The Black Stallion

voices. "I'll drive you over to the fair just as early as you want to pick up your truck and Symbol; then we can come back here for Tom and the mare an' colt," Uncle Wilmer said.
    "All right," George said, "if it won't be too much trouble."
    "Trouble?" Aunt Emma asked. "It won't be no trouble at all."
    A little later Tom finished his packing. He was closing the lid of his suitcase when the stairs creaked and Uncle Wilmer appeared at the head of the stairs.
    "Just finished," Tom said, and then he noticed the book and magazines his uncle was carrying.
    "You forgot these," Uncle Wilmer said.
    Shaking his head, Tom said, "They're yours. I'm leaving them for you."
    "You take them." But Uncle Wilmer still held the books and magazines close.
    "I want you to have them," Tom insisted. "I have too much now to carry."
    Uncle Wilmer turned back to the stairs. "All right," he said. "I'll keep them for you, if you got too much already." As he reached the top step, he turned again to Tom. "You take good care of that colt, Tom."
    "I will, Uncle Wilmer."
    "An' you write to me, mind you, same as you did to Jimmy. I'll want to know, all right."
    His uncle was descending the stairs when Tom called out, "Uncle Wilmer—"
    "Heh?"
    "I had such a good summer with you."
    "Heh?"
    "
I
said I had such a good summer with you and Aunt Emma
!" Tom shouted.
    Uncle Wilmer started down the stairs again, and without turning around he said, "It was good havin' you, Tom." Three more steps, then he stopped and looked back at the boy. "And Tom—"
    "Yes, Uncle Wilmer?"
    "You git Jimmy to race the colt at Reading Fair, won't you? I'd sure like to see him race, all right. I sure would."
    "I'll get him to Reading some way," Tom said. "I want you to see him, too. And it won't be long, Uncle Wilmer. He'll be here before you know it. Time passes fast with a colt like that. And I'll let you know every week how he's doing until you see him for yourself."

The Weanling
10
    For Tom, it was difficult getting used to Coronet again. As he walked from his home in the small mining town across fields studded with high, iron frames of wells that had plumbed the earth in search of natural gas years ago and now were forsaken for surface coal mining, he thought of his uncle's farm with its acres of green, unravaged fields. And he missed it all very much for a while. But his days and weeks were filled with activity, so it wasn't very long before he had forgotten the farm.
    The Queen and her colt were, of course, stabled in Jimmy's shed at the track. Every morning before school, Tom would leave his home early enough to go to the stables; there he would help George clean the stalls and feed and water Symbol, the Queen and the colt. Later in the afternoon he would return to play with the colt in the dirt paddock in back of the long sheds. He saw Jimmy Creech only on Saturdays, for Jimmy was taking it easy now that the season was over. Jimmy jogged Symbol'.only every other day, for the aged horse needed little work to keep in condition. And there wasn't much to do with the colt except to continue leading him about the paddock and handling him; and Tom took care of that.
    "We'll let him nurse the mare until the middle of December," Jimmy told Tom. "That'll be long enough, just about six months. I don't like to keep a colt on a mare longer'n that. Takes too much out of the mare, an' doesn't do the colt any good; he becomes too dependent on her. Besides, the colt is eating enough oats and hay now to keep him goin' without the mare's milk. He's growing every day, Tom, isn't he?"
    And whether it was Jimmy's enthusiasm for the colt or the regular, non-hectic life he led now, the man's health improved considerably. Jimmy put a little weight on his small bones; he had good color in his face and his eyes were bright; there was no more stomach trouble, and as October and November passed and December came, George and Tom forgot that Jimmy had ever been sick.
    The first snow fell in the middle of December and although it was only a light fall, Jimmy had Symbol's shoes changed, putting edged shoes on him, which would hold better on the ice-spotted track. The snow made Tom think of Christmas and in his next letter to Uncle Wilmer he included the subscription to
Hoof Beats
magazine, which he had ordered for him. Uncle Wilmer wrote occasionally, but only to ask for more pictures of the colt and when Jimmy was sending the mare to him.
    The Queen would leave for the farm any day, so Tom spent more