Read Online Gargantuan by Maggie Estep - Free Book Online

lose my stirrups and even that didn’t do it. I waited till we were clear of other horses and fell off. The horse, relieved of his rider, crossed the finish line first by ten lengths and looked proud afterward. I felt sick. And I wasn’t the same after that.
    When Tony had approached me about fudging my ride on a brave little claiming mare two weeks earlier, I’d refused. Tony had said I’d regret it, but I hadn’t taken the threat very seriously. The guy was crooked but I didn’t think he was a murderer. Now, I wasn’t sure. As Sal and I walked by, the small, ugly man looked at me and sneered. Sal didn’t notice. We kept walking.
    We reached the rail of the track where the wind was gathering strength, chilling me so much I could feel my toes curling inside my boots. I was so stiff I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to ride, but once Sophie, the groom who was handling Jack Valentine, gave me a leg up, all the physical unpleasantness disappeared.
    Jack was a sweetheart of a horse. He had trouble staying sound and, even though he was just starting to really get the hang of racing, he probably wouldn’t have a long career. Jack was an honest horse though and always gave me as much as he had. This morning that proved to be a lot. I guess that Jack, like all the rest of us, hadhad enough with being cooped up. As I asked him to move from a trot to a comfortable canter, he got excited, bucked, squealed, and shook his head, which was pretty uncharacteristic for this horse. He was probably just feeling good though. Like me.
    I had a pretty tight hold on Jack’s mouth and he was paying attention to me, arching his neck, focusing. I pulled my first pair of goggles down over my eyes then asked him for a slow gallop. The track didn’t feel good. It was cold and still partly frozen, quickly turning to mud that was flying up into Jack’s eyes and plastering my goggles and vest. But Jack was going nicely. I liked the gelding and he liked me. We were galloping slowly but it still felt like flying.
    When we finished, I brought Jack down to a walk along the rail and looked over and saw Henry beaming, the first smile I’d seen out of him since the day Ballistic won us a race.
    Sal didn’t look nearly so pleased and, when I handed Jack off to Sophie, the big man cornered me.
    “I don’t like it,” he scowled.
    “What’s that, Sal?”
    “You’re vulnerable out there.”
    “I’m always vulnerable out there.”
    “You know what I mean,” Sal frowned.
    “Sal, it’s okay. I appreciate your looking out for me. But I gotta do my job.”
    Sal scowled at me a few seconds longer, then shrugged.
    And, a short while later, I was wondering if he was onto something.
    It was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen happen on the track.
    There were about fifteen or so of us out there. I was on a filly named Heroism, a two-year-old who wouldn’t start racing for another few months. She was a handful and I couldn’t get a good feel for her. Henry had me working her with two older horses. He was so short on help he had Pepe, the hotwalker—who’d only just been licensed—riding a battle-weary gelding named Fierce Fred. Larry, a talented Peruvian kid, was on Whippersnapper, an allowancemare I’d ridden once or twice. The two older horses were going to teach my little filly what’s what.
    We all three had red-and-blue covers on our crash helmets so it’s possible we were indistinguishable. We were hand galloping in tandem, the three horses nose to nose, getting close to full speed when we heard shouting coming from behind us.
    Next thing I knew, a horse was trying to wedge in between Larry and me. It all happened very quickly—which was a blessing, I don’t think any of us had enough time to panic. As horse and rider shoved between us, bumping both our mounts, Larry tumbled off, over the rail. Somewhere in the blur of what happened next, I got one brief look at the interfering rider and saw he was wearing a
ski mask
.
    Both Pepe and I