The Trojan Colt Read Online Free PDF Page B

answered Jamie. “But he had a mama too, and every time she ran more than nine furlongs she tripped on her pedigree.” He shrugged. “What the hell. Most races are shorter than that these days, so maybe he’ll go two and a half after all.”
    Then a couple of men in suits showed up. “Time,” announced one of them, flashing his credentials, and the other opened the stall door, then stood aside as Jamie led Tyrone down the aisle and out of the barn. The colt pricked up his ears and looked around but didn’t seem at all nervous. I didn’t know what you wanted in an auction yearling, but you got nervous if the horse you’d bet on started sweating heavily on the way to the post. Tyrone was dry as a bone, which is more than I could say for the two guys in suits walking alongside him in the Kentucky sun.
    I’d seen photos of prior auctions in Tony’s magazines, but evidently they’d all been taken at evening sessions, when the rich and famous felt compelled to wear tuxes and designer gowns. But as I entered the pavilion and surveyed the audience, I couldn’t tell the billionaires from the trainers and the press (well, with a very few exceptions).
    I noticed they’d stuck a label on Tyrone’s right flank. It read “203,” and from that moment until the auction ended he was known and referred to only as “Hip 203” by both the auctioneer and in the catalog.
    He was third in line. A filly went for what I was told was a disappointing quarter of a million, and then the colt just ahead of Tyrone was led into the ring. There were a couple of bids, but the auctioneer couldn’t elicit anymore, and he announced that the colt hadn’t met his reserve—something like four hundred thousand—and would be returned to his breeder.
    It got me wondering if maybe everyone had been overestimating either Tyrone’s value or the health of the economy. I didn’t know what his reserve was, or even if he had one, but I had a feeling that Bigelow, his breeder and consignor, must be getting a little nervous as Jamie led him into the ring.
    It turned out that I worried for nothing. The opening bid was a million and a quarter, and the auctioneer was up past two million in less than a minute. I could see half a dozen of the rich and famous whispering with their trainers and their bloodstock agents. Finally one white-haired gent nodded his head, the auctioneer announced that the bid was two and a quarter, and somehow they passed over two and a half and two and three-quarters in the next few seconds to land on three million.
    No one raised their hands or gave any other indication that they were about to bid, and the auctioneer, no fool he, just relaxed and gave them all another minute to confer. Then he announced, “Going once, going twice” and got a three-and-a-quarter-million bid before he could reach “going three times.”
    He gave everyone another minute, and this time no one bid, and Tyrone—excuse me, Hip 203—was sold to Khalid Rahjan, an oil-rich sheikh from Dubai or the Emirates (I never knew the difference; to me it’s all “the Middle East”). I checked to see who was shaking his hand. That’s when I found out that Biff Wainwright was his trainer, and that meant I might actually get a chance to see Tyrone when he began his career, because unlike Bill Halwell, who was strictly a West Coast man except for the Triple Crown and the Breeders’ Cup, Wainwright often ran his horses in the Midwest.
    As Tyrone was led out of the ring, Ben Miller walked over to me.
    â€œOkay, Eli, they’ve got their own security, so there’s no need for you to stick around. Go on back to Cincinnati and pick up your fee from the office tomorrow morning.”
    â€œThanks,” I said. “I was afraid that I might catch something, being exposed to all this money.”
    â€œI assume that’s your notion of a