Category: Books

Lucky # 11!!

Here’s the next chapter and a bit of news as this book is slated to be the next movie. It’s been in the works for awhile, it even has three scripts already written … but maybe you haven’t read the book?? Like to know what your favorite scenes are, what do you think would be the most exciting parts for a film.

THE SENTINEL
1

The gray gelding, Napoleon, was built from the ground up and butter fat. His roundness was not due to overfeeding or lack of exercise but to a most placid disposition and an ease of adapting himself to any kind of situation or way of life. He stood with one hind foot drawn in an easy, relaxed position and eyes half-closed. Only his long ears moved, and they just wobbled as if the weight of them was too much for him to bear at this particular moment. He was the picture of contentment; as peaceful as the June night which enveloped him. There was no reason for him to appear otherwise. He was perfectly happy with his life.

The grass of his paddock moved in the night breeze, giving it the soft, liquid motion of the sea. There were stars and a moon, and together they shone frostlike on the fences and roofs of the barns and main house a short distance away.

Finally the old gray roused himself to saunter about his paddock. His movements were slow and quiet. He was very particular in his choice of grass. He would stop only long enough to crop a few mouthfuls, then go on to other grasses that appealed more to his fancy and discriminating taste. But it wasn’t long before he returned to his favorite haunt beneath the billowing oak tree. He closed his eyes again.

All was quiet, and as it should be. The inky silhouette of a tall, black stallion moved in the adjacent paddock to his left. Teeth clicked sharply as the stallion cut the grass low and even.

The gray’s wobbling ears were keen, and by using them he followed the movements of the Black. He was well aware, too, of the whereabouts of the burly black horse in still another paddock, the one on his right. He had heard Satan snort a few moments ago.

The breeze became stronger, gently whipping his body with a shower of deep evening coolness. After the heat of day it felt very good. That there were no flies to bother him added to his enjoyment. For ideal comfort this was the way it should be. A fly-protected barn during the day, and at night the freedom of the paddocks. For several weeks now the horses had been allowed this privilege. It would continue as long as there was peace in the paddocks. All this the old gray knew very well; his vast experience told him so.

He knew why he occupied the paddock between the Black and Satan. To keep his head, to think for himself, to do what was expected of him … these things he had learned long ago. He did his duties willingly, whether he was on the track, helping to school young and eager yearlings in their first lessons, or here in the paddock, where he was ever watchful of the actions of mature stallions. Knowing that he was wanted, that he had a job to do, gave him a warm consciousness of virtue and well-being. He opened his eyes, took in the paddock fences, and then, as though receiving comfort and security from their great height, permitted his eyelids to drop again. This time he went fast asleep.

He awakened to the sound of a strong wind. The skies had turned black. The moon was blanketed by heavy, running clouds and the stars were mere pinpoints in the heavens, shedding no light below. The oak tree afforded the gray horse protection against the wind and he was loath to leave it. Besides, there was no reason for him to go. He need only stay here and wait out the wind. If it got worse and became a storm, he was certain that soon he would see the lights go on in the house and barn, and shortly thereafter he and the others would be taken into their stalls. He moved closer to the great trunk of the tree, and for a while just listened to the racing winds above him.

It was the wind and the blackness of the night that diverted Napoleon’s attention from the movements of the tall stallion in the next paddock. For a long while the Black had trotted lightly and warily along the fence, only his eyes disclosing the excitement that burned within him. He made no sound except for the slight, hushed beat of his hoofs over the grass. He did not shrill his challenge to the burly stallion two paddocks away from him. It was not yet time. The Black was clever and able to control the savage instinct that sought release within his great body.

The wind whipped his mane, and his tail, set high, billowed behind him. He stopped again to measure the height of the fence. In spite of his long limbs he had to stretch his head to touch the top board. He moved on to the front corner of the paddock, facing the barn. Once more he tested his strength against the center boards at this particular spot. They bent as they had before. He pushed harder this time. They cracked and split. He stopped using his strength, waiting almost cunningly until deciding on his next move. The fire in his eyes was mounting.

the rest of the story pdf – 11th book chapter

#10 is only the beginning!

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OLD MARE, YOUNG MAN

1

Alec Ramsay opened his eyes and stared into the darkness of his bedroom. He could not sleep. The darkness was familiar enough, but not the complete silence that lay over everything.

Long moments passed and he could hear the stillness. It was more than the hush, the quiet of late night. It was more than the complete absence of sound. It was a vibrant, living silence and he listened to it as one would to the soft rustle of leaves in the stir of air. He listened to it while his eyes opened again, searching the darkness—for what?

Suddenly he swung out of bed and went to the open east window. If he couldn’t sleep, the thing to do was to get up and find out what was the matter. He put his head out the window, listening to the stillness. If he wasn’t mistaken, it meant trouble. Something was going to break fast. It was the quiet before the storm, the quiet that preceded an onslaught of terrible force. Where would it come from? What would it be?

Just beyond the stallion barn were the separate paddocks and in one he saw Napoleon’s white, ghostlike figure. The old gelding was standing still, probably asleep. Somewhere in the adjacent paddock was the Black.

The boy’s keen eyes searched the darkness for some sign of movement. Finally they found the tall stallion, his head up and the pricked ears showing clearly against the backdrop of stars. The Black did not move. The night remained still, too still.

Alec’s gaze swept across the fields to where the mares and suckling foals were grazing. He made out their dark movements but heard nothing except the silence, so heavy with its dreadful portent. If the danger was not to come from the Black would the mares be the ones to set it off?

Turning from the window, Alec went to the closet and pulled on a pair of coveralls over his pajamas. The only thing to do was to go out and look things over. Some of the new broodmares didn’t get along very well together. Also, old Miz Liz was due to foal sometime soon and it just might be tonight. She’d bear watching. If Snappy, the foaling man, was on the job, Alec wouldn’t have to worry about her.

Softly Alec tiptoed to the door, carrying his boots so as not to wake up his parents. Then he remembered that he would need his house key to get back in, and retraced his steps to the closet. The key should be in his brown suit. The last time he’d used it was two weeks ago when he’d seen Henry off on the train for Pimlico racetrack. He missed having his old partner and trainer around the farm.

He found the key and something else which he had completely forgotten about—a registered letter that he’d picked up at the local post office after leaving Henry. Concerned and angered at his forgetfulness, he went to a small desk and switched on the lamp. The letter was from the insurance company. Opening it he found that as of three days ago, when final payment on the fire insurance policy had been due, all the barns and other buildings of Hopeful Farm were unprotected in case of loss or damage! Furious with himself, Alec shoved the letter into his pocket. It was inexcusable that he should have forgotten to give the premium notice to his father, allowing the policy to lapse.

He left his bedroom and went quietly down the hall, stopping only at his father’s business office. There he left the letter on the big desk, knowing that he’d have a lot of explaining to do later in the morning.

Outside the house he waited a moment until his eyes became accustomed to the darkness. Again he heard the stillness and felt its warning. This was very real. This was not his imagination playing tricks with him.

Having the lapsed insurance policy heavy on his mind, he thought back to the warning he had given Snappy about smoking in the broodmare barn. Twice during the past week he’d had to speak sharply to the foaling man about it. More apprehensive than ever, Alec now started running down the road while behind him the Black snorted, breaking the deathly quiet of the night.

Going into the dimly lit broodmare barn, Alec breathed deeply the odors he loved—the hay, ammonia and feed. He smelled no tobacco smoke. He walked down the long corridor of empty box stalls, going toward the far end of the barn where he’d find Miz Liz all by herself in the biggest stall of all awaiting the birth of her colt or filly. It wouldn’t be tonight, Alec decided, or Snappy would have had the place more brightly lit.

At the large foaling stall, Alec peeked over the half-door. Miz Liz stood beneath a very small overhead bulb, looking fat and tired, with her head drooped.

“Hello, old mare,” Alec said softly, going into the stall. There was only a slight twitching of Miz Liz’s long ears to disclose she’d heard him.

Alec squinted, deepening the white creases in skin as tanned as old saddle leather, while he examined the mare. He looked at her longer than was necessary, remembering Henry’s description of her going to the post as a three-year-old, all sleek and shiny and fired up, so long ago. Running his hand over the mare’s sagging back, Alec left the stall.

Now he thought he knew the ominous portent of the night’s stillness. Miz Liz was going to foal very soon and that spelled trouble. Where was Snappy?

Alec opened the door of the small room beside the foaling stall. There were a chair and a cot, both empty. The foaling equipment was set out with the oxygen tank ready for use if necessary. It was Snappy’s job to be here now, watching Miz Liz. It could happen any moment.

Leaving the room, Alec stood in the corridor. Suddenly he heard the faint sound of music. He looked up at the ceiling, certain that Snappy was in Henry’s vacant apartment, where he had no right to be at any time, much less tonight. With a bound Alec climbed the stairs, taking two at a jump. Reaching the apartment door, he flung it open without knocking and there was Snappy sitting in Henry’s big living-room chair, his feet on the center table and a pipe in his mouth. Mixed with the pleasant aroma of burning tobacco was the hickorywood smell of smoked bacon frying on the kitchen stove!

Startled by the opening of the door, Snappy looked up and then quickly removed his long legs from the table.

Alec said, “You’re sure making yourself at home while Henry’s away.”

The man mumbled something beneath his breath and then said, “I figured he wouldn’t mind.”

“You know he minds. It’s his home and he likes to keep it private, the same as you would. He’s told you that before.”

The man banged his pipe bowl against a white saucer, knocking out the top ashes; then he relit the tobacco.

Alec went on. “Just as we’ve warned you before about smoking in the barn.”

“This is Henry’s apartment,” the man said curtly, “not the barn.”

“It’s the same thing, and Henry doesn’t smoke.”

“You’re not tellin’ me nothin’. He’s too old to have any bad habits. He ain’t worth much any more, Henry ain’t. Anybody can see that.”

the rest of the story – pdf –10th book chapter

You gotta have heart! Read on…. tim

Comments here or on the forum.

#9 is fine!

 For Paula Turner, who first read this book as
a young girl, and whose dream came true.

 

HOPEFUL FARM
1

The following sports column written by Jim Neville appeared in newspapers throughout the United States on November 14.

Farewell, Satan

This is an obituary. There are two reasons why you read it here rather than in the special section which this newspaper devotes to the deceased. Number one, my subject is a horse. Number two, he isn’t dead yet.

But for me and the millions of others whose sole contact with our racing thoroughbreds is at the track he’s as good as dead. For once a racehorse leaves us to spend the rest of his life in retirement at a stock farm he’s gone forever as far as we’re concerned. Certainly we think of him again whenever his sons and daughters appear on the track for the first time. But his colts and fillies are distinct individuals in themselves and we look upon them as such. Never do we say with any degree of honesty, “Here he is again!”

So it was with sincere sympathy and sadness that we watched Satan step onto the Belmont Park track yesterday for his last look around before being shipped home to Hopeful Farm in permanent retirement.

Satan, sired by the Black, had a racing career that was much too short for one who had so much speed yet to give. He was unbeaten at two, three and four years of age, winning some of our greatest classics. Last season he lost only one race, the San Carlos Handicap at Santa Anita Park, California, in December. He ran that race, we learned later, with a stone pounded deep inside his right forefoot. Yet he wouldn’t quit. Although he was running on only three legs it took a photo finish for Night Wind to beat him to the wire in race record time!

X-ray photographs taken after the race disclosed a fractured sesamoid, one of the small bones in the ankle. The injured leg was put in a cast and Satan was shipped home. We were sure that he had reached the end of his racing career. But during the spring encouraging reports reached us. The injured leg had healed and Henry Dailey was putting Satan back in training. By summer the burly black horse was stabled at Belmont Park, and during his works he looked as powerful as we all remembered him. But Henry Dailey wasn’t satisfied. He took Satan along slowly, never asking too much of him, never quite ready to race him. Only last month did Henry step up Satan’s works. And then the great horse went sore again in the injured leg. Last week it was decided that to prevent further injury Satan would be retired permanently.

Yesterday, at the insistence of the track management, Satan took his last look around Belmont Park—the scene of so many of his brilliant wins. And for the thousands who packed the stands, it was a sad but thrilling moment when he came out of the paddock gate between the seventh and eighth races.

The weight of a rider might have aggravated his injury at this time, so he was led out by Henry Dailey, riding Hopeful Farm’s gray stable pony, Napoleon. As Satan pranced there was no evidence of the leg injury that had brought his racing days to an end. He stepped lightly and a little faster at the crowd’s first and most thunderous ovation. He looked very beautiful and very gay with black and white ribbons braided into his mane. He was the picture of health and energy. That he could look as he did and yet be able to race no more accounted for the wealth of feeling which moved so deeply all who watched him.

The pdf –9th chapter book

Find all the books and more @ the Trading Post!

Ride on!!

tim

#8 it’s GREAT!

More to see and read @ the Trading Post!

The next one – is a pretty easy guess don’cha think?

Racetrack Special
1

It was hardly the time or the place to be thinking about a horse, any horse, the man decided, even Man o’ War. He pulled up the collar of his overcoat and pushed his head against the drizzling, chilling dampness that penetrated everything he wore right down to the flannel undershirt beneath his heavy gray suit. It was unusually cold for only the 22nd of October. But one couldn’t count on anything in New York. Full of surprises, always.

He glanced up at the buildings rising like giant pyramids above him. Even Times Square wasn’t square. It was a triangle, noisy and garish. And now that the morning was just about over, Broadway was coming to life, with theater and store managers trying to pierce the milkiness with pale, flickering lights. It was a losing battle. The fog wasn’t going to lift for a while. Maybe he wouldn’t even be able to see the backstretch of the big track at Aqueduct.

As he turned west on 42nd Street his way became more crowded and noisier than ever. Yet as he pushed his way through the surging throng he allowed his large head to emerge a bit more from his overcoat, much like a giant sea turtle peeking out from its heavy shell. He watched the marquee lights flashing on and off and, somehow, they seemed to warm him. He became less uncomfortable, less dissatisfied with the weather. He didn’t try to understand his love for the hum and roar of the city, not just any city, just New York. He was a country boy and he should be thinking more about the warm October days of his youth in Kentucky. Now those were the good years of quiet and peace and horses. But he wouldn’t trade one inch of this paved street for all of Kentucky’s green acres, not anymore! The way he’d felt as a kid was long since over.

Reaching the subway entrance, he turned into it and left 42nd Street’s lights and hubbub behind. He stopped at a newsstand, picked up several papers, then hurried down a flight of steep steps as if diving into a cellar.

The smell of the subway grew stronger in his nostrils and he could see the long line forming before the change booth. Over the booth a sign read:

SPECIAL
AQUEDUCT RACETRACK
SPECIAL

Here’s the rest as a pdf- 8th book chapter

Leave your comments here or on the forum.

Enjoy the subway ride!

tim

#6 chapter – an easy one!

Find the whole enchilada @ the Trading Post

It’s Saturday and so here’s an easy one … It’s the only book that has ME :) as the main character. I get to co-star with our real life horse Tena, Al-Marah Athena. A lot of this really happened (with an active imagination) at our house in Florida when you could still take a ride on the beach. Now there are so many rules I doubt you could even have a horse in the city limits at all! It was a great time to be in Venice, where Dad has his Literary Landmark at the local library if you ever get a chance to visit – but you better hurry it’s right where hurricane Isaac is headed tomorrow!!

 Here’s one page;

and the PDF – 1st chapter

Enjoy the Ride!!

tim