Man O'War (40 page)

“That's for sure,” the jockey said.

Danny Ryan glanced around the room, noting the water basins, low and just the right height for the little men. At the
far end was a recreation lounge, where some of the boys were playing Ping-Pong and pool while awaiting the call for their races. There were bunks and dressing rooms and showers and steam rooms … everything to make the jockeys comfortable and, like everything else, a far cry from the old days.

He walked on.
How much he wished he'd been born small … even now, after all these years.

There was a large crowd waiting for the elevator and he joined them, nodding and smiling.

“It turned out to be a fine day after all, Ed,” he said to an old friend.

“Yes, I was afraid the sun wouldn't make it,” the other answered. “Can't take the cold like I used to.”

Danny said, “Me, too.” Ed was about his own age. Ed had seen Man o' War. “It
had
to shine today,” he added in a low voice. He didn't want the others to overhear. They wouldn't have understood.

“I suppose so. But it never mattered to
him
what kind of a day it was, Danny. He always ran the same way, hot, cold, muddy, or dry. He was a big horse, all right.”

“He sure was. They don't come like him anymore. They never did. They never will. Everything about him was
big.
”

“Omaha and Sun Beau were bigger in size,” the other reminded him.

“Taller, you mean, and not so muscled in chest and shoulders.”

“But Roseben was.”

“Yeah, but Roseben didn't have his large and powerful quarters,” Danny answered.

“Whopper did.”

“But not his stride. No other horse ever covered twenty-nine feet in one leap.”

“No, and I guess they never will,” the other admitted. “He
had the best of everything and in perfect proportion. It'll be a long time …”

“It'll be never,” Danny said louder than he'd meant to.

A young reporter standing behind them said, “You old-timers sure all sound alike today. But just
what
did Man o' War ever beat?” he needled.

Danny didn't turn around. “Golden Broom, Upset, Blazes, John P. Grier, Wildair, Paul Jones, On Watch, and Donnacona,” he answered, “… all top horses that would have been champions any year but his.”

“But he was never thoroughly tried,” the young man persisted. “He never raced after three, so he never proved himself as a handicap horse.”

Danny felt the hot blood flushing his face, but still he didn't turn and face the young man behind him. “Man o' War didn't have to prove himself any further,” he answered evenly. “He carried more weight at two than most horses carry at three, and at three he carried higher weights than any older horse has ever been asked to race with. Don't you ever read the record books?”

There was complete silence behind him. He had known such arguments before, often from sportswriters who, even though young in years, should have known better. He was resigned to it, realizing that such comparisons of today's “super horses” with Man o' War would never end. If they had only
seen
him!

The elevator doors opened and Danny went inside the car with the others. A few jockeys came running up, too, crowding into the large cage. Quietly, the elevator left the ground floor and began rising.

“Upsy-daisy,” one of the jockeys said, his small body lost in the center of the packed throng. “We're leavin' the gate.”

“Then don't lose your whip like you usually do,” a photographer said. “You'll need it to get out.”

“Imagine,” the jockey went on, “a track providin' us with a rooftop penthouse to watch the races from. That's class, brother.”

“Maybe they expect you guys to learn somethin',” the other answered.

“Wise guy,” the little man muttered.

They rose to the topmost tier of the great stands, the height of a ten-story building, before the doors opened. Danny didn't push his way out. He was in no mood to hurry. There was still plenty of time before the horses came onto the track for the running of the first Man o' War Handicap.

He found he was not alone; the young reporter had waited, too, for the others to leave. “Another thing, Danny,” the fellow said eagerly. “I know I haven't been around as long as you and maybe I'm stepping on your toes, but Man o' War seems like something Hollywood dreamed up. He couldn't have been as good as you old-timers say.”

“He was no Hollywood horse,” Danny said patiently. “Come to think of it, what he did was not in the Hollywood tradition of an exciting racehorse at all. He had things too much his own way. He made every race look easy at any weight, any odds. He was exciting only if you
saw
him do it.”

Danny waited for the younger man to leave the elevator, then followed him down the corridor. Together they entered a door marked
PRESS
. There was nothing within to obstruct the view, and for a moment Danny's eyes swept over the vastness of open space that stretched before him.

The mile and one-eighth track with its dun-colored surface was directly below. Inside the main oval was the mile turf strip, and inside that was the seven-furlong steeplechase course.
All
kinds of courses for all kind of horses, that was New Aqueduct
, Danny mused. And, as if that wasn't enough for the spectators, two blue-water ponds decorated the infield.

His eyes traveled beyond the sprawling track to the stable area with its modernistic barns and dormitories for the grooms. That, too, was a far cry from the old Aqueduct he and Man o' War had known so well.

He watched a jet airliner take off from Idlewild Airport a few miles in the distance, following its flight until it disappeared over the jagged New York skyline. Only then did his gaze return to the track below, and he muttered aloud, “It's the same old clay base, anyway.”

The young reporter was still standing nearby, and he said, “You mean they put a new surface on the track without changing the base?”

“Yeah, it's the same old base all right,” Danny said. “Just as Man o' War's hoofs knew it, and those of Equipoise, Exterminator, and Domino, going all the way back to 1894.”

“That's interesting,” the young man said, making a note of it on a piece of paper.

“It's a fast track, they say,” the young man went on.

“Naturally,” Danny said, his eyes following the takeoff of still another jet airliner from the huge airport. “Like everything else these days,” he added. He wondered if the arrival and departure of so many planes bothered the horses and decided it did not. They, too, had adjusted to the new era.

Then he saw the familiar deep blue of Rockaway Inlet flowing in from the Atlantic Ocean, while above it fluttered hundreds of seagulls. There were some things that would never change. Mother Nature was here to stay.

“They've got a three-inch cushion of dirt and sand out there, sifted and filtered so it's fast without being abrasive to
horses' hoofs,” the young man said, as if eager to impress.

“I know,” Danny said. “The surface is as fast as they could make it.” What would Man o' War have done on a track like that? he wondered. What records would he have set with such an opportunity? All track surfaces were now almost two seconds faster to the mile than in the days his hoofs had known them. And yet most of his records still hung high,
records he had made without even being allowed to extend himself!

Danny turned to the younger man beside him. How could this fellow, how could
anybody
talk about their Whirlaways and Citations, their Nashuas and Native Dancers, being a “second Man o' War”?

Never would there be another like him! Never, until a champion came along who could outsprint the sprinters, outstay the stayers, carry the highest weight ever put on a horse's back, and win on every kind of track! And while doing it, such a champion must break record after record. After that he must sire champion colts and fillies and broodmares that would produce still more champions. Only then could a horse be called “a second Man o' War”!

Danny moved on through the crowded room on top of the stands, nodding to many. But his thoughts were far afield. Someone bumped into him, and he heard a quick apology, “Sorry, Danny. But I can't seem to find a pencil sharpener anyplace. Imagine a $33,000,000 joint like this with no pencil sharpener!”

Danny smiled. “Yeah, how about that,” he said, relieved to have found something missing at this fantastic racing plant. “It'll never make it.”

He looked far below and saw that the horses were ready to step onto the track. George Seuffert's band had stopped playing. The flags on the infield pole were barely moving, so the
wind had died. The sun was out. All was as it should be for the first Man o' War Handicap.

A red-coated bugler, wearing shiny black boots and a black hunting cap, stood in the middle of the track. He placed a four-foot-long coach horn to his lips and for a few seconds held it there without blowing. The sun glistened on the golden horn and finally the music came forth, sounding the call to the post.

Danny shivered. The call would never change. It meant the same now as it always had, and he reacted to it the same way. He watched the horses leave the paddock. There were a couple of flighty ones trying to throw their riders. Everybody was tense. Everybody was waiting. New Aqueduct might be a racing Utopia, but only fine-blooded horses could make it a success. No modern facilities, no glistening pomp, could change things from the way it had to be. The grueling test of speed and stamina was all that really mattered to the eighty thousand people this new track could hold.

Danny's heart beat faster as he watched the horses parade. Was there among them just one who might have stayed within the shadow of Man o' War? No, none of these, he decided. Not today or tomorrow or any of the days to come. Not for him.

His eyes grew dim as he moved past clicking typewriters and teletype machines. Few men paid any attention to him, for they were watching the post parade and listening to the introductions coming over the public address system.

He sat down in a chair and drew his own typewriter toward him. The man next to him said, “Pity we still have to pound out our own stuff, Danny. You'd think that with all the modern machines they've got around here …”

Danny wasn't listening. He saw only a fiery phantom and heard the roar of a multitudinous throng of another day. The
years that had passed were many and other champions had come and gone. But Man o' War was the one they should always remember.

The shadows of the stands lengthened across the track, and the breeze blowing off the ocean became colder. Danny put a sheet of paper in his typewriter and stared at it. He never expected to see another Man o' War in his time. But the very young, might they not one day see
his
return? They had more time to wait and hope and dream. Perhaps if he helped them a little by telling them of the colt he had known so long ago.… Perhaps … yes, just perhaps, history might repeat itself.

Danny Ryan began typing, not for his newspaper, but for all boys and girls who might read his story of Man o' War.

Walter Farley's love for horses began when he was a small boy living in Syracuse, New York, and continued as he grew up in New York City, where his family moved. Unlike most city children, he was able to fulfill this love through an uncle who was a professional horseman. Young Walter spent much of his time with this uncle, learning about the different kinds of horse training and the people associated with each.

Walter Farley began to write his first book,
The Black Stallion
, while he was a student at Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High School and Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania. He finished it and had it published in 1941 while he was still an undergraduate at Columbia University.

The appearance of
The Black Stallion
brought such an enthusiastic response from young readers that Mr. Farley went on to create more stories about the Black, and about other horses as well. In his life he wrote a total of thirty-four books, including
Man O'War
, the story of America's greatest Thoroughbred, and two photographic storybooks based on the two Black Stallion movies. His books have been enormously popular in the United States and have been published in twenty-one foreign countries.

Mr. Farley and his wife, Rosemary, had four children, whom they raised on a farm in Pennsylvania and in a beach house in Florida. Horses, dogs, and cats were always a part of the household.

In 1989 Mr. Farley was honored by his hometown library in Venice, Florida, which established the Walter Farley Literary Landmark in its children's wing. Mr. Farley died in October 1989, shortly before the publication of
The Young Black Stallion
, the twenty-first book in the Black Stallion series.