OCR Text |
Show MU1CY THUS FAlt : Tliundor-heart, Tliundor-heart, commonly known as tha Uoblln, Is tho only wlillo luirao ever born on uta tiooso llur mnch In Wyoming. Ho grows from a misshapen colt to a powerful yearling, resembling his great granrtslra mora overy day. The granrtslro Is a wlltt talUon called Hie Albino. One day Goblin wanders Into a mountain valley, mens the Albino, and barely escapes with hl life. When his wounds are bellied. Ken Mi'I.aiig hlln. his 12-yeur old owner, bo-gins bo-gins to train him. Goblin, although difficult dif-ficult to handle, ocraslonally submits, and runs wllh astonishing speed and endurance. en-durance. Charley Sargent, millionaire horse breeder, tells Ken Uiat Goblin might become a winning racer. CHAITER XIV Ken brought his horse over the line as he had done before the same, hard gallop, with the colt fighting his head and unwilling to obey. It mnde Ken mnd that Just now when he wanted performance Thunderhend would do nothing but fight. All right then let it be war. This battling with the stnlllon wns bringing bring-ing out something In the boy thnt had never been there before. lie raised the light crop he held and j brought it down on the colt's haunches as hard as he could. Thun- derhend leaped In the air and tried I to shake Ken off. Ken could feel the power and anger surge into his own body. He raised his arm and brought the crop down again. When the horse lit this time he was going. It was the long floating effortless i pace that had been Rocket's. Ken sat motionless on the tiny saddle. ; Down to the turn, around the posts, I up the other side I Nell glanced at Charley. "See I that?" she said. "That's what I j mean." "And he's not even trying." said Charley In a daze. "He's coming! He's coming!" screamed Howard. "Look at the watch " Sargent gave a start. He hadn't had his eyes off the colt, he hadn't timed him. He waved his arm and yelled at Ken, "Keep going! Go around again!" Ken's eyes flickered up to him as he passed, but he didn't turn his head. There was a rapt look on his face. "Gosh! He runs In the air!" howled Sargent. "He doesn't touch the ground!" Howard was Jumping up and down. "Keep it up! Keep it up! Thunderhead! Thunderhead!" Nell felt hysterical. She suddenly sudden-ly put ber face into her hands. The beauty of it. The super-performance and Ken sitting so still the victory at last the two-year-long battle the faith the exhaustion the cuts and bruises and strains she had to bind up and now, Victory She raised her head and looked again. Coming back up the home stretch! Coming! One long sustained sus-tained yell from Sargent and the horse over the line. Ken trying to pull him up swinging around in circles Howard' voice squawking "What did he make, Mr. Sargent? Whnt rilrl h. make?" while Sar gent was trying to scramble down the rock. Thunderhead had made the half-mile half-mile in forty-seven second. "Oh, Kennie Kennie " "Gee, Ken he did it Gee!" "That horse! He's one of the seven sev-en wonders of the world!" Thunderhead was fighting. He wanted to keep going. Ken had hardly come back yet from the ecstasy ec-stasy in which he had ridden. His glowing face with the slightly parted part-ed lips was half unconscious. "Could he do it again? Has he ever done it before? We'll let him rest a little, then give him another spin." "Rest?" said Howard. "He's not tired. He never gets tired. He hates to be stopped when he gets going. That's why he's mad now." They decided to try the colt again; and again they climbed to the ledge and timed his start, and again Ken fought with him to control him, forced him over the line, and was shaken by the angry, rough gallop-by gallop-by his breaking through the posts. The struggle went on the lashing of the crop the scarlet face of the boy, while Charley grew grave and the little group on the ledge no longer chattered with excitement, but stood silent. At last Sargent was hopeless. "It was a fluke," he said. "He's uncontrollable." un-controllable." "Look, look, Mr Sargent! He's doing do-ing it again!" The colt had broken through his temperamental impediments. He "burst into his swift, floating pace, and w-snt streaming around the track. As he crossed the line Sargent Sar-gent punched the watch. They held their breath. Sargent's mouth was wide open in a crazy grin. His eyes popped. The gelding. For days and nights Ken had been thinking of it. The better the colt behaved, the more speed he showed, the more despair Ken felt. They told him, and they argued with him, and they proved it to him. The colt would lose no iota of his speed-might speed-might even have more, because his energies would not be wasted in fighting, in running after mares, in breedin? them. It made no difference differ-ence to Ken. He had seen the colts before gelding, the power that flowed through them like hot lava, making them rear and ploy and Unlit and wrestle; making their talis and manes lift like flying banners; giving a look of individuality and passion to their faces and he had seen them after. Seen the change in the carriage car-riage of the head, the look of the eye, the appeorunce of the colt, the general behavior. Nothing would reconcile him. But his father had decided. What could one do in such a Jam? Fortitude. When you couldn't have what you wnnted, you accepted defeat with fortitude. His mother said you could pray but you needn't think you'd get whut you wanted, you'd Just get the strength to bear the disappointment. disappoint-ment. Those days made a change in Ken's face and character. He said little about it. The more you argued ar-gued and plead the less likely his father fa-ther was to yield. Ills mother was really on his side, but she left such things to his father. She felt that he really knew best. It happened that on the morning of the day of Ken's trial race down on the track a call came into the offlee of the veterinarian at Laramie. Lara-mie. It was from Barney, the rancher ranch-er west of the Goose Bar, stating that he had a sick cow who needed to be cleaned out after a premature calving. Could Dr. Hicks come out and take care of her? Dr. Hicks and Bill, his assistant, arrived at the Barney ranch about one o'clock. They worked over the cow for a couple of hours. When they were leaving. Dr. Hicks said, "It's only a few miles down the back road to the Goose Bar. We'll stop In there and geld those two- 111 A 11 -fill f1 fs4 lli Mr 'ill "How's your muscle?" asked NeU. year-olds of Captain McLaughlin." They arrived at the stables soon after Rob had driven oft" with the blacks. Gus went out with a bucket of oats and called in the colts, and the men got to work. "Is that all?" asked Doc, when he had gelded seven. "I thought the Captain said eight." "Dere's one more," said Gus, "Ken's colt. De white one." "Oh, the throwback!" said Doc. 'The one Ken thinks is going to be a racer. How's he comin' on?" "He runs right gude now," said Gus. "Maybe they don't want him gelded." geld-ed." "De Captain wants him gelded all right. Mebbe you cud wait a little, while I go down and help Tim wid de milkin'? Ken tuk de colt out a while back he might be home any minnit." Doc and Bill took seats on the corral fence and rolled cigarettes and waited. The shadows grew longer. They heard the cowbells as the cows, after aft-er being milked, wandered out into the pasture; then the sound of the separator whirring in the milk house as it cut the milk in half, pouring a rich, foaming, white fluid into one jar, a thick yellow cream into the other. At last Doc told Bill to pack up the stuff. They got in the car and drove away. Ken felt almost awed when he arrived at the stables with Howard, having driven the blacks home in the Jouncing cart," and heard from Gus what had happened. There stood the seven gelded colts in the east corral, their heads hanging lifelessly, life-lessly, their hind legs covered with blood. Thunderhead, said Gus, had come galloping in with Touch And Go some ten minutes after Doc had left. He had unsaddled him and turned them both out into the home pasture. i Ken stared at the geldings while the blood rushed through his body and sank again. This meant this meant Doc had made his trip to the ranchl His father would never order or-der him up again to geld one colt! Ken leaped in the air with a whoop of triumph. "Gosh!" said Howard. "You're shot in the head with luck!" So Thunderhead was not gelded. A year before, the Albino had recognized rec-ognized in Thunderhead a reflection of himself in miniature. But gelding geld-ing would have changed that. It would have left the colt, perhaps, a successful racer; it would have made him more useful to men and amenable to their demands; but never again would he have been a creature who could have commanded command-ed the notice of his royal great grandfather. Nell had hardly recovered from the emotion she had felt when she saw Ken's triumph. And the fact that the colt had escaped gelding (for Rob had said that since Doc had come and gone he could wait another year) gave her an even stranger feeling of unreality. When obstacles vanished, they Just floated awny as If they never had been "He is going to be a racer after all, isn't he, dad?" "Looks like It, son." "And all our troubles will be over." "What are you going to do with all the money, Ken?" "He's going to pay back a lot that he owes me!" "And he can pay for his own education! edu-cation! " "And pay off the note on the ranch." "And put wooden fences around it he's promised me that!" "Mother, you've got to tell me what you want! I've asked you and asked you and you never have." "Can I have three wishes?" "Yes three things. Make them big tilings, mother!" "I want a Swan sleigh all covered with bells! I want a monkey treel And I want a little girl!" "What Is a monkey tree?" asked Charlie. "It's a kind of big old pine tree here on the ranch there are only a couple of dozen of them," Howard explained. "We were looking at one one day long ago They are a queer shape with branches all twisting every ev-ery which way, and mother said It had a face like an old monkey's." "Mother," insisted Ken, "tell me some other wishes real wishes that I could get you." "He wants to buy her Joo-oo-ools!" clowned Howard. "Better cross your fingers, Ken," said Charley. "Many a slip betwixt the cup and the lip, you know " In the interchange of talk and flashing glances that played around the table, Nell's look crossed Rob's. They stared a moment She felt the impact of his animosity. He hadn't forgiven her for what she had said last night. When they were alone together, he was smooth and easy as if it were forgotten bat with people around, he lowered his guard and let her see the truth. While they argued as to whether it would be better for Thunderhead to be raced this coming fall or wait until he was a three-year-old, and decided on the latter, she sat at the end of the table, feeling all her elation dying down. Thunderhead's success began to seem very remote indeed, unlikely. No. The odds were, nothing would come of it. The colt had, apparently, run a half-mile half-mile faster than it had ever been run before. Could that be true? According to recorded runs, yes. But there were many colts in the world besides those who ran in races many colts who had been clocked on makeshift tracks like this one who might have must have, broken records, and yet, for one reason or another, never were heard of. Why? Things happened. They got hurt, or stale, or proved a flash in the pan, or unmanageable "For you see," said Charley, "we know now he's got it in him. It's there. But he's an unmanageable brute. He can't be depended on. He needs a lot of training and disci-' pline. Besides, he hasn't got his growth yet. In another year, when he's settled down, he'll be unbeatable!" unbeat-able!" He gave Ken's back a resounding whack! "Young fellah, me lad, you'll have a winner! How'll it feel to be the famous owner of a famous horse?" But Ken had a thought. "Suppose," "Sup-pose," he said lugubriously, "we get him all trained for a race, and then he runs away and we can't find him?" Rob glanced at Ken, then at Nell. His expression was sardonic. "Ken, you take after your mother more than any boy has- a right to." Nell's eyes met Rob's and clashed again. She looked down and finished her sliced peaches. What was the matter with him? It wasn't only the quarrel of last night thai had left him hard and cold toward her, but now he was in a state-had state-had been all evening ever since ever since yes, ever since he? arrived ar-rived at the race track in that ridiculous ridicu-lous cart what had he been doing before Oh, yes, he went out on Gypsy went out on Gypsy to see Bellamy and ask if he was going to take the lease again this fall Ah! She put down her spoon and sal motionless, staring a hole through the table her mind rushed forward. Charley was shouting that with a horse of such potential value as Thunderhead, they would neve: dream of putting him out on the range that winter? (TO BE CONTINUED) |