Alec said, “She belonged to Captain Philippe de Pluminel.”
“Yes, I know,” the man answered without hesitation. “One does not follow the circus in Europe without knowing of Pluminel. But is he not dead? I was told so when I bought her.”
“From whom?” Alec persisted. “A man named Odin?”
The trainer’s eyes became apprehensive again, even a little frightened. “Yes. He came to the winter quarters and asked for me, as I am in charge of all the performing horses in the circus. He had the mare with him and said that Pluminel had died en route there. He had the music for her act and knew about Pluminel’s contract with Ringling. He asked me to buy her.”
The trainer paused, smiling a little grimly. “It is true that I had some reservations as to Pluminel’s death and this man, who claimed to be his great-uncle, having the right to sell her. But we were leaving on tour the next morning, and I had little to lose by taking her. It is not often that one is offered such a finished act.”
Alec turned to the gray mare and, for a moment, seemed to be lost in his own thoughts. Finally he said, “I want to buy her from you.”
“She is not for sale.”
“At twice what you paid for her?” Alec asked.
The trainer laughed instantly and loudly. “Now I know you make fun of me,” he said. “It is a joke, is it not? You do not know what I paid for her and yet you make such an offer! Why? You are not with the circus. What use would you have for her? And what if Pluminel is not dead and claims his mare? What then?”
Something strong stirred within Alec and he ignored the man’s questions. “It is no joke,” he said without anger or emotion of any kind in his voice. “Just tell me how much you want. I’ll pay whatever you ask.”
“Alec—” Henry began but was silenced by the look he saw on his friend’s face. He knew he had to stay out of it, whatever reason Alec might have for making such a ridiculous offer to another professional horseman. He turned to Borofsky, knowing well what was going on in his mind. It was an enviable position, one any horse trader would welcome. Henry kept his silence, telling himself to agree with whatever Alec decided to do. It would be worth it, if it helped, regardless of the cost.
The circus trainer shrugged his well-tailored shoulders. “As I have said, she is not for sale and there is, of course, a contract to be considered.” He paused, his eyes studying Alec again. “However, I suppose I could let her go and make all the necessary arrangements for … say a price of thirty thousand dollars. It is a great deal of money, I know, but she is very valuable as a performance horse. It would be easy for you to—”
“I’ll buy her,” Alec said abruptly. He turned to Henry. “Give me your checkbook, please.”
“But Alec—”
“Please.”
Henry handed Alec the checkbook, finding the whole thing overwhelming. He looked at the gray mare again. She was nothing they could ever use in their business. What possessed Alec? Why did he need this horse so much he’d pay the price of a top thoroughbred mare, one that could be worth something to them in the years to come? Henry shrugged his shoulders. It wasn’t for him to answer. The last few weeks had been filled with impossible events.
Alec made out the check and handed it to Borofsky. “I’ll send a van for her,” he said, his patience exhausted.
“As you wish,” the circus trainer replied, putting the check in his pocket.
Later, when Alec and Henry walked through the lobby of Madison Square Garden, the man said, “I guess you know what you’re doing. You wanted the mare badly, that was pretty evident.”
“I wanted her,” Alec repeated. “I’ll have her sent to the farm.”
“For any reason in particular?”
“For a lot of reasons,” Alec said, his voice so low it was barely audible. Seeing the mare again and listening to the music had brought back impressions and thoughts he’d been trying to forget. He needed to get outside and take a breath of fresh air, as rainy and miserable as the day might be. He felt as if he were going to burst with everything locked up so tightly inside him.
“I mean,” Henry persisted, “would you have any reason I might be able to understand?” Then he added with attempted humor, “Even an old jackass like me likes to know what’s going on.” His eyes held a look of longing for answers he sought and had not found.
Alec came to a stop and put an arm around his old friend’s shoulders. “There’s one you’ll understand,” he said. “She’s in foal to the Black, so how could I let her get away from us?”
A cold mask dropped quickly over Henry’s face. “You mean,” he said sullenly, “you let him—”
“I didn’t let him,” Alec said. “I couldn’t stop it, Henry. You refuse to believe what I told you about Captain Pluminel and that night, everything, just as if it didn’t happen at all!”
Henry’s eyes studied Alec’s face for answers, then he felt an emotion stir within him that he’d never experienced before. Fear of what he could not understand swept over him. He could say nothing. He struggled, trying to find his voice.
Finally he said hoarsely, “You made up a ridiculous story for reasons I don’t know or care to understand, Alec. I will repeat what I’ve told you before. I do not think it happened the way you think it did. You were lost and sick. Dr. Palmer said so, everybody said so. You had hallucinations.”
“And if the mare has a foal,” Alec asked, “will it be a hallucination, too?”
“No, then I’ll know you disobeyed my orders and bred the Black to her because you thought it would be a good mating. But I don’t think Pluminel gave you a hard time. And I won’t believe any crazy story about him dying the way you say he did. In fact, if you want to know something, I don’t even think Pluminel is dead. Like Borofsky, I think he’s going to turn up someday and claim his mare. Then you’ll have nothing to show for your thirty thousand dollars!”
“He won’t show up,” Alec said. “He’s dead, Henry. You can believe that, if nothing else.”
Alec had no trouble recalling the captain’s pitted, staring eyes looking into his own; the smashed nose and mouth and broken teeth; the pieces of torn bark in his clenched hands and the trail of dark blood. He had died in frenzy and terror.
They left the building for the crowded street. The sky had cleared and the late-afternoon sun could be seen above the Hudson River, too low to warm them but brightening their spirits nevertheless.
“Let’s forget what happened and look ahead,” Henry suggested. “We’ve got plenty of things to do this spring.”
“I’d like that,” Alec said, shouldering his way through the milling people on their way home from work. He was anxious to be one of the crowd. He wanted to get back to his horse and the work he loved. He wanted to do common things, entailing common thoughts.
His hand found the small figurine in his pocket and he wondered if it was time to throw it away. Coming to a trash can, he stopped and took the figurine from his pocket. There was a throbbing in his temples as he looked at it. He had no fear of it, and yet he knew that with its coming his own world had altered. No single thing would ever again be quite the same as before.
Alec recalled the captain’s words, “I must never let it fall into strange, unkind hands.” He decided that he couldn’t throw it away.
“Come on, Alec,” Henry called irritably. “What’s keeping you?”
“I’m coming,” Alec answered. He looked at the figurine again; the green eyes appeared bright and seemed to be winking back at him. He put it in his pocket.
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 Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, New York, and Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania. 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 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 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.
Turn the page
for an exciting preview of the story of
THE BLACK STALLION’S LIFE
BEFORE HE MET ALEC
available in paperback from Random House
THE OLD ONE
1
In a high, grassy pasture, well concealed in the remote mountains of eastern Arabia, two herders tended their horses.
“It is a dying breed,” the old herder said in a deep, guttural voice. “Our chieftain knows this as well as I do. His only hope rests with the black one.” He waved his gnarled hands in the direction of the small band of young horses grazing in the light of the setting sun.
The young herder, tall and thin, lowered his body to sit on the ground beside the old man. His kufiyya, a white headdress made of fine cloth, was drawn back, revealing a look of childish eagerness and anticipation on his face. He had heard this talk many times before. Still, he asked his questions and listened eagerly for the old one’s replies.
“O Great Father,” he said, “thou who knowest everything, is it not true that our leader is the richest of all sheikhs in the Rub’ al Khali? Is it not his wealth that enables him to breed and maintain horses of such power and dazzling beauty as we see before us? Look at them, Great Father. Their coats have the gleam of raw silk and although they are still young, little more than a year old, their shoulders are muscular and their chests deep. Truly they are horses of inexhaustible strength, endurance and spirit, all worthy of the great tribe of Abu Já Kub ben Ishak.”
“It is true our leader is one of great wealth, but that does not make him the wisest breeder of all,” the old man proclaimed, his small, sharp eyes never leaving the horses. Reaching for his walking stick, he tried to get his old legs beneath him. After a brief struggle, he gave a weary sigh and sank down again.
The young man drew back before the harshness of the ancient one’s words. He wanted no confrontation. His only recourse was to humor the old man. Slowly, a soft smile came to his hard, flat face.
“O Great Father, I do not mean any disrespect,” he said, waving his long, powerful arms in the cold mountain air. “I know there is no other horseman as wise as you, who have spent your long life in the same saddle as your forefathers. It is only my bewilderment at your words. We are living with the birds of the mountaintops when our feet as well as those of our horses prefer the soft, hot sands of the desert. Why are we here if not to breed and raise the fastest horses in all the Rub’ al Khali?”
The wind blew in great gusts. Despite a glaring sun, the day had been icy cold. Winter seemed unwilling to leave the highlands, where the barren peaks of gray limestone were now painted blue and yellow by the softening light. Setting his turbaned head against the wind, the young man waited for the old man’s answer. Receiving no reply and growing impatient, he persisted. “Tell me, Great Father, pray tell me, what other reason would we have for coming to this mountain stronghold of our leader?”
Finally, the old man turned his head toward the youth, his bones showing prominently beneath taut, aged skin. To the young man he appeared to be a hundred years old or more, his body frail and withered beneath the folds of his great aba, a shapeless black cloak. How could such an old man stand this cold, coming as he did from the gleaming sands of Arabia, where the burning desert scorched the soles of one’s feet?
No one in their tribe knew how many years it had been since the old man had first traveled the paths from the desert to the Kharj district of the high eastern mountains in order to serve the forebears of Abu Já Kub ben Ishak. There was no other horseman like him in all Arabia. He was the oldest and wisest—yet he kept traveling back and forth, tending each crop of young horses, searching for what? What dream led him on and on over such tortuous trails? The young man wanted to know. It had to do with horses, of that he was certain. Horses were the ancient one’s life. Their blood was his blood, his blood theirs. It was the only thing that had kept him alive.
Others might scoff at the old herder’s crazy stories and his wild talk about a stallion of the night sky, but the young man felt privileged to share his watch with the legendary one. He had learned a great deal over the winter and hoped someday to breed horses himself. For now he would help the old man back and forth from their tents in the valley up to the different pastures, a job that was becoming more and more difficult as the old herder weakened with age.
The blasts grew colder still, and the young man drew his wool-lined garment closer about him. His black, gleaming eyes remained on the old man while he waited for him to speak. The silence continued except for the sound of the wind blowing from the mountaintops. Out in the pasture the yearlings continued to feast on the first green shoots of spring grass. Soon it would be time to find fresh grazing, and they would move elsewhere.
At last the young herder decided to break the silence again. His tone was good-natured and soft as he said, “The Prophet is with you always, Great Father, but I do not understand when you say that our mounts are a dying breed. Abu Ishak would have your head, old and wise as it is, for proclaiming such a thing, if only to me. Rest your mind, Great Father, I will never repeat what you have said. But, pray, tell me about the horses we see beyond. You have seen their like many times before?”
The old man’s piercing eyes were clear and untroubled. His thin shoulders heaved beneath his cloak, as if he were gathering breath. From somewhere he found the strength to speak, if only in a loud whisper.
“Not all of them have wings,” he said, waving his feeble hands toward the band. “This is true not only for the horses of Abu Ishak but for all the wealthy lords of our land. Our mounts are no longer as swift as falcons. No longer can they gallop a whole day through. They are no longer fit for the great conquests of our land.”
“But our tribe is the fiercest of all!” the young man cried. “We have the finest horses in the Rub’ al Khali. No one can defeat us. It is as true now as in the days of your youth, Great Father. Our lives depend on the speed and stamina of our mounts, and none can match our horses.”
“It is only the black one who can save us,” the old man said. “Look closely and you will see.”
The young man had no trouble finding the colt. He was the only black yearling in the small band. He was taller and more athletically built than the others, and his long raven tail reached almost to the ground while his forelock fell to the tip of his nose. Yes, there was a difference in body and size and something else as well, something difficult to understand. It was as if the other yearlings—bay, roan and chestnut—already had welcomed him as their leader.
Finally, more to get the old man’s attention than anything else, the young herder said, “Perhaps you see more in him than I, Great Father. He is much too big-boned and large-framed for me. He is too tall and gangling, too much on the ungainly side.
To my eyes he is not a perfect horse.”
“The perfect horse cannot be found anywhere, my son, and some of the almost perfect ones can’t run far. That you will learn in time. But look again and tell me what else you see.”
The young man laughed. “I see a black coat that despite the icy winds is rough and sun-bleached, Great Father.”
“More than that, my son, if you are to take my place when I am gone.”
“His head is small, though not too small for the rest of him,” the young man said. “I will admit, Great Father, that his eyes are very large and clear, with a strong look of boldness. He is an intelligent colt, Great Father, that I can see.”
“And his neck?” the old man persisted. “Is it not the right length, the right proportion? Does it not suit the angle of his shoulder blade, sloping from point of shoulder to middle of withers? Does that not account for his long, swinging gait when he walks? See how he is overstriding, hind feet extending beyond the front feet?”
“Yes, Great Father, I see all that. But my eyes are not accustomed to such largeness. The desert sands will swallow the tremendous bulk of his body.”
“You are not looking at him with a horseman’s eyes,” the old man said resignedly. “You do not see that which I see.”
“You have the eyes of the Prophet, Great Father, that I know,” the young man replied. “But they are growing weary if you see such greatness in the black colt. He is different, I know, but that does not mean greatness. He walks alone. See how he has moved off by himself. He is not one of them.”
Smooth muscles moved easily beneath sleek skin as the black colt walked away from the others. When he stopped, it was to raise his head defiantly. His eyes, set low in his wide, prominent forehead, missed nothing.
“He is too nervous to live in our tents as a family friend,” the young man continued. “There is nothing to fear here, and yet he will not quietly graze like the others. It is not a good omen for our tribe.”