He kept Bonfire a few lengths ahead of the other horses going around the turn and into the backstretch. He’d found out the trick hood was successful and, furthermore, that there was no need to close the eyecup when Bonfire passed horses to his right. It was only when they came up on him that he was reminded of his clash with Silver Knight.
Alec slowed Bonfire still more, letting the horses come up on his right again. Once more he closed the eyecup when they passed, and then opened it. When Bonfire saw the horses ahead of him he wanted to go after them as he had done before, but Alec kept him behind. The boy wanted to shout to Henry that the hood was working better than his most hopeful expectations. But when they passed the old trainer, all Alec did was to nod his head. And Henry nodded back.
Henry watched them go up the stretch, the colt striding so easily and Alec sitting so relaxed behind him. The trick hood was working all right, working for both of them. Henry couldn’t recall ever having felt much better than he did just then. He wasn’t even tired after his long night.
Later, back at the stables, Henry said, “I think I’ll let you go in a race with him in a few nights.”
“So soon, Henry?” Alec asked anxiously. “Do you think he’ll be ready for it?”
“He has to be, if we’re goin’ to Goshen. It’s not ‘so soon,’ Alec. We got less than two weeks now to the Hambletonian.”
Alec remembered the colts he’d seen being sent to Goshen that morning and nodded. “You’re right, Henry. He ought to get a good race in him.”
“I guess so,” the old trainer replied. And he hoped desperately that he was right.
They entered Bonfire in a race for Monday night, three days off. The blood bay colt went to the track on Saturday and Sunday, with Henry watching his every move—and Alec’s too. Everything he saw was most encouraging but he knew he was rushing them a little in having them go to the post Monday night. Yet he had no alternative. The Hambletonian would take place a week from the following Wednesday, and the colt definitely needed the race on Monday. So did Alec.
Henry was gambling that everything would go well for them. If it did there’d be no holding them down. They’d both have the confidence they needed, thanks to the trick hood. If things didn’t go well and they got in a jam, well … As he thought of the consequences, Henry covered his face with the palms of his big hands.
Then his hopes rose again when he remembered how docile Bonfire was while wearing the hood and that Alec had no trouble working the eyecup. It seemed to Henry that working it came automatically to Alec now. The boy knew to the exact second when to close and when to open it.
On Sunday morning Alec finished the long four-mile jog Henry had ordered for Bonfire. He was about to take the colt off the track when Henry said, “Don’t go back yet, Alec. I want you to turn him an’ go a fast quarter just to top him off for tomorrow night.”
As Alec took Bonfire up the track, ready and anxious to go, the colt too knew what was coming. Except for the Black, Alec had never felt more alertness and eagerness in any horse than he did during the seconds he stopped Bonfire at the head of the stretch and then turned him the right way of the track. He thought the blood bay colt was going to break from his hands. The colt demanded rather than requested more rein. Alec had to use all his skill in keeping down Bonfire’s strides until they’d reached the starting pole, and then he let him go.
Bonfire’s speed was not gradual, mounting, when Alec gave him his long awaited release. It came with a sudden burst of swiftness that caught Alec unprepared. He felt the seat beneath him move as though it were alive. He was picked up and hurled forward with it, and all the terrific pull of Bonfire ran down the lines to his arms and shoulders. He pushed his feet hard against the stirrup irons to keep from being lifted bodily from his seat.
Had he ever thought there was little difference between driving and riding a racehorse? If so, he quickly changed his mind as the white rail whipped by in a never-ending blur. Riding was being a part of your horse, being one with him, going along with him stride for stride. This was something else. This was being whipped along in the wake of a flaming meteor. He sat so low, so close to Bonfire’s powerful hind-quarters, that he had to lean to the left in order to see what was ahead. The track was clear. They were going around the sharp first turn, yet there was no slackening of Bonfire’s long strides. Alec kept him close to the rail.
Off the turn and down the backstretch they went, the colt’s long tail lashing his rider’s face. Alec leaned farther to the left to avoid the tail and to watch for the quarter-mile pole. He saw that they were rapidly approaching the pole. He called to Bonfire, urging him on to still greater speed. The black tail streamed back, whipping harder. Alec felt its sting, but didn’t mind now. Tomorrow night he’d sit on it. Tail-sitter! He called to his colt again and they flashed by the quarter-mile pole.
A few minutes later he drove Bonfire back to the stables. Henry walked alongside. “You seemed to have a little trouble slowin’ him down after the quarter pole,” the old trainer said.
“It wasn’t as easy as I’d thought it’d be,” Alec answered. “He wanted to go on.”
“Nothin’ wrong with his feelin’ that way. It was a good show. Even the guys sittin’ on the bench with me were impressed.”
“Weren’t you, Henry?”
“Yeah, but I figured he had that kind of speed.”
Alec said, “It was an experience I won’t forget very soon. It was different from riding fast, and I hadn’t figured on that, somehow. It felt, well, like …” He stopped, and then went on, “It’s hard to explain, Henry. But don’t you feel that this sport is growing on you too?”
“No, but the colt is,” Henry answered quietly.
The next day, race day, they did nothing but walk Bonfire, and then waited for the night to come.
It was late in the afternoon that the waiting became most difficult. Bonfire was going to the post in the first race of the evening at eight-thirty. And now, at not quite six o’clock, they watched the horses Bonfire would be racing against go to the track for their first mile warm-up.
To get away from seeing them, Alec went to the tack room. Waiting was hard enough without having to watch their competition at this early hour. These horses would give Bonfire the kind of race he needed. The colt should win if everything went well. The horses Alec was really worried about beating were at Goshen, awaiting the Hambletonian.
Momentarily he let his thoughts turn to Tom. The operation was over and, according to the post card received from George the day before, it had been a complete success. Tom would be in the hospital a week more, and then would be allowed to go home on crutches. Jimmy Creech, who had met George and Tom at the Pittsburgh airport, was with them.
Alec left the tack room. Thinking of Tom hadn’t helped him to forget tonight’s race. He passed Henry and went into the stall with Bonfire. This was the best place for him just now.
The blood bay colt left the corner of his stall, and went to Alec. He stood quietly beside the boy without nickering, without nuzzling.
Alec pulled the red-and-white cooler a little higher on Bonfire’s neck, but after that left him alone. It was enough just to be with him. He was certain the colt felt the same way about his being there.
“You need a mascot, somebody like Napoleon,” he told him after a while. “You don’t like to be left alone, do you?”
Bonfire turned his head toward him but made no sound. Alec went on talking softly to him.
A few minutes later the door opened and Henry came inside. He stood quietly beside Alec a little while and then said, “They just came back.”
“Who?” Alec asked without taking his eyes off Bonfire.
“The horses we’ll be racing against,” Henry answered. He shook his white head, puzzled. “The things they do here, an’ nobody tells me why.”
Alec said nothing but his friend went on anyway. “I got to talkin’ to some of the young fellows yesterday while watchin’ you and Bonfire. One of them
was Fred Ringo, who has that Hambletonian colt Lively Man up at Goshen. He flies up there just to work his colt, an’ then comes back here to train and race his other horses.”
“He’s got a big stable,” Alec pointed out.
“I know. So have a good many of the other young trainers here, an’ they all seem to be makin’ big money.” Henry paused. “But that’s not what I had in mind to tell you about.”
Alec kept his eyes on Bonfire, talking to the colt by glances and touches alone.
Henry continued, “I asked them why they thought they had to give their horses as much as three separate mile warm-ups before going to the post. You think I got an answer, Alec?”
Alec shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, Henry,” he said. He well remembered finding Bonfire standing hot and blowing in his paddock stall upon his arrival at Roosevelt Raceway. It wouldn’t be that way tonight. Henry had ordered no pre-race works for Bonfire.
“Well, I got no answer,” Henry went on. “Most of the men just looked at me like I shouldn’t even have asked. An’ this Fred Ringo said, ‘It’s the way it’s done.’ I got up an’ left ’em.” Henry paused before continuing. “What I should have told them, Alec, is that that was the way it was done when I was their age, but there’s no sane reason for doin’ it now. I should’ve told them to look at their horses instead of at me!”
Alec turned to Henry, and noticed that his face was getting red. “Don’t get excited, Henry. You’ll bother the colt.”
“I’m not excited,” the old trainer said, lowering his voice. “It just makes me sore to see what these young guys, who call themselves trainers as well as drivers, are doin’. They’re not even thinkin’ for themselves. They’re following the leader … the old leaders! It was the way we did it many years ago, when we unhitched horses from wagons and plows in the fields an’ then took them to the track for a day of racing.”
Henry bent down to check Bonfire’s leg bandages but it didn’t stop him from talking. Alec listened. He had learned long ago to listen to everything Henry had to say.
“Of course our horses needed those long, hard warm-ups just before their races,” Henry was saying. “They were rugged, strong animals doin’ the work that tractors do today, an’ knowin’ little else except an occasional day off to race at a fair. They were muscle-bound. We worked them before the race to loosen ’em up because we knew they’d race all the better for it.”
Henry shook his head sadly. “But that stuff isn’t necessary today. If the guys around here would look at their horses they’d know it. These horses have come a long way since I was a kid. They’re not bread and raised to work a field any more, but for speed. Years and years of fine, close line breeding have made them what they are today, lighter boned, lighter bodied, more temperamental, and much faster than anything we ever dreamed of when I was a kid. Most of ’em don’t need the kind of hard work they’re gettin’ before goin’ to the post. They’re leavin’ their races on the warm-up track.”
Henry went to Bonfire and pulled the colt’s forelock away from his eyes. “Some of ’em are takin’ all that work better’n others. But one thing I know for sure is that this colt can’t take it. Thanks to the Black he’s as racy as anything I’ve ever seen at our tracks. He’s got the Black’s hot blood. He’ll know when he’s about to race. His coat will get wet without any work before goin’ to the post. He’ll loosen himself up without any help from us. A light jog on the way to the post is all he needs … an’ it’s all he’ll get while I’m trainin’ him.”
Then Henry turned to Alec, grinning a little self-consciously. “That was a long spiel,” he said. “You’re a good listener, an’ plenty patient.”
Alec put a hand on Henry’s arm. “What do you think I’m here for? I want to listen to you and learn as much as I can.”
Henry chuckled. “I thought it was jus’ because you liked my company, Alec.”
“It’s that too,” Alec answered.
Henry turned back to Bonfire. “Anyway,” he said, “for him an’ for us there’s not goin’ to be any ‘follow the leader’ stuff … those old leaders like Jimmy Creech who never change their way of doin’ things.”
Suddenly they heard a high nasal voice call, “Henry! Henry Dailey! Are you in this row?”
Henry’s face went white and he stood frozen in his position beside Bonfire. Alec went to the stall door and saw a skinny little man with a prominent nose walking toward them. He stopped when he came to the stall with Bonfire’s nameplate above the door, and then he looked in.
Alec couldn’t take his eyes off this strange, scrawny-looking little man. He heard Henry say in a tight voice, “Hello, Jimmy.”
THE LEADER
8
So this was Jimmy Creech. Alec watched him walk into the stall unmindful of anything or anybody but his colt. Bonfire went to him, pushing his nose into Jimmy’s thin chest. Jimmy stroked him, and in his small eyes was the devoted, loving look of a father for his only son. It said, “This is my colt.”
Alec turned to Henry, who was strangely quiet for one who had just met an old friend. But so was Jimmy Creech. Alec turned back to him and the colt.
Finally Jimmy said, without taking his eyes off Bonfire, “I had to come and see how you were making out with him. Tom told me to come. He said it would do me good, and he was right.”
“You don’t look so well, Jimmy,” Henry said. “Are you sure you’re feelin’ okay?”
“I’m fine now,” Jimmy answered.
“Did you tell your doctor you were comin’?”
“No. He wouldn’t have let me come, if I had. He’s got me down for just one visit to the track this year. I picked the Hambletonian.” For the first time Jimmy turned to Henry. “Will he be goin’ in it, Henry?”
“I think so.”
Jimmy turned back to Bonfire. “That’s what I wanted to hear you say. That’s why I came. Just to hear that and look at him again. It’s been a long time, over two months now. No doctor should mind my having so little as this, and then going right home.”
Henry’s face lightened. “What time does your train leave, Jim?” he asked.
“Ten o’clock. A sleeper to Pittsburgh, so I’ll get plenty of rest.” Jimmy looked at Alec. “Tom and George told me about you,” he said kindly. “A lot of good things, too.” He let his sick eyes fasten themselves on Bonfire again. “Do you like him?”
“They don’t come any better,” Alec answered.
Jimmy’s scrawny shoulders came back a little in his pride, and he nodded his head in full agreement with Alec. “Tell me what you’ve done for him, Henry,” he requested.
Henry shifted uneasily. “He’s going well. We’re usin’ a blind on him, Jim.”
Alec saw the tightness come to Jimmy’s face as the little man said in a quivering voice, “I like my colts to go clean. You know that.”
“I do too,” Henry came back quietly. “But sometimes it’s necessary to use an aid. We had to here.”
Alec noted the mounting anger in Jimmy’s face and said quickly, “It’s really a wonderful idea, sir. He wears a hood and we can open and close the eyecup. Look, let me show it to you.” He left the stall without seeing the warning in Henry’s eyes.
When Jimmy took the racing hood from Alec, his face was livid. Alec saw the look in Henry’s eyes then, and realized he had done wrong in producing the hood for Jimmy’s examination.
For a moment Jimmy just held the hood in his trembling hands, looking at it, but saying nothing. His body was shaking too.
Henry came up behind him, speaking softly. He told him what they had done and why. He explained how well the special hood was working and that it would get their colt to the Hambletonian. Wasn’t that what Jimmy wanted more than anything else in the world? After the big race the hood could be removed from Bonfire. The colt was regaining his self-confidence quickly. He wouldn’t need the hood much longer. It was just a temporary aid. But it was necessary now if they were to race Bonfire. Couldn’t Jimmy
look at it that way?
Alec knew that Jimmy was doing everything he could to understand and to accept the hood as a temporary aid for Bonfire. His fight to keep from becoming overexcited was evident in his eyes and pitiful to see. Alec understood then why Jimmy’s doctor didn’t want him to visit the track.
There was silence in the stall long after Henry had finished talking. Even Bonfire was quiet. Finally Jimmy handed back the hood to Alec. “All right, Henry,” he said softly, steadily. “I see why you had to use it.”
Nothing more was said for a while. Jimmy walked slowly around Bonfire, feeling the colt’s legs and body, lifting and examining his feet. When he had finished, he said reluctantly, “I guess that’s what I came for. Maybe it would be best if I went now.”
Henry said, “I’ll drive you to Mineola. It’s only an hour’s ride from there to New York.”
“I know,” Jimmy replied. “That’s the way I came. But you needn’t bother, Henry. I’ll get a taxi.”
Henry chuckled easily. “Bother? For an old friend? What are you talkin’ about, Jimmy? It’ll give us a little more time together. Come on. Alec will take care of the colt. There’s nothin’ to keep me here.”
Jimmy took a long last look at Bonfire and then left the stall. As Alec watched him go, he felt he understood now why Tom had wanted to do so much for Jimmy Creech. There were few such men left, old-timers who had devoted all their lives to their horses and loved them beyond everything else. In addition, Jimmy was a very sick man.
Alec saw him come to a sudden stop outside the stall, and then Jimmy asked Henry in his high voice, “When you going to start him? He’ll need a race before going to Goshen.”
There it was. Alec felt a numbness sweep over him. Henry wouldn’t lie to Jimmy. It wasn’t in him to lie about anything.
“Soon,” Henry told Jimmy quietly. “Come on, now. We’d better get goin’. We’ll have more time together at the station.”
But Jimmy wasn’t to be put off. “It’s got to be this week. Didn’t you put your entry in the box yet?”