I’d leave him alone.”

“But nothing’s there … just Tony’s old horse.”

“He knows that,” Mr. Ramsay said, moving her across the porch. “He knows it very well.”

When they opened the door, a small dog with shaggy brown hair leaped outside and rose, clinging to their legs with his forepaws. Mr. Ramsay reached down to pull gently on the long ears. “You’d better go with Alec, Sebastian,” he said. “I think he’d like to have you around.”

The dog stood still before the closed door, whimpering and with his head cocked; then he turned and saw Alec. With a short bark he ran down the steps and across the pavement until he came to a sliding stop before the boy.

Alec bent down to him, holding the soft body in his arms, but after a few minutes he straightened and went to the high, iron-barred fence. Opening the gate, he went inside, followed closely by Sebastian.

The graveled driveway led to Henry’s house and one of the few open fields left in a fast-growing area; it stretched before him, coming to an end at an old barn a hundred yards away. Alec walked toward it, his eyes leaving the darkened barn only for the wooden fence to the left of the barn and to the field beyond … the field where the Black—and, later, Satan—had grazed.

Reaching the barn door, he opened it and went inside. Even before he switched on the light there was the soft whinny of a horse. Sebastian’s feet pattered over the wood floor as he made his way toward one of the two box stalls in the small barn.

Blinking his eyes in the sudden light, a horse pushed his gray, almost white, head over his stall’s half-door. Alec went to him, placing his hand upon the soft muzzle. For a moment he stood there, his eyes running over the well-groomed coat.

“Tony takes good care of you all right, doesn’t he, Napoleon?” Alec’s gaze turned to the cloth hanging on the peg beside the door. “But I guess it wouldn’t do any harm to go over you once more.” Taking the cloth, Alec went inside and ran it across Napoleon’s swayed back. But the horse turned to him, seeking the boy’s face.

“Stand still, Napoleon,” he said, taking the old head and pressing it close to him.

Sebastian entered the stall, running between the horse’s legs and beneath the heavy hanging girth. Napoleon lowered his head, inquisitively watching the dog.

When Alec had finished grooming Napoleon, he went to the water pail and found it full. But he emptied and refilled it; then he got some clean straw and spread it over the floor.

It was only when there was nothing else to do that he turned to the other box stall. He looked at it for many minutes before going to the tack room at the far end of the barn, and there he sat down on a low, flat chest and buried his head in his hands.

“You’ve got to grow up,” he told himself angrily.

When he raised his head again, it was to look at three pictures hanging on the wall before him. They were of Satan. One had been taken when he was a weanling and stood on long spindled legs; another when he was a yearling and already bigger-boned and more burly than his sire; and the last picture was one of him as a two-year-old, standing in the winner’s circle after he had won the Hopeful last fall. That had been the beginning of his meteoric career on the track and the end, Alec knew, of having Satan for his own.

There was another picture, larger than the others, on the wall to Alec’s left. Without turning to it, he saw every detail in his mind. It was a photograph of the Black’s head. Alec had taken it one day long ago, and his father had had it enlarged and framed for him. The background was nothing but sky, and the Black stood out against it so vividly that it seemed you could reach out and touch the finely drawn muzzle, to feel it soft and quivering beneath your hand.

It was a small head, noble and arrogant, with eyes large and lustrous, burning with fiery energy; his silky foretop and heavy black mane were swept back, for there had been a strong breeze that day; his small ears were pricked forward, almost touching at the tips; and his delicate nostrils were dilated, for he had been suspicious and wary of the camera.

Alec closed his eyes, shutting out the Black’s picture from his mind. But he opened them almost immediately, startled by the sound of his own voice as he said loudly, “Today I rode Satan to the Triple Crown championship. No one could ask for more than that. No one should. I’m the luckiest and happiest kid in the world.”

He repeated his words to himself, then rose to his feet, knowing well that he was only kidding himself.