What do you mean where’d we get him?”

“Just that, Henry. We got him in Arabia. He was foaled and raised in the Great Desert, the Rub’ al Khali.”

“I know all that.”

“I thought maybe you’d forgotten,” Alec said.

“Forgotten?” Henry sought an explanation in Alec’s eyes. “Forgotten that he was desert born? What do you take me for, Alec?” He raised his voice a pitch higher. “Do you think that excuses him for this? Wasn’t Satan desert born, too?”

“Satan came to us as a weanling,” Alec said quietly. “He had a chance. The Black was a mature stallion, never fully broken, never handled. And, Henry, he had roamed the desert free for a long while. Have you forgotten that?”

“I tell you I haven’t forgotten anything,” the old man said. Some of the harshness was gone from his voice. “I know further that he’s your horse completely, that no other person in this world can do as much with him. But Alec …”

“Do you remember my telling you what happened the first time I ever saw him,” Alec interrupted, “the day they were loading him on board my ship when it stopped at that Arabian port on the Red Sea?”

Henry shook his head in disgust. “Alec, if you’re going to bother tellin’ me the whole story of the Black again, you’d better just save your breath an’ I’ll save you some time. I know he was stolen from the Arab sheik, Abu Ishak, and put aboard your ship. I knew it went down off the west coast of Spain and you and the Black were the only survivors. An’ if he hadn’t pulled you to that reef of an island somewhere out there you wouldn’t be around now to be talkin’ this way.” Henry paused for breath. “I know, too, that if you hadn’t found food for him on the island, he wouldn’t be any more yours than he’s mine or anyone else’s. A hungry animal is a tame animal. I’ve seen it happen before. Sure, I’ll admit he loves you now, but never forget that your finding something for him to eat when he was starving made it all possible.”

“I wasn’t going into all that,” Alec said.

“You brought it up,” Henry insisted, his mouth less tight now. “I’ll finish it. I don’t want you to think I’ve forgotten anything,” he added sarcastically. “When you came back to the States with him, I met you and him for the first time. I knew what kind of a horse you had better’n you did. We raced him once and there never was or will be another race like it. Then we lost him because his rightful owner, Abu Ishak, came to reclaim him. Later on he sent you Satan as your reward, and then when Abu died he willed you the Black, so we got him back again.”

Henry stopped. “Am I making sense, Alec? Isn’t my memory still good?”

Alec nodded, and tried to interrupt. “All I wanted to say, Henry, was …”

“Let me finish, Alec. So we had the Black and Satan, and we made a world champion of Satan.