I Had 72 Hours to Drive an $8 Million Racehorse From Kentucky to Saratoga. On Day Two, His Owner Called and Told Me Not to Arrive

The state troopers met me at the Saratoga backstretch gate at 12:40 p.m.

Four cars. Lights. Guns on their belts.

For about ninety seconds, I thought I was going to jail.

Then Ruth Okafor walked out from behind them in a straw hat, took one look at her horse coming down the ramp, healthy and bright-eyed and a little annoyed at the crowd, and burst into tears.

The lead trooper looked at the paperwork. Looked at the video the kid from Texas had sent to every news station in the Northeast. Looked at me.

“Mr. Kirby,” he said. “You’re free to go. Mr. Vane, on the other hand, is going to have a long weekend.”

They arrested Preston Vane at his house on Long Island that evening. Insurance fraud, attempted theft, conspiracy. The men in the SUV were private security he’d hired with a story about “repossessing” the horse.

The racing commission suspended his ownership. Brass Monkey was put under the control of a court-appointed trustee until the bankruptcy was sorted out.

And at 5:46 p.m., he ran in the Travers Stakes.

I watched from the rail, in the same shirt I’d been wearing for three days.

He broke slow. He was sixth at the turn. And then, in the stretch, he came down the outside like a train coming home, and won by a length and a half.

Ruth found me at the rail afterward. She hugged me so hard I lost my hat.

“The trustee wants to give you a percentage of the purse,” she said. “As a reward.”

“I don’t want it.”

“It’s two hundred thousand dollars, Lane.”

I thought about that.

“Give half to the Flying J in Milesburg,” I said. “Tell them to buy coffee for every trucker who stops there for a year. And give the other half to a grandmother in Ohio named Pearl.”

“What about you?”

“I’ve got a horse to pick up in Ocala on Tuesday,” I said. “Quarter horse mare. Worth about six thousand dollars. Very rude.”

Ruth laughed.

I walked back to my truck, turned on the radio and pulled out onto Union Avenue.

Nobody in my trailer. Nobody on the phone.

Just me and George Strait.

Exactly how I like it.