Out of Bunyan by Runyon

From the moment he trotted onto the track, Silky Sullivan must have known he was on the spot. California horseplayers knew what the implausible chestnut could do. They had seen him before, loafing while a fast field stole a 40-length lead, then blazing into the stretch--and a narrow victory--as though his tail were on fire. Could he do it again? This was the $130,500 Santa Anita Derby, and Silky was up against nine swift three-year-olds, including Old Pueblo, the last one to beat him. If he lost this time, people might suspect he was only a horse after all.

For months they had suspected that he was something more. "I've seen the act in vaudeville," said awed ex-Vaudevillian Charley Foy. "It's two guys on roller skates." Chimed in a breed-improver named Georgie Jessel: "His name isn't Sullivan at all. He's Silky Solomon. I knew him in Philadelphia."

Good Doer. No sooner had the ten-horse field settled into its stride at Santa Anita last week than Silky's strongest boosters began to worry about his form. Their favorite was only 28 lengths behind the leaders--for him that was hot pursuit. Maybe he was burning himself out early. But Silky had plenty in reserve. When the field carried wide on the stretch turn, he wove and darted toward the rail with the sure-footed skill of an All-American halfback. Silky shot under the wire a widening three lengths in front of his stablemate, Harcall. Said Harcall's jockey, Bill Boland: "He ran by me so fast, he darn near sucked me under."

Satisfied at last that Silky was a legitimate sensation, the form followers were still trying to figure out how he did it. With his breeding he should not have the staying power to finish a mile-and-a-furlong derby with a sprint. His sire, the Irish-bred Sullivan, seldom lasted more than a mile; his dam. Lady N Silk, also seemed mere horseflesh. With his build, Silky hardly looks like a thoroughbred at all. He has heavy jowls, the neck of a Percheron and the broad chest of a Turkish wrestler. He clops solidly up to the starting gate as if he were there only to pull it into position. Indeed, Silky is a horse out of Bunyan by Runyon.

At the oat pail, Silky is what stablemen call a "good doer." He eats like a horse. But the feed never turns to fat; it only stokes Silky's fires. He burns it up according to the dictates of his own four-footed psyche; his jockey is only along for the ride. He breaks from the gate like a common sprinter, races 70 yds., then lags as if his safety valve had popped. Wags in the press box contend that he is a ham who hates to leave the grandstand. And it is a heart-stopping fact to bettors that he begins to run again only when he rounds the stretch turn and heads for the crowd again. Says Co-Owner Tom Ross: "I swear, he counts the house."

Bad Risk. Silky's only stubborn detractors are the early-morning dockers, the stopwatch specialists who have heard him come back from a workout wheezing like an equine asthmatic. Silky's outraged owners brush off such canards. They admit no more than that their horse is a "roarer," i.e., an animal who clears his ears, nose and throat with a sound like a bull alligator with his tail caught in a trap. They have other health problems on their minds. Each of the two owners is a cardiac case.

For men of such delicate health to own Silky is a little like a hay-fever sufferer working in a florist shop. Silky may make it to the winner's circle, but after seeing him run, there is a live possibility that his owners may not. Gentle Tom Ross tries to avoid the danger by hiding under the grandstand rather than watching. His partner, Phil Klipstein, is even more practical. Last week he tried to sell Silky for an offered $400,000. But Ross demurred. And now, neither man is sorry. Come the first Saturday in May, California's pride and pocketbook will be riding into the Kentucky Derby on their colt, an Irish bully-boy like his namesake John L., who is sure he can lick any horse in the house.

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