Man O'War Read Online Free

fields beyond. But the boy’s gaze never left the road in front of him and his long, thin face was heavy with concern. He walked fast, his arms swinging loosely against his big-boned but gaunt frame. He had made an important decision. He had come to a turning point in his life. He was going to quit school and go to work at Nursery Stud.
    Like a gangling Great Dane he moved through the night mist, his nostrils sniffing the scent of new grass in the meadows. Soon he’d smell the warm bodies of horses, but he’d have to wait until he got closer to the barns.
    It Wouldn’t be many days before the familiar scent, stronger than anything else, would pervade the night air all around. But now, at just the beginning of spring, the nights were still too chilly for the horses to be turned out. In another few minutes it would be midnight and the beginning of the 29th day of March, 1917. He’d better get moving faster. He might be late as it was!
    Turning off the road, he went over and climbed the fence and set out across the fields at a run. It was nothing new to him, this getting excited about being around when a racer was born … a horse who wouldn’t set foot on a track for two years. It was part of his life not to miss the foaling of a Thoroughbred, a part of living in Kentucky. If he’d been living anywhere else it would have been different. But here in Lexington, horses were everything and there was nothing strange in thinking that the most wonderful sight in the world was the earliest hours in the life of a racehorse!
    With knowing eyes he looked over the big breeding farm, loving the cleanliness of its fences and fields and barns. There were hundreds of acres, all for the use of horses alone, with dozens of fenced paddocks, each serving a specific purpose in the raising of Thoroughbreds. It was a costly business, far more expensive than he could ever guess. It was a good thing Mr. Belmont was rich for otherwise there would have been no Nursery Stud. To a man like Mr. Belmont the sport lay not so much in the winning of races as it did in
breeding
the best horses. That’s what made foaling time so interesting around here … one never knew when one might be looking at the baby horse who would turn out to be the greatest of them all!
    Mahubah was the broodmare closest to foaling time, he knew. They’d been expecting her to foal for three days now but she’d kept putting them off. What was she waiting for anyway? Didn’t she know her time had come? Or maybe she just liked being treated like a queen, being bathed and brushed and pampered all the time. Maybe she knew what she was doing, at that.
    He liked Mahubah, even her name, which in Arabic meant “good greetings, good fortune.” She was well bred, rangy, and young. She should foal a good one. He hoped it would turn out to be a colt. A colt could beat a filly any day.
    The boy ran faster, his long legs moving with surprising grace. A big grin suddenly drove the seriousness from his face, a face already brown from the sun and clean and seasoned as if it were washed regularly with saddle soap. He grinned because he had just remembered that more foals were due in April than any other month that year. During the next few weeks there would be a parade of baby horses for him to watch entering the world!
    He sure wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. Where but here could one find such an interest in horses? No other business could compete with the breeding and raising of Thoroughbreds. And where else was the grass so blue, so rich in calcium and vitamins? Of course you had to have special Kentucky eyes to see its bluish tinge, otherwise it was green like any other grass, except in the fall and winter months when it turned real brown. What would people from anywhere else think if they saw him get down and start nibbling away at it, as he did once in a while just for kicks? They’d think he was crazy, that’s