I
It was the afternoon before the closing day of the spring meeting of
the old Jockey Club that so many people know. The next day was to be the
greatest ever known on that course; the Spring Meeting was to go out in
a blaze of glory. As to this everybody in sight this spring afternoon
was agreed; and the motley crowd that a little before sunset stood
clustered within the big white-painted gate of the grounds about
the Jockey Club race-stables rarely agreed as to anything. From the
existence of the Deity to the effect of a blister on a windgall, through
the whole range of stable-thought and horse-talk, there was no subject,
speaking generally, on which that mongrel population agreed, except, of
course, on one thing--the universal desirability of whiskey. On this one
subject they all agreed, always.
Yet they were now all of one mind on the fact that the next day was to
be the record on that course. In the first place, the prize in the great
over-night event, the steeplechase set for the morrow, was the biggest
ever offered by the club, and the “cracks” drawn together for the
occasion were the best ever collected at a meeting on that course.
Even such noted steeplechasers as Mr. Galloper's Swallow, Colonel
Snowden's Hurricane, and Tim Rickett's Carrier Pigeon, which had
international reputations, were on hand for it, and had been sent “over
the sticks” every morning for a week in hopes of carrying off such a
prize.
There was, however, one other reason for the unwonted unanimity. Old Man
Robin--“Col-onel-Theodoric-Johnston's-Robin-suh”--said it was to be the
biggest day that was ever seen on that track, and in the memory of the
oldest stable-boss old Robin had never admitted that any race of the
present could be as great, “within a thousand miles,” as the races
he used to attend “befo' de wah, when hosses ran all de way from
Philidelphy to New Orleans.” Evil-minded stable-men and boys who had
no minds--only evil--laid snares and trapfalls for “Colonel Theodoric
Johnston's Robin, of Bull-field, suh,” as he loved to style himself, to
trip him and inveigle him into admissions that something was as good now
as before the war; but they had never succeeded. The gang had followed
him to the gate, where he had been going off and on all the afternoon,
and were at their mischief now while he was looking somewhat anxiously
out up the parched and yellow dusty road.
“Well, I guess freedom 's better 'n befo' d' wah?” hazarded one of his
tormentors, a hatchet-faced, yellow stable-boy with a loud, sharp voice.
He burst into a strident guffaw.
“Maybe, you does,” growled Robin. He edged off, rubbing his ear. “Befo'
de wah you 'd be mindin' hawgs--what you ought to be doin' now, stidder
losin' races an' spilin' somebody's hosses, mekin' out you kin ride.” A
shout of approving derision greeted this retort.
Old Robin was a man of note on that circuit. It was the canon of that
crowd to boast one's self better than everyone else in everything, but
Robin was allowed to be second only to the speaker and the superior
of everyone else with a unanimity which had its precedent only after
Salamis.
Robin had been head of Colonel Theodoric Johnston's stable before the
war, the time on which his mind dwelt with tender memory; and this,
with the consideration with which he was treated by stable-owners
and racing-gentlemen who shone like luminaries on the far edge of the
stable-boys' horizon, and the old man's undoubted knowledge of a horse,
made him an authority in that world.
The Bullfield stable had produced some of the greatest horses of the
country--horses to which the most ignorant stable-biped knew the great
winners of the present traced back their descent or were close akin--and
if Colonel Johnston's stable lost anything of prestige, it was not in
Robin's telling of it. He was at it now as he stood at the big white
gate, gazing up the road, over which hung a haze of dust. Deucalion, Old
Nina, Planet, Fanny Washington, and the whole gleaming array of fliers
went by in Robin's illumined speech, mixed up with Revenue, Boston,
Timoleon, Sir Archy and a dozen others in a blaze of equine splendor.
“Aw, what 're you giffin us!” jeered a dusky young mulatto, clad in a
ragged striped sweater, recently discharged as a stable-boy. “What wus
the time then? Why 'n't you read the book?”
This was a dig at Robin, for he was “no great hand at reading,” and the
crowd knew it and laughed. The old man turned on the speaker.
“Races now ain't no mo' than quarter-dashes. Let 'em try 'em in fo'-mile
heats if they want to see what 's in a hoss. Dat 's the test o' wind
an' bottom. _Our_ hosses used to run fo'-mile heats from New York to New
Orleans, an' come in with their heads up high enough to look over dis
gate.”
“Why 'n't you read the books?” persisted the other, facing him.
“I can't read not much better than you ken _ride_,” retorted Robin.
This was a crusher in that company, where riding stood high above any
literary attainment; for the other had been a failure as a jockey.
He tried to rally.
“I 'll bet you a hundred dollars I can----”
Robin gazed at him witheringly.
“You ain' got a hunderd dollars; you ain't got a hunderd cents! You
would n't 'a' been wuth a hunderd dollars in slave-times, an' I know you
ain' wuth it now.”
The old man, with a final observation that he did n't want to have to
go to court as a witness when folks were taken up for stealing their
master's money, took out and consulted his big gold stop-watch. That
was his conclusive and clinching argument. It was surprising what an
influence that watch exercised. Everyone who knew Robin knew that watch
had been given him before the war as a testimonial by the stewards of
the Jockey Club. It had the indisputable record engraved on the case,
and had been held over the greatest race-horses of the country. Robin
could go up to the front door of the club and ask for the president--he
possessed this exclusive privilege--and be received with an open hand
and a smile, and dismissed with a jest. Had not Major McDowell met him,
and introduced him to a duke as one of his oldest friends on the turf,
and one who could give the duke more interesting information about the
horses of the past than any other man he knew? Did not Colonel Clark
always shake hands with him when they met, and compare watches? So now,
when, as the throng of horse-boys and stable-attendants stood about him,
Robin drew his watch and consulted it, it concluded his argument and
left him the victor. The old trainer himself, however, was somewhat
disturbed, and once more he gazed up the road anxiously. The ground on
which he had predicted the greatness of the next day was not that the
noted horses already present were entered for the race, but much more
because he had received a letter from one whom he sometimes spoke of as
“one of his childern,” and sometimes as “one of his young
masters”--a grandson of his old master, Colonel Theodoric Johnston of
Bullfield--telling him that he was going to bring one of his horses,
a colt his grandfather had given him, and try for the big steeplechase
stake.
Old Robin had arranged the whole matter for him, and was now awaiting
him, for he had written that he could not get there until late in the
day before the race, as he had to travel by road from the old place.
Though old Robin let no one know of his uneasiness, he was watching now
with great anxiety, for the sun was sinking down the western sky toward
the green bank of trees beyond the turn into the home stretch, and in an
hour more the entries would be closed.
While he waited he beguiled the time with stories about his old master's
stable, and about the equine “stars” that shone in the pedigree of this
horse.
Colonel Johnston's fortune had gone down with the close of the war, and
when his stable was broken up he had recommended his old trainer to one
of his friends and had placed him with a more fortunate employer.
Robin had not seen his old master's grandson for years--not since he was
a little boy, when Robin had left home--and he pictured him as a dashing
and handsome young gentleman, such as he remembered his father before
him. As to the horse, not Sir Archy himself had been greater. Robin
talked as though he had had the handling of him ever since he was
dropped; and he ran over a pedigree that made the boys about him open
their wicked eyes.
Just then a stable-boy discerned out on the highway across the field a
rider, coming along at a swinging trot that raised the dust and shot it
in spurts before him.
“Yonder he come now!” cried the urchin, with a grimace to attract the
attention of the crowd. They looked in the direction indicated, and then
in' chorus began to shout. Old Robin turned and glanced indifferently
down the road. The next instant he wheeled and his black hand made a
clutch at the boy, who dodged behind half a dozen others as a shout of
derisive laughter went up from the throng. What Robin saw was only a
country lad jogging along on a big raw-boned, blazed-faced horse, whose
hipbones could be seen even at that distance.
“You know dat ain't my horse!” said the old man, sharply. “You young
boys is gittin' too free with you' moufs! Dat horse----”
The rest of his speech, however, was lost; for at that moment the
horseman turned from the highway into the road to the race-course and
came swinging on toward the gate. The gang behind old Robin broke into
renewed jeers, but at the same time kept well out of his reach; for the
old man's face bore a look that no one dared trifle with, and he had a
heavy hand on occasion, as many of them had come to know. His eyes now
were fastened on the horse that was rapidly approaching through a cloud
of dust on the yellow road, and a look of wonder was growing on his
brown face.
The rider pulled rein and drew up just outside the open gate, looking
down on the group there in some bewilderment Then his eyes lighted up,
as the old trainer stepped out and, taking off his hat, put forth his
hand.
“Uncle Robin!”
“My young master.” He took the bridle just as he might have done years
before had his old master ridden up to the gate.
The act impressed the gang behind him as few things could have done,
and though they nudged one another, they fell back and huddled together
rather farther away, and only whispered their ridicule among themselves.
The boy sprang from the saddle, and the old man took possession of the
horse.
They were a strange-looking pair, horse and rider, fresh from the
country, both of them dusty and travel-stained, and, as the stable-boys
whispered among themselves, both “starving for the curry-comb.”
The lad passed in at the gate, whipping the dust from his clothes with
the switch he carried.
“Good-evening, boys.”
Robin glared back fiercely to see that no insolent response was made,
but there was no danger. The voice and manner were such that many a hand
jerked up to a cap. Besides, the young lad, though his clothes were old
and travel-stained, and his hair was long and was powdered with dust,
showed a clean-cut face, a straight back, broad shoulders, and muscular
legs, as he strode by with a swing which many a stable-boy remarked.
Robin led the horse away around the end of the nearest stable. No one
would have known his feelings, for he kept a severe countenance, and
broke out on the nearest stable-boy with fierce invective for not
getting out of his way.
The horse carried his head high, and, with pointed ears, wide eyes, and
dilated nostrils, inspected everything on either side.
It was only when the new-comer and Robin were out of hearing that the
jeers broke out aloud, and even then several of the on-lookers, noting
the breeding along with the powerful muscles and flat bone, asserted
that it was “a good horse, all the same.” They had eyes for a good
horse.