Perhaps he would be able to find out. He was aware from having listened to him yesterday that Jay loved to talk and that it wouldn’t be long before he knew a lot more about this man and where he was from.

“Do you know why you have the ideal racing seat?” Jay asked.

“No. I just try to keep from falling off.”

Jay laughed loudly, and his hair fell low on his forehead when he shook his head. He turned quickly to the boy, only his eyes smiling now. “I wasn’t laughing at you,” he said when he saw Steve’s flushed face. “Your saying that reminded me of what happened a short while ago. I was down South on a visit when …”

“South America?” Steve asked quickly.

“No. Southern United States,” Jay replied. “Kentucky, I think it was, but it’s not important. Anyway, I was watching the horse races at a small country fair and most of them were being won by kids riding bareback. There were a couple of big Eastern trainers there, and I got talking to them. It seems they went to the small fairs looking for horses they might be able to use on the big city tracks. They were disturbed because while they’d been buying a lot of the winning horses at the fairs it turned out that they didn’t run very well when they reached the Eastern tracks. The trainers couldn’t understand what happened to the horses’ speed.”

Jay stopped, and his eyes glowed with an unusual brightness.

“Maybe it was the faster competition,” Steve suggested.

“No, it wasn’t that at all,” Jay answered. “The reason was that the trainers took the horses but left the kids who had ridden them behind.”

“Were they such good riders?”

“In a way,” Jay replied thoughtfully. “You see, those kids at the fairs didn’t have enough money to buy saddles, so in riding bareback their first objective was to keep from falling off.” He smiled and then went on, “A simple matter of self preservation, Steve, as you pointed out a moment ago. They hung on to whatever was best to keep their balance. They moved forward over their mounts’ withers. They pulled up their knees and leaned close to their horses’ necks, holding mane as well as rein. In doing all these things their weight was forward, where it should be for extreme speed, and in addition they cut down wind resistance to a minimum; their bodies didn’t act as a brake.”

Jay paused to glance at Flame, who was walking slowly around the band.

It gave Steve a chance to say, “But certainly that’s the way jockeys ride even with saddles.”

Jay turned quickly to the boy. “Oh, no, Steve. You’re mistaken. I’ve watched them. They ride with very long stirrups and sit straight up in the saddle with their weight in the middle of a horse’s back. Really I can’t understand why they do it! They just don’t seem to use their heads at all. It makes me a little angry, especially when I think of what happened in England not long after my visit to that country fair.”

Steve said nothing. He knew that the crouched forward seat of riding had been first introduced to horse racing well over a half-century ago!

Jay continued, “I was spending only a few days in England, but naturally I visited the track every morning. And, Steve, listen to this. One morning I saw the trainer I’d spoken to at the country fair, and working for his stable was one of the boys who had ridden bareback! I realized immediately that this man had finally come to his senses. I told him as much and he agreed fully.