The Black Stallion

Once more Symbol tried to get away, and again Tom was able to stop him.
    When Tom brought Symbol back to the shed, Jimmy Creech said, "You did much better'n I expected, Tom." Then, taking the boy's hands in his own, he turned the palms upward and slapped them lightly. "From what I saw you might have the kind of hands most of us give our eye-teeth for; and you'd be the luckiest kid in the world. You never acquire the feeling in the hands that I'm talkin' about. You're born with that kind, and very few are lucky enough to have them." His eyes left Tom's hands and traveled to his face. "I'm not saying you have them—so don't get all excited. But I know I couldn't have kept Symbol down to the speed you were goin' without keeping a good hold on him all the time. You didn't have to do that. You touched him at the right time. He knew you had him outguessed; that much I know."
    George reached for Symbol's bridle. "Don't build him up so much, Jimmy," he said. "Might be different next time."
    "Yeah," Jimmy replied, "maybe it will. But what I saw looked good."
    Tom followed them into the shed, wondering why Jimmy and George were making so much fuss just because he could tell through the lines exactly what Symbol was going to do. It seemed that anyone should be able to do that; yet Jimmy said
he
couldn't—and that was most surprising of all.
    Tom looked forward to the following Saturday and possibly driving again until Jimmy Creech told him that he had made arrangements to send the Queen that day to Uncle Wilmer. He stopped looking forward to Saturday then.
    But the day came, and it found him standing quietly beside the Queen while Jimmy blanketed her dark-brown body and got her ready to be loaded into the van which waited just outside the door. Tom was glad that it was a closed van, for it was very cold that morning. He was glad, too, that the driver was the same man who had taken the Queen to the farm last summer; Tom could depend upon him to take it easy with the Queen.
    While Jimmy hooked the straps of the blanket about the Queen, her colt kept close to her side.
    "They both know somethin's up," George said, leaving the stall.
    "Yeah," Jimmy replied, "they know, all right. 'Specially the Queen; the blanket tells her she's going to move."
    Tom was silent, standing close to the mare and colt. He thought he had become reconciled to the Queen's going, but it was much more difficult now that the time was here.
    Running his hands through the short black mane of the colt, he said, "It's going to be all right, boy." Then he turned to Jimmy. "He
will
be all right, won't he?"
    "He'll miss her today and tomorrow, and the mare will miss him. But in two days they'll have forgotten each other. That's the way it goes, Tom."
    "You're sure, Jimmy?"
    "I'm not sure about anything, Tom," Jimmy said quietly. "But you'll find that the colt will settle down in two days. You'll see for yourself. It's all a part of growing up," he added when he met the boy's troubled eyes. "The Queen will be better off at the farm, as we both know, and the colt belongs here. Each has a separate life from now on."
    Tom nodded. "You're right, Jimmy. I know that."
    They took the Queen from the stall, closing the door between her and her colt. She nickered several times but obediently followed Jimmy. "You stay with him, Tom," the man said. "He won't like being left alone and I don't want him to hurt himself. George and I won't have any trouble loading the mare."
    They went out the shed doors and Tom was alone with his colt, whose short, shrill neighs came frequently as he moved back and forth in the large stall, his ears pricked and eyes large and startled. Tom went inside the stall to comfort him, but the colt ignored him.
    Outside the shed there were a few neighs from the Queen, then came the sound of her hoofs on the wooden ramp leading into the van. Tom was glad he wasn't out there. He heard the doors close and the Queen's neigh again, now muffled. The van's motor was started.
    Frantically the colt moved about the stall, his shrill cries never ending. Tom stood beside the half-door of the stall, wanting to comfort him but knowing he could not take the Queen's place. Suddenly the colt moved quickly to the door and his forelegs rose in an attempt to get over. Tom's arm went beneath the hard body in time to stop him, then held him until he was able to pull the struggling legs from the door. When he had him down once more, Tom hurriedly closed the wire-mesh screen