Horses! Page 4

  "You've got to keep him under restraint, Ben. You can't let anybody know what he can do."

  "I can do anything with him out here by himself. But who knows what he'll do with other horses?"

  "You've got to hold him."

  "Listen, Cos, I've ridden some of the best and some of the toughest. I know what I can hold and what I can't. If Eagle ever takes it in his head to run, there'll not be a hell of a lot I can do about it."

  "We've trained him careful."

  "Yes, but if I've got him figured, he'll go crazy if a horse starts to crowd him. Another thing, any horseman will see at a glance what we've got. They'll know we're not letting him extend himself."

  We were standing out by the pine pole paddock and I turned and looked at Red Eagle. Have you ever seen a cheetah? It's a cat. It runs faster than any other living creature. It's long-legged and long-bodied and it moves soft and graceful until it starts to run; then it becomes a streak with a blur of legs beneath. Red Eagle looked more like a twelve-hundred-pound cheetah than a horse and he ran the same way.

  "Well, he's a race horse," I said. "If we don't race him, what'll we do with him?"

  "We'll race him," said Ben, "but things ain't ever goin' to be the same again."

  That turned out to be pure prophecy.

  We decided to start him on a western track. We had to mortgage the ranch to get the money for his entry fee, but we had him entered in plenty of time. Two days before the race we hauled him, blanketed, in a closed trailer and put him into his stall without anyone getting a good look at him. We worked him out at dawn each morning before any other riders were exercising their horses.

  This track was one where a lot of breeders tried their two-year-olds. The day of the race the first person I saw was Croupwell. His mild interest told me he already knew we had an entry. He looked at my worn Levis and string-bean frame. "What's happened these three years, Costello? You don't appear to have eaten regular."

  "After today it'll be different," I told him.

  "That colt you have entered, eh? He's not the bet you won from me, is he?"

  "The same."

  "I see by the papers Ben's riding. Ben must have lost weight too."

  "Not so's you'd notice."

  "You're not asking a two-year-old to carry a hundred and twenty-eight pounds on its first start!"

  "He's used to Ben," I said casually.

  "Costello, I happen to know you mortgaged your place to get the entry fee." He was looking at me speculatively. His gambler's instinct told him something was amiss. "Let's have a look at the colt."

  "You'll see him when we bring him out to be saddled," I said and walked away.

  You can't lead a horse like that among a group of horsemen without things happening. Men who spend their lives with horses know what gives a horse reach and speed and staying power. It didn't take an expert to see what Red Eagle had. When we took the blanket off him in the saddle paddock every jockey and owner began to move close. In no time there was a milling group of horsemen in front of where Ben and I were saddling Eagle.

  Carvelliers, a handsome, white-haired Southern gentleman, called me to him. "Costello, is that Wing Away's colt?" "Your signature's on his papers," I said.

  "I'll give you fifty thousand dollars for his dam."

  "She's dead," I said. "She died two weeks after we'd weaned this colt."

  "Put a price on the colt," he said without hesitation.

  "He's not for sale," I answered.

  "We'll talk later," he said and turned and headed for the betting windows. Every man in the crowd followed him. I saw several stable hands pleading with acquaintances to borrow money to bet on Eagle despite the extra weight he would be spotting the other horses. By the time the parimutuel windows closed, our horse was the odds-on favorite and nobody had seen him run.

  "I'm glad we didn't have any money to bet," said Ben, as I legged him up. "A dollar'll only make you a dime after what they've done to the odds."

  The falling odds on Red Eagle had alerted the crowd to watch for him. As the horses paraded before the stands there was a rippling murmur of applause. He looked entirely unlike the other eight horses on the track. He padded along, his head bobbing easily, his long hind legs making him look like he was going downhill. He took one step to the other mincing thoroughbreds' three.

  I had gone down to the rail and as Ben brought him by, heading for the backstretch where the six-furlong race would start, I could see the Eagle watching the other horses, his ears flicking curiously. I looked at Ben. He was pale. "How is he?" I called.

  Ben glanced at me out of the corners of his eyes. "He's different."

  "Different!" I called back edgily. "How?"

  "Your guess is as good as mine," Ben called over his shoulder.

  Eagle went into the gate at his assigned place on the outside as docilely as we'd trained him to. But when the gate flew open, the rush of horses startled him. Breaking on top, he opened up five lengths on the field in the first sixteenth of a mile. The crowd went whoosh with a concerted sigh of amazement.

  "Father in heaven, hold him," I heard myself saying.

  Through my binoculars, I could see the riders on the other horses studying the red horse ahead of them. Many two-year-olds break wild, but no horse opens five lengths in less than two hundred yards. I saw Ben steadying him gently, and as they went around the first turn, Ben had slowed him until the pack moved up to within a length.

  That was as close as any horse ever got. Around the turn a couple of riders went after Eagle and the pack spread briefly into groups of three and two and two singles. I could see the two horses behind Eagle make their move. Eagle opened another three lengths before they hit the turn into the stretch and I could see Ben fighting him. The two that had tried to take the lead were used up and the pack came by them as all the riders turned their horses on for the stretch drive. Eagle seemed to sense the concerted effort behind him and his rate of flow changed. It was as if a racing car had its accelerator floor-boarded. He came into the stretch gaining a half length every time his feet hit the turf.

  When he hit the wire he was a hundred yards ahead of the nearest horse and still going away. Ben had to take him completely around the track before Eagle realized there were no horses behind him. By the time Ben walked him into the winner's circle, Eagle's sides were rising and falling evenly. He was only damp, not having got himself hot enough to sweat.

  The first thing I remember seeing was Ben's guilty expression. "I tried to hold him," he said. "When he realized something was trying to outrun him he got so damn mad he didn't even know I was there."

  The loudspeaker had gone into a stuttering frenzy. Yes, the world's record for six furlongs had been broken. Not only broken, ladies and gentlemen; five seconds had been cut from it. No, the win was not official. Track veterinarians had to examine the horse. Please keep your seats, ladies and gentlemen.

  Keep their seats, hell! Every man, woman, and child was going to see at close range the horse that could run like that. There had been tears in my eyes as Eagle rolled down the stretch. You couldn't stay calm when you saw what these people had seen.

  The rest of that day sorts itself into blurred episodes. First, the vets checked Eagle's teeth, his registration papers, his date of foaling, and finally rechecked the number tattooed in his lip to make sure he was a two-year-old. Then they found that he had not been stimulated. They also found measurements so unbelievable they seriously questioned whether this animal was a horse. They went into a huddle with the track officials.

  There was loose talk of trying to rule the Eagle off the tracks. Carvelliers pointed out that Eagle's papers were in perfect order, his own stallion had sired him, he was a thoroughbred of accepted bloodlines, and there was no way he could legally be ruled ineligible.

  "If that horse is allowed to run," said one track official, "who will race against him?"

  Croupwell was seated at the conference table, as were most of the other owners. "Gentlemen," he sa
id suavely, "aren't you forgetting the handicapper?"

  The job of a handicapper is to figure how much weight each horse is to carry. It is a known fact that a good handicapper can make any field of horses come in almost nose and nose by imposing greater weights on the faster horses. But Croupwell was forgetting something. Usually, only older horses run in handicaps.

  I jumped to my feet. "You know two-year-olds are not generally handicapped," I said. "They race under allowance conditions."

  "True," said Croupwell. "Two-year-olds usually do run under arbitrary weights. But it is a flexible rule, devised to fit the existing situation. Now that the situation has changed, arbitrarily the weights must be changed."

  Carvelliers frowned angrily. "Red Eagle was carrying a hundred and twenty-eight against a hundred and four for the other colts. You would have to impose such weights to bring him down to an ordinary horse that you'd break him down."

  Croupwell shrugged. "If that should be true, it is unfortunate. But we have to think of the good of racing. You know that its lifeblood is betting. There will be no betting against this horse in any race it's entered."

  Carvelliers rose. "Gentlemen," and the way he said it was an insult, "I have been breeding and racing horses all my life. It has always been my belief that racing was to improve the breed, not kill the best horses." He turned to Ben and me. "At your convenience I would like to speak with you."

  Ben and I paid off the loan we'd used for the entry fee, bought ourselves some presentable clothes, and went up to Carvelliers' hotel.

  "Hello, Ben, good to see you," he said. "Costello, I owe you an apology. I've disagreed with you on bloodlines for years. You've proven me wrong."

  "You've been wrong," I agreed, "but Red Eagle is not the proof. He would have been a good colt if he was normal — maybe the best, but what he actually is has nothing to do with bloodlines."

  "Do you think he's a mutation—something new?"

  "Completely."

  "How much weight do you think he can carry and still win?" I turned to Ben and Ben said, "He'll win carrying any weight. He'll kill himself to win."

  "It's too bad you couldn't have held him," said Carvelliers. "My God, five seconds cut from the record. Don't fool yourself, they'll weight him until even tendons and joints such as his can't stand it. Will you run him regardless?"

  "What else will there be to do?"

  "Hmminm. Yes. Well, maybe you're right. But if they break him down, I have a proposition to make you."

  We thanked him and left.

  Ben and I planned our campaign carefully. "We've got to train him with other horses," Ben told me. "If I can get him used to letting a horse stay a few lengths behind, I can hold him down."

  We bought two fairly good platers with the rest of our first winnings and hired neighboring ranch kids to ride them. We began to see men with binoculars on the hills around our track. We let the Eagle loaf and the boys with the binoculars never saw any great times.

  The racing world had gone crazy over what Red Eagle had done to the records. But as time passed and the binocular boys reported he wasn't burning up his home track, the writers began to hint that it had been a freak performance—certainly remarkable, but could he do it again? This was the attitude we wanted. Then we put Red Eagle in his second race, this one a mile and a sixteenth.

  It was a big stakes race for two-year-olds. We didn't enter him until the last minute. Even so, the news got around and the track had never had such a large attendance and such little betting. The people didn't dare bet against the Eagle, but he had only run at six furlongs and they weren't ready to believe in him and bet on him to run a distance. Because of the low pari-mutuel take, we were very unpopular with the officials of that track.

  "If there's any way you can do it," I told Ben, "hold him at the gate."

  "I'll hold him if I can."

  By this time Red Eagle had become used to other horses and would come out of the gate running easily. When they sprung the gate on those crack two-year-olds that day, Ben had a tight rein and the pack opened a length on the Eagle before he understood he'd been double-crossed. When he saw horses ahead of him he went crazy.

  He swung far outside and caught the pack before they were in front of the stands. He'd opened five lengths at the first turn. He continued to accelerate in the back stretch, and the crowd had gone crazy too. When he turned into the stretch the nearest thing to him was the starting gate the attendants hadn't quite had time to pull out of the way. Eagle swerved wide to miss the gate and then, as if the gate had made him madder, really turned it on. When he crossed the finish line the first horse behind him hadn't entered the stretch. I sat down weakly and cried. He had cut ten seconds off the world's record for a mile and a sixteenth.

  The pandemonium did not subside when the race was over. Front-page headlines all over the world said, "New Wonder Horse Turns Racing World Topsy-turvy." That was an understatement.

  "The next time we run him," I told Ben, "they'll put two sacks of feed and a bale of hay on him."

  Ben was gazing off into the distance. "You can't imagine what it's like to sit on all that power and watch a field of horses go by you backward, blip, like that. You know something, Cos? He still wasn't flat out."

  "Fine," I said, sarcastically. "We'll run him against Mercedes and Jaguars."

  Well, they weighted him. The handicapper called for one hundred thirty-seven pounds. It was an unheard-of weight for a two-year-old to carry, but it wasn't as bad as I had expected.

  At home we put the one thirty-seven on him and eased him along for a few weeks. He didn't seem to notice the weight. The first time Ben let him out he broke his own record. I kept tabs on his legs and he never heated in the joints or swelled.

  We entered him in the next race to come up. It rained for two days before the race and the track was a sea of mud. Some thought the "flying machine," as Red Eagle was beginning to be called, could not set his blazing pace in mud.

  "What do you think?" I asked Ben. "He's never run in mud."

  "Hell, Cos, that horse don't notice what he's running on. He just feels the pressure of something behind him trying to outrun him and it pushes him like a jet."

  Ben was right. When the pack came out of the gate that day, Red Eagle squirted ahead like a watermelon seed squeezed from between your fingers. He sprayed the pack briefly with mud, then blithely left them, and when he came down the stretch he was completely alone.

  During the next several races, three things became apparent. First, the handicapper had no measuring stick to figure what weight Eagle should carry. They called for one hundred forty, forty-two, then forty-five, and Eagle came down the stretch alone. The second thing became apparent after Eagle had won carrying one forty-five. His next race, he started alone. No one would enter against him. Third, Eagle was drawing the greatest crowds in the history of racing.

  There were two big races left that season. They were one day and a thousand miles apart. The officials at both tracks were in a dilemma. Whichever race Eagle entered would have a huge crowd, but it would be a walkaway and that crowd would bet its last dollar on Eagle, because the track was required by law to pay ten cents on the dollar. The officials resolved their dilemma by using the old adage: You can stop a fright train if you put enough weight on it. Red Eagle was required to carry the unheard-of weight of one hundred and seventy pounds. Thus they hoped to encourage other owners to race against us and at the same time they'd have Eagle's drawing power.

  Ben grew obstinate. "I don't want to hurt him and that weight'll break him down."

  "Great," I replied. "Two worn-out old duffers with the world's greatest horse end up with two platers, a sand-hills ranch, and the winnings from a few races."

  "I know how you feel," said Ben. "The only thing you could have got out of this was money, but I get to ride him."

  "Well," I said, trying to be philosophical about it, "I get to watch him and that's almost as good as riding him." I stopped and grabbed Ben's arm. "What
did I say?"

  Ben jerked his arm away. "You gone nuts?"

  "Get to watch him! Ben, what's happened every time the Eagle's run?"

  "He's broke a record," said Ben matter-of-factly.

  "He's sent several thousand people into hysterics," I amended.

  Ben looked at me. "Are you thinking people would pay to see just one horse run?"

  "Has there ever been more than one when the Eagle's run? Come on. We're going to enter him."

  We entered Eagle in the next to the last race of the season. What I'd expected happened. All the other owners pulled out. They weren't having any of the Eagle even carrying a hundred and seventy pounds. They all entered in the last race. No horse, not even the Eagle—they thought—had the kind of stamina to make two efforts on successive days with a plane trip sandwiched between, so they felt safe.

  The officials at the second track were jubilant. They had the largest field they had ever run. The officials at the first track had apoplexy. They wanted to talk to us. They offered plane fare and I flew down.

  "Would you consider an agreement," they asked, "whereby you would withdraw your horse?"

  "I would not," I replied.

  "The public won't attend a walkaway," they groaned, "even with the drawing power of your horse." What they were thinking of was that ten cents on the dollar.

  "That's where you're wrong," I told them. "Advertise that the wonder horse is running unweighted against his own record and you'll have a sellout."

  Legally, they could not call off the race, so they had to agree.

  On the way home I stopped off at Carvelliers'. We had a long talk and drew up an agreement. "It'll work," I said. "I know it will."

  "Yes," agreed Carvelliers, "it will work, but you must persuade Ben to run him just once carrying the hundred and seventy. We've got to scare the whole racing world to death."

  "I'll persuade him," I promised.