The Race and Other Stories by Sinclair Ross

A Day with Pegasus

A Day With Pegasus "Two white stockings and a star," Mrs. Parker called from the kitchen, and in his bare feet, struggling with suspenders, Peter raced downstairs and across the yard to see. At the stable door,just for an instant, he hesitated. It was some instinct perhaps of emotional thrift, warning him that so fierce and strange a tingle of expectancy ought tobe prolonged a little — some vague apprehension that in Biddy's stall there might be less than he had seen already.Then he advanced slowly — a finger raised to forbid the yellow pup that waited for his word to leap and yelp — on furtive tiptoe past the stalls where Mr. Parker and his grown-up brother Dan stood harnessing their horses for the field. This suddenly wasimportant. In what awaited him there wasno place for Dan or his father or the pup. The stable with its gloom and rustling mangerfuls of hay had subdued his excitement to a breathless sense of solemnity — a solemnity that was personal, intimatelyhis own — that he knew the others would misunderstand and mar. He even felt a vague resentment that while he was still sleeping they had been here before him. It was his colt — it should have been his first to see and touch. Five months he had been waiting. "Biddy's colt about the end of May," they had promised him at Christmas,and today now wasthe twenty-eighth. Marvellinga little at the prophecy he reached the box-stall door. There wasa moment's stillnesswhile the pup sat watching with his silly head cocked up as if it were a game. Then the mare whinnied to him and he slipped inside. It was a small colt — disconcertingly small — even though no smaller than the other new-born colts that he had seen. Itlay, a black,unprepossessing littleheap among the straw,itscoat still rough and mangy-looking, its eyes half-closed, its head unsteady . He squatted in front of it, almost in a conversational attitude, as if he were introducing himself and awaiting recogni- 38 THE RACE AND OTHER STORIES don. But the colt, even before the advent of its owner, showed signs of neither interest nor respect. Even when the owner put out a finger to touch and verify the star. Even when the finger became gently importunate in an effort to prod awake some sign of at least potential speed and grace. The head kept swaying back and forth, the eyes went shut and open blearily — and nothing more. Then Biddy came up, and with a no-nonsense push of her nose toppled him sprawling off his hunkers into the straw. He lay there still a minute, watching respectfully as she licked the colt between the ears. Nearly all their horses were Biddy's colts or grand-colts. Big, rangy, hairy-footed Clydes, and yet with twice the dash and spirit of the horses that he knew on other farms. Because Biddy had a strain of racing blood. Even after nearly twentyyears of foal-bearing and the plough, she herself always pranced a littleas theyled her out of the stable. And every day of his life young Tim raced the others to the water-trough where, heels twitchingand ears flat to hishead, he dared them to approach till he had drunk hisfill.The same with the bay mares Lulu and Marie, who in town one day last summer had pretended fright at the sight of a truck, and to the scurrying amazement of all Main Street taken off a wheel on the corner of Pandora's Beauty Shop. He remembered gratefully, encouraging himself with the thought that his colt now, for all its poor beginnings, was not likely to prove an exception. Then Dan came in, and eager for an expert's pronoucement , Peter sprang attentiveto hisfeet. But first, withouta word, Dan put his arms around the colt and lifted it. He steadied the shaky body a minute, straightened out one of the whitestockinged legs that wasbuckling at the knee, and then for a long time — a mercilessly long time — stood thoughtful and appraising. It would be final, Dan's opinion. Fearfully,as if in the sober, sun-tanned features his own destiny were to be read, Peter scanned his face. "What do you think?" he asked anxiously at last, unable to contain himself longer. "I mean — will he be all right? Is he as good as her other colts?" Dan smiled in answer — the inarticulate smile of a...