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#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

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#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

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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

#7 Horse for you??

There’s always something new for you @ the Trading Post!

Here’s the next chapter / book in the contest – comments???

Desert Born

1

For days the Bedouin band had ridden across the white sands of the Rub al Khali, the Great Central Desert of Arabia, and the steady pounding of the horses’ hoofs left a rising cloud of sand behind them. The white-robed figures rode in no particular formation, their long guns resting easily across their thighs, their hands lying only lightly upon them. For the danger of a surprise raid by desert bands had passed . . . ahead lay Addis, on the Red Sea, their destination.

There were twenty of them, sitting still and straight in their saddles as their horses moved effortlessly across the sand. Each steed’s head was held high, his hot coat shining in the sun, and each pulled slightly on his bit as though impatient to break out of the slow canter to which he had been held for so many days. The men, too, were as impatient as the blacks, bays and chestnuts they rode. E . . . yes! It had taken them ten days to cross the Great Desert from the mountain stronghold of their sheikh, Abu Ja Kub ben Ishak, who led them. Ten days! When other trips had taken them but four! Ten days of constant riding, halting during the day only for prayer, to turn toward Mecca with a reverent “La ilaha-‘llah: Muhammadum rasula-‘llah.” And then they would be in the saddle again, their long limbs wrapped about the girths of their mounts.

And as they rode, if their eyes left the sheikh, astride his giant black stallion, Shetan, it was only to come to rest upon the small black colt who followed doggedly behind the stallion, straining at the lead rope that the sheikh had attached to his own saddle. E . . . yes! It was the young colt with his spindled, tiring legs who was responsible for this long slow march across the Rub al Khali. It was he, as much as his great black stallion of a father, who had caused them to ride with heavy hands upon unslung rifles for so many suns. Only for the possession of the mighty Shetan and his firstborn, worth all the treasures beneath the sun and moon, would other desert tribes dare to challenge the might of the powerful Sheikh Abu Ja Kub ben Ishak! But now the worst of the trek was over, for ahead was Addis and the ship of the sea which would take the young colt to another land.

Nearing the outskirts of town, the sheikh raised his rifle high in the air, and then slung it over his shoulder; and it came to rest with those of his men.

They were in formation, riding two abreast as they entered Addis and started down the street that would lead them to the sea and the ship that awaited the son of the black stallion.

Two boiler-room men climbed the spiraling iron staircase leading up from the bowels of the tramp steamer, Queen of India, as she docked at Addis. Reaching the upper deck, one of them wiped a greasy hand across his perspiring forehead, leaving it streaked with grime. “No better up here, Morgan,” he said, as they walked over to the rail and leaned heavily upon it.

Below on the dock, vendors shouted forth their wares to the multitude of onlookers, freight agents and dock hands who laboriously loaded the varied produce of the desert and farms onto the ship. Camels and donkeys, heavily laden with the wares of vendors, milled with the crowd, superbly unbothered by the high-pitched voices of their owners.

“Makes me think of the barkers at Coney Island, Harrity,” Morgan said nostalgically.

Harrity didn’t answer, for his gaze had left the crowd below and had traveled up the long, narrow, cobblestoned street that led from the pier. Coming toward them was a group of horsemen. And even from this distance he could see that they weren’t like the natives below. Heads moving neither to the right nor left, they rode forward, the hoofs of their horses ringing on the stones. Only for a few seconds did Harrity’s gaze rest upon the riders’ flowing robes; fascinated, he turned his attention to the magnificent animals they rode. He’d heard tales of such horses as these, owned by the feared and little-known Bedouins, supreme rulers of the desert. But in all his years of traveling up the coast of Arabia, he had never seen even one of them until now.

The horsemen came closer, and Harrity’s eyes were drawn to the great black stallion in the lead. Never in the world had he seen a horse like this one, he told himself. This horse towered above the others, his body beautiful to behold. Thunder could roll under those powerful legs, Harrity was sure.

“Look at that band of Arabs comin’ down the street,” Harrity heard Morgan say.

Without taking his eyes from the mighty black, Harrity replied, “Look at the horses, Morgan. Look at them.”

“I’m lookin’. And me who’s been to Aqueduct and Belmont, and thought I’d seen the best of ’em.”

“Me, too.” Harrity paused, then added, “Get a load of that black stallion in the lead, Morgan. If he isn’t one of the finest chunks of horseflesh I’ve ever seen, I’ll eat my hat.”

“Yeah,” Morgan replied. “And he’s a wild one, all right. See that small head and those eyes? There’s fire in those eyes, Harrity. Look! He half-reared. He doesn’t want to come any closer to this mob on the dock. That Arab on his back can ride, all right, but he’s no match for that devil and he knows it. See, what’d I tell you, Harrity! They’re stoppin’ out there. He’s goin’ to get off.”

Suddenly Harrity realized that the shrill voices of the vendors and natives had stilled. The dock was unnaturally quiet. Everybody there had seen the Bedouins.

A few of the multitude moved toward the band, but stopped when they were still a good distance away. They had moved as though compelled by the fascination of this wild band, and had stopped in fear of it. They knew this group of horsemen, no doubt about that.

Harrity’s eyes were upon the black stallion and the sheikh with the white beard who stood beside him, holding the bridle. The stallion snorted and plunged, and the man let the horse carry him until he had regained control.

“A black devil,” Harrity muttered. “A black, untamed devil.”

“What’dya say?” Morgan asked.

“That black stallion . . . he’s a devil,” Harrity repeated.

“Yeah.” There was a slight pause, then Morgan said, “And did ya notice that little black one just behind him? He’s tryin’ to work up a lather, too.”

Harrity hadn’t noticed the young colt, but now he saw him. Standing there on his long legs, the black colt, whom Harrity judged to be about five months old, was being held by one of the Bedouins.

The colt moved restlessly, trying to pull away from the tribesman who held him close. As though imitating the big black in front of him, he snorted and plunged, throwing his thin forelegs out, striking at the Bedouin. The man moved quickly, avoiding the small hoofs, and then closed in upon the savage head and held him still.

“Could be father and son from the way they act.” Morgan laughed.

“Yeah,” returned Harrity. “Look a lot like each other, too. Coal black they are, except for that small splotch of white on the colt’s forehead. Didya notice it, Morgan?”

“Uh,” Morgan grunted. “It looks diamond-shaped from here.”

as pdf– 7 chapter

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Enjoy the 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