The Black Stallion

the same thing. They were worried and wondering when and how Tom would come up to them; they knew the blood bay colt would come. Coming off the turn and going into the back-stretch, they left their single-line formation as though to take up as much of the track as possible to prevent Tom's breaking through with Bonfire.
    But the track was wide and Tom knew there'd be plenty of room to get by with his colt when he chose to use it. Just now he was content to let them worry and wonder about him.
    They went the first lap of the track, the drivers ahead looking back at Tom constantly. They'd wanted him to make a move long since, for their straggling positions halfway across the track meant a longer distance for their horses to go. Only Sam Kossler and Tom were taking the short distance around.
    They went into the first turn again and Tom heard George yell, "Good, Tom!"
    Bonfire was getting impatient; he didn't pull, but Tom could sense how he felt by the movements in mouth and body. Tom knew that the pace Sam Kossler was setting in front was easy on the colt. It would mean about a 2:20 mile for him, and that was just what Jimmy wanted for Bonfire this early in the season. Tom touched the lines. Bonfire was going to win this time.
    And coming off the turn, entering the backstretch of the last lap, it happened. Later, the people who saw it found it difficult to explain exactly what they saw and felt. The nearest they could come was that the colt's speed coming down the stretch and past the others set them afire; never had they seen such sudden power and breath-taking speed. For them, it was like being picked up and carried with him in his almost frightening, whirlwind flight to the finish. Sam Kossler said too that he'd never seen a colt turn on such speed so fast and for so long. Maybe one or two older horses during all the years he'd been racing, but never a two-year-old colt.
    Bonfire didn't come out for the third heat. It was to have been a race between Sam Kossler's chestnut gelding and the colt, for each had won a heat, to decide which horse would be the winner. Tom and George had gone to the judges' stand and had conceded the race to Sam Kossler, claiming that another mile would be too much for the colt this early in the season.
    They were racing Bonfire as Jimmy Creech would have raced him.
    "So we get second money instead of first, Tom," George said, when they returned to the stable. "Jimmy said not to push the colt just to make money for him. We're off now, Tom. And we're twenty-five dollars to the good."
    But Tom didn't hear George, for he was in the stall with his colt, watching him while he ate his bran mash. He wasn't thinking of the money won or of Jimmy Creech. He was thinking only of his colt and the speed he'd shown that last time around. He and Bonfire had started their careers together, and the first race was usually the toughest. Next was the Indiana County Fair—and with his colt he looked forward to it eagerly.

Racing the Fair Circuit
17
    Unless a person was a regular reader of the weekly racing publications which devoted some of their space to the results at the smaller fairs, or unless he had attended the Pennsylvania fairs at Indiana, Clearfield, Bedford, Dayton, Mercer and Port Royal during the months of July and August, he never would have known of a blood bay colt by the name of Bonfire. For Tom Messenger never allowed his colt to go faster than a 2:19 mile. And there was nothing exceptional in a two-year-old racing in that time, especially when this was the year of such top ones as Princess Guy and Silver Knight.
    The weekly racing publications gave a large portion of their space to summaries of races won by Miss Elsie Topper's black filly, Princess Guy, at the Ohio fairs as she broke one track record after another in amazing times ranging from 2:09 to 2:04. Just as much space was given to the startling speed being displayed by Silver Knight as he improved with each successive night race at the Roosevelt Raceway and brought his record down to 2:05.
    Hoof Beats
was published monthly, and regularly there would be an article discussing "the extreme speed of Silver Knight and Princess Guy." The magazine hoped that "Miss Elsie Topper and the amateur sportsman, Phillip Cox, would see fit to race their exceptional filly and colt against each other before the season ended… as we feel certain that such a race would lower Titan Hanover's world record of 2:03
Va
for two-year-olds on a half-mile