Read Online Son of the Black Stallion by Walter Farley - Free Book Online Page A

when he had been riding. And the one which Alec had worn when he had ridden the Black in the match race at Chicago. Finally Alec glanced at the empty wall on the other side of his bed. He was saving that wall for the colt, for pictures of him, for his
own
jockey cap … his
own
colors. His silks would be black, coal black … the color of the great stallion and now his son. Somehow he had known Satan would be black. Alec thought of the white diamond in the center of the colt’s forehead. Maybe he’d add a white diamond to his colors, a white diamond on the right side of his shirt.
    Alec’s gaze left the wall and returned to the ceiling. Perhaps, he thought, he was getting ahead of himself. Perhaps the colt would never have the speed of the Black. Or they might have trouble with him. Maybeeverything wouldn’t turn out the way he and Henry thought. Maybe the bad beginning was just an indication of much worse to come. And how well he remembered the words Henry had uttered angrily in the barn, as the colt had attempted to savage old Napoleon: “
It’s going to be like trying to raise the devil himself.…
” Could it be that Henry actually felt that way about Satan? Alec wondered about it as he lay there. That, and other things. How would his father react when he asked him to register the horse in his name? What would his father say when he told him he didn’t want to go back to school? Tomorrow, he decided, would be a better time to talk to him than tonight. Tomorrow, Saturday, when his father didn’t have to go to work, and might not have such a vivid recollection of all that had happened today. Tomorrow …
    Alec didn’t know how long he had lain there when he heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. He recognized them as his father’s. They were steady and quick, as compared to his mother’s soft, faltering ones.
    He heard his father reach the top of the stairs, walk toward his own room, hesitate, go on again, and then stop. It was still enough for Alec to hear the crickets chirping in the field across the street; then he heard the closing of the refrigerator door in the kitchen and the sound of his mother moving about downstairs.
    His father’s footsteps reached him again; this time they were coming toward his room! They came to a stop before his half-open door.
    “You up, Alec?”
    “Yes, Dad.” Alec rose to a sitting position on thebed as his father entered the room, switching on the light.
    “Just thinking?” his father asked.
    Nodding, Alec watched his father’s tall frame as the older man walked slowly over to the window and, bending, looked out. Then straightening again, he turned and looked about the room, glancing over the banners, the pictures, and the soiled jockey cap, finally letting his eyes come to rest on Alec. “What are you and Henry up to?” he asked quietly.
    It had come much too fast and unexpectedly for Alec. He looked down; but quickly, as though ashamed of his faltering gaze, he looked his father in the eyes again. “We want to race the colt,” he replied, “… eventually.” And the sound of his own voice seemed strange to him.
    “Thought it might be something like that,” Alec heard his father say slowly.
    He wished that he knew his father better … wished that he could read his eyes as well as he could Henry’s. It would have helped now.
    His father walked over to the bed, sat down beside him, and asked, “Do you think he’ll have the Black’s speed?”
    More startled than ever, Alec looked at him. His father’s face was still tense, his eyes somber. Yet his voice had been almost casual. “I—I think … hope so, Dad,” he replied unsteadily.
    Bending down, his father picked off a long thread from the legs of his brown trousers. “I read somewhere that most Arabian horses, while long on endurance,were short on speed. And I’ve heard, too, that they’ve been very much outbred by the American and English thoroughbred.”
    “Have you forgotten the