Ten Broeck smiled, thinking how reading such lines in his hometown paper surely had put Wells off his breakfast. Wells might have been better pleased by the dispatch in the Daily Crescent: “We believe Lexington will win his match against time, and still we don’t think he will beat Lecompte.” The paper took issue with the fact that the judges had agreed to allow Lexington a running, rather than a standing start, and had allowed pacemakers to run with him.

  It was a fine day, though a stiff breeze pushed the drifting tendrils of moss almost sideways on the oaks. Ten Broeck noticed Jarret out on the track. He squinted in aggravation when he saw him kneel down in the dirt. What was he thinking—already dressed for the race? If he knew the price of that embroidered banyan he wouldn’t be fouling it so casually.

  Ten Broeck eased his way through the gathering crowd and waved to get Jarret’s attention. Jarret stood, dusted off his hands, and came toward him, his face grave.

  “They’ve stripped the track,” he said, before Ten Broeck could remonstrate with him about the state of his garments. “It’s smooth, as you wanted. But it’s hard as rock. They’ve taken too much soil off.”

  “I said smooth and hard,” Ten Broeck said. “We want a fast track.”

  “Well, it’s like iron out there,” Jarret said. “All the spring is gone from it.”

  Ten Broeck shrugged and waved a hand at the dirty circles on the knees of Jarret’s breeches. “Do you have any others you can wear? You’ve quite ruined those.”

  “I’m worried about ruining the horse,” Jarret retorted.

  Ten Broeck ignored Jarret’s ferocity. “I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that. In any case, nothing to be done at this hour. Go and see if Gilpatrick is in want of anything, will you?” Ten Broeck had adopted the common habit of running the jockey’s first and last names together. Jarret glared at Ten Broeck and stomped off to the stables. He could at least ensure that the jockey was aware of the appalling state of the track—so different to what they had trained upon.

  As the hour for the race approached, grooms ponied out the two horses who would challenge Lexington to make his best time. A gelding named Joe Blackburn would start with him for the first two miles, then Arrow, brought in fresh, would take over to challenge him for the race’s second half.

  Gilpatrick started Lexington up the stretch, turned him at the draw gates, and was at a full gallop as they passed the judges’ stand and heard the drum tap. Throughout the stands, spectators clicked the buttons atop the cases on their brand-new stopwatches.

  Jarret had placed himself by the outer rail, as near as possible to Ten Broeck. As Lexington blazed through the first half mile, concern creased Ten Broeck’s face. At the mile, he glanced at his stopwatch: 1:47:25. Too fast. “He can’t hold out at such a pace,” he muttered. As Gilpatrick passed him he roared his instruction: “Take back! Take back!”

  The disciplined jockey complied and held Lexington to just under two minutes in the second mile. Even so, the pacer Joe Blackburn couldn’t keep up. Just three minutes into the race, he had dropped back so far as to be useless. Ten Broeck shouted to bring Arrow up early. The jockey spurred the fresh horse to challenge Lexington as he rounded the curve. Hearing him coming, Lexington fought Gilpatrick’s pull and asked insistently for his head. Gilpatrick allowed enough extra speed to keep ahead of his challenger. The horse again passed the mile mark. Stopwatches clicked. Mile three: 1:51:5.

  The effort to challenge Lexington at such a speed was too much for Arrow, so Ten Broeck waved Joe Blackburn back into the race. Neither horse could muster speed enough to be of any use. No matter. Lexington needed no competition to set his pace.

  Jarret noticed that Lexington was fighting Gilpatrick all through the final mile, trying to swerve out from the rail. “He’s trying to find the softer going,” Jarret shouted to Ten Broeck. “He must keep him on the rail,” Ten Broeck replied.

  Only in the stretch did Gilpatrick give the horse his head, allowing him to finish the final quarter mile in under 25 seconds. As Lexington blazed across the finish line, spectators thumped their stopwatches. There was a momentary hush as they stared at the time in disbelief. Then a howl of thrilled approval. Lexington, running alone, had conquered four miles in a new record time of 7:19:75. He had trounced Lecompte’s 7:26 record.

  As Gilpatrick brought the horse back toward Jarret, it was immediately apparent that both his front shoes were loose. Jarret shouted to the jockey to dismount. Gilpatrick did so, standing by, concerned, as Jarret picked up Lexington’s right leg, and then his left. Both of the thin racing plates had worked loose, rattling against the horn of the horse’s hoof. One shoe had all but three of ten nails out. The remaining ones were bent and twisted.

  “His feet must be stinging something terrible,” Jarret said.

  Gilpatrick pushed back his cap. “If his shoes had been right, he’d have shaved another four or five seconds. Just shows what courage he has, to run on, with shoes like that,” he said. “I don’t know another horse that would have kept giving like he gave, and not even a pacemaker in earshot of him. I think he’s proved something today, for sure. Not just the fastest horse in history, but maybe the bravest one as well.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The next morning, Gilpatrick leaned over the door of Lexington’s stall as Jarret positioned the horse’s right hoof in the soaking tub. He spoke softly so that no one else could hear.

  “You have to tell him.”

  Jarret stood, wiping his hands. “Still holding too much heat in that leg.”

  “Legs’ll be just fine after a few more cold soaks. It’s the other thing worries me. Should worry you.”

  “Course it worries me.” Jarret ran his hand through Lexington’s forelock. The horse leaned into his touch and didn’t flinch as Jarret found the lumpy protrusion of bone encircling his eye. “Worries me every waking minute.”

  “You know they’re about to set terms for the rematch. Old Man Wells is all but begging for it.”

  “Heard tell he’s having vapor fits over Lexington being called the fastest racehorse in history.”

  Gilpatrick gave a dry laugh. “He fell right into the trap your man set for him.” He leaned farther into the stall and dropped his voice even lower. “I think the only thing that will put a stop to it is if you speak up. Tell Ten Broeck the truth.”

  Jarret busied himself swabbing the other leg. He didn’t reply.

  “Jarret!” Gilpatrick’s tone was jussive. “If you don’t tell him, I will. You leave me no choice.”

  “You got a choice. You don’t got to ride him.”

  Gilpatrick thumped a fist against the stall boards. “Damn it, you’re a stubborn boy. You know how much I want the ride. But an owner has a right to know what he’s agreeing to.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “He ought to know his horse can’t see.”

  “He can see. Shadows, still.”

  “But it is getting worse.”

  Jarret straightened and finally looked Gilpatrick in the eye.

  “Oh yes. Much worse.”

  It had started with the inflammation. But Jarret had tended that with cold compresses, and it had subsided. Then, in Saratoga Springs, Jarret had noticed that the horse was spooky in a way that wasn’t usual for him. Jarret had ascribed it to the unfamiliar surroundings, the stress of the long journey north. When the horse began to trip during workouts, Jarret suspected he’d been nail-quicked by an unskilled farrier and called the man back to reshoe.

  It was only when Lexington walked right into a barrow that someone had carelessly left in the midst of the paddock that Jarret began to suspect the truth. He pulled a kerchief from his pocket and flapped it. The horse leaped sideways and Jarret felt a rush of relief. But when he tried the same test on the other side, the horse made no response at all.

  One eye was failing. There had been signs: a manner of tilting his head to favor the better eye, the way he dropped his muzzle to probe the ground, especially where surfaces changed suddenly from dark to light. The horse had been resourceful. In the familiar surrounds of Metairie, he’d made his own mental maps and compensated even as his world began to darken.

  A blind horse has other acute senses: smell and hearing and the delicate sense of touch in the fine hairs of his face. He can travel well through his known world using these. But away from his familiar home, there was fear.

  Harry had always told Jarret that Boston went blind because of a savage beating. He’d been sure that the blindness wouldn’t be passed down to his foals. But now Jarret wondered if his father had been mistaken. Perhaps Boston’s blindness was hereditary. He walked Lexington to his stall on the Saratoga farm and examined his eyes closely. There was no discharge, no clouding. But then his fingers found the lump of misshapen bone. He felt the other side—no lump. That, at least, was good. He knew of many horses who raced just fine with sight in only one eye. But what could have happened to deform his bone in this way? Jarret had been with the horse his whole life, except for those hard weeks at Fatherland, and even there, he’d watched him from a distance and would have known if the horse had injured himself. Pryor had called on him for the colic; he would have done the same, surely, for any other crisis. He couldn’t think what, besides a bad injury, could misshape a bone and rob a horse of vision in that way.

  When they left Saratoga and transferred to the stables at the National Race Course in New York City, Jarret made various excuses as to why Lexington should not be turned out with other horses and why he alone should have the handling of the stallion. It was easy enough to convince the hands that the stallion had a foul temper, since so many did. They were willing to take Jarret at his word and leave everything, from the mucking of the stall to the morning gallops, entirely to him. Then, when Captain Stuart sickened and died from the cholera, the misfortune gave cover for their untimely return south. Stuart had been the one with good connections at the new course, and Ten Broeck had relied on him to create interest in a northern contest. With the death of his friend, Ten Broeck seemed to lose heart for promoting such a race, and sent word to bring the horse home, by slow stages, keeping him in condition for the Race Against Time.

  Jarret had done so, taking every opportunity on that journey south to build on his strong bond of trust with the horse and to expand the range of verbal commands Lexington responded to. They had stopped for long rests at farms where Ten Broeck had connections, and in every strange place, Jarret worked from first light to last on building Lexington’s confidence. He slept in the pasture so that the horse would be reassured by his familiar scent. By the end of the journey even a strange paddock held no terrors.

  He had been confident Lexington would run brilliantly in the Race Against Time. He was just as certain that if he had time to heal the soreness in his feet, Lexington would defeat Lecompte. Maybe, with a worthy challenger to press him on, he would even beat his own world record.

  Jarret wanted this chance. The blindness was progressing rapidly. Despite his hopes, the sight in the good eye had begun to fade. Soon, he feared, Lexington would be completely blind. And no one would risk racing a stone-blind horse.

  But if Lexington beat Lecompte, he would prove himself beyond doubt the champion stallion of the age, assured of a good life as a coddled stud sire. He didn’t need to see to do that.

  Jarret lifted Lexington’s hoof out of the soaking tub and dried each leg vigorously. Gilpatrick held the stall door as he carried the tub to the barn entrance and threw the water in a wide sparkling arc.

  The two men stepped out into the warm spring morning. A grimace of vexation deepened the lines on the smaller man’s face. Jarret sighed. “You really think he gone call this thing off if you tell him?”

  “Yes, I think—I expect—”

  “Then you don’t know him. There ain’t nothing gone make him do that. He plans to make this thing the race of the century. He reckons it’s bigger than American Eclipse and Sir Henry back in 1823, bigger even than when you raced Boston up against that Fashion filly in forty-two.”

  “But there were seventy thousand people at that race! He can’t possibly think—”

  “But he does. That’s exactly what he thinks. He saw how many folk came out just to watch a race against a clock, and now he reckons this rivalry—the two great sons of Boston—is sure to take hold of the racing press and fire up every single person ever liked a horse race—rich, poor, old, and young. That what he thinks. You, me—nothing we say is gonna stop him.”

  Jarret looked around, to make sure they weren’t overheard. “But what you might do is rowel him up to some kind of foolishness. Just like we talked of last time. That man might do anything. You know that.”

  Gilpatrick stared up at the tall youth, considering. He’d raced against talented Black jockeys all his long career and ridden winners trained by expert Black horsemen. Any notions he’d had about natural inferiority had long ago been rasped away by the evidence of his own experience. He knew Jarret’s gift with horses was prodigious. But was he also a judge of the motives of men—especially of such a subtle player as Ten Broeck? Gilpatrick wasn’t sure.

  In the end, he said nothing, and the race date was set for April 14. The sporting press waxed enthusiastic, as Ten Broeck had predicted, hailing Lexington and Lecompte as “the great lions of the day” and proclaiming that their contest merited the “same interest and avidity as the probable fate of a nation.”

  Readers apparently agreed. New Orleans filled to brimming, once again, with racing fans lured by Ten Broeck’s promotional flair. Wells’s friends from the Red River district crowded the city, avid to see their man put the northern interloper back in his place. The Kentucky-bred horse and his New York owner could not be allowed another triumph. Wells’s sister boasted that half of Rapides Parish had come to bet on Lecompte, “not only because they considered him the best horse in the world, but because he was Jeff Wells’s horse.”

  By midday, coaches and drags packed the infield, carrying their noisy parties. As the clock eased slowly to the three p.m. race time, strolling bands of minstrels, acrobats, and Creole dancers entertained the crowd. Vendors carried trays piled high with fruits and iced drinks. Ten Broeck had ordered the stands decorated with festoons of bright fabric and soon the gaudy tiers were crammed. Trees sagged and boughs cracked under the weight of spectators. It was, the French denizens proclaimed, a “succès fou,” even before the horses left the stable.

  Ten Broeck moved through the crowd, pensive. The Red River men, it seemed, were not betting on their horse. Ten Broeck didn’t know why, and for him that was an unaccustomed experience. By all measures, their horse should have been favored. For one thing, Gilpatrick was riding above his ideal weight, so Lexington would be carrying 3¾ pounds more than Lecompte. This was no trifling matter since Lexington was the smaller horse by some 160 pounds. It was not as if he had no eyes on the Wells horse. He had paid to be kept informed on Lecompte’s form in training. A few days earlier, his informant had sent a message that Lecompte was looking grand and training perfectly. So why was the money going so heavily to Lexington? What was depressing wagers on the Wells horse?

  Ten Broeck turned the matter over in his mind as he did a circuit of the stables, looking for the youth he’d paid. He could hardly ask after the boy by name without raising questions, but his scan of the grooms’ quarters proved futile. His informant was nowhere to be seen. Vexed, he sought out Jarret, who was preparing Lexington.

  “Have you heard anything that would account for a dearth of Red River money?”

  Jarret shook his head. “But you might ask the painter, Mr. Scott. I know he was up in Rapides Parish this week past. He knows a good many of Hark’s people and—”

  Ten Broeck didn’t wait for Jarret to finish. He’d seen Scott down by the rail earlier and now he forced his way through the crowd to find him. Scott, journal in hand, foot on the rail, was scribbling notes for his column. Ten Broeck touched his sleeve.

  “Do you know why there’s no money on Lecompte?”

  Scott looked over both shoulders and dropped his voice.

  “Three days ago. Sudden, out of nowhere. Severe colic. Hark insisted on drastic treatment. Got the horse on his feet, but I heard he’s off his feed and dull in the gallops.”

  “Thanks for that. I assume you’ve bet accordingly.”

  Scott smiled wanly. “I would have, were I in purse to do so.”

  Ten Broeck patted his arm. “I’ll place a wager for you.” Before Scott could say anything, he slid away into the crowd.

  In the saddling enclosure, Lexington danced with an excitement that told Jarret his feet were fully healed. Wells’s grooms led Lecompte out. It was an impressive procession. The trainer Hark, in frock coat and top hat, walked on one side, Abe Hawkins in Wells’s golden silks on the other. When the grooms stripped Lecompte’s sheet, his chestnut coat gleamed. But once saddled, the outrider had to urge him forward toward the track. There was a coin toss, and Lexington drew the pole.

  At the drum tap, the two rivals burst forward at sprinter speed. At the first turn, Abe challenged Gilpatrick for the pole position, but the veteran would not allow an inch. They came into the stretch head to head. No one had seen such early speed—both horses apparently going flat out—in the first quarter mile of a four-mile contest. Ten Broeck clicked his watch at the quarter mark and cursed. Twenty-five and a half seconds. “Suicidal. They will walk home.”

  Jarret wasn’t so sure. He could see that Gilpatrick wasn’t even asking as Lexington pulled ahead and took a lead around the upper turn. Abe answered with whip and spur, putting maximum pressure on Lecompte to close the gap.

  The chestnut did his best. Hearing him move up, Gilpatrick nudged Lexington a single time and the horse answered instantly, widening the lead to several lengths as Lecompte labored and showed his distress under Abe’s pitiless thrashing. When Jarret saw Lecompte’s tail droop and fall, he knew the great horse’s spirit had surrendered. Ahead of him, Lexington’s tail streamed high, like a plume of triumph. Gilpatrick tried to hold Lexington back, worried he couldn’t sustain this blistering speed. But as they passed the stands, the crowd’s wild cheering seemed to inspire the horse. Gilpatrick, for all his wiry strength and skill, could not check him. He broke away and hurtled to the wire.