The Hunt

discouraged by her lack of response that he stopped going to the club.

The approaching winter became the winter of his discontent. It was a mild winter and Keegan spent most of it in the south of France in a small town called Grenois. He had decided to winter one of his racehorses there, to get her ready for the summer season at Longchamp. The mare had shown promise on the American tracks as a two- year-old, now Keegan wanted to see what she would do on the European circuit. Keegan’s trainer was Alouise Jacquette, Al Jack for short, from Larose in the Delta country of Louisiana. The Delta was known for quarterhorse racing, so named because the horses are flagged off and run wide-open down a quarter-mile straight track. After ten years, Al Jack graduated to thoroughbred racing where he became known as a keen judge of championship horses and a superb trainer. He was six feet two inches tall and had the posture of a West Point cadet. He dressed in a suit, vest, tie and Panama hat at all times, even when he was in the training ring with the horses. Al Jack was a man who believed that racing was a gentleman’s game and he dressed accordingly.

“When they speak of mixed blood ,“ he would tell you proudly, “they speak of Al Jack. I am one-quarter Cherokee Indian, two-quarters Cajun and one-quarter Negro, and the only one who knows more about horses than Al Jack is God himself.”

When he was working, Al Jack had little to say. He would express approval or disapproval by the tone of his chuckles. Al Jack was a man who chuckled all the time. If he told you the world was about to end he would chuckle while he gave you the bad news. After a while Keegan learned to tell which were good news chuckles and which were bad news chuckles. There was also a disaster chuckle but Keegan had only heard it once, when Al jack discovered they did not have crawfish in France. Luckily, he soon discovered that snails were a reasonable substitute and became addicted to escargots. So they were up at dawn every day, working out the horses until late afternoon when they would walk to the village and stuff themselves on escargots, washing it down with Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

“Got us a winner, mon ami,” Al Jack would say in his Cajun patois. “This lady goin’ take the purse every time she go outa that gate.”

“If she doesn’t, it’s off to the glue factory with her,” Keegan would answer and they would laugh and order more snails.

“You know my dream, Kee? My dream is that I save up enough money to buy her first foal when she retires.”

“You got it, Al. Call it a bonus. When she starts losing her speed, we’ll breed her.”

“That’s a damn generous thing t’do, Kee, but I do believe I’d feel better paying for the pony.”

“We’ll talk about it later.”

It was a pleasant enough time, the days filled with hard work, horse talk and good food, but he could not get the singer out of his mind. He never talked about her but she had his heart in her hand and was never far from his thoughts. He and Bert spent the Christmas holiday in Spain trout fishing, then Rudman was off to Ethiopia for a month to report on the country many believed would be Mussolini’s first conquest, his dispatches appearing almost daily on the front page of the Trib. From there it was on to Spain for two months to report on the civil war everyone felt was imminent. Rudman’s style continued to become more formal, more subjective, tougher. With each dispatch he seemed to be more masterful at interpreting the volatile politics of Europe for his readers. His fixation on Hitler, the Nazi movement and the advent of fascism in Germany, Italy and Spain earned him a growing reputation as one of Europe’s most respected correspondents. Keegan spent a month skiing in the Swiss Alps after Rudman left, spent a few weeks in Berlin, avoiding the Kit Kat and doing the usual party rounds, frequently bumping into the little hunchback, Vierhaus, Hitler’s personal gossip, who was always pleasant to the point of obsequiousness. Then Keegan returned to France.

In early March, Keegan and Al Jack moved to Deauville, where they drove the few miles to the beach every morning to let the filly run in the surf, strengthening her legs and building her endurance for the longer European tracks. Keegan followed his friend’s career avidly and was delighted when Rudman finally returned to Paris and came to visit them.

“She learnin’ to run backwards,” Al Jack said proudly, since most of the European races were run from right to left, the opposite direction from the way Al Jack had trained her in the states.

“So, tell me about it,” Keegan asked Rudman as they sat in the dunes watching Al Jack put the mare through her paces. “What’s Ethiopia like?”

“Hot, dismal, dirty, dry, sand everywhere—in your hair, your eyes, your coffee.”

“Is there going to be a war?”

Rudman nodded emphatically. “Within a year the Lion of Judah will be in an Italian cage.”

“That’s depressing. How about Spain? How are the ladies?”

“You know the type. They don’t get insulted when you invite them home and they don’t get mad when you don’t invite them to stay for breakfast. Spain’s very depressing. Civil war’s just around the corner. It’s going to be brutal.”

“That’s the way war is, Bert.”

“I don’t mean that way. Listen Kee, I saw an airfield outside of Madrid with a couple of dozen Heinkel bombers parked in hangars. The Loyalists are all using German weapons. Wait and see, Spain’s going to turn into Hitler’s personal testing ground.”

“You’re getting to be quite the political oracle, aren’t you, pal?”

“Trying.”

“We got some fine horse there, boss,” Al jack said, climbing up the dune and standing ramrod straight in his Sunday finest, his cap pulled down to his eyebrows, as Keegan and Rudman watched Rave On romp in the surf, her breath steaming from flared nostrils as she bucked and jumped in the chilly water.

In mid-April they were ready to move on to Paris where she was stabled at Longchamp, perhaps the most elegant racetrack in the world. Most of the tracks—Chantilly, St. Cloud de Maisons, Evry and Longchamp—were within forty miles of Paris. The plan was to run her in La Coupe de Maisons, then on to Chantilly for the French Derby and after that to Longchamp for the opening of the season in May, building up to the prestigious Grand Prix de Paris in June and the big one, L ‘Arc de Triomphe, in September.

Once they had Rave On settled at the stables in Paris, Keegan joined Rudman in Berlin.