The Black Stallion's Courage (2 page)

Alec broke out all over in clammy perspiration and his hands trembled. “With some mares you can wait,” he said, “but not with her. You should know better than I that it's too dangerous.”

“If you're worried, go take care of her yourself,” the man answered. “I don't need this job. I got people wantin' me back home, lots of people. Plenty of mares in Kentucky but not many foaling men like me.”

“Only because your father was the greatest of all teachers,” Alec said, unable to control himself any longer. “Everybody knows that. But I don't think you ever listened to him, Snappy. If you had you wouldn't be sitting here smoking a pipe when Miz Liz is about to foal! So you're not good enough for our farm any longer. You're fired, Snappy. Now get out of here and stay out!” He reached for the man's arm.

Snappy rose and towered above Alec, the pipe smoke curling about his surprised but scornful eyes. Then his big hands tore Alec's fingers away from his arm and he gave the boy a hard push.

Although Alec braced himself for the backward fall, his head hit the floor with terrific impact. And although he did not lose consciousness, he was barely aware of Snappy's leaving the apartment.

Alec lay on the floor a short while, waiting for his head to clear. Then, suddenly, he heard a loud snort from below. He struggled to his feet and opened the apartment door, shouting down the stairwell to Miz Liz that she was not alone with her foal! He knew the foal had come, that he had only a few seconds more to reach the stall in time to prevent what he dreaded. Miz Liz always got to her feet soon after foaling. It wouldn't be any different this time. That's why Snappy should have been there, waiting.

Running down the stairs, Alec made straight for the end of the corridor, where he flipped on the bright overhead light. The foaling stall came to life with festive brilliance. In the center Miz Liz was climbing to her feet, while beside her deep in the straw lay her newly born colt.

Alec did not stay quietly outside the stall to watch mother and son become acquainted in those wondrous first moments together as he did with other mares. Instead he flung open the door and shouted! Miz Liz moved toward her colt, not to lick his coat dry
but to kill him
!

Alec reached out and slapped her hindquarters hard, throwing her off balance and distracting her attention. Startled, she hesitated before the sight of his raised hand and the sound of his urgent commands.

The mare's eyes were wild, matching the viciousness shown by her flattened ears. Yet she fell back a
step, giving Alec a chance to gather the wet colt in his arms. She came for them when the boy moved toward the door, her head outstretched and teeth bared.

Alec swung the colt away from her and felt the searing pinch of her teeth as she turned upon him in all her fury and frustration. But she had not taken hold and he jumped through the open door, slamming it behind him.

Gently he placed the newly born foal on the floor, while the stall became suddenly quiet. Left alone, Miz Liz would cause no trouble. For a moment Alec looked at her as she stood so wearily beneath the bright light, her wet coat matted with straw and manure. She showed no further interest in him or her colt, not even when the boy spoke to her.

“Old mare, why do you make these moments, which should be the best of all, so terrible? I'm not going to let you kill him as you did another of your sons. Nor will you kill me as you did old Charley Grimm. I'm not afraid of you, old mare, just very sad for you.”

He turned to the sprawled bundle on the floor, all legs and head and eyes. A fine colt. Not black like his famous sire but chestnut with a blaze, the same as Miz Liz. A big-boned colt. Big nostrils, too. Good for scooping in the air on his way down the homestretch when he'd need it most.

Alec's hands were slippery on the wet body. Large eyes, so inquisitive and unafraid, met his own. Finally he rose and went to the adjacent room, noting the equipment he'd need later on. Taking a soft, clean cloth he went back to the colt and began wiping him dry.

“Not the same as your mother's tongue,” he said, “but it'll do for the time being.”

For many minutes he watched the colt's attempts to unlimber the long forelegs that would not do what he asked of them. It wouldn't take long before this fellow would be the master of his gangling body.

“I hate to tell you this,” Alec said, picking up the colt once more, “but you don't have a very smart mother. At first she doesn't know you and won't have you. In fact, she'd like to do away with you. But after a while, not so very long from now, she'll come over to us very slowly and we won't have to run away. She'll put her old head down and sniff, and then she'll start licking you, just as though none of this had happened at all.”

He opened the stall door, still talking to the colt. “My job will be done then and she'll be as loving as she is mean now. But as I said she's not very smart at the beginning. We have to keep reminding her that you're hers and there's no getting out of it.”

Miz Liz had moved to the corner of her stall. She stood quietly, showing no interest in them, her disheveled head hung low. Alec shifted the heavy, awkward bundle in his arms so he might watch her better. He did not move far from the door while letting the colt support some of his own weight.

“Old mare,” he called, “this is your son, and the sooner you get to know him the sooner I can clean you up and get this business over with. But I'll not come a step closer. I know you too well.”

Without raising her head, Miz Liz suddenly plunged toward them, her nostrils flared and ears back.
Alec pulled the colt outside and slammed the stall door in the mare's face. She made no attempt to reach over it but turned and went back to the corner of her stall again.

Breathing heavily, Alec put down the colt. “Anyway, she's getting to know you,” he said. “It shouldn't take too much longer.”

Far down the corridor the door banged open and his father's running figure emerged from the darkness. “Dad, what are you doing here?” Alec called.

His father didn't need to answer. He opened the door leading upstairs and smoke billowed into the corridor! Only then did Alec remember with horror that Snappy had been frying bacon on Henry's stove—and that he had forgotten to turn it off!

No longer was the night still. When Alec ran toward the stairs to help his father he heard the crackling of flames beyond the smoke. The onslaught of destruction had come and he had helped to create it.

The smoke rose above the barn … softly, moving, waving, drifting. Then with a deafening roar the night was shattered by the raging inferno that had spawned the smoke. Long tongues of flame reached out from second-story windows, greedily grasping and devouring adjacent treetops. Echoing the scream of the fire came the snorts and squeals of pastured horses. From farther away came the wailing siren of the village firehouse, summoning its volunteers.

Inside the barn Alec and his father came down the stairs from the second floor, their figures seeming to float through the dim, murky veil of heat.

“Get the colt, Dad,” the boy said. “We've done all we can up there.” There was no fright in his voice, only defeat. “I'll take the mare.” He picked up an empty feed sack.

Mr. Ramsay nodded but his eyes were glazed and staring as if he didn't understand at all. Yet he went to the colt and picked him up carefully, steadying him on
his feet. Then he turned to Alec and the glassiness left his eyes. “You'd better be careful of her, son.”

He watched Alec step inside the stall, talking to Miz Liz as if nothing at all were happening upstairs. His voice was so soft that Mr. Ramsay could catch a word only now and then, but by watching the frightened mare he knew she was listening to Alec. He moved along the corridor, the colt heavy in his arms.

Alec snapped the lead shank onto Miz Liz's halter and wrapped the sack about her head so she could not see. “Come,” he whispered, starting her toward the door. With the roar above and the heat in her flared nostrils, Miz Liz was no longer vicious, only terribly afraid. Neither he nor the colt had anything to fear from her now, thought Alec. But what a price to pay for their acceptance!

Suddenly the ceiling directly above them exploded and slender bits of flame fell at Alec's feet, igniting the straw. He and the mare leaped as one through the stall door and into the corridor.

Now the very air was alive with tiny particles of heat that stung Alec's face. He pulled down the mare's head, shielding it as best he could with his own body. Only once did he look up, and he saw a raging canopy of fire directly above them. He hurried Miz Liz along the corridor faster, for in her new terror she was inclined to hang back. More and more falling tongues of flame were coming down now and Alec began twisting as he ran in an effort to avoid them. Miz Liz screamed and bolted forward in pain. Fortunately the exit was just ahead and they followed Mr. Ramsay and the colt through it and out into the coolness of the night air.

They stayed at a run until Alec could no longer feel the heat upon his back, and then he slowed Miz Liz. He removed the blindfold and she stood trembling beside him for a few minutes; finally she whinnied. He rubbed her muzzle, knowing that her soft utterance wasn't for him or for joy at the fresh, clean air in her nostrils. No, it was for her son, who had been placed on the grass beside the road and was now the center of her attention.

Mr. Ramsay was looking back at the fire. “Oh, Alec,” he said in a forlorn wail.

But Alec did not turn and look back. There was nothing anyone could do. Nobody could save a barn full of hay and straw once it started to go. The small water pump and hose which some of the hired men already had hooked up to the adjacent field pond were of little use. So was the fire engine which he could hear coming down the country road. All the pastured horses were safe, but the barn which he and Henry and his father had had built with such pride would be completely destroyed. He did not want to look upon the horror of its burning. Instead he watched the start of a new life.

There were new trials to be watched, too, for the colt was attempting once again to make his forelegs behave. There, there, he had them in place. Eager and strong in his confidence he pulled up his hind legs until they too were where they should be. Then he stood in all his freshly won glory, his eyes bright and seeking, his sharp-ribbed body teetering on stilted legs.

“He's made it, Dad,” Alec said, “all by himself.”

There was no comment from Mr. Ramsay.

Miz Liz tugged on the lead shank and Alec let her go to her son, watching as she licked him with all the
care and tenderness that he'd been missing. It didn't matter that his red, furry coat was perfectly dry, even singed in spots. No, what was important was the reassurance that she was giving him. At last he knew that he was loved and wanted.

Out of the darkness came the close scream of the fire engine. Alec heard his father say bitterly, “Even when I called them, I knew it was too late.”

“They can keep it from spreading,” Alec said.

“Nothing to spread to,” his father answered. “There's no wind to carry the sparks. The other barns are far enough away.”

“I was thinking of the trees,” Alec said while he steadied the colt, holding him close to the mare. “You'd better eat,” he told the colt. “You've waited a long time.”

Only when the colt finally was nursing did Alec turn and look at the fire. His eyes became blurred as he gazed upon the blinding spectacle of white and golden fury. Too late even to save the bordering trees, he saw. But they hadn't lost a single horse—not even Miz Liz's colt.

He heard the Black's blasting, repeated whistles but he did not turn toward the far paddock. His eyes were fastened on the sweeping, golden brightness that reached ever higher into the sky. All they'd lost was a barn—their biggest and best barn, but only a barn. Cost? About one hundred thousand dollars
and uninsured
. A total loss. That was all they'd lost, he concluded grimly.

After a while Ed Henne, the fire chief, stood beside him. “I'm awfully sorry, Alec,” he said. “We're hooking up our pump to the pond but we won't save much.”

“I know, Ed. Thanks, anyway.”

The fire burned brightly until dawn while neighbors came and went, some only to watch the fiery spectacle and others to offer their sympathy as well. During one of those long hours his mother stood beside Alec, sharing his loss. She said, “It could have been so much worse, Alec. What if Henry had been at home and asleep? Think how horrible that would have been! Remember, too, that you've lost none of your horses and there's the insurance to cover the barn.”

He hadn't told his mother how wrong she was. If Henry had been at home there'd have been no fire. And there was no insurance. He hadn't wanted to worry her about the lapsed policy then, with the fire so bright in her face.

The roar of lashing, leaping flames died with the gray light of day. The last of the spectators left and then finally the fire truck. There was nothing more to be seen or done. The barn lay black and gutted with only the two stone end walls standing.

“What are you going to do, Alec?” Mr. Ramsay asked, searching the eyes of his son. They hadn't been a youth's eyes for several years, he realized. Too much had happened to Alec. Too many quick decisions had been made in his young life. Too many fast horses had been ridden.

Turning from the water-sodden debris that was all that was left of their broodmare barn, Alec said, “It's not as if it was winter and we couldn't get along without it for a while. The mares and colts can use the field sheds for shelter. We'll keep Miz Liz and her colt in the yearling barn for a few days and then turn them out with the others.”

His father nodded. “We'll have the new barn up long before cold weather sets in.”