Man of the Family by Ralph Moody Page A

whispering nicker way up in his muzzle, then he trotted over to the bars.
    Sky had hardly stopped nickering when Mr. Cooper said, “Well, I’ll be doggoned! Look at that Sky horse; he knows the kid.” And Hi’s voice sounded as if he was kind of choked up. “By doggies,” he said, “ain’t that purty? Actin’ jest like a old range mare that’s found her lost colt.” I think he said more. I was astraddle of the top bar, and Sky High put his muzzle right up in my lap. I wanted to laugh and cry, all at the same time, and I didn’t even have a piece of sugar in my pocket to give him.
    Before I’d finished talking to Sky High, the men had all crawled through the bars and were saddling Fred’s bay. Everybody seemed to be trying to tell Tom Brogan how he ought to ride him to win the hundred-dollar race, and they were all trying to do it at the same time. I yelled over to them, “I’ll bet Sky can beat him any old time; he could beat the tar out of Hi’s Blue.”
    They all laughed as if they thought Sky was an old plug; then Fred Aultland said, “Let Little Britches ride along with you while you’re warming him up, Tom. Might keep the bay from getting nervous till he gets used to the layout here.”
    I wanted to ride bareback for two reasons. I didn’t think I could get the best out of Sky with a big saddle, and then, too, I didn’t want Hi to ask me about my own saddle. When I’d started to work at Cooper’s, he’d made me one by hand that was just my size, but it was stolen from our barn the first week we were in Littleton. So I just put a bridle on Sky and slid onto his back from the top rail of the corral. Tom had a stripped-down saddle on the bay that couldn’t have weighed more than ten pounds. Everybody used light saddles for racing.
    The first couple of times around the track we didn’t hurry. We just let the horses canter along easy, to loosen them up and get the sweat running. The bay didn’t like it. He kept bobbing his head and jerking at the lines so that Tom would let him out, but Sky loped along beside him as easy as a greyhound behind a carriage. But I knew he didn’t feel that way inside, because every time the bay would start to make a break, Sky’s ears would prick forward, and I could feel his muscles bunch under my knees.
    While we were going around the track the second time, Jerry Alder rode over to the middle of the back stretch. By the time we got there he had marked off a starting line, and was standing back against the outside railing with his six gun in his hand. Sky didn’t have any idea what it was all about, but the bay went into a regular jig, so that his hoofs sounded like sticks on a snare drum. Tom brought him up to the line—right next to the inside rail—and held his head around to keep him quiet till Jerry pulled the trigger. I was afraid Sky might get left behind, so I held the end of the lines up over my head—all ready to smack him when the gun went off.
    I needn’t have done it, though. You’d have thought both horses had been shot out of a cannon. The bay was away first, but only by half a length. And Sky took in after him with his ears pinned back tight to his neck. At first I thought we could catch right up, but we couldn’t. Sky was taking a long, pounding gait, with his head stretched out like a wild goose in flight. The bay was running with a short chop, and his legs were going like the pitman rod on a runaway mowing machine. By the time we had gone fifty yards he was out in front, and I brought Sky over against the rail behind him.
    I wanted us to win so much that I guess I went a little loco, and I could only think that I had to do something to make Sky take shorter strides and more of them. Inch by inch, the space between his nose and the bay’s tail was getting wider and wider. I stretched out along his neck and withers, with my head