Crown Prince (10 page)

“In case you don't know what cribbing is,” Rudy continued, “it's when a horse grabs a hard surface with his teeth and pulls back while he swallows air. Unless a strap around his throat stops him from cribbing, he gets air in his stomach and doesn't digest his food well. This horse is also a little on the nervous side, which hasn't helped. Between that and his cribbing, he's not an easy keeper. I think he'll do better away from the racetrack, where he can be turned out regularly and may be more inclined to relax.”

“That makes sense,” Jack said. “But I think Sarah and I agree she'd best avoid a horse that has a vice from the get-go.” When she nodded her approval, Jack added, “Let's move on and take a look at the gray.”

“He's on the other side,” Rudy said, as he led the way. Sarah looked at each horse as they passed, thinking how magnificent each was. As they rounded the corner, they saw a big-bodied steel-gray horse being led into his stall. His groom circled him to face the stall door and his hay net. The horse wasted no time diving into the hay.

“This is Cut Glass, and I have to be honest—he can't outrun a fat man,” said the trainer. “He's a full brother to a stakes winner, but you'd never know it. He just doesn't have class. It goes to show you that sometimes well-bred horses can be pretty common. He's definitely one that Mr. Bolton needs to weed out. But he should be a great riding horse for you, young lady,” he said, smiling at Sarah.

Jack, Sarah, and her father sized up this third horse in their lineup. Jack's knowledgeable eyes saw that the horse toed in with his left front leg, and his narrow chest placed his front legs close together. Sarah stroked the gray while he quickly devoured the carrot she offered him.

Just then Rudy's cell phone rang and he excused himself. “I'm expecting an important call,” he explained.

Jack slipped into the stall and continued to evaluate the gray horse, noticing his rather long back and that his rump was higher than his withers. When Jack emerged from the stall, he looked at Sarah and her father, shaking his head. “This horse will be unsound sooner rather than later,” he predicted. “His poor conformation puts a lot of stress on his body. I don't think you want to take this horse, Sarah.”

Sarah nodded. It certainly made sense. The gray was not going to be the one.

“The first horse we saw seems like an exceptional prospect,” continued Jack. “What do you think, Sarah? Will Code of Honor be the horse for you?”

“I like him a lot. He's beautiful. But isn't there a fourth horse for us to see?”

Her father looked to the end of the shed row where Rudy was talking on his cell phone. “Let's ask Rudy,” he said.

When the trainer rejoined them, Jack posed the question. “What about the fourth horse that Hank Bolton had on your list?”

Rudy hesitated before answering. “Yes, there is another horse Mr. Bolton has decided to cull, but honestly, I was surprised to see him on the list for you folks. It's a four-year-old that has never started in a race because of training problems.”

Rudy leaned back against the shed wall and went on to tell them about a homebred out of Mr. Bolton's champion, Northern Princess, a well-bred mare from a brilliant family who had won several Grade I stakes races. Before Mr. Bolton owned her, the mare had produced a horse that won the Preakness several years before, and he was able to afford her only because she was getting along in years. “As an older mare, it was questionable she could carry a foal to term, or even get in foal, but Mr. Bolton took a chance on her,” explained Rudy. “After being bred to a stallion that had won the Kentucky Derby—Emperor's Gold—Northern Princess foaled a colt my boss had great hopes for. The colt was named Crown Prince.”

Sam came around the corner and stopped to listen.

“That colt was a beauty from the start,” Rudy continued. “He was big, too, and very correct. I understand he dominated the other colts on the farm and won every spontaneous dash across the fields. He was broken to saddle late in his yearling year, as is customary, and as a two-year-old came to me to begin serious training.”

“How well I remember.” Sam said. “Crown Prince was a real eye-catcher as a two-year-old. He turned a lot of heads every time I took him to the track. He was quite a mover, too. Very well balanced. People around here thought he was a prospect for the Breeders Cup Juvenile, so of course Mr. Bolton was high on him.”

Jack, Sarah, and Martin Wagner listened, spellbound, as Rudy continued the story. “All went well for a while. We did slow gallops at first, taking our time, not rushing him. One day Sam told me he thought the colt didn't feel quite right. We had Doc Greene go over him, taking X-rays and checking his blood. Doc determined that being a big growthy colt, the bones in his knees hadn't closed completely. He hadn't finished growing. Doc said he should be turned out for at least six months, so he was shipped back to the farm in Florida.”

They moved off the shed row to give plenty of space to a horse prancing toward them, pulling against his hot walker. Sam moved to the outer wall of the feedroom as he picked up the threads of the story. “I remember what he looked like when he came back as a three-year-old,” he said. “He was close to seventeen hands, big and strong, and he knew it. When I tried to do slow gallops to gradually condition him for faster work, the horse wouldn't buy it. He fought me constantly. The way he leaped and whirled in the air, it's a wonder I could stay on him.”

“Yes,” Rudy agreed. “His antics continued to get worse, and we knew we were getting nowhere. Finally I told Mr. Bolton I thought the horse should be gelded, even with his impeccable breeding. He could have been one heck of a valuable stud prospect, but gelding usually calms down male horses. It looked like this was the only way to salvage him as a racehorse. We hoped that as a four-year-old, he would have matured and be more trainable. So again he went back to the farm.” “Did it make a difference?” Jack asked.

“I'm afraid when he returned to me last February he was even bigger and his attitude hadn't improved.” He gestured to his exercise rider. “Sam, tell them what he was like when you were on his back.”

“It's hard to believe, but the last time I rode him, he was worse than before. A few times I thought he was going to take me through the rail. Funny thing, though, in the stall and walking on the shed row, he's always been a puppy dog, quiet, although at times a little spooky. It will always be a mystery to me.”

“Finally Mr. Bolton agreed he just wasn't going to be the racehorse we'd hoped for,” Rudy said. “It was time to punt. In this game you have to be prepared for disappointment. But as I said, I'm surprised he added him to this list. Crown Prince certainly isn't a quiet ride for a young girl.”

“From what you've told us, I would agree,” Jack said. “The chestnut horse, Code of Honor, looks to be our best choice, so let's get back to him. Does that sound like a plan to you, Sarah?”

Sarah nodded, although she couldn't help being curious about Crown Prince. Where was he? What did he look like? She wished she could see him.

“Okay,” answered Rudy. “I understand you have a letter from Chandler DeWitt I need to sign, and I have a folder of information on Cody to give you, medical records and such. I'll also write up what we've been feeding him, so you can gradually change him over to whatever your farm uses for grain and hay. Let's go to my office to take care of the paperwork.”

SARAH WISHED SHE COULD
go back to Cody's stall, but she grudgingly followed the men down the shed row to the trainer's office. She really didn't want to be cooped up inside “doing business” when there were so many beautiful horses here to see.

Rudy opened the door and gestured for them to enter. For someone who had been a longtime leading trainer at Raceland Park, his office was surprisingly “no-frills.” The room was sparsely furnished with a desk and an older computer. A few straight-backed chairs sat beside two metal file cabinets, and the only other piece of furniture was a drop-leaf table near the door, where a bulging scrapbook was displayed. Except for a large chart mapping out the training program for each horse in his string, the paneled walls were bare.

Rudy began looking for Code of Honor's file in one of the cabinets. One Thoroughbred racehorse could accumulate a lot of paperwork, with a record kept of every shoeing, every visit from the vet, and a lifetime of training schedules. The successful horses' files also included listings of their racing wins, any newspaper clippings, and printouts from websites and racing blogs.

“His Jockey Club registration papers are over in the Racing Secretary's office, and I'll forward them to you once he's passed the vet exam. They verify his age, breeding, and ownership history. Unfortunately, you won't find anything in the races won column.”

Jack opened the scrapbook on the table to a newspaper article, faded and yellowed over time, with the headline, “Best Beau First in Raceland Handicap.” The scrapbook was filled with other clippings and magazine articles about some of the notable horses Rudy had trained and the important races they'd won. Sarah's father joined Jack, and soon the two men had tempted Rudy to regale them with the highlights of his impressive career and the horses he'd trained. Rudy seemed to have story after story to tell.

They don't need me here,
Sarah thought. She wanted to get back to the horses. Quietly she slipped out the door and went to Code of Honor's stall, where the chestnut gelding was still eating hay from his net. Sarah brought out her last carrot, and as before, let the horse have small bites. She stroked his face as he chomped on the carrot. When it was gone, he strained over his stall's webbing to nudge her with his nose, asking for more. “Sorry, Cody, that's it,” Sarah said, showing him empty palms.

A groom walked by carrying a bale of golden straw that he plunked down by the next stall. He paused to look at Code of Honor and Sarah. “Cody's a nice horse,” he said. “I've been his groom all year, and he's been a peach. I've never had to watch my back with that one. You're going to like him a lot.”

“Will you miss him?” Sarah asked.

The man shrugged. “Horses come and go. I rub four horses and that keeps me too busy to notice, really. I hear there's a nice two-year-old coming from the farm to take the first open stall. Maybe he'll be the ‘big horse,' with speed to burn. You never know. It's great to groom a horse with class, if you're lucky enough.”

“How about Crown Prince?” she asked. “Can you tell me where he is?”

“Oh, that one?” He looked at her curiously. “You're interested in him? Well, he's around here somewhere. Maybe on the other side,” he said, gesturing down the shed row. With that he cut the twine on the straw bale and went to work in the stall next to Cody's, shaking the straw out with a pitchfork.

Sarah looked up and down the aisle. Somehow she couldn't get Crown Prince out of her mind. Rudy had painted the horse as a hard-to-manage rogue. Could he really be that bad? She wanted to see for herself. Slowly she worked her way along the shed row, looking at each horse as she passed. Most had returned to their stalls, and grooms were busy filling water buckets, doing up legs with support bandages, and carrying off muck baskets to the manure bin. Many of the horses wore halters with name-plates. She checked the names on each one, but saw no sign of Crown Prince. Rudy Dominic hadn't given any clues to his whereabouts. Where was the mystery horse?

At the end of the shed row Sarah neared the darker area by the barn's feedroom, where the extended roof blocked the sunlight. As she started past what appeared to be an unused stall with both its top and bottom doors shut, she heard a faint noise. She stopped in her tracks and stood still, listening. There it was again, the sound of a rustle in straw that seemed to come from inside the stall.

Turning back, Sarah cautiously opened the stall's top door and peered inside. When her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she could make out the silhouette of a horse against the far wall. He was like a giant statue, his head high and alert. Maybe this was Crown Prince! It was strange to find him shut up in his stall like this when all the other horses' top stall doors were open. Had Rudy hoped to keep them from seeing him? She couldn't imagine why else the big horse would be kept in the dark.

Sarah stood quietly watching the horse. There was no movement as he stood facing the far corner, ignoring her. She clucked softly, but there was no response. Her hand dug deep in her pocket in hopes of finding one more carrot, but it was empty. Nothing was left, except perhaps…yes, in her other pocket she felt a peppermint candy, which she withdrew and slowly unwrapped. In response to the crinkling of the cellophane, a slim finely chiseled head turned her way, his ears pricked forward. He wore a halter, but was too far away for her to read the nameplate. She placed her outstretched hand with the peppermint over the stall door and spoke softly, “Prince, come Prince.”

Slowly the horse turned from the rear wall and cautiously moved toward her. As he got closer, she felt delicate nostrils blow gently on her hand and then the slender muzzle lifted the peppermint away. He studied her as he chewed the candy slowly and deliberately.

He was big. Except for the enormous draft horses she had seen in pulling competitions at the state fair, this horse was larger than any Sarah had ever seen, including Chancellor. The only horse who might possibly match his size was Donegal Lad. But this horse possessed such refinement his size wasn't readily evident until he was close. In the dimly lit stall his dark bay coat looked almost black, and his only marking was a small white star in the center of his forehead. The deep straw bedding hid any possible white markings on his legs.

For several moments Sarah and the horse stood looking at each other. Then she lifted the stall door's latch and let herself inside. As Crown Prince retreated to the corner, she reached back over the door to lower the latch back into position. Slowly she approached the horse, all the while talking softly. “Good boy, good Prince,” she repeated. Once by his side, she reached to touch his long neck and stroke it gently. His coat felt like sleek satin. He turned his head toward her, seeming to know she meant him no harm.