Black Gold Read online

  Each morning before he put Black Gold’s halter on, he would run his hands over the young horse’s body—not only his neck, barrel, and rump, but legs and tail, too. Then he would place the soft web halter over his nose and head, oftentimes attaching the lead rope to it. Whether or not he led his charge to some choice grazing spot for breakfast, he nearly always laid the rope over the colt’s back for a while. “I want fer ye to get the feel of ropes and straps and hands so they’ll never make ye jumpy. First things first, I allus say.”

  Each morning, too, he took Black Gold out on the lunge rein, exercising him in an ever-widening circle. Watching the colt trot and gallop, Hanley Webb wanted to cry and laugh both. The legs, though delicately made, were pinions of great strength and reach. But oh, the head! Must he always go upheaded?

  Unconsciously the old man looked to the sky, asking the question. “Al, can he do it? Did y’ever know of a colt to run with his head up, and win over a distance?” Always he thought of Al Hoots as having gone to heaven, living somewhere up there in the clouds. So always he addressed his worries to the sky. Occasionally a cloud would shift, seeming to answer, but this time no answer came.

  “I’ll make it up to our little horse,” he resolved. “I’ll see to it he’s trained so good that handicap of his won’t amount to nothing.”

  He sent to Skiatook for his old Indian friend, Chief Johnson, still wiry as a cricket, still working with horses. When the Chief arrived, Webb said, “You can sleep right here in the stall with me—you rolled up in your Injun blanket on the floor, and me on my cot. It’ll be kinda cozy that way, and cheap, too.”

  Next morning, when the Chief had admired Black Gold enough to suit even Hanley Webb, he explained his plan of training. “Here’s what you do, Chief. Work him long hours, but not fast. We got to leg him up so’s he can be a stayer, not just a sprinter. And whatever you do, don’t coddle him.”

  The Chief obeyed to the letter. Rain or shine, he worked Black Gold. And Black Gold responded, developing rapidly into a glossy, hard-muscled, eager yearling.

  “What I like about colt,” Chief Johnson confided to Hanley Webb one night as the two were bedding down, “is no matter if he feel good or bad, he don’t balk. If weather good or bad, he still run good.”

  For answer there was a satisfied chuckle.

  • • •

  Now once more the days were all alike, days of steady routine, of growth and development. The two old men and the horse were happy, stabled side by side. They even ate at the same time, in their own stalls, one enjoying his warm bran mash, the other two their ham hocks and cabbage cooked in the black pot over their charcoal fire.

  “We all of us got to eat good if we’re going to make you a champion,” the old man explained to Black Gold as he looked through the gap in the partition. “Yep, we got to eat real good!”

  So highly did Hanley Webb prize his charge that he wrote to Rosa, asking if she could spare the old Skiatook watchdog, Buster. Then when he and the Chief needed to go to town for groceries or a haircut, Buster could stand guard.

  From the moment Buster arrived, the two animals became fast friends, playing tag together, lipping and licking each other, and sleeping back-to-back in the quiet intervals between workouts.

  Buster on guard duty, however, was a very different character. If any stranger so much as raised a hand to stroke Black Gold, the small red dog became a tiger.

  And so Black Gold worked and ate and played and slept, and grew.

  16. Jaydee’s Responsibility

  FOR NEARLY two years Black Gold and the boy, Jaydee, had lived unaware of each other’s existence. When at last they did meet, Jaydee was jogging along on an early morning workout. He felt good. It was the kind of day when he wanted to stand up in his stirrups and do pushups to the clouds.

  It was January in the year 1923. As with Thoroughbreds everywhere, Black Gold had just passed the common birthday of January first. In celebration, Old Man Webb had shipped him to the Fair Grounds at New Orleans. “Sure! Sure! I know he’s barely a two-year-old,” he told Colonel Bradley before he left, “but I had to go to work when I was only a little knee-pants boy, and ain’t no reason why early work won’t do Black Gold a heap o’ good, too. Besides, the Chief and I figger he can’t begin too early to get ready for the Kentucky Derby.”

  On this bright and shining morning shortly after Black Gold’s arrival at the Fair Grounds, Jaydee was schooling a filly named Meddling Mattie, teaching her how to break from the barrier. At the same time the old Indian was schooling Black Gold.

  Together the two-year-old colt and the three-year-old filly broke away, and together they went a short breeze. Jaydee, on Mattie, won. But curiously he found himself making excuses for Black Gold. “Such a little tyke,” he said to himself. “So small for a stallion, and yet he’s got the makings; he’s the difference between a firecracker and a rocket. If we’d gone another eighth, Mattie might’ve been left behind.”

  He thought back to the time he had visited Black Toney, and now he saw the remarkable resemblance: the compact build, the fine, strong bone, the grand way of moving.

  All the rest of that day Jaydee was unnaturally silent. The jockeys taunted him. “Ho-ho! Mooney is mooning over something . . . and likely it’s a horse.”

  “Cat got your tongue?” asked Doc Holmes, who owned Meddling Mattie.

  The truth was that Jaydee could not put the small black stallion out of his thoughts. After that first morning when Black Gold and Jaydee met, their paths crossed often. By the end of the month they were in the same race. The boy was on a filly named Edna V., and although she finished second and Black Gold third, it struck him that he remembered as much about Black Gold’s race as about Edna V.’s. He remembered that the colt started well but was taken far to the outside and then too late brought back in. But despite this he made a game finish, only a head behind Edna V.

  Jaydee’s hands itched to hold the reins on Black Gold, to sharpen him up. The speed was in him. Some day soon, if Hanley Webb did not come to him, he would have to go to the old man and beg to ride the colt. “It’s too hard,” he said to himself, “for me to go on like this—riding two horses in a race, wanting both of them to win.” Here he was, Jaydee Mooney, a free-lance rider who could choose from among a whole lot of horses; and now all at once his thoughts narrowed down to just one.

  • • •

  In April, Black Gold was shipped to Lexington, and Jaydee followed the next day. On April 28, in a drenching rain and over a waterlogged course, they rode again in the same race, and again Black Gold’s performance was full of heartbreak. He should have won! It was just that he wasn’t ready at the start and so he had to race wide all the way. But he closed an immense gap, and if only the race had been a mile instead of three-quarters he would have won going away!

  Reporters, too, saw the potential in Black Gold. They wrote punchy sentences:

  . . . Edna V. scored a lucky victory. Black Gold finished second but seemed much the best.

  . . . Black Gold came with a good rush near the end. If the distance had been the mile instead of the three-fourths, the scoreboard might have read differently.

  . . . Black Gold . . . came fast in the last sixteenth, to finish second. Much the best horse.

  . . . he just missed getting up front. Again . . . had to take second place.

  Finally the time came when Jaydee could stand it no longer. It was at Churchill Downs the day of the Bashford Manor Stake, the most important race for two-year-olds. In the jockeys’ quarters Jaydee watched in envy and misery as Black Gold’s rider put on the colors—the rose blouse with the black bars on the sleeves and the white sash—watched him go out of the building until he was lost in the crowd. Then, feeling like a spy, Jaydee pulled down the ceiling ladder and climbed through the narrow trapdoor to the roof to see the race.

  As he hoisted himself up through the small square opening, he tried sitting on the edge of it, but the view wasn’t good enough. He tried sitting on the
slope of the roof itself, his feet in the rain gutter, but the shingles were hot with the sun. Finally he crouched on his heels, bracing himself against the slant. Peering down, he saw the whole panorama spread out before him.

  Already the field of nine entries was parading to the post, Black Gold easy to recognize . . . the shimmering black coat, the upheaded way of going. Jaydee ran his eye along the parade. The other two-year-olds were bigger, longer of stride. Excitement took hold of him. He climbed to the ridgepole and clung there like a cat. It was like the old days, the old days at Stumptown.

  • • •

  The field of nine is at the barrier now and the silks of the jockeys look no bigger than a string of bright beads—yellow and purple, green and brown, and the rosy red, brighter than all the others. The barrier is going up and with it the explosion of voices: “They’re off!”

  Out from the field Black Gold breaks well, clear, free! Then within forty yards two entries close in on him, upset him. He’s down on his knees! Eight horses are galloping ahead. Jaydee clutches the ridgepole. The blood is pounding at his throat.

  Black Gold is up like a rocket, trying with furious purpose to catch stride, trying to catch the others. But the gap is too great! With three quarters to go, he has caught and passed only one horse.

  Now he’s stretching out, traveling low to the ground, his legs going like forked lightning. But half way home he’s still second to last, still second to last at the turn.

  Fast and faster he travels, moving up and up, passing King’s Ransom, passing Orlox, Lester Doctor, Chilhowee, Bob Cahill. Now, in the stretch, only two horses to beat. Jaydee can’t make them out; they’re running in tandem. He can’t hear the caller for the roar of the crowd. But he can see the black bullet streaking forward, nearing the leaders, reaching them, passing them to win! To win by two lengths! To win going away!

  • • •

  Jaydee let out a shrill whistle and suddenly his stomach rose and fell. He was limp, spent. He sat down weakly on the rooftop. A lump came to his throat at the great heart that could lift a horse from his knees and carry him from last to first place, to win going away.

  A jockey climbing up the ladder to call Jaydee for his next race was hauled bodily up the last steps. Jaydee, eyes blazing, grasped him by the shoulders.

  “Listen to this, man!” the words burst from him. “Next year Black Gold will win the Kentucky Derby. It’s going to happen, I know it’s going to happen!” To himself he promised, And I’ll be riding him!

  17. Indian Counsel

  THE NIGHT was black and starless. The silence of the long row of stables was broken only now and then by the stomping of a horse or the muted voice of a stableboy crooning the blues.

  Jaydee had eaten his supper in town and had come back, half walking, half running to the stables. This would be the time to approach Old Man Webb. Now, with everything quiet. The crowd of people gone to their homes. The grooms sleepy. The horses content.

  Yes, now was the time. Now!

  A light showed in the stall next to Black Gold’s, and the figure of the old man made a grotesque shadow against the whitewashed wall. Jaydee hesitated a moment, took a deep breath. So much depended on this night. He slowed his steps, thinking. It’s like my whole world is at stake. What will happen to Black Gold if I don’t get a yes answer? Do I even want to go on being a jockey? If only I can make the old man understand how it has to be!

  From Black Gold’s stall came a low growl. It deepened, then rose shrilly into the night. “You!” it warned. “Whoever you are, stay away from here!”

  A bald head poked out of the stall. “Who’s thar?”

  “It’s me, Jaydee Mooney, the jockey. Can I see you, Mister Webb?”

  “Buster, stop yer barkin’! The boy means no harm.”

  The hand with the three fingers waved to Jaydee to come on in, and motioned him to sit down on the bunk. Then the old man picked up the small leather collar he was saddle soaping and went on working. There was no smile on his face, not even a lifted eyebrow asking, “What’s on your mind, boy?” There was more welcome in Chief Johnson’s quiet grin as he sat on the floor drowsing and smoking his long-stemmed pipe.

  The small sounds of night loomed big. Frogs making glug-glug noises. A mockingbird trying out a medley of songs. As his eyes became accustomed to the light, Jaydee could see between the planks into Black Gold’s stall. The colt was lying asleep, his head nodding in the straw. His pose seemed more like that of a kitten than a race horse. And curled up beside him was the whiskery red dog, his eyes blinking at the unfamiliar caller.

  Jaydee’s fingers fumbled at the collar of his shirt. It was hard to breathe. Quite suddenly he remembered the time he had been caught under a raft and nearly drowned. This was like that. He cast about in his mind for a topic of conversation to break the silence. “That leather collar you’re soaping,” his voice was tight and strained, “I reckon it belongs to Buster.”

  “To Buster!” Webb’s voice was even less friendly than before. “No, begorry. ’Tis my very own, for special occasions when I want to look duded up. Case we win the Derby, I got to look respectable. So I soaps it now and then to keep the leather soft. Why wouldn’t I?” he barked.

  Silence again.

  “I wish I was in good standing with you, Mister Webb,” Jaydee tried once more.

  “Humph, ’tain’t no matter. We don’t mean nothing to each other.”

  “But from now on, we got to!”

  “Oh?” The old man strung out the little word and ended it with a wry laugh.

  “Mister Webb, I . . . Mister Webb, I got to ride Black Gold from now on. I’ve been watching him, and watching him. I know why he has such a hard time winning.”

  The old man slapped the collar down on the table and the rub rag beside it. The blood rose in his face. “I wouldn’t let you ride Black Gold if you was the onliest jockey in the hull dang-blasted world!”

  At the quick anger in the man’s voice, Buster leaped through the gap in the partition and came snuffing up to Jaydee. Then he turned to the old man, his eyes asking, “This boy giving you any trouble?”

  “Down, Buster. I’ll handle this.” He pointed a bony finger at Jaydee. “Oncet I thought you was a very fine jockey, but when I saw you of-a-purpose lose on Tulsie, you lost your chance with me.”

  “But I didn’t lose a-purpose!”

  “Oncet you won on him.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the next time you didn’t even aim to win. You didn’t even try.”

  “Us Mooneys,” Jaydee jumped to his feet and clipped out the words, “us Mooneys always try. We do our best.” The old man grunted, and was silent.

  “I rode Tulsie the same way in both races, but he didn’t respond the same way. And you want to know why?”

  Webb made no answer. He took up the rub rag, and began working on Black Gold’s bridle reins. In his corner behind Hanley Webb, the Chief winked Jaydee on.

  “All right, sir! Even if you don’t want to know, I’ll tell you. I didn’t know myself till the race was over. Then I saw why. Tulsie was calked.”

  “Calked!” the old man snorted again.

  “Yes, sir! It was that Number Four horse that did it. Remember how nervous and jigging he was at the gate?”

  No answer. Only the night chorus of the frogs, and the dog, back in the other stall, licking Black Gold’s face.

  “Yes, sir! That horse calked Tulsie; hurt him bad. It was a real deep cut. He just couldn’t respond when I asked him. You’ve got to believe it. You’ve got to, sir, because that’s what happened!”

  Chief Johnson cupped his hands together in soundless applause. There was a stirring in the next stall as Black Gold rose to his feet and stomped.

  Old Man Webb stood up to see that the colt was all right. Satisfied, he reached into his pocket and took out a plug of tobacco. With his hoof-paring knife he cut off a corner of the plug and slipped it into his cheek.

  Impatiently watching this ritual, Jayd
ee could not help wondering if the man put one in the other cheek now, would he look more chipmunk or squirrel?

  “Well, ’tain’t no matter anyways,” Webb said as he sat down again. “I promised Jack Howard he could ride him in the Latonia Jockey Club Stake next Saturday.”

  “But after that, sir? What about after that?”

  “We’ll see. Don’t rush me, boy. The light and all our gabbin’ is keeping Black Gold awake. The Chief and me has got to bed down, too. Away with you now.”

  18. The Halter Rope

  WHEN JAYDEE left the stable, it was nearly midnight. He walked slowly down the road to the small rented room in Louisville where he was staying. The half-moon, a big orange slice, hung low in the sky. It reminded him of the candy he used to eat when he was little.

  Walking along, he felt happy that he had been able to find out what had stood between himself and Webb, and he believed he had made some small progress toward his goal. In spite of everything, he liked the homely old man with his toothless mouth that opened and closed like a pocketbook when he talked.

  Lots of folks slur him, Jaydee thought. They say he’s mulish. But I like him, gruffness and all. He’s a poor man’s man—like my father, maybe. And anyone who would live in a stable to keep watch over a colt . . . well, anyone who would do that is a man to trust.

  He thought enviously of Jack Howard, and after he went to bed he dreamed the jockey rode so well that Black Gold became known as a flying horse. “Pegasus the Second” he was called, because he actually flew over the heads of the other horses and always finished going away in a cloud.