Sam’s there, and he’ll give me all the info I want.”

Shortly after Morgan left, the two Bedouins emerged from the hold and walked quickly down the plank onto the dock. Without glancing to the right or to the left, they hurried to their band, nodded as they passed their sheikh, and mounted.

The group stayed there until the last of the cargo was put aboard the Queen of India and the dockhands had thrown off the lines holding the ship to the pier.

Harrity realized that he should be below, working with his men, but the sight of that Bedouin band, sitting still and straight on the magnificent horses, fascinated him.

The Queen of India was well away from the pier when Morgan rejoined him. “Sam gave me as much information as he had,” he said excitedly. “And guess what, Harrity. That baby we’re carryin’ isn’t goin’ to any of those big horse stables in Kentucky.… Nope, he’s goin’ to some guy by the name of Alec Ramsay. And this will kill you. Where does the guy live but in Flushing, New York! Why, that’s like goin’ to my burg, Brooklyn!”

“Not exactly,” Harrity replied. “It’s a lot smaller, but maybe there’s room for a horse to turn around in.”

“Well, it’s a suburb of New York, ain’t it?”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right. I can’t see this horse in either place.”

They were walking toward the door leading down to the boiler room when Harrity came to a sudden stop. “Alec Ramsay,” he muttered to himself.

“Yeah, that’s his name,” Morgan said. “What’s eatin’ you?”

“That name. I know it. I’ve seen it somewhere,” Harrity said, half to himself, half to Morgan. Turning, he went back to the rail of the ship and looked again at the mighty black stallion. The sheikh had mounted him, but the band still hadn’t moved. The horse had his head high, his ears pricked, and he, too, seemed to be watching the departing ship. Then suddenly he raised his head still higher, and there was heard, resounding across the still, hot air, his shrill, piercing whistle. The scream of a wild stallion! Harrity had never heard anything like it and he knew that in all probability few of those on the ship or dock had. It was a long, high-pitched cry that crept to the marrow of one’s bones. It was eerie, frightening.

Harrity found Morgan at his side. “Y’mean that came from him?” Without taking his eyes from the stallion, Harrity nodded. And Morgan said, “That was weirder than anything we ever heard in India.”

They saw the black horse rear to his utmost height as the sheikh astride him wrapped his long legs like two bars of steel around his girth. Coming down with battering forefeet, the stallion snorted, half-reared, and screamed again. His rider raised a hand in signal to his men, and simultaneously they wheeled their horses.

And as the Bedouin band rode up the street which would lead them back to the desert, Harrity and Morgan heard the muffled scream of the black colt in the hold.

Morgan said, “Guess that’s the end of the fireworks, Harrity. We’d better get goin’.”

Nodding, Harrity followed, deep in thought. And it wasn’t until they were well on their way down the iron stairs that he stopped. “I got it,” he half shouted, as his hand grabbed Morgan’s arm. “Y’remember that trip the Queen’s boiler went bad on us, and we had to limp back to New York for a repair job?”

“I don’t want to remember it,” Morgan said, “after the work it caused us.”

But Harrity went on. “We hit port just in time to hear all about that big match horse race out in Chicago. Y’couldn’t help rememberin’ that, Morgan, for everybody was talkin’ their fool heads off about it.