Black Gold Read online

  Contents

  1. A Haunt in the Wind

  2. The Match Race

  3. Eighty Acres’ Worth

  4. Jaydee

  5. The Parallel Dream

  6. Bring on the Mash!

  7. The Claiming Race

  8. The Home Place

  9. Tribal Rights

  10. To the Court of Black Toney

  11. Boarded Out

  12. A Foal Is Born

  13. The Letter “B”

  14. First Lessons

  15. Hanley Webb Takes Over

  16. Jaydee’s Responsibility

  17. Indian Counsel

  18. The Halter Rope

  19. Aiming

  20. The Scare

  21. The Wrong Horse

  22. Golden Jubilee

  23. The Magic Shoe

  24. Critical Decision

  25. Without a Backward Glance

  26. Green Pastures

  27. A Penny Postcard

  28. The Winner Loses

  29. In Good Faith

  To Sam and Brad Holmes

  This is the story of a courageous little horse . . .

  Of a race . . . two races . . .

  Of a man and a boy who were both reaching

  for the same goal. Each was wholly unaware that

  the other existed. Yet, miles apart and years apart,

  they beheld the same dream.

  And this is the way of it—

  1. A Haunt in the Wind

  THE MORNING is fair and filled with the smells of spring. It is the year 1909, and the young Indian community of Chickasha, in the new state of Oklahoma, is stirring with excitement. The day of the long-postponed race has come at last—the match race between the big-striding Missouri mare, Belle Thompson, and an untried filly named U-see-it.

  The time of year is May, and already the bluestem grass is nearly stirrup high. On either side of the Chisholm Trail it ripples across the broad grazing grounds on its way to meet the sky.

  On this clear spring morning the wind is livelier than usual, swirling the grasses into sea-green whirlpools, now pale, now dark. Quail scuttle and bob along, making whispers in the grass. And wild turkeys fly above the fields, squawking their praise to the morning.

  Today the old Chisholm Trail has suddenly come to life. The dust that had settled when the new railroad was built is boiling and billowing again. But it is a different kind of dust, not a steady-flowing cloud as in the days when steers slow-footed their way from Texas to the corn belt in Kansas. Today there are joyous spurts of dust caused by quick-stepping horses pulling buggies, spring wagons, runabouts, surreys, and even shiny hearses with dark-eyed Indian children peeking out the windows.

  People from everywhere—from Comanche, from Empire City, and as far away as Red River Station—are on their way to a full day of merrymaking. They are hard-working farmers and grocers, butchers and printers and carpenters who need a holiday. Their women have vied with each other in preparing hampers of fried chicken and apple and berry pies. The children have been up since long before dawn, grooming the horses, doing their chores in double-quick time, singing as they worked:

  “Hook up, hook up the one-hoss shay,

  And away we’ll go to Chickashā!”

  By midmorning the trail is alive with horses trotting, wheels rumbling, people shouting—all moving toward the neat half-mile track in Chickasha. Right here the excitement begins. A long freight train comes chuffing by, smokestack belching, bell ringing. A few daring drivers try to race the train, their horses wild with fright, snorting, rearing up on their hind legs.

  The engineer, leaning out his window, toots his whistle and laughs to see the horses bolt like scalded cats.

  As the trail nears the town, excitement mounts. Wagonloads of Indians come streaming in to join the procession. At the helm of each wagon sits an Indian brave, tall and solemn; behind him his squaw and children, bright-eyed. They have just left the government warehouse, where new farm implements were being parceled out—rakes and plows, discs and harrows. But today is the match race! Spring planting can wait!

  Now the trail takes a quirly turn and the whole parade is fanning out around the race course. Horses are blown, men and children calling to each other, women sighing in relief that the trip is safely made.

  In the more orderly activity near the track, two men are talking earnestly before an open shed. Within it stands the lone filly, U-see-it, still as a little wood carving. She is studying the two men with her big wide-set eyes, and they in turn are studying her.

  The shorter of the men is saying, “Far as I can see, Al, the postponement hasn’t done a thing for Halcomb’s U-see-it. He must’ve thought a little more time was all his filly needed, but,” he paused, “it don’t appear so to me! My Belle Thompson is fit as a fiddle, and knows how to run. Sort of embarrasses me to match her against this poor little greenhorn.” It is Ben Jones speaking, young Ben Jones who has a knack of getting speed out of his horses.

  The other man is Al Hoots—tall, dark-eyed, dark-haired Irish Al Hoots, who looks more Indian than the Osage tribesmen with whom he lives. On the palm of his hand he is offering U-see-it a pink peppermint. He starts to pick off a few shreds of tobacco clinging to the candy, then laughs at his foolishness, remembering that horses like both. “Here, little one. My pocket has dirtied it some, but it’s still tasty.”

  As U-see-it crunches the peppermint, Al Hoots sizes her up, thinking. So wispy she is, and little. Nothing about her to make one take notice—her coat mud-brown, like Oklahoma ditch water in spring, her tail and mane sparse. Nothing to set her apart. Nothing except maybe she’s just coming into her power. Else why that knowing, eager look?

  “Ben,” he says, “she’s plain-looking and drab as a November hillside, but her eyes seem to kind of follow me around, like she’s begging me for something, and I don’t mean just a peppermint!”

  Clusters of people are gathering about the shed, exchanging family news, talking crops, talking horse. They make room for a handy-boy who steps forward, eases a saddle onto the filly’s back, and a bit into her mouth.

  Ben Jones starts off to saddle his mare, Belle Thompson, but something makes him wait. He understands men as well as horses, and he likes big, soft-spoken Al Hoots. He senses the man’s impulse to run his hands over the filly, to stroke her neck, her barrel, her rump. “Hey, Al,” he laughs, “you’re not thinkin’ of buying Halcomb’s little critter, are you?”

  There is no answer.

  “I been wrong before,” Ben goes on, “but if there’s a promise here, ’tain’t just around the corner.”

  Al Hoots shakes his head. “Maybe not now. But I’ve been watching her. Under that mousey coat of hers she looks Thoroughbred. And,” he smiles, “to me, she’s big for her size!”

  A second time Ben Jones turns away, then thinks better of it. He can spare a moment; Belle Thompson saddles and bridles easily.

  “Al,” he says, “you already own a bunch of poor platers. And I’ve seen this one in her workouts. She’s a skittery thing. Jumps in the air at the start and gets left at the barrier. Then she wakes up and sprints like a jackrabbit. But then it’s too late!”

  The dark eyes are laughing now. “Sure, sure. From a two-year-old what else can you expect? She sprints, yes. But my wife Rosa, in her Osage talk, would say, ‘She’s . . .’” he hesitates a long time before he adds, “‘She’s a haunt in the wind.’”

  2. The Match Race

  MILLARD HALCOMB, U-see-it’s owner, came up to the shed as Ben Jones was leaving. “Ben,” he called out, “this little filly’s going to give you a run for your money. Oh, howdy, Al,” he said in the same breath.

  Halcomb was a prosperous, large-scale rancher. Big of person, too—shoulders broad, arms bul
ging with muscle, head shaggy as a lion. He went over to the filly, tested, then tightened her girth strap another notch. She looked even smaller under her saddle.

  Strange, Al Hoots thought, that so big a man should own so small a horse.

  “Hello, Halcomb,” he said. “This is scarce the time to bother you with talk, but I’m just curious how you ever hit on the name U-see-it.”

  “I didn’t,” Halcomb replied as he checked the bit to see if it set right. “I bought ’er already named. John Riddle, who bred her dam, told me she was so tiny as a foal she couldn’t even poke her nose over the half-door of her stall. You could barely see her. And so he dubbed her U-see-it.”

  Al Hoots chuckled. There was no more time for talk. Halcomb was giving his rider a leg up, and everyone was moving toward the track.

  • • •

  It is ten minutes to two. The race is set for two o’clock! For U-see-it this is not only a match race, but a first race. Firsts in anything are filled with excitement. People sounding important, making predictions, making their voices boom and buzz. Color moving—in the red and yellow blankets of the Indians, in the bright, full skirts of the womenfolk, in the American flag waving.

  Now the hometown brass band bursts into “Oh, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie,” and the flutter of talk goes back and forth, loud and louder as the tension builds:

  “U-see-it ’minds me of a Siberian goat.”

  “Better not let Halcomb hear that or you’ll get his goat! Ha, ha!”

  “Hey, don’t you be forgetting she’s Thoroughbred! And she’s enough horse to attract a pretty big crowd here.”

  “Yeh. She’ll make things plenty interesting for the big mare.”

  “Pooh! Belle can win in a walkover.”

  Buzz . . . Buzz . . . Buzz . . .

  “Who are the jockeys?”

  “Why, I hear Ben Jones sent clean to Fort Worth for Peewee Pryor. He don’t weigh no more’n a handful of thistledown.”

  “And what about U-see-it?”

  “Oh, Skinny Walker, from up on Mole Hill, is riding her.”

  With a stick in his hand the starter draws a line across the track. Now the people pack solidly around the course, impatience mounting. Children in sailor hats elbow grown-ups for a better view. Boys dive between legs, sitting froglike on the ground. Mothers scolding: “You, Seth! You, Timothy! Stop runching under the fence. You’re tearing yer britches!”

  Buzz . . . Buzz . . . Buzz . . .

  Only three men at the rail are silent. Blue-eyed Ben Jones, fingering his binoculars. Big Millard Halcomb, nervously spilling cigar ashes down his vest. And dark-eyed Al Hoots, waiting as if it were a painful thing about to happen. Why does it matter to me? he thinks. U-see-it’s not mine. Why do I care? Is it because this is her first race? Or is it the promise I see?

  He sighs, wondering why he bothers with horses at all. Every race hurts him deep inside. The horse left behind is always himself. Always the struggle is his!

  Waves of applause interrupt his thoughts. And the crowd yelling: “Bring on the horses! Bring ’em on!”

  Now the young bugler blows wild, triumphant notes, and in the echo, two horses with their fly-weight jockeys come prancing out on the track. Grooms run with them, leading them first the wrong way of the track, then turning them the right way. As they near the line, the grooms let go, the starter raises his pistol, his finger ready on the trigger.

  The crowd waits, breathless, for the explosion.

  With a bang it comes, sharp and loud.

  U-see-it does not jump in the air. She leaps forward.

  “Hey!” Ben Jones claps Al Hoots on the back. “The extra training did help her!”

  The two fillies are running neck and neck; they seem harnessed together! Five seconds. Ten. Then a startled hush falls over the crowd as down out of the sky a big black buzzard swoops low, skimming over the track. Both horses shy. Then U-see-it stretches out as if she too will fly. The buzzard is her pacemaker. Her tail waving defiance to Belle Thompson, she passes the bigger mare.

  Al Hoots laughs with his eyes. Run, run, you haunt in the wind! Run, run! Let your nostrils flutter and widen! Let your lungs pump! Let your heart pound! Let your feet fly!

  “You can do it!” he cries out loud. “Go! Go! Go! Do it!”

  At the quarter-mile the buzzard is lost in sky, but U-see-it is still leading. The crowd is wild—Indians standing up in their wagons, brandishing their shiny tools, men and women yelling.

  “They’re yelling too soon,” Ben shouts as Belle Thompson begins moving up.

  Belle Thompson gaining, gaining, gaining, until Al Hoots cannot see the little filly at all, so closely are they lapped. Suddenly a groan escapes him as he catches sight of her tail wisping out behind. Then he sees her brown flanks, then her legs blurring. Now she becomes only Belle Thompson’s shadow—lengthening, lengthening, as if the day were waning along with her strength. Now she is two lengths behind and the race is over! Belle Thompson wins.

  3. Eighty Acres’ Worth

  AL HOOTS closed his eyes a moment in the familiar disappointment. He tried to close his ears, too. The prattle of the people jostling around him was hindsight talk.

  “U-see-it didn’t have a chance against big Belle.”

  “No, not a chance.”

  “Did you see how the little one held up until the quarter? Maybe she’ll be no more’n a quarter horse all her life!”

  “Don’t know why you say that. She held up way past the quarter.”

  “Yes, but she’s just short-legged enough and short-backed, too, so to me she spells quarter horse.”

  “Yuh,” an old man agreed. “Good for only the quarter.”

  In all the babble only one person had echoed his own thought. Only one had said, “Why, she’s just an untried two-year-old; no telling what she’ll do when she gets her growth.”

  Sighing, Al Hoots walked away from the crowd. He set out for an open field to do his thinking. The tall grass wiped the yellow dust from his shoes, and quite suddenly he felt the tug of his own fields and a homesickness to talk things over with Rosa. Whether U-see-it had won or lost, she had somehow become important to him, very important. Not for his own sake alone, but for Rosa’s, too. Just once in their lives he’d like to own a horse that was Thoroughbred in every way. As he scuffed along, a young rabbit played hop, skip, and jump ahead of him; then with one bound was swallowed by grass.

  After a long while Al Hoots returned to the track, his stride purposeful. He found Millard Halcomb sitting on a trunk in front of the log barn. Without any hemming or hawing, Al Hoots spoke. “I’d like to make a trade, Millard.”

  Halcomb at the time was paying his jockey a five-dollar bill for the race. His bushy eyebrows lifted.

  “A trade?” he asked.

  Al Hoots gave a slow nod.

  “So long, Skinny.” Halcomb waved the boy out of earshot, and he moved off dejectedly, as if he hated being reduced to a child after almost winning a race.

  “Now, Hoots. A trade for what?”

  “For U-see-it.”

  Halcomb’s eyes studied Al Hoots while his thoughts spun like a pinwheel. This man had a weakness. He always seemed to put his faith in a loser. He had never owned a really good horse. Couldn’t seem to pick a winner. If he liked U-see-it, she might not be so good after all, and was today’s race perhaps a forecast? Hedging for time, he pulled out his watch, looked at it, held it up to his ear; then squinting against the sun, he checked man’s time against sun time. “What did you have in mind, Hoots?” he asked. “What kind of trade?”

  “A piece of land. Land from the Home Place at Skiatook.”

  “Have you talked to Rosa?”

  “No, but Rosa and me—we have a little agreement between us. Horses and land is the best Indian money. She would like the filly, I know. U-see-it is built fine, if little. More like an Indian pony should be.”

  “How many acres, Hoots?”

  “Forty I think would be fair.”


  Halcomb smiled, then laughed aloud. “You’re just making a joke.” He waved his broad-fingered hand. It was the same kind of wave he had given Skinny Walker. It said, “Be off with you, Al.” He tucked his watch back into his vest pocket and took a dozen steps away from the barn.

  Al Hoots followed at his heels. “Fifty acres?” he asked.

  The lion head with its shock of hair swiveled right and left, saying a vehement No. And the broad shoulders swung around, nearly bumping into Hoots. “Don’t forget she’s Thoroughbred!” he said almost angrily. “She’s out of Effie M by Bonnie Joe. And Bonnie Joe goes back to Bonnie Scotland—one of the great horses of all time!”

  “Sixty?”

  “You know better’n that, Hoots!” Halcomb was growing impatient. “I bought her from C. B. Campbell for good hard cash . . . ”

  “Seventy?”

  The big man seemed weary of explanations. “Why, I paid a heap more to have John Riddle break and board her, and he’s the best man in the business!”

  This time it was Al Hoots who turned to go. “I know my Rosa,” he said with finality. “She would not like me to give more than eighty, even though she would prize U-see-it. In my mind I already see Rosa when she takes the music box out onto the porch, playing it to please the big horses. She would like watching the little one come running to the gate. She would like the little brown ears better than all the others. But I would like U-see-it because . . . ” He let the sentence dangle unfinished. The man was not listening anyway.

  Halcomb’s lips were pursed. He was figuring. The land at Skiatook was considered good cattle land. Eighty acres for a green two-year-old might be good business, very good business. His tone suddenly changed, “Come along,” he said cordially, putting an arm about Al Hoots’ shoulder. “Let’s go back to the barn.”

  As they approached U-see-it’s stall, they saw her picking out choice bits of meadow grass from her manger. She stopped with a spike of timothy between her lips like some senorita with a rose in her mouth. Her eyes gazed curiously at Al Hoots and her nose snuffed up the familiar smells of him—tobacco, spicy-sweet with molasses, and peppermints that would be tickly to the tongue. His voice, too, was pleasing; it had a nice singsong. With the timothy still in her mouth, she looked up, her eyes asking: “Didn’t we meet in the saddling shed earlier today?”