Willow King Read online

  Katie nodded and gathered her reins. King had a nervous edge to him this morning. He pranced and threw his head around, straining at the bit. Each time a horse would race past him on the inside rail, he would jump, trying to get away from Katie so he could go with the other horse.

  “Whoa, boy. What’s eating you today? You ready to take on the world?”

  She had to backtrack him an extra quarter mile to get him settled down, but when she turned and trotted him off, he seemed more relaxed. On her first pass down the back, she noticed Mr. Ellis standing by the outside rail. She smiled at him in the early morning light and held King to his steady pace.

  As she galloped down the front stretch, with almost three furlongs to go before she hit the half-mile pole, King flicked his ears and threw his head in the air, trying to snatch the bit from her grip. “What the—?” Katie muttered to herself as she knuckled him back under control and looked about for the cause of his spooking. A moment later she heard a loud cry and looked over her right shoulder to see Cindy on horseback, swooping down upon them.

  As Cindy flew past on the outside rail, spurring her horse, Katie noticed with horror that the poor beast was Jester. The only resemblance the animal bore to her once-beloved horse was the white star on his forehead. Everything else about him had a wild look. His eyes were rolling back and forth so the whites showed, and he was drenched in sweat from head to hoof. White foam flecked from his mouth and blew on them as he passed.

  “Catch us if you can, slowpokes!” Cindy yelled as she flew past them.

  King wasn’t used to having a fast-working horse approach him from the outside, and the screaming and pounding of hooves spooked him out of his calmness. He tossed his head in the air again and again until he almost unseated Katie, then he grabbed the bit and surged ahead, trying to catch Jester.

  Katie stood in the irons and pulled with all her might, but it wasn’t enough to slow the colt. King flattened his ears against his head and ran full out, his legs pumping like pistons, until he caught up to Cindy. Jester was no racehorse; he knew when he was beaten and he tried to lessen his pace, but Cindy drew her whip and flogged him.

  King leaped ahead and continued to open the distance between them. This was the first time he had ever raced against another horse and he was in his glory.

  This couldn’t be happening. It was like a bad dream that she couldn’t wake from. Katie continued to stand in the stirrups. She was going faster than she ever had aboard a horse. If she hadn’t been so miserable, she might have enjoyed it, but she knew what the fast pace would do to King’s legs. Especially over the distance they were traveling.

  Jester finally dropped out, making it easier for her to slow King down. By the time she broke his pace, he had traveled a mile at the wretchedly fast clip. She pulled him up on the back side of the track. King took several faltering steps. By the time they reached the exit gate, the colt was limping so badly that she had to dismount.

  Tears streamed down her face, but she didn’t have any more control over them than she had over King’s wild workout.

  Jason grabbed the reins and quieted King, while John pulled the saddle off.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Katie girl. You did everything you could,” John assured her.

  She could barely talk for the tears choking her throat. “It doesn’t matter whose fault it was, John. King is injured, and now we’re not going to be able to get him in an early race. How could Cindy do that? Where is she?” Katie turned, looking frantically around the stable area.

  “I can’t believe she would do such a stupid thing,” Jason said. “I’m going to have a talk with her. She can’t get away with this.”

  “Just settle down,” John ordered. “I suspect her father will handle this. By the look in his eyes, I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes right now.”

  Katie turned to see Cindy being grabbed from Jester’s back by Mr. Ellis. John was right: he looked like a bull ready to charge a red cape.

  “Come on. We’ve got to get this colt taken care of,” John said. “Jason, run on ahead and get the hot water ready for King’s bath. And, Katie, you prepare his stall.”

  “Excuse me, John.” The timid voice of a stable boy who usually did the clocking cut in. “I thought you might be interested … I caught the colt going a mile in a minute and thirty-eight seconds.”

  John’s brows shot up and he looked back at the boy. “Keep that under your hat, okay? I don’t want anyone but me and Mr. Ellis to know. Not even any of the help, understand?”

  “Yes, sir.” The boy went back to his job.

  “Is that good?” Katie asked the trainer.

  “For this track, and under those conditions, I’d say it was more than good. Don’t you go worryin’ none about that Futurity, little gal. This is just a minor setback. We’re going to get there, you mark my words. Now, run along and ready that stall.”

  Thirteen

  King spent the next thirty days recovering from his injury. He was turned out in a small pasture by himself for the first couple of weeks. Moving was painful, and he hobbled from one patch of grass to another.

  Katie’s heart went out to him. She remembered when she was younger and she had been put in a partial body cast to correct a problem her short leg had caused with her back. She had been so sore, and moving had been very painful.

  Jan climbed onto the fence next to her, breaking her reverie.

  “He looks like he’s walking on eggshells,” Jan observed.

  “He’s really hurting,” Katie agreed. “It took me almost a half hour to walk him to this pasture, and it’s only a couple of hundred yards from the barn. The poor guy almost fell down several times.”

  “What happened to Cindy?” Jan asked. “After all the damage she’s done, I hope her father grounded her for life.”

  Katie frowned. “I don’t even want to hear her name. I heard some of the stable hands talking. They said that she’s grounded to the house for a couple of weeks, and she’s restricted from the stable area for a month. If it wasn’t for Cindy’s stupid trick, King could have won his first race by now.”

  At the mention of his name, Willow King raised his elegant head and nickered, staring thoughtfully at Katie as he chewed on a mouthful of the tender grass.

  “See? He thinks so, too.” Katie jumped down from the fence and offered King an apple. He stretched his neck to receive the treat, then munched happily while Katie petted his neck.

  “You told me that John says he’ll be walking better pretty soon,” Jan said. “This horse sure has a lot of heart.”

  “Yeah,” Katie said as she scratched him behind the ears. “I should take some lessons from him. He’s a lot braver than I am,” she said, thinking of the one and only time a boy had asked her to dance, and what a fool she’d made of herself. Katie wondered if she’d ever get another chance to dance with Jason—and whether she’d have the nerve to try it again if he ever did ask her. But after the way she had behaved, she sincerely doubted that he would ever ask her again.

  “You’re a lot braver than you think you are, Katie.”

  Katie shrugged off the compliment. She wished she had as much confidence in herself as Jan had. “Anyway, King won’t be ready to train until his thirty days are up. He won’t have enough time to get ready for the big race.” Katie kicked at a big lump of dirt. “It’s so unfair! By the time King’s stood around for a month, he’ll have lost a lot of the endurance we’ve helped him gain.”

  “Maybe not.” Jan hopped off the fence and came to stand in front of Katie.

  “What do you mean?”

  King paused in his grazing as if he, too, were interested in what Jan had to say.

  “Remember Mr. Simon and his horse pool? A lot of the horses he was swimming were broken-down horses that couldn’t take the pounding on the racetrack.”

  Katie brightened. “You’re right. He said that swimming kept their wind built up while they were healing. I bet that King will be walking well enough in a week that
we could take him out to the pool and start swimming him again.”

  “I’ll call Mr. Simon tonight,” Jan offered.

  “Thanks, pal. You might have just saved King’s career.”

  By September, when King should have been racing, he was just starting back into training at the track. But thanks to the horse pool, he bounced back quickly, and they were able to enter him in a race much sooner than they had originally anticipated.

  School had started. Katie was in eleventh grade now, and the homework was tougher than ever, but with King’s race coming up, she just couldn’t keep her mind on the tasks at hand. When the bell rang, ending the school week, she dashed home and quickly packed her suitcase. Her mother had agreed to drive her and Jan to Portland that night. King didn’t race until two o’clock the next afternoon, but Katie wanted to spend as much time with him as possible. Jason would drive up and meet them a couple of hours before the race.

  Katie was a nervous wreck the next morning. She woke feeling sick to her stomach, so she ate a light breakfast and hurried to the track.

  “You look like an old mother hen,” John said as he watched her fuss over King. “If you keep brushing that horse, he’s not going to have any hide left.”

  “But I want him to look pretty,” she protested.

  “All horses look good when they’re in the winner’s circle.” He chuckled. “Come on, now, get on out of there. It’s makin’ me nervous just watchin’ you. We don’t need to get this colt worked up before his race.”

  Katie gave King a pat, and he nuzzled her pocket looking for a treat. “Sorry, boy, you know the rules. No food until after your race. We don’t want you getting a stomachache while you’re running.” She straightened his forelock and looked into his brown eyes. “But I’ve got a bag of carrots in the tack room. They’re all yours if you do well.”

  A half hour before the race, they started preparing King. They picked his hooves and brushed him again until he gleamed. Katie brought blue carnations to weave into his mane and tail. They matched the color of silks the jockey would wear. Blue was her favorite color; it was a good sign.

  “Do you think we’ve got a chance to win this one, John?” Katie asked as she fumbled nervously with the mane and tail comb.

  “Every horse in this race has a chance to win it. That’s horse racing.” He flipped through the pages of the Daily Racing Form. “The biggest competition will be that colt Raging Wind. They’re priming him for the Kentucky Derby.”

  Katie’s stomach flopped. Did they stand a chance against a Derby horse?

  John folded the paper and put it in his hip pocket. “Don’t go looking so worried, Katie girl. We’ve got as good a shot as he does to win this race. King’s every bit as good as Raging Wind—maybe a little better.”

  Katie smiled. John was right. King was a champion, and today he was going to prove it.

  “You got your new license?” John asked.

  She nodded.

  “Make sure you keep it on you, ’cause they’ll probably ask for it.”

  Mrs. Durham, along with Jan and Jason, stopped by to wish them luck before going over to the grandstand. “Mr. Ellis said he would be in the paddock if you needed any help saddling,” Katie’s mother said. “We’ll meet you over there.”

  Jason stepped forward and took her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Good luck, Katie. I’ll be waiting for you on the front side.”

  Katie blushed furiously. When Jason looked at her like that, it made her feel as if she had a thousand butterflies whirling in her stomach.

  When the call to the gate came, they bridled King and flushed his mouth with cool water, then took him out to stand in the shed row.

  “Keep him here until the gate pops on the race before King’s. I don’t want him getting excited when he hears those other horses running down the backstretch. I’ll holler when it’s time to bring him for his race. You all right, girl? You look a little pale.”

  “I’m fine, John. Just a little nervous.”

  John laughed. “You better get used to it. This colt’s got a lot of races in him.”

  King sensed her nervousness and began to fidget. She put a hand on either side of his bit and gently shook it, just as John had showed her. The colt became interested in the game and forgot his dancing around.

  Katie listened to the sound of the announcer as he called the loading of the gate. It was a six-furlong race—three-quarters of a mile—so the starting gate was on the backs tretch. She was close enough to hear the doors slam and the gate men yelling directions to one another as they loaded the nervous animals. When the last one was in, she heard the starter say, “Everyone get tied on.” Then the bell rang and the doors clanged open. The pounding of hooves echoed up and down the barns.

  King jumped when he heard all the commotion, lifting his tail in the air and blowing a great gust of air through his nostrils.

  “Whoa, boy. Save your energy for your race.”

  She heard John call, so she led King out, handing him to the man on the pony horse who was to take him to the front. She cut across the infield with John.

  The paddock area where the horses were saddled contained twelve stalls, each painted in a different color. John took King from the pony horse’s rider and led him into the saddling stall. They had drawn the number-two post, so they would be one of the first to be tacked.

  When all the equipment was in place, Katie took King out to walk around the circle. This helped loosen him up, and also gave the public an opportunity to see what they were betting on. As they made their rounds, she heard lots of oohs and aahs. Katie smiled proudly and patted King on the neck.

  “Bring ’em in,” the paddock judge yelled. Because it was King’s first race, the official had to check King’s tattoo and body markings against the registration papers to make sure the right horse was racing. He grabbed King’s lip and rolled it back, reading the smudged blue-black numbers and letters. When he was satisfied that they were correct, he compared King’s markings with those described on the papers. He walked behind King and brushed at the small patch of white on his right heel.

  “This white isn’t listed,” he said as he stood and surveyed the paperwork again.

  “Let me see that.” John took the papers from him and a frown furrowed his brow.

  Katie didn’t like the look on either man’s face. “What’s that mean?” she asked with rising panic.

  John turned to her and shook his head. “It means they can scratch the horse,” he said.

  “No,” she whispered, afraid that if she said it any louder, it would come out a scream. “We’ve come so far, how can something as simple as a few white hairs stop us?”

  “It’s the racing rules,” the paddock judge offered. “But I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. Everything else checks out. I’ll let you run him today, but you’ll have to get these papers fixed before you race him again. Contact the jockey club tomorrow, and they’ll take care of it.”

  “Thank you!” Katie gave him her best smile.

  King entered the track to the sound of the trumpet calling the horses to the post. They paraded at a walk in front of the audience, then trotted or galloped back to the gate. Her mother and friends sat up in the clubhouse with Mr. Ellis, but Katie preferred to stand next to the fence with John.

  The first horse was loaded into the gate. Katie’s nerves were stretched so tightly that she thought she would burst. King stood behind the gate, and she held her breath, praying that he wouldn’t give the loaders any trouble. He stepped into the number-two hole, and Katie let out her breath—then held it again in anticipation of the start.

  “They’re off!” the announcer yelled into the microphone.

  From where she stood, Katie could see King striving to take the lead. Two other horses were running with him, the rest of them trailing behind.

  “It’s Raging Wind in the lead, with Simple Lad and Willow King running neck and neck behind him,” the man with the microphone announced.
/>   “Get him out of there, Randy!” John instructed the jockey, as if he could hear him. “He’s trapped on the rail. He’s got no place to run.”

  Katie watched as King held his ground, neither able to pass the leader nor draw to the outside. She knew Randy was doing his best. He had been the Ellis farm’s jockey for many years. He had worked King several times and was familiar with the colt. Before the race, he had told Katie they had a good shot at winning.

  Katie lost sight of King as the leading horses went into the turn and the rest of the pack caught up to them.

  “He’s got to do something now,” John said. “Get him out of that hole!”

  Katie’s heart sank as she saw the blue colors fade back into the pack. What had happened? Had King run out of breath? Were his legs hurting again?

  The announcer broke in. “Willow King seems to be having some difficulty. He’s fading fast, and Usurper has moved up to battle for the lead.”

  Katie put her forehead on the cool metal of the fence. She couldn’t bear to watch. All her hopes were being crushed beneath the pounding hooves of the racing horses.

  “Here he comes!” John jarred her arm, then slapped his hands on the fence. “Come on, King!” he screamed.

  “Willow King is making a comeback on the outside,” the announcer said. “Look at him run! He’s passed Usurper and is moving up to challenge the leader, Raging Wind.”

  Katie’s head snapped up. She could see a patch of blue coming on the outside. “You can do it, Kng!” she screamed with all her might. She jumped onto the cement ledge the fence rested on and strained her eyes so she could see what was happening.

  The pounding of hooves as the horses entered the homestretch and the roar of the crowd was deafening. She could see King on the outside of the pack, but from her angle, she couldn’t tell if he was running first or second.

  “It’s Raging Wind and Willow King coming down to the wire … Raging Wind and Willow King…” The announcer paused for emphasis. “And at the finish line, it’s Willow King by a nose!”

  Suddenly, Katie’s mother, Jan, Jason, and Mr. Ellis were surrounding her and John, patting them both on their backs and shouting congratulations. Jason picked her up and swung her in a circle. In the midst of all the commotion, she looked up to see a man staring at her and frowning heavily. He quickly walked away. Katie turned back to her friends, not giving the strange man another thought.