The Black Stallion

track."
    George snorted, "Humph."
    Tom said, looking at his colt, "If I just let him out once, just once, they'd all know."
    But he never did. At one fair after another, race after race, he rated Bonfire carefully behind the others, trailing the field until near the end of the race when he made his move. And, as in their first race at the Washington Fair, it was these sprints that people talked about long after Bonfire had gone. Yet their talk of the blood bay colt's blinding sprints that "pick you up and set you afire even though you're sitting in the grandstand" stayed within the small-fair circuit and never reached the outer world.
    "It's the way Jimmy wants us to do it," George said. "We're not rushin' him at all."
    And Tom realized as the season progressed the value of Jimmy's orders. Bonfire was stronger than ever, his legs and body were as hard as steel and never was there any sign of lameness or stiffness. Moreover, the colt knew what racing was all about now. He and Tom had learned quickly.
    Only twice did Bonfire lose a race, and then only because Tom was outsmarted by the older drivers and couldn't get through in time to win. At every fair except one, the colt raced against aged horses, the same as at Washington. The Dayton Fair had a race solely for two-year-old colts and Tom and Bonfire had the easiest time of all, winning in 2:19.
    The purse money won accumulated and George took care of it.
    "Eleven races an' nine hundred dollars," he said, adding it up. "Jimmy never had it this good. And Tom, think what it would be if we were racin' for more'n two- and three-hundred-dollar purses divided up among the first four horses! But no sense thinkin' about that," he added soberly. "Purses never have been more an' never will be in this circuit."
    From the money won, they deducted their expenses and sent the rest home to Jimmy Creech. They figured that Jimmy should feel a lot better having this money coming in to pay his bills. But he didn't; his letters were few and far between and his handwriting, a weak scrawl difficult to read, was that of a sick man. Dr. Morton's letters to them didn't help either, for he wrote that "Jimmy's condition is the same, but I'm surprised that he isn't in better spirits since Bonfire is doing so well."
    George said, "I figure he's still worried about payin' the doc. Jimmy didn't have no idea he'd be sick this long."
    Tom and George worried about Jimmy even more as they moved farther and farther away from Coronet, going eastward where the fairs were larger and the purses a little better.
    It was early September when they arrived at the York Fair. Reading and Uncle Wilmer's farm were less than a hundred miles to the north and east. They would be at the Reading Fair in a week's time and Uncle Wilmer and Aunt Emma were expecting them. Eagerly Tom looked forward to seeing them and the Queen again; he knew too how much his uncle wanted to see Bonfire go.
    They found the York Fair to be as large as the fair at Reading; there was a great cement grandstand and bleachers, and there were just as many people milling about the exhibit buildings and stables.
    "Just look at this purse we're racin' for today," George said excitedly. "Six hundred and fifty dollars! Let's see now. That's—" He figured a moment, then went on, "Three hundred and twenty-five bucks to the winner! If we'd known the purses were going to be that big, Tom, we woulda come here earlier in the week. Here it is the last day of the races."
    "There's Reading ahead of us," Tom reminded him. "The purses will be just as large there."
    The boy turned to look down the long row of stables. He didn't know any of the men here, but they were no different from all the others he'd met and raced against at the fairs. Hardened, well-lined old faces—the Jimmy Creeches of this sport. There were no big stables, no raceway drivers, for the purse money, while good, could not be compared with that given at the night raceways. They had to work harder at the fairs for their money, Tom thought, for each race meant driving two and sometimes three heats, while at the raceways they went what they called a "dash," which simply meant just one race of a mile with no heats.
    That was another thing Jimmy Creech had against the raceways. He didn't like those "dashes." He believed a horse should have stamina and endurance as well as speed, and how much he had of both could be decided only by racing in heats—the way it always had been done.
    Some people