The Black Stallion's Ghost Read Online Free Page A

over the dirt road came faster and louder. He thrust out his small head as if ready to extend himself to the fullest; his haunches glittered in the early morning sun like black satin.
    Alec’s eyes were as bright as his mount’s. The Black was reveling in his freedom from bit and saddle! Still, Alec knew he must keep him under control. He pushed away the stallion’s mane that streamed back at him, clearing his blurred eyes so he could see objects along the road. Instinctively he began estimating furlongs and began counting off the seconds, down to fifths of seconds, keeping time in his mind. Every jockey needed to know the pace of his mount, whether running at full speed or not, and Alec never stoppedpracticing because he knew it was not a question of talent but of hard work. Also, he didn’t want the Black to run himself into the ground.
    After a mile, he slowed the Black to a walk. He let go of the mane and wiped the sweat from his face. They were close enough to the Everglades for him to be able to smell the rank odor that blew from the swamp.
    Suddenly the air took on a warning bite. Alec had the same feeling he’d had earlier, an awareness that this morning was not like other mornings. But now another element had been added. He stopped the Black in his tracks. He didn’t know if the
danger
he felt was real or something he sensed in the air around him. But he knew it was there, somewhere in the Everglades.

T HE H AMMOCKS
3
    Alec’s gaze swept over the saw-grass empire, colored like ripe wheat nearby but shading to emerald green in the distance. It was a wild bright plain, neither land nor water, with no visible limits. It was a land mostly untouched by human hands. It was motionless—and yet Alec sensed in it a throbbing heartbeat of its own.
    He shrugged off the feeling of apprehension that had come to him. There was no reason to fear this watery wilderness that was being drained by the canals. He realized that the huge swamp was resisting, fighting for its life. This was evident in the sun-bitten vastness spreading before him as if in challenge to all those who sought to destroy it.
    The dirt road went to a remote and isolated Seminole Indian village a couple of miles away. The people there were hunters, he had been told, and lived on one of the high islands in the swamp known as hammocks.
    His gaze turned to the nearest hammock, a round clump of land with tall palms silhouetted against thebrazen sky. There were some birds flying above it and he watched them vanish behind the palm fronds. There were other hammocks to the west, some larger, others smaller, all emerging from the green-and-yellow-speared sea.
    Alec moved his horse on. He had come this far, and there was no reason to turn back now. He did not mind the quiet of the swamp after the months of pandemonium at Hialeah racetrack.
    Just ahead, a score of buzzards rose from a mud flat at the sound of the Black’s hoofs. Alec watched them move awkwardly in swift, waddling flight. They didn’t go far but stayed directly above, planing in lazy circles, waiting for him to pass.
    When he rode by he saw a dead alligator, its body furnishing forage for the hideous carrion birds. The buzzards had ripped flesh and entrails into a shredded horror; he turned away.
    For the first time Alec thought of the devastation to wildlife that the drainage canals must even now be bringing to the Everglades. Yet as he looked at the immensity of the land that stretched as far south as the Gulf of Mexico, he doubted that the swamp ever would be conquered completely by man. It was not meant for human habitation. It belonged to wildlife alone.
    Later he came to an unexpected fork in the road and brought the Black to a halt. One way led to the Seminole Indian village, while the other road wound its way through the vast wilderness of swamp to the southwest. Far in the distance Alec saw a large hammock and decided the road went there. Perhaps it was one