“Only seven furlongs,” the trainer had said, “so he ought to be able to handle it and still beat ’em.”
A purse of $8,950 would go to the winner. That amount plus what Black Minx had earned in the Preakness would make a grand total of $20,200, Alec figured. Still a long way from the necessary $100,000 for the new barn but they were on their way.
He went to the window. “Stop counting purses before we’ve won them,” he grunted.
Now that Alec realized what day it was he knew the reason for his bad night. He never slept well the night before a race. It was due to all the excitement preceding an important contest. Every rider, every athlete, knew it well. There was nothing unique about it.
Alec never for a moment considered the grim possibilities of sudden injury and even death as the reason for his sleeplessness. Jockeys never thought along those lines if they wanted to stay in the saddle. They got down fast and became anything but jockeys, knowing full well that a nervous race rider was very close to being a dead or injured one.
Only the spectators standing on the rail near the first turn had any idea what it was really like. They were the ones who could see the crowding of horses and men as racers slammed hard against one another and riders grabbed anything to keep from going down under tons of steel-shod hoofs. But a jockey never thought about that.
Alec stood quietly in the grayness of his room and thought, This is the big day, and I’m as ready to go as he is. All I’ve lost is a few hours’ sleep. It’s happened before. It’ll happen again.
Whoever was in the kitchen below had the radio on and was getting the weather report. “Fair and mild today with a high of sixty-five.…”
May 26. A perfect spring day. A dry, fast track for the Black.
Alec quietly raised the Venetian blinds and the light poured into the room. Henry stirred, grunted, and Alec said, “It’s six.”
Henry turned over and went back to sleep.
It doesn’t matter this morning. So sleep, Henry, sleep. The Black isn’t going anywhere until this afternoon. The filly can be galloped later in the morning. Just feed and talk and muck out stalls. That’s all we have to do.
Looking out the window, Alec saw Wintertime being turned out in the small paddock between the house and barn. The blood bay colt had been a little off his feed, so Don Conover had started giving him a few hours of freedom in the small paddock every morning. He didn’t want Wintertime to go track sour on him with the rich Belmont Stakes coming up.
Alec wondered if the trouble might be that the colt missed Black Minx, who was stabled on the other side of the barn. Silly notion, of course. Maybe his thoughts about the whole affair were ridiculous. Still, weren’t horses supposed to be treated like people? Wasn’t that what Henry always said?
Alec watched Peek-a-Boo, the Shetland pony owned by Don’s six-year-old daughter, being led into the paddock to join Wintertime.
From the kitchen window below came the smells of coffee and bacon and toast. Alec was hungry but the appetizing aroma of good food didn’t bother him as it did some of the riders he knew. And he knew too that once a jockey starts fighting his appetite and the scales he’d better start looking for another job.
His eyes left the small chestnut pony for the stablemen who were already raking the ground around the barn. Everything here was neat and clean and freshly painted. Like the tack trunks, the pails, brooms and rakes were painted red and green, the colors of Jean Parshall’s racing stable. So were the big sliding doors to the barn as well as the paddock fencing. This was permanent headquarters for Miss Parshall’s stable. Unlike Alec and Henry, she had no farm of her own and her horses seldom left Belmont Park to race outside the New York area. The exceptions, of course, were the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness.
“I’m a city girl,” Alec had heard her tell Henry once, “and Belmont is far enough out in the country to keep my horses. I’ll let you fellows run the farms.”
In a way, Alec decided, she had just about everything here that one could have at a farm except for the broodmares and young stock. There were acres upon acres of lovely towering shade trees, and at all times of the year the wonderful smell of hay and horses. Many stables made Belmont their permanent home and had quarters such as these.
Alec went into the bathroom and washed. Yes, as Henry had said, “It was good to be back at Belmont.” And it was good of Don Conover to take them and their horses into his home and barn. They would not have been so comfortable stabled in transient quarters.
After dressing in jeans and a light sweater, Alec left the room without awakening Henry. He went down the back stairs and outside. Usually Alec had coffee with Don and Mrs. Conover but this morning was different. He preferred being alone as much as possible today—alone with his horse.
Wintertime and the Shetland pony came to the fence when they saw him. Alec parted the pony’s heavy forelock so he could see her bright eyes. “Peek-a-boo yourself,” he said, smiling.
Going on to the barn, he slid open the red-and-green trimmed door and went inside.
“ ’Morning, Ray,” he called. The man he greeted had a rub rag swinging from his left back pocket and he was raking the walking turf under the shed.
“ ’Morning, Alec. The boss comin’ along?”
“Pretty soon now. He was having breakfast when I left the house.” Alec went down the corridor, and some of the horses stretched their heads over the stall doors so he could pat them.
The stableman called after him, “I ‘spect you got no taste for breakfast this morning?”
“Never knew a morning that I couldn’t eat, Ray,” Alec answered without turning around. But he knew he wasn’t fooling Ray or himself. He wasn’t hungry at all.
An exercise boy turned from the training sheet posted outside the tack stall. “With the Black carrying a hundred and thirty pounds this afternoon, I guess you can eat all you want,” he said. His remark was made jokingly but there was great respect in his voice as well. He looked upon Alec Ramsay as his ideal. Someday he hoped to be as good a rider.
Alec stopped at the tack room. “Sam,” he said, smiling, “you and I could ride him together and still make that weight.”
“Plus two seven-course meals,” Ray called from down the corridor.
The exercise boy said, “That would be the day, the day I put a leg up on the Black!”
Alec went to the other side of the barn and there he found the filly with her head above the half-door. He refilled her water pail and then went into the next stall. “Hello,” he said quietly. “This is your day.”
The tall stallion came quickly to him and Alec’s eyes swept approvingly over his great body. The Black had lost what little extra weight he’d had upon his return to the track. Now he was in fine trim, the embodiment of a sleek and powerful machine. He would give a good account of himself today. There was some straw in his thick mane and tail, evidence that he’d been down on the floor during the night. That was good. It rested him to have the weight taken off his feet. He’d need all the energy he had today. His eyes were clear and quiet, reflecting the calmness of his whole being. Not until he was on his way to the paddock would the first marks of perspiration appear on his body.
As Alec picked the straw from the Black’s mane he couldn’t help thinking how everything about his horse spelled greatness—true greatness and not something labeled “great” one season and forgotten the next. That was why Sam had spoken with awe at just the thought of riding him. And that was why everybody called the Black by his right name and not some nickname. It was unusual around a stable for a horse to be called by the name that appeared on his registration papers and in racing programs. For example, Eclipse was “Pops”; Wintertime was “Red”; Black Minx was “Baby”; Golden Vanity was “Sunny”; and Silver Jet was “Bud.”
“Only Casey is ‘Casey,’ “ Alec said aloud. “I wonder if that means anything. But that’s enough. I’d better get to work.”
A short time later Alec left the barn, going out by a
nother door to avoid meeting anybody. Beyond the high hedge that guarded the track he could hear the muffled thunder of a horse coming down the stretch. Closing his ears to it he walked still faster, scarcely seeing the men and horses who passed him on their way to the big track. He nodded only when friends called to him.
On another morning it would have been different. But this was race day. Even more important, it was the Black’s day. Alec felt the nervous perspiration trickle down the sides of his chest and he chided himself. “At least the Black waits until he’s on the way to the paddock before sweating. Take it easy. The race is still hours away.”
He went on and began whistling in the cool morning air. He wasn’t fooling anyone.
“That’s Alec Ramsay,” he heard one stableboy say to another while they were walking hot horses clothed in bright coolers. “He and the Black are going today. The third race, I think it is.”
He passed between the long rows of barns and thought how big and neat and somehow formidable Belmont was. High wrought-iron fences and well-guarded gates separated it from the rest of the world.
Perhaps, he decided, it was all this elegance and bigness that caused Belmont Park to put itself above such matters as exploiting the Black’s appearance in the day’s feature handicap. Other than a single publicity release to the press announcing the names of the ten horses going to the post in the Speed Handicap, nothing had been done. Belmont Park’s treatment of the Black’s return to the races was certainly devoid of any sensationalism.
“That’s the way it should be,” Alec recalled telling Henry.
“Maybe so,” Henry had answered. “But I would have liked to hear the clash of cymbals, and you can bet we’d have heard ’em at any other track where he might have raced, especially on the West Coast. It would have been a production there, a real Hollywoodtype job! Still,” he added resignedly, “I guess this is what makes Belmont what it is. Maybe that’s why it’s home.”
Alec pushed through the crowd in the busy track kitchen. He ordered bacon and eggs, aware that many eyes were on him and wishing now that he hadn’t come at all.
“I’m like a kid riding his first race,” he thought. “And for the life of me I can’t stop myself. Just thinking about going to the post with the Black again has me all on edge, worse than ever before.”
A few minutes later he left the kitchen without finishing his breakfast.
That afternoon he arrived late in the jockeys’ room. Those who were riding the first race had already dressed and gone. He went to his locker and sat down on the bench.
“Well, ’tis a worried face you’re wearin’, Alec,” a familiar voice said.
“Hello, Mike,” Alec answered, looking up. The man’s twinkling black eyes made him smile too. “I’m not really worried. That’s just my usual face.”
“Begone with ye.” Michael Costello chuckled. “ ’Tis the other I know better.”
The jockeys who had been listening laughed and one of them, mimicking an Irish brogue, shouted with mock excitement in his voice, “Alec’s a nervous mon today, Mike. He’s a-ridin’ the Black!”
“Hold your tongue!” The wiry old man’s command had an immediate effect, for the others became quiet and returned to their lockers. Then he winked at Alec and said, “ ’Tis ridin’ ye like an apprentice they are today.”
“That’s what I feel like, Mike,” Alec confessed.
“Faith, you’ll not be around us long on the likes of him!”
Alec smiled. “I didn’t know you were riding the third race,” he said.
“ ’Tis the truth ye speak. A plodder named Earl of Sykes, who has no more right to be in the race than he has to such a title. Now if ’twere Casey I was a-ridin’ you’d never get free from us.”
“When’s Casey going?” Alec asked.
“Monday’s Suburban.”
The man began undressing at his locker and Alec noticed that, unlike Henry, Michael Costello had no trouble keeping his weight down. He was as thin as an iron rail and just as hard.
“What weight are you making today, Mike?” Alec asked.
“One hundred and ten,” the man answered. “ ’Tis twenty pounds ye’re givin’ us. That by me personal rule-of-thumb method makes you ridin’ the better horse by five lengths.”
Alec smiled. “A pound a neck, you mean?”
The man turned his round, wrinkled face to Alec. “ ’Tis a long neck, me boy, as I figger it. A quarter of a length for each pound or four pounds for the length of his whole body. Ye won’t find a better yardstick than that up to a mile and an eighth.”
“Then the twenty extra pounds we’re carrying should bring us down to the wire together,” Alec said lightly, “so don’t be sad.”
“ ’Tis what the track handicapper thinks, not I,” Michael Costello corrected, turning back to his locker. “ ’Tis the truth I speak when I say the Black is more than five lengths better than the best of us. But who am I to put meself above the good, hard-workin’ mon in the office who’s doin’ his best to equalize the field?”
Some of the jockeys left the room for the second race and Alec said no more. He wouldn’t have much longer to wait. By now Henry and Napoleon must be taking the Black to the paddock.
Alec finished dressing and once more turned to Michael Costello. He watched the man pull on his skin-tight white nylon pants. Still hanging in the locker were the rich blue-and-gold silks of the famous Milkyway Stable, owner of Casey as well as Earl of Sykes. Alec knew that such a large and popular stable wouldn’t be represented in the Speed Handicap unless it felt it had a good chance of winning, regardless of Mike’s criticism of his plodding mount.
For a moment Alec watched the little man who had made the waiting period in the jockey room a lot easier than it might have been. He was anxious, too, to ride against Michael Costello after all he’d been told about him.
“There never was a headier rider than Mike,” Henry had said, “but few people except trainers were ever actually aware of it. Mike never did anything during a race that labeled him as a spectacular rider. Instead, he made his moves so quietly and without fanfare that he’d suddenly appear in front and people in the stands would wonder how they’d missed seein’ him get up there! So would the other jocks.
“And another thing,” Henry went on. “Mike never did anything mean. He was clean and fair to those ridin’ against him, and he followed orders better than any rider I’ve ever known. He never tried to prove that he was smarter than the trainer who’d given him a fit horse to ride. All in all Mike was a well-liked guy by everybody—owners, trainers and jockeys. I’m sure he still is. But if he ever races against you, be on your toes or you’ll find yourself out on a limb and wonderin’ how you ever got there! Just remember he’s got a bag of tricks that’s taken a lifetime to learn. He’s in good physical shape, too, so in many ways he’s more dangerous now than ever before. I wish I could be ridin’ against him. It’s no easy job.”
Alec turned back to his locker. “I’ll be on my toes,” he said aloud, without thinking.
“What’s that ye say?” the wiry man asked.
“Nothing,” Alec answered, standing up to retuck his black silks into the top of his pants. Then he took his goggles and fitted them over his white cap before putting it on his head. “Just talking to myself,” he explained.
Michael Costello shrugged his narrow shoulders. But his twinkling black eyes belied his apparent disinterest in either Alec Ramsay or the race to come.
Alec closed his locker and followed most of the other jockeys in the third race out of the room. He knew Michael Costello wouldn’t be far behind him.
One pound was one neck.
SPEED!
11
Thirty minutes before post time Alec walked into the scale room to join the line of jockeys who were weighing out for the third race. There were eight riders ahead of him, which meant that only Michael Costello was missing. Soon he, too, came into the room and stood behind Alec.
The line of ride
rs moved faster toward the official scale. A valet named Victor Hasluck was waiting for Alec. He and the other jockey valets were supplied by the track, for a fee of two dollars each, to assist the riders with their tack. Victor held Henry’s battle-scarred saddle in his arms.
Alec stepped forward, taking his tack from Victor. Beneath the old saddle was the special pad whose empty pockets would now be filled with heavy strips of lead.
“Ramsay,” the valet told the Clerk of the Scales. “Number three.”
Alec stepped onto the scale. From his original weight of 110 pounds the arrow ascended as the lead was added to the saddle pad. Finally the arrow came to a stop.
“Thirty,” the clerk said. “Ramsay. Number three. One hundred and thirty. Check.”
Alec stepped off the scale, handing his tack back to Victor. As he went to the number rack to pick up his 3 he heard the only other valet left in the room say, “Costello. Number four.”
Alec put his number high on his arm and then looked around at the scale. He noted the martingale that Mike was holding. It too must be weighed as a part of Earl of Sykes’s “clothing.”
Alec went on to the door while the clerk said, “Ten. Costello. Number four. One hundred and ten.”
Twenty pounds of “dead” weight is the difference between us, Alec thought. But it will take more than that to beat the Black!
Michael Costello caught up to Alec just outside the room.
“Is it ridin’ in Henry’s old saddle ye are?” he asked, his black eyes looking hard at the boy.
Alec nodded but didn’t stop, for he was anxious to reach the paddock. In his haste he left the man behind.
“I am a-promisin’,” Mike called after him, “that with such a saddle yer good fortune will come with mine.”
A strange friend, Alec decided. But he must remember what Henry had said. “Watch him. Be on your toes every second.”