The Black Stallion and Flame (2 page)

Only loran equipment—long-range navigation equipment—could have helped him now to determine their position on his graph. But the company had decided it was too expensive to install, “unnecessary” was the word they used, pointing out that their planes had flown this route so many times they could almost fly it alone. The company operated on a very stringent economy program, as did most nonscheduled airlines. It had to make every ounce of payload count. The navigator knew their slogan by heart:
Economize. Save money. Save equipment. Save men
. That’s why they had no separate radio operator, the job of communications being done by the copilot and the navigator. That’s why they were depending upon radio telephone instead of telegraph. That’s why they had no loran. That’s why they were in such a jam!

Desperately the navigator bent over his board again and studied his plotted graph of position reports. He could make only a stab at figuring out their present position, and every minute he worked, another four miles of space swept by. They’d been in the air sixteen hours and fifteen minutes. He tracked as well as he could the approximate distance covered against fuel remaining and consumed. Finally he put down another small
x
two hundred miles off the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles. That was not close enough but was the best he could do under the circumstances. He decided to keep the information to himself for the time being. No one would have believed him anyway. The spot he had marked was much too far off their scheduled course.

Suddenly the captain asked him, “How much fuel do you figure we have left?”

“Enough for another hour.”

There was a greater rush of air through the ventilators, and they felt the cold touch of the storm.

“Then you’d better tell our passengers what to expect if we don’t find some place to land in that time,” the captain said.

“I don’t have to,” the navigator replied grimly. “I was with them a while ago. They’re sweating it out. One old guy especially. He’s had a death-grip on his seat since takeoff, when there wasn’t a ripple in the air.”

“Get the life jackets on them anyway. Brief ’em what to do if we ditch.”

“And use your most professional manner,” the copilot joined in, his voice high and strained despite his attempt to be funny. “No dramatics. As the operations manual says, we must instill confidence in the passengers and make ’em believe that the crew knows exactly what’s to be done. Don’t ever let ’em know we’re as scared as they are. It’d never do.”

“That’s enough,” the captain ordered angrily. The soft pink and yellow lights of the flight deck disclosed the beads of perspiration on his forehead. “Stay back there with them,” he told the navigator. “When I flash on the
NO SMOKING
sign we’ll be headed for the water. Brace yourself and hang on for good then.”

The navigator unbuckled his seat belt and left his stool, the floor heaving beneath his feet. He went as far as the black curtain separating the deck from the crew cabin before turning around. “I—I guess we can’t do anything about our cargo,” he said.

The captain laughed grimly, and when he spoke
his eyes were still glued to the instrument panel. “You’ve got a big heart for the company, worrying about our payload when you might be going for a swim yourself.”

“I wasn’t thinking about the freight. It’s the rest.…”

“We can’t do anything for sixteen thousand pounds of horses,” the captain said. “They don’t make life jackets that big.”

The navigator parted the curtain. “I guess not,” he answered, “but there’s one horse in particular a lot of people are going to miss. His name is the Black and I guess he’s about the most famous horse in the world.…”

The crew cabin on the other side of the black curtain was small, functional and very noisy since the pounding engines were only a few feet away. A coffee pot and dishes clattered in the galley and a piece of soap slithered in the wash basin. Opposite the galley were two bunks, empty except for strewn uniform caps, ties and jackets. Strapped overhead was a rolled, uninflated life raft and in a compartment beside it were three yellow life jackets.

A door opened into the passenger cabin, where most of the seats had been removed to make room for cargo. There were no smells here of high-octane gasoline or burning radio wires. Instead there were odors of hay, grain, saddle soap and leather. The dome lights beat down garishly on strong wooden box stalls holding four broodmares, eight yearling fillies and a lone black stallion.

The horses stood still, almost dozing. Except for
the occasional flat, muffled explosion of a backfire, the cabin was quiet—ominously quiet.

Fear was present here, as on the flight deck. The smell of it leaked from the skin of the two men and the boy sitting in jump seats near the horses. Their faces were pale and wet with sweat, and their jaws, alternately working and clenched tight, gave further evidence of their fear. The old man grabbed the sides of his seat, his hands shaking, when the plane suddenly began to yaw and lurch. There was a sharp jolt and a quick surge of noise within the aluminum shell, then all was quiet again as the propellers found more solid air.

Alec Ramsay turned to the navigator when the crewman sat down beside him. “It’s bad, isn’t it?” he asked. “How bad?”

The navigator studied the boy’s face a long while before answering. “I think we’ve ridden out the worst of it. How’d you get the horses so quiet?”

“We had to give them tranquilizer injections. They were tearing away the padding in their boxes.” There were heavy circles under Alec’s eyes. The muted red light on the wing went on and off, touching the boy’s face—a face much too old for his age.

“What about him?” the navigator asked, nodding toward the white-haired man. “Can’t you give your friend one, too?”

“Henry’s all right. You needn’t worry about him. He just looks scared. I guess I’m more scared than he is. The Black and I were in a spot like this once before. I thought I’d forgotten it, but I haven’t.”

“I hope you’re right,” the navigator said, “and that it was a spot something like this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you got out of that one.”

The green navigation light at the end of the wing blinked on and off regularly, making a tiny glow in the darkness outside.

“You don’t think our chances are very good then?”

“You want it straight or should I quote confidently from the company manual?” It’d be better if they all knew what they faced, the navigator decided.

“I want it straight,” Alec answered. He was looking out the window rather than at the man. The heavy overcast had obliterated even the green light now. All he could see was the trailing edge of the wing slicing through the murk. It made him think of a knife slicing through the heavy icing of a birthday cake. And that made him think of home, when he was trying not to.

Finally he said, “What you mean is that we’re going to ditch. Is that it?”

The navigator nodded and his eyes remained on the youth’s face. “We will if we don’t find some land soon. We have gas left for less than an hour and we don’t even know where we are. Our radio communication system has been knocked out.”

“Isn’t there any clear air space beneath this stuff?”

“There wasn’t a while ago. No bottom. No top either since we’re not pressurized. The skipper will try again soon, I guess. You’ll know when he does.”

“The wind seems to have died down some.”

“As I said, I think we’ve seen the worst of it. There’s more body to the air now. She’s handling better.”

The big engines were no longer straining but growling in defiance of the storm.

“Maybe we’ll be lucky and find something below,”
Alec suggested hopefully. “I-I mean something besides water.”

“Maybe we will. We’ve been flying long enough to be over something more solid by now.” The navigator unfastened his seat belt and stood up, still holding the other’s gaze. He decided that whatever happened, the kid could take care of himself if given half a chance. He only hoped they’d be able to give him that much of a start. There might be waves as thick and high as mountains.

“If we do have to ditch,” he went on, “it shouldn’t be too bad. And our rafts will be loaded with everything we’ll need until they pick us up.”

Alec wanted to ask who “they” might be but didn’t.

“I’ll tell the others now,” the navigator said, moving away.

“But what about the horses?” Alec called after him. “What can we do for them?”

The navigator turned back, a grim smile on his lips. “That’s almost funny,” he said. “I asked the skipper the same thing and he laughed at me—because there’s nothing in this world we can do for them except hope they get a chance to swim for it.”

Alec’s eyes turned to Henry Dailey as the navigator went over to speak to him. He remembered Henry’s words at takeoff.
“Altitude is for the birds, Alec, an’ if the good Lord had meant us to fly he’d have provided us with wings. But I’ll go along with you in agreein’ that a night’s flight to the U.S. is a lot easier on a horse than a week’s trip by boat. So I’ll jus’ sweat this one out as I’ve had to do before. I won’t shirk my chores but don’t think for a moment I’m goin’ to be good company. I’m not. I’m goin’ to crawl into the shell that I’ve spent some sixty-odd years growin’ and stay there until we land
.

“I’ll be figurin’ out how we might have won some of those big European classics if the Black hadn’t picked up his bad stone bruise. Oh, I’m not really worried about him none. He’s gallopin’ all right an’ I guess he could go on all day long if he had to. It’s not that he’s bad but he’s not quite right. I want to give him a lot of time to get over his trouble. You don’t take chances with this kind of horse. So I’m goin’ to plan what’s in store for him when he’s sound again. I’ll have a ball, all right, an’ before I know it we’ll be across the Atlantic.”

Now Alec looked at his friend and wondered just how protective Henry’s shell really was. It was difficult to close one’s ears to the sound of the propellers and the wind screaming in the night, difficult not to listen to the uneven pounding of the engines and to ignore the severe thuds and jolts followed by the sickening drops.

Henry sat with his eyes almost closed, the perspiration on his brow oozing down the deeply etched lines of his face, and his big-knuckled hands gripping the sides of his seat.

Alec turned away, certain that Henry was prepared for any emergency even if he didn’t look as if he were. One didn’t ride fast horses, both on the flat and over jumps as Henry had done, without developing confidence in an ability to get out of jams.

Alec glanced at the tall black stallion, standing almost listlessly in his box a few feet away. If Alec had any protective shell like Henry’s it was his horse who provided it, and he turned to him now for solace.

The strong wooden box was reinforced with metal and lined inside with straw and sack padding. Alec spoke to the Black in their secret language and the stallion raised his head, pulling against the tie-shank. The effect of the injections would last a little longer, Alec
knew. It had taken two shots to quiet the Black—but without them the stallion would have battered down the sides of the box. As it was, much of the padding was strewn about the floor.

The Black closed his eyes again. He was extremely sensitive to words and sounds, including clicking of the tongue and whistling. Alec made good use of his knowledge of this, both in praise and reproach. Various pitches of his voice meant different things to the Black, and at home Alec had a secret book in which he kept the musical notes of their special language.

Even with his head down and eyes closed the tall stallion looked every bit the champion he was. His small, delicate ears were cocked forward as he dozed and the long nostrils were dilated as if to catch the slightest scent of danger. His giant body was tough yet satin-smooth. His strong legs were clean and bare of shipping bandages while bulging sinews stood out prominently beneath the skin.

The Black snored and dreamed of other nights and times, of running fresh and free. He hated to be pampered, to be bathed and washed and wrapped in blankets while his hoofs were cleaned and trimmed. Much, much better for his hide to be washed cool by strong winds and rains and warmed by many suns and for his hoofs to be trimmed on flying rocks. He was all stallion and he knew it—strong, arrogant and cunning. Every savage instinct in him constantly sought release from the domestic life he led. Only his love for Alec and the boy’s love for him kept him under control. Yet there were times like this when he dreamed of another kind of life, one he had known long ago.

Alec turned to the broodmares and yearlings. They
were standing in boxes similar to the Black’s, two abreast and stretching almost the whole length of the cabin. Farther aft was the rest of the cargo, most of it huge wooden crates of machinery. Everything was carefully balanced to enable the plane’s big engines to conquer gravity while hauling over seventy thousand pounds across the ocean. Despite the storm none of the crates seemed to have shifted.

Alec glanced out the window. There was no break in the heavy overcast but the winds had died as suddenly as they’d come up hours before. Perhaps the captain would find an opening below. The slight pressure in his ears told him they were descending. They might even find land. He had to think that way now.…

Alec turned back to the horses and to the groom who had charge of the mares. The man had unusually long arms, which hung loosely against the sides of his slight, frail body. His skin was very tanned, and he had prominent cheekbones and a long, narrow hooked nose. His appearance was not improved by an Adam’s apple the size of a small red balloon, which worked continually up and down while he listened to the navigator, who had moved over beside him.

Alec sincerely hoped that the navigator would be able to convince this man that everything was going to be all right. For here was a case of somebody seeming to be paralyzed by his own fear. The groom hadn’t budged in his seat for hours.

Earlier in the flight Alec had spoken to him. The man was excellent at handling horses, but he had told Alec that this job—caring for the mares and making certain they reached their destination—was only a temporary one. His charges were pure-bred Arabians being
sent as a gift to a young Caribbean breeder. That was all he would say.