Finally the Black Stallion stopped fighting and let the waves carry him back toward shore. There was no deliberation in his act, only a growing sense of tiredness and an unwillingness to do further battle with so formidable an opponent as the sea. He let it carry him where it would, slowly moving his legs to stay afloat and to steer him clear of the coral rock in his path. The instinct to live remained strong and yet within him grew a sense of indifference as to what lay ahead.
The wind and sea carried him to the south as well as back toward Azul Island. And finally the jagged shoreline gave way abruptly to form the sandspit, its bright beach jutting out into the water. The Black Stallion let the waves sweep him toward it. He had reached safety but there was no quickening of the blood coursing through his veins, only a deep sense of sadness and loss.
THE QUEST ENDS
17
It was midmorning when the Night Owl completed its run around Azul Island and drew opposite the sandspit again. Alec stood up forward, his eyes on the shoreline, his body wet with the spray that whipped over the bow.
Henry joined the boy. “I guess you’ll have to be satisfied he isn’t here, Alec. We’ve done …”
A sudden, startled look came over Alec’s face. “Give me the binoculars, Henry, quick!”
“But we’ve …”
“Give them to me!” Alec repeated, his voice urgent, demanding, no longer respectful of an old friend. He grabbed the binoculars and hurriedly pressed them against his eyes.
The sky had turned gray and a mist blanketed the spit of land ahead of them. Alec watched for the movement he thought he’d seen in the ghostly light.
Henry said, “Use your head, Alec. He wouldn’t be on the spit. Like I told you before …”
“I saw something move! I’m sure of it.”
“Maybe it was the bat.”
“This was no bat.”
“If it was the Black he would have seen us earlier an’ come.”
Alec kept the binoculars fixed on the sandspit. Finally he said quietly, “I’m certain he’s there, Henry.”
“Y’mean you see him?” the old man asked incredulously.
“No, but I will—any second now.”
Henry shook his head, more in deep respect than in bewilderment. Alec believed the Black was somewhere on shore and Alec was seldom wrong in the feelings he had about his horse. Again Henry wondered, as he had done so often during the many years of their friendship, just what there was between Alec and the Black. What was there about this boy that made an otherwise untameable stallion submit to him quietly and gently? Whatever it was, it was bringing the two of them together again.
“See him yet?” the old man asked after long moments of silence.
Alec didn’t answer and Henry didn’t press him. There existed between boy and horse an understanding that was extremely rare in this age of machines and jets and rockets. Henry was more in awe of it than he would have admitted.
Alec suddenly let out a yell that carried sharp and clear across the water. It sent a chill over Henry for never before had he heard such a yell come from Alec. But then, never before had there been such a reunion as this!
For now Henry could see the Black moving through the mist. And Henry surprised himself by letting out a yell almost as loud as Alec’s.
The big man at the wheel saw the horse, too, and felt the air become alive with excitement. He turned the Night Owl into the wind and went forward at full speed. It would take only a few minutes to round the spit and come in at the pier. Then the boy would be with his horse again.
They met just off the pier, Henry letting Alec go on ahead. The boy did not run to the Black, nor did the Black run to him. They approached each other at a normal, steady pace as if they’d known all along it would end this way. Then they stood side by side, Alec’s hands and eyes speaking for him while the Black nuzzled the boy’s chest.
Watching them, Henry said, “Skipper, you’d better get ready to carry a lot of horse.”
The fisherman nodded, his eyes never leaving the Black. “He’s sure that, boss,” he answered. “A lot of horse, a whale of a lot of horse.”
Moving closer, Henry said, “He’s cut up some on the neck and withers. Must be from the coral rock.”
“Must be, boss,” the big black man agreed.
Henry said, “Walk around him with me … slowly now … there, that’s it.… Nothing that looks like the bite of a vampire, is there now?” The old trainer waited anxiously, tensely for an answer.
Finally it came. “No, boss, none at all. Just those cuts on him.”
Relieved of tension, Henry said, “That coral rock sure can make pretty bad gashes. Anywhere else an’ I’d say he’d been fighting another horse.”
The fisherman nodded his big, dark head. “Yeah, boss, anywhere else. No horses here but him.”
Suddenly the Black turned from Alec to gaze at the towering cliffs beyond. His eyes shone brightly as he whinnied. Alec listened to the soft, wavering pitch of the call, no different from that which the Black uttered when he scented his broodmares at home.
“What is it, fellow?” Alec looked into the small canyon at the end of the spit.
Henry moved to the boy’s side and followed his gaze. “He must have been down there all the time we were offshore. Strange he didn’t scent us. Not much gets by him, not usually.”
Alec nodded in agreement. He didn’t understand it, either, any more than he did the reason for the Black’s soft, wavering call which was so strange for this desolate land. But maybe the Black had reasons of his own. They’d have to leave it that way, and anyway nothing mattered except that they were together again.
“We’d better get going,” Henry said anxiously. “We don’t want to meet up with that vampire again.”
“We sure don’t,” Alec agreed. “C’mon, Black, we’re going home.”
The tall stallion whinnied, this time full of love for the boy at his side. He walked with him toward the Night Owl.
Deep within the walls of Azul Island the red herd stallion smelled the wind and the news it carried. Fainter and fainter became the scent of the stallion who had been his equal in fire, speed, endurance and intelligence. But his own passion for freedom had been greater than the other’s. He smelled the scent of man and knew where the Black Stallion had gone.
Finally he turned back to his herd. Beautiful in form, majestic in bearing, he looked down upon the young stallions almost in scorn. With large eyes blazing and chest bulging he walked slowly around the herd. Then, as if to get even further attention from mares and stallions alike, he broke into a trot, his mane flashing in the wind, his long tail curving and flowing behind him. He went faster and faster, a red comet gliding across the valley, still the king of an unfallen world!
The others watched their chosen leader and gloried in his strength and courage. They stood motionless while he passed before them, and they trembled a little in reverence and awe. He was the bravest of the brave. And young colts hoped that someday they would be as big and strong as he. Meanwhile, they would graze on the same fine grass as he did, drink the same pure water, breathe the same invigorating air and always be free!
The Night Owl left Azul Island behind. Standing in the stern was the Black. Once again in his life he had known freedom. His giant body had been cooled by wild winds and rain and warmed by the sun. He had run fresh and clean, his hoofs trimmed by flying rock. His savage instincts had been released and not found wanting. More than ever before he knew that he was all stallion—strong, arrogant and cunning.
The boy at his side spoke to him and he turned to listen to the low-pitched sounds. He whinnied in reply, his nostrils flared to their fullest, his eyes bright. He was greatly loved and he knew it. Nothing else in the world could mean as much to him as the boy’s love, not even the freedom of the wild ones.…
Slowly he turned his ever-watchful eyes back toward the island. With head held high he surveyed the sea, and suddenly he screamed his shrill clarion call as if
claiming the waters for his very own. The air rang with his wild, savage challenge.
A moment later he became stone-still again. Then his wide-open nostrils quivered, followed by a nervous twitching of his ears. He had picked up the faintest whiff of a scent that had sent his blood racing. He had smelled the herd stallion once more.
A sudden gust of wind riffled the Black’s mane and tail, and his body rocked slightly with the movement of the boat. Again he whistled his clarion call of battle across the sea.
For a while he had guarded the big herd with all the alertness of the hunted. The mares had looked to him for masterful protection and his faintest signal had sent them racing over the ground. Yes, he had defended them against great danger. He had been fierce in his attentiveness. Yes, he might have stayed and towered above his harem, lord of all he surveyed and wild with freedom except for …
He bent his long, graceful neck to the boy again, his nostrils quivering. The sea wind whipped his mane but not a muscle moved beneath his tight skin. He remained still, very still, with his love for the boy showing in his eyes.
Nothing would ever break the ties between them. He had no impulse to return to the island and the wild runners.
“It’s over and we’re going home,” Alec told his horse. “It won’t be long now, not long at all.”
Alec rubbed the heavily maned neck while the Black uttered a high, bugling snort of joy. And Alec gloried in the beauty of his horse standing so majestically in the morning sun and swishing his tail in perfect contentment.
High in the unbroken sky the man-o’-war bird reappeared and Alec turned to look at it. Why did it stay above the dome of Azul Island? Why had it caused him, too, to stay in these waters when Henry would have gone on? He was making too much of nothing, he knew. And yet … try as he would he could not think of this satanic-looking creature as anything but a good omen!
Besides, hadn’t it played an important role in his finding the Black again? At least, it had been part of the picture. He wouldn’t confide his thoughts to Henry or anyone else; they’d only shrug their shoulders and tell him to stop thinking about what had happened. No, Alec decided it would be much better if he just kept quiet and enjoyed what he shared with the Black—a way of life that was very precious to both of them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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.
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THE STORY OF THE MOST
ANTICIPATED HORSE RACE IN FICTION,
BETWEEN THE BLACK AND FLAME,
available in paperback from Random House
FAN MAIL
1
“Dear Alec Ramsay,” the letter began, “I’ve wanted to write you a long time but was afraid you’d be too busy even to read my letter. I finally decided I just had to take a chance and write anyway. I know there’s no one else who would understand my love for a horse as much as you and I need your help very much.”
Alec stopped reading and got off his seat on the tack trunk so the old man with him could rummage inside. “What are you looking for, Henry?” he asked.
“The X-ray plates Doc Palmer took,” the trainer said.
“The latest batch?” Alec asked.
“Yeah, those.”
“In the right-hand corner.”
Removing the stack of negatives, the old man held them up to the morning sunlight coming through the doorway of the small room. He stared at the X rays, shook his head, then climbed up on the tack trunk and held the negatives against the bare light bulb.
“You won’t find anything,” Alec said. “You never do.”
“There just might be a speck we missed.”
“There’s nothing,” Alec insisted. “The Black’s hoof healed long ago. We have the doc’s word for it. We have clean pictures and we know he’s acting right.” Mounting impatience with the old man made him add, “I don’t see why you keep looking for trouble, Henry. He was wild to run this morning. I haven’t seen him act so alive and well in months.”
“You let him get away from you,” the old man said defensively. “You were supposed to take him for a sightseeing gallop and you didn’t.”
“I couldn’t. As I say, he was wild. He felt good. He was bucking and playing all the way. You know yourself that he was still so fresh when we got back to the barn that it took the two of us to walk him.”
“I know,” the old man said, still studying the pictures.
Alec Ramsay turned back to the letter in his hand. “You want me to read this letter to you?”
“Why not? Don’t you always read your fan mail to me?”
“But sometimes you don’t listen.”
“I’ll listen. I can work at the same time.” Henry Dailey held the X-ray negatives to the light bulb again and added, “Whoever is writing needs your help. Like maybe ten others a week you hear from. He loves horses as much as you do. Or maybe it’s from a girl this time?”
Alec turned over the letter to read the signature. “No, it’s from a fellow. Someone named Steve Duncan. But you’re right so far … he loves horses as much as I do and he’s asking for help.”
“Want me to go on?” the old man asked without taking his eyes from the negatives. “I can tell you the rest of it, almost word for word.”
“No, let me read it to you. Maybe it’ll be different this time.” But different or not, Alec decided it was good knowing people were interested enough in him and the Black to write. If the day ever came when he and Henry became too busy to read such letters, it would be time to quit racing altogether.
“From the newspapers I know you have the Black at Hialeah Park this winter and may race him before long,” Alec read aloud. “I know exactly how you feel having such a wonderful horse and I wish …”
Henry stepped down from the tack trunk, replacing the X-ray negatives in a large manila envelope. “That fellow knows exactly how you feel having the Black, and he wants one exactly like him someday,” he said. “You’re not going to be able to help him any more than you did the others, Alec. How come people don’t understand that a truly great horse like the Black turns up just once in a lifetime, if at all?”
Alec shrugged his shoulders as he met the old man’s gaze. Henry’s face had the texture of old parchment crisscrossed with a mass of wrinkles, but his eyes and voice still held the fire and gusto of youth.
“I’d pity mo
st of them if they ever did have a horse like the Black,” the old man went on. “They don’t know what it’s like having a great horse on their hands. They don’t know any of the problems.”
“Who’re you kidding? You wouldn’t change it for the world, Henry,” Alec said.
“Of course not. I waited all my life for him to come along. Maybe I worry about him too much like you say,” he went on. “Sometimes I think he’s going to worry me to death. Sometimes I can’t eat or sleep, just knowing I got the big one in my stable. That’s the way it is, but I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else.”
Turning back to the letter, Alec said, “This fellow seems to have something else in mind.”
“… and I wish,” he continued reading, “that you and I could get together. I live in Miami now. My family moved here from the North last fall. It would be easy for me to get to Hialeah to see you. Would you mind if I came over soon? It’s very important and I’m sure you could help me.”
“That’s great, just great,” the old man said. “All we need around here is a horse-struck kid with a problem. Maybe he won’t get past the barn gate.”
“That doesn’t sound like you, Henry,” Alec said. “It won’t do any harm to see him if he does come. I don’t see what’s wrong with you these days. You’re too cautious about everything.”
Henry straightened his blocklike figure, making a gallant attempt to look unconcerned at Alec’s criticism and regain his position of authority. He didn’t like the way Alec was sizing him up. Alec was too composed, while he was squirming inwardly. Maybe it was a sign of old age creeping up on him. Maybe it wasn’t a case of being as old as one felt but as old as one was.
“I guess you’re right,” he said finally. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. We’ll help him all we can.”
Alec smiled, trying to make it easier for his old friend. He thought he knew how the trainer felt. The Black had made up for a lot of disappointments in Henry’s long life. Despite his ever-present anxiety over the Black’s soundness, Henry was a happy man. Having a great horse could make anyone really enjoy life to the fullest.