, all right, because it says here Princess Guy raced at Ohio fairs and the Maywood Park Raceway in Chicago an' never was beaten. She has a record of two o four which makes her the favorite, easy.”

At the surprising news of Miss Elsie's coming to Reading, Tom and George looked at each other in astonishment, but neither said a word.

Tuesday morning Tom was bringing Bonfire off the track from his early workout when he saw two large and very impressive horse vans come to a stop before the stables. The lettering on their sides told him they had come from Roosevelt Raceway, Westbury, Long Island, New York.

George said, “Here they come, up for some sun to race in the Futurity tomorrow.”

As they removed Bonfire's harness and sponged his sweated body, they stole frequent glances at the colts and equipment being unloaded from the big vans. It was the first time this season they had encountered any raceway stables; having lived and raced with the Jimmy Creeches, they had forgotten the glittering, glistening polish of leather, brass and nickel of the money-backed stables.

Tom didn't recognize either of the two drivers. “I thought one of them might be Ray O'Neil,” he told George, remembering the well-known raceway driver who had smashed Jimmy's sulky wheel at Reading two seasons before.

“Didn't you read where he's drivin' for the Phillip Cox Company now?” George asked, while running a dry cloth over the colt's body. “He's been giving Silver Knight all his records at Roosevelt Raceway. Got the colt down to two o four last week.”

“I missed that,” Tom said. He threw the cooling blanket over Bonfire. “I'll walk him, George,” he said, leading the colt away.

Early that same afternoon, Miss Elsie's trailer drawn by her jeep came down the shed row. Tom and George rose from their canvas chairs before Bonfire's stall the moment they recognized her at the wheel. A groom was sitting beside her. Miss Elsie's arrival stirred activity and interest up and down the row, for in her trailer was one of the two top two-year-olds of the season and perhaps of all time.

Miss Elsie stopped before an empty stall, and when she heard Tom's call and saw him and George, she pushed her way through the crowd and came quickly toward them.

She had cut her hair shorter, but that was the only thing different about Miss Elsie. Her horn-rimmed glasses moved up and down as she wiggled her nose while she talked and smiled at them. Only when they told her that Jimmy was very sick and in the hospital did she make an attempt to draw her lips tightly over her prominent white teeth.

“I want to do anything I can for him,” she said seriously. “You know that, Tom, and you, too, George.”

“We know it, Miss Elsie … and thanks. But you know how Jimmy is,” George replied.

“I know,” she said. “He never took a favor from anyone in his life. His kind don't. But I want to help, if I can,” she offered once more.

Then they talked about her black filly and Miss Elsie was all smiles again. “Princess Guy's
it
, just as I knew she was going to be,” she said. “And she'll go faster than her record of two o four. I know she will.”

“You shouldn't have no trouble in the Futurity,” George said. “I hear there'll only be three other horses
in it. Your filly scared all the others off—they knowin' how fast she is, I mean.”

“I don't think she'll have any trouble, either,” Miss Elsie said confidently. “No two-year-old can keep up with her … and that includes Silver Knight, too,” she added quickly. “The Princess will take care of him Saturday night.”

“At Roosevelt?” George asked quickly.

Miss Elsie nodded her short-cropped head. “In the Two-Year-Old Championship Race,” she said. Then Miss Elsie left to help unload her black filly with the four white stockings.

George said, “She's excited about her filly, all right. But Princess Guy hasn't changed her any. She's still a mighty good woman … Miss Elsie always will be.”

But Tom had turned to his colt. “Yet she never even asked about Bonfire,” he said. “She never even asked.”

George turned to him. “That's Miss Elsie,” he said. “There's only one two-year-old in the world for her now, an' that's her filly. She can't see no other.”

The next afternoon, Tom, George and Uncle Wilmer stood at the paddock rail watching the racing of the Futurity, and they learned why Miss Elsie was so proud of her black filly.

The program and the announcer called it a race, but it wasn't. The Two-Year-Old Futurity that day was an exhibition of extreme racing speed given by Princess Guy. Miss Elsie, identified as a woman in her orange-and-blue racing silks only because that fact was pointed out to the crowd by the announcer, drove the
filly to win the first heat by ten lengths and the second by fifteen.

The spectators, expecting a closer race, didn't leave the stands disappointed, because after Princess Guy finished the second heat it was announced to them that the filly had set a new world championship record for two-year-olds of 2:03! Yet the majority of the people who witnessed this creation of a new world record, including George and Tom, were surprised at the sensational time. For the black filly strode so effortlessly, never obviously changing her stride or beat from start to finish, that they had had no idea she was traveling so fast. She had given everybody the impression she could have gone much faster with only a little more effort.

Walking back to the stables, George shook his head as though still uncertain about the sheer speed of Princess Guy. “She's like a bird,” he said, almost to himself. “She flies an' you don't even know it. She jus' steals over the ground like nothing I've ever seen. I saw her do it or I wouldn't believe it.”

Uncle Wilmer mumbled something in reply to George, but Tom didn't say anything until they reached Bonfire's stall and sat down in the chairs. “Do you think she was going all out, George? She didn't seem to be at all.”

“I got an idea she was,” George returned. “I think Miss Elsie was lettin' her go all the way. But you'd never know it to watch the filly, like you say,” he added. “That's the kind of a racer she is.”

“When Bonfire goes all out you know it,” Tom said.

“That's the kind of a racer he is,” George replied. “They're different as day an' night. Put them together
on a track and somethin' will happen. I don't know what.”

They sat there for the rest of the afternoon, discussing the black filly and the blood bay colt and awaiting Aunt Emma's return from the pie contest. Tom and George were going to the farm again that evening.

And when Aunt Emma joined them it took just one look at her constant smile to know that her mincemeat pie had won first prize this year. She removed the blue ribbon from her handbag for just a moment so they could see it; then she put it away carefully once more.

Bonfire had been fed, watered and bedded down for the night, and they were in Uncle Wilmer's old car when the race secretary handed George a special delivery letter. After taking a look at the return address, George turned to Tom, sitting next to him. “It's from the doc,” he said grimly.