“He is hill of it,” Callahan said. “A real Thoroughbred feeling frisky. Is that a sight?”
I allowed as how it was a sight.
“Thoroughbreds are trained to breakfast out of the gate and open up and run quickly and flat away to
the finish line, save up a little extra and put it on hard near the end, like a swimmer doing the two
twenty,” Callahan said. “This horse wants to go, so they have to calm him down a bit. Otherwise he
will be too brash and spooky when the rider is up.
So they were not running hard and instead were trotting in and out of the cotton wads of fog, working
out the early morning kinks. When they brought him in, he made one more half-hearted effort to bite
the outrider and then, hopping slightly sideways, he kicked his heels a couple of times and settled
down. The trainer led him to the tie-up to be saddled.
Disaway was a fine-looking animal with very strong front legs and a sweat-shiny chest, hard as
concrete. The muscles were quivering and ready. Callahan walked close and stroked first one foreleg,
then the other, then strolled ba.ck to the rail.
No comment.
The owner was a short, heavy man in a polo shirt with a stopwatch clutched in a fat fist and binoculars
dangling around his neck. His name was Thibideau. He stood with his back to the jockey, chewing his
lip. When he spoke, his voice was harsh and sounded like it was trapped deep in his throat.
“Okay,” he said, without turning around or looking at the rider, “let?s see what he can do. You open
him up at the three-quarter post.”
The exercise rider looked a little surprised and then said, “The three-quarter, yes, sir.”
They threw the saddle over the gelding?s back, all the time talking to him and gentling him, and got
ready to let him out.
“All these characters are interested now,” Callahan said. “The track handicappers, the owners, the
trainers, the railbirds—all standing by to see just how much horse he is today.”
The exercise rider led the gelding out onto the track, lined him up, and then, standing straight up in
the stirrups and leaning far over the horse?s mane, egged him on until he stretched out his long legs
and took off down the track into the fog. Half a dozen stopwatches clicked in unison somewhere in
the mist.
I could hear him coming long before he burst through the haze, snorting like an engine, his hoofs
shaking the earth underfoot. Then, pow! he came out of it and thundered past us, his head up and his
mane waving like a flag. The watches clicked again. Callahan looked at the chronograph on his wrist.
Still no comment.
“Let?s get some breakfast,” he said. “The jockeys?ll be showing up about now.”
