It was a gray and bitter morning in January when Tim first saw The
Vale. For weeks winter had lain heavy upon the sunny South. A cold rain
had swept the countryside; then came zero weather for days, till the
ice lay inch-thick on all the broad pikes of Lexington County, and only
the firs were green.
Tim and his mother had left the little cabin they called home at the
first crack of dawn and together had tramped the five miles that
spelled the road to The Vale. All the way they spoke scarce a word, for
they knew that parting was near and that it had to be. Colonel Darnton
was to take the boy and make a jockey of him, if he could, and the
stables of The Vale were to be his home thereafter.
The negroes were feeding the stallions when the boy and his mother
trudged up to the big barn. They sat on a feed-box until the Colonel
had finished his breakfast and come out from the big house under the
trees.
"Morning to you, Mrs. Doolin," said the Colonel. "And so you've brought
the boy, eh?"
"I have that," responded Mrs. Doolin, in her odd mixture of brogue and
Southern drawl. "An' I beg ye t' be good tew him. Since Pete died, he's
all I hov, an' it's the good lad he's been to me, an' phwat it is I'll
be doin' widout him whin he's gawn, I dinnaw. Will ye be afther lettin'
him come down t' see me wanst a fortnight, sor?"
"Of course I will," smiled the Colonel, and then he turned to Tim,
standing there, so pale and little.
"And you, boy," he said, taking the lad's chin in his big hand and
turning the blue eyes up to his gaze, "how about you--strong for the
hosses, eh?"
Tim's lip quivered. He was only twelve. But he looked the Colonel
bravely in the face.
"I reck'n," he said.
"Well, well, we'll see," said the Colonel, mercifully releasing the
boy's chin. "'Twould be odd if you weren't. Your father was mighty
handy with 'em all--mighty handy."
"Savin' yer prisince, Colonel, I'd hov jist wan wurrud wid th' boy,"
said the woman, and she drew Tim aside.
"Lookee yew here, yew Tim Doolin," she said, when she had him by
himself, "don't yew niver fergit thet yew're up here tew The Vale tew
larn hosses. Raymimber thet." The boy drew one ragged sleeve across his
blue eyes.
"All right, maw," he quavered.
"An' raymimber this, too," she went on. "There niver yit was wan Doolin
thet wasn't on the square. Hoss racin' ain't prayin', an' all them as
races hosses ain't like the Colonel. But there niver was wan Doolin yit
thet wasn't on the level. Mind yew ain't the fust crook in the clan, er
else yew needn't niver come home t' the Blue Grass ter look yewr maw in
the face."
Thin and gaunt and gray-haired, she stood in the biting wind that
fought to tear her shawl from her bony shoulders. For a moment she
stared, stern and dry-eyed, at the boy. Somehow he had never seemed so
tiny before.
"Will yew raymimber thet?" she demanded at last. Tim dropped his eyes
in boyish embarrassment.
"I reck'n," he said.
His mother drew her shawl tightly about her shoulders and departed
without more ado.
The life of a stable-boy on a great breeding-farm is not all beer and
skittles, whatever that may be. His principal business is to look sharp
and do as he is told and never forget. It's always early to rise,
before dawn in the winter time, and often late to bed, if some of the
priceless thoroughbreds are ailing. Moreover, the tongues of stable
foremen are sharp, and their hands are heavy.
Tim made his mistakes. Once, after they came to trust him at The Vale,
on a sharp morning when he was giving King Faraway, the head of the
stud, his morning gallop on the pike, he fell to dreaming. A little
brook ran under a wooden bridge built for carriage use. But to one
side there was a ford through which people drove in summer to give
their horses drink. The brook was solid ice that morning, but Tim, not
thinking, turned King Faraway into the ford. The great horse slipped
and fell.
Tim sprang up from the far side of the brook with the blood gushing
from a nasty cut on his forehead. But he didn't think of that. Was King
Faraway hurt?
He walked the three miles back to The Vale, the stallion limping behind
him, and at the stable he told the truth and got a thrashing.
King Faraway was on three legs for a month. But he recovered. Every
night of that month the boy slept on a heap of straw in the stallion's
box stall, waking up half a dozen times a night to rub the injured
stifle; and in the end the great horse was as good as new.
Again, one chilly November night Tim left one of his yearlings out in
the South Paddock. Late that night a cold, driving storm came up. In
the morning they found the yearling shivering by the paddock gate.
The Colonel himself worked his fingers off over that yearling colt,
for he was bred in the purple. The youngster had pneumonia, but they
saved him, and the Colonel said that Tim's nursing was what pulled him
through.
On an April morning something over two years after the day Tim came
to The Vale, he started with the season's two-year-olds for the big
tracks at New York. He had helped break the youngsters to the saddle
and to the track on the half-mile race-course on the farm, and he knew
every one of the lot as if he had been its mother. So when they rounded
them up to take them to the special box-cars that were waiting in the
freight yards, the Colonel took the lad aside.
"Really want to be a jockey, Tim?" he asked.
"Sure," said Tim.
"Want to leave us, then, eh?" The boy looked away, and the Colonel
spared him.
"All right," he said with a laugh. "To the races you go. You can come
back if you don't like it."
All the broad acres of The Vale and the costly stallions and the brood
mares belonged to David Holland, a captain of finance. He was too busy
manipulating the ticker to pay much attention to the stock-farm itself.
He knew nothing whatever about the breeding of horses and was clever
enough to admit it. He paid the bills and got his fun out of "seeing
'em run."
The Holland stable was already quartered at Sheepshead Bay when the
Colonel and Tim arrived with the two-year-olds. Pat Faulkner, the
trainer, was there to meet them. He and the Colonel drew aside and
left the boy to himself. The hours for morning gallops were long since
over, and when Tim climbed the white rail fence that enclosed the
back-stretch, the big and beautiful track was absolutely deserted.
"Well," said Faulkner, "what sort of a grist have you brought me this
trip? I've been bitin' me nails off to find out, but not a word would
you write."
They had out the chestnut colt with the one white foot, and the black
with the white blaze, and the bay filly by Checkers-Flighty, and a few
other individuals, while the trainer felt them over and looked them up
and down and round about, and had them walked and trotted and cantered
through the stable yard.
When it was all over, and he knew that here was material that would
make his rivals sit up, Faulkner's eyes fell upon a slim shape sitting
on the white rail fence.
"What's the kid?" he demanded.
"That?" said the Colonel, with a smile, "why, that's Tim Doolin, a
champion jockey I've brought you." The trainer grunted.
"How old?" he asked.
"Going on fifteen, weighs seventy-three pounds, is kind and clever,
knows the hosses, and they'll do for him. Try him out at exercise work,
and if he makes good, give him a chance to ride."
That same night the Colonel departed.
After that Tim's work was cut out for him. There were twenty-six
two-year-olds in the Holland stables, twelve three-year-olds, and six
or eight thoroughbreds in the aged division. Faulkner kept a big staff
of grooms and exercise boys, but there was always a day's work for each
of them. Aside from the routine exercise for every horse in training,
the feeding, the grooming, and so on, all the youngsters had to be
broken to the starting barrier. Some trainers didn't pay much attention
to that.
"Let 'em come to it in their races," said they. Not so, Faulkner. He
drilled every last one of his two-year-olds till the starting gate was
no more to them than so much steel and wood and webbing.
Tim was not long in winning the trainer's confidence. The job of
breaking to the barrier was turned over to the stable foreman, under
whose eyes the grooms and exercise boys worked. But one afternoon
Faulkner himself came out to see how things were going. He noticed that
the three two-year-olds that were Tim's especial care were already
barrier-broken. He cross-examined the lad. Tim was reticent.
"I--I--jest get 'em used to it," he faltered.
"How?" demanded the trainer.
"I--I jest lead 'em up to it, first along, an' let 'em smell of it
and look at it. Then I git one of the boys to spring it while I'm
a-standin' by at their heads. They git used to it pretty soon. Then I
ride 'em up to it."
"Humph!" grunted the trainer; but later he said to the foreman: "That
kid's got sense."
It wasn't long before Tim was exercising three-year-olds, and one gray
morning when he turned out of the loft where he slept, the foreman
shouted:
"Hurry up, you Tim, an' git yer breakfast."
The boy wondered and obeyed. He gulped down the last of his oatmeal,
shot out of the training kitchen, and ran up to the stables, where a
negro groom was holding a big bay horse, about which Faulkner himself
was busily working. The trainer arose as the boy ran up.
"Up you go, kid," he said and tossed Tim into the saddle.
And Tim knew that he was to exercise Lear! And everybody knew that the
Holland stable was pointing Lear for the Brooklyn Handicap! It was a
proud moment for Tim. But his honors didn't sit too heavily on his
small shoulders, for Faulkner was a hard task-master.
"Jog him to the mile post and send him the last half in .55 an' keep
yer eye on the flag," the trainer would order.
Then the boy would canter away through the gray light, and the trainer,
handkerchief in one hand and stop-watch in the other, would mount the
fence. If the clock said .57 for that last half mile, or anything
between that and .55, there was a slap on the back and a "Good kid,"
for Tim, but woe to him if the clicking hand cut it down to .53.
Mistakes he made, and many of them, but they grew fewer and fewer. Good
hands he had (for they are born with a boy, if he's ever to have them)
and an intuitive knowledge of the temper of a horse. A good seat they
had taught him at The Vale. And gradually, little by little and bit by
bit, he came to be what only one jockey in fifty ever grows into--an
unerring judge of pace.
Just what it is that tells a boy whether the muscles of steel that he
bestrides are shooting him rhythmically over a furlong of dull brown
earth or black and slimy mud in .12-1/2 or .13-1/4, some person may
perhaps be able to tell, but certain it is that no person ever has told
it. Long after Tim had learned the secret as few boys have ever known
it, I asked him.
"Why," said he, "yew know your hoss, an' after thet, why, yew jest feel
it."
It was not until the autumn meeting at Gravesend that Tim first wore
the colors. It was in an overnight selling race for two-year-olds, for
which Faulkner had in despair named Gracious.
Gracious was a merry little short-bodied filly, who was bred as well as
any of the Holland lot, but who hadn't done well. Out of six starts she
had never shown anything, and Faulkner had determined to start her once
more and then weed her out. The weight, eighty-seven pounds, was so
light that the stable jockey couldn't make it. Then Faulkner remembered
the Colonel's words: "Give him a chance, if he makes good."
"I'll do it," he said, and told Tim.
Tim didn't sleep well that night, and with wide eyes he welcomed the
first light of the great day. At last he was to wear the colors!
"Just get her off well and take your time," said Faulkner, as he put
the boy up. "Rate her along to the stretch and then drive her."
Tim did all that. Coming into the stretch, there were four horses
ahead of him on the rail. But two of them were weakening. Then Tim
called on the filly. She answered and went up. But the colt next her
was staggering. He swerved, and Tim had to pull out. He got Gracious
going again and landed her third, only a head behind the second horse.
Faulkner was radiant as Tim dismounted.
"Good kid," he said. He had backed the filly a bit to run third. But
Tim was almost weeping.
"I could have won," he moaned, "if thet there Blinger hed kep'
straight."
The boy rode half a dozen races in the next month, all of them for
two-year-olds. He won once and was second twice. Among the other
apprentice riders he was already a personage, although, of course, he
scarcely dared speak to the full-fledged jockeys.
And then the Terror came.
It was Gracious that brought it. There were eight two-years-olds in the
seven-furlong sprint on the main track at Morris Park. The filly had
gone slightly off her feed the night before the race, but she seemed
perfectly fit otherwise, and Faulkner determined to start her.
"She won't finish as strong as she would a week ago," he told the boy,
as the saddling bugle blew. "So you send her along a bit at the start
and get the rail. Keep her goin' an' let her die in front."
"I reck'n," said Tim confidently, and they swung him into the saddle.
Gracious, under Tim's riding, was a quick breaker. She leaped away the
instant the barrier rose, and from the middle of the track the boy took
her to the rail before the run up the back-stretch was over. She held
her lead till the field had rounded into the stretch, and then he felt
her falter. In an instant he began to ride, first with hands, then with
hands and feet, then with hands and feet and whip. But it was not in
the filly to answer. At the six-furlong pole she had gone stale--gone
stale between two jumps. But the boy kept at her with might and main.
[Illustration: "TIM AND HIS MOTHER HAD LEFT THEIR LITTLE CABIN AT THE
FIRST CRACK OF DAWN"]
It was useless. In six strides a brown muzzle crept up to his saddle
girth. In two jumps more it reached the filly's shoulder. In three more
strides the two were head and head; and then the brown muzzle was in
front.
Suddenly the brown muzzle drooped, and the colt faltered. Tim took
heart again. Perhaps, perhaps he might still nurse the filly home in
front. He gripped her withers a bit tighter with his knees and spoke to
her, softly and pleadingly, as was his wont, through his clenched teeth:
"Come on, yew gal--come on, yew baby--come jes' once mo'--jes'
once--we's mos' home now--come--come. Come, yew gal!"
Back to the boy's stirrup came the saddle girth of the brown colt, as
his stride shortened under the staggering drive. Tim's heart leaped in
his bosom, for there was the wire not ten jumps away and--he was going
to win.
"Come--come, yew baby," he whispered almost into the filly's ear, as he
leaned far over her nodding head. The ecstasy of victory thrilled his
small body to his very toes.
At that instant the brown colt swerved against him. The pungent odor
of sweating horseflesh smote his nostrils--the roar of a horrified
crowd filled his ears--the track rose up to meet him. A flash of red
enveloped his brain--then came darkness and oblivion.
When he came to himself, the first faint light of dawn was sifting in
through a window somewhere. "Time I was up fer exercisin'," he thought,
and he struggled to rise. A flash of pain in his left arm turned him
faint and sick. As he wondered over this, he became aware of a dull,
steady roar that filled the room.
Again he opened his eyes. Dimly he made out the form of a white-capped
woman standing over him. Then he knew that he was not lying in the
loft at Sheepshead Bay.
"Are you awake, little boy?" said a soft voice.
"I--I reck'n," said Tim faintly.
There came the rattle of a heavy vehicle pounding over pavements, the
shrill shriek of a whistle, the roar of horses' hoofs.
Then he remembered it all and turned his face to the wall.
That same evening Faulkner came in to see him.
"Well, Tim," he said, "'twas a bad tumble, hey? How d'you feel? better?"
"Sure," said the boy feebly.
"That's fine, that's fine," cried the trainer heartily. "'Twa'n't your
fault. You done fine. You'd 'a' won, sure, 'f that chump Reilly had
kep' his colt straight. But don't you care. We'll have you out in a few
days, the Doc says. I telegraphed the Colonel you was all to the good,
an' he'll tell yer ma, so don't you worry about that, kid." He leaned
over, smiled kindly, and put a huge hand on the boy's head.
It smelled horribly of sweaty horseflesh. With a shudder Tim turned his
head away.
"You musn't mind a little thing like a tumble," said the trainer
anxiously. "They all get 'em. Why, I remember when I was ridin' a hoss
named ----"
And the kindly horseman blundered on in an attempt to cheer the
helpless lad. It seemed to Tim that he simply must cry out to him to
stop, when the nurse came swiftly up and warned the trainer not to stay
any longer.
"Well, so long, kid," was Faulkner's parting word. "Oh, 'course yer
busted arm won't let yer ride again this fall, but the season's most
over anyway. Only two more days o' Morris Park, and y' know we ain't
got any cheap ones to start at Aqueduct. Anythin' I kin do f' you?" Tim
opened his eyes again.
"Filly hurted?" he asked faintly.
The trainer laughed.
"Nothin' to hurt," he said. "Skinned her knees a bit, but I was goin'
to put her out o' trainin' anyhow. She's O.K."
To Tim's unspeakable relief he lumbered away.
With his arm in a sling, Tim was out again at the end of a week.
Much against the boy's will, Faulkner took him one day to the
meeting at Aqueduct. There the trainer was soon surrounded by
professional colleagues, and Tim fled to a seat in the highest row
of the grandstand. Thence he looked down upon the first stages of a
six-furlong sprint, but when three horses labored home in a tight-fit
finish he buried his face in his hands that he might not see them.
When he lifted his face again, he glanced furtively about, thankful,
oh, so thankful, that nobody had noticed him.
Then self-scorn descended upon him. If he could only go away somewhere
and die! Furtively, he wept, wiping the tears away with one pudgy,
brown fist. For some minutes he stared, heavy-eyed and broken, at his
feet.
"Ta-ra-ta-ta-ta! Ta-ra-ta-ta!"
The bugle spoke, calling the handicap horses to the post.
Tim started up and edged toward the aisle. His racing feet carried him
in panic half way down to the lawn. One idea possessed him--to get
away--to hide himself, he didn't care where--anywhere where he couldn't
see the horses run.
A hand seized him by the shoulder and spun him around.
"Hey, kid," said a voice, "how you feelin'? All to the mustard, hey?"
It was Bud Noble, star jockey of the Holland stable, radiant with all
the prestige that comes with twenty thousand a year and the adulation
of the racing public.
"I reck'n," said Tim, and fled again.
He had no notion of flight. His feet bore him along unsentiently.
Suddenly they stopped. And then he knew that he couldn't run away.
He must see that race. Something within him that would not be denied
commanded it. Slowly he retraced his steps, muttering unconsciously: "I
gotter do it. I gotter do it."
Presently he found himself back in the top row of the grandstand. As in
a dream, he watched the parade of brilliant colors to the post. As in
a dream, he saw the barrier flash up. The old-time roar "They're off!"
came faint and faraway to his ears. Dreamlike, the field drifted up the
back stretch, rounded the turn, and straightened out for home. He dug
the fingers of his one good hand into the hard wooden bench and held
his eyes upon the horses.
"I gotter do it. I gotter do it," he muttered still.
They were years in reaching the wire. No mortal thoroughbreds ever
ran so slowly before since time began. But at last, at the end of the
world, they finished. And up on the highest bench of the grandstand a
little boy, with white face and wide eyes, sat back, limp and still.
Tim's arm was still in a sling when he got back to Lexington, and it
was January before he could use it to any effect. The intervening weeks
he spent at home, helping his mother as best he could in the round of
her hard life, running her errands and bearing to and fro the various
washings by which she lived. For the first time in his life it worried
him to see her work so hard.
[Illustration: "A NEGRO GROOM WAS HOLDING A BIG BAY HORSE, ABOUT WHICH
FALKNER WAS BUSILY WORKING"]
"Nivver mind, Tim," she would say, lifting her bent back from the tub
in the corner of the kitchen, "soon you'll be the famous jockey wid
thousands a year. Thin it's your ould mother that'll be wearin' the
fine duds and wurruk no more."
And then the boy, sick with shame and fear, would steal from the
house--anywhere to be out of the sight of her and the sound of her
voice.
Sometimes the Terror would grip him in his sleep, in the middle of the
winter night, when the wind shrieked under the shingles on the cabin
roof or the cold rain drove against the window-pane. More than once he
started up, broad awake, with the smell of sweating horseflesh sharp
and agonizing in his nostrils. Once it was the sound of his own voice
that woke him, and he was crying out:
"Come on, yew baby, come, come, yew gal!"
Then he sat on the edge of his cot, with the blanket over his
shoulders, until daybreak, with such thoughts as a boy may know.
But on a sunny morning in February, it was Tim who stood in the great
doorway of the stallion stable at The Vale, saying to the Colonel:
"Thought mebbe I could help yew with the two-year-olds."
Day by day he strove with himself. Little by little he fought the
Terror down. The very smell of the stables turned him faint for a week.
He used to creep into King Faraway's box-stall when the big horse
stood, wet under his blanket, after his morning gallop, and bury his
face in the stallion's mane and rub his nose along the giant withers,
till at last the horrible smell of sweating horseflesh had power
to terrify him no more. It was weeks before he could mount without
trembling, but at last he came to do it and--to hope.
At last came April, and one evening, as Tim was helping with the
feeding, he heard the Colonel's voice calling him. He trembled a
little, for he knew what was coming.
"I've a letter from Faulkner," said the Colonel, "and he's asking
for you, Tim. Shall I tell him you'll be up with the new batch of
youngsters?" It was the cast of the die.
"I reck'n," said Tim stoutly.
But it wasn't quite the same old Sheepshead Bay that Tim went back to.
He did his work as faithfully and skilfully as ever. His hand was just
as light and sure; he had not lost his sense of pace. But the first
pale light of day did not send him out to the stables with every nerve
in his lithe body tingling for very joy of the work that was coming.
And once, when he saw a stable-boy thrown--the Terror rose at him
again; not with the old terrible leap, to be sure, but he saw Its face
for an instant.
He will never forget his first race that spring. Again he rode a
two-year-old, and he won without difficulty, nobody guessed at what
expense. As the season went on, he rode again and again, and sometimes
he won, and oftener not.
But Faulkner saw and shook his head. If Tim's horse won, it was because
its own speed and the judgment of its rider did it. Nobody ever saw Tim
take a chance. Other boys might leave him space to squeeze through if
they liked. He never did it. It was the longest way 'round and plain
sailing for Tim. No mad, brilliant rush for the rail. No fine finishes
from unlucky beginnings.
And Faulkner watched and saw it all. Once the boy caught the trainer
looking at him, thoughtful and puzzled. A big lump rose in his throat
and strangled him, and he stumbled away with his grief. It seemed to
him that he could not live on any longer. He grew even more grave and
silent as the days went on, shunned the other stable-boys, and kept
stolidly to himself.
It had to end sometime, somehow, and the ending of it was
notable--because Tim was Tim, I suppose.
For the Suburban Handicap, with the Brooklyn the greatest of the
classic races for the older horses, the Holland stable had two
candidates. The first was the five-year-old Gladstone, son of Juniper
and winner of fifteen races, one of them a Metropolitan. The second
was Kate Greenaway, a three-year-old filly by King Faraway, whose only
claim to distinction was that she had won third place in the Futurity
of the preceding year. But, though Gladstone was the stable's main
reliance, the filly's work had been dazzling, and the shrewd Faulkner
had hopes of her.
Bud Noble, as stable jockey, was to ride Gladstone, while the trainer
relied on the light-weight Ban Johnson, on whom the stable had second
call, to handle Kate Greenaway. Tim knew the filly as no one else knew
her or could know her. Down at The Vale, before ever he came to the
races, he had been the first to put halter and bridle on her; his small
legs were the first to bestride her; he had broken her to the barrier
until she seemed actually to like the thing, and in her work she had
been his especial charge. But he had never ridden her in a race.
The running of a big handicap at a Metropolitan track is an impressive
event, even to the man who knows nothing of horses. To him who loves
the thoroughbred it is inspiring. To Tim it was something more than
that--a thing to make you tremble.
All morning the boy hung uneasily about the stable. He ate scarcely
any dinner and roved restlessly about until it was time to take the
filly to the paddock. He got her there just as the horses were going to
the post for the third race. The Suburban was the fourth. Up and down
under the great shed he walked his charge, blanketed and hooded, in the
wake of towering, black Gladstone. Soon a shouting from the grandstand
announced that the third race was over.
Then came a rush of hundreds to see the Suburban horses saddled. One
by one, the candidates filed out to the track for their warming-up
gallops--Boston, top-weight, favorite and winner of the Metropolitan,
and second in the Brooklyn; Carley, winner of the Advance the season
before; Catchall, the speedy Hastings mare; and all the rest--all save
Kate Greenaway. Once, in a warming-up gallop, she had run away, and
Faulkner would never take chances with her after that. So Tim walked
her up and down by herself, thankful, yet ashamed, that somebody else
was to ride her.
Suddenly the stable foreman ran up.
"Hi, you Tim," he shouted, "hustle over to the dressin' room an' git on
yer duds. Skin along, now, no time to lose."
Tim stood gaping.
"Git a move on--git a move! My Gawd! You ain't got no time to lose.
Ban's fell down an' sprained his ankle."
Tim trudged over to the jockey's house, his eyes on the ground. Over in
the paddock, Faulkner listened stubbornly to the foreman.
"I tell you," the latter was saying, "the kid's lost his nerve. Ain't
you seen it all along? He ain't took a chance sence his tumble. Why
dontcher give the mount to Tyson or Biff Barry? They ain't neither of
'em got a mount."
"Nothin' doin'," rejoined the trainer. "The kid knows the
filly--brought her up, almost. He can ride, too, if he don't get in
a tight place, an' that ain't likely. Tyson can't make the weight.
B'sides, I told the Colonel I'd give the kid a chance. An'," he
concluded, "this is it."
"All right," said the foreman, "but you'll see. He's lost his nerve.
Why, he got white eraoun' the gills when I tol' him."
[Illustration: "HE SAT ON THE EDGE OF HIS COT, WITH THE BLANKET OVER
HIS SHOULDERS, UNTIL DAYBREAK"]
Tim had grown like a weed since he first saw Sheepshead Bay, but it
was a slender, fragile figure that the trainer tossed into the chestnut
filly's saddle when the bugle blew.
"Now, kid," said Faulkner quietly, throwing one arm over the crupper,
"you're third from the rail. You know the filly as well as I do. She's
fit to the minute. She'll run in 2.03, if she ain't rushed in the first
half. Hold yer place an' let the sprinters do their sprintin'. They'll
come back. Keep her goin' her pace for a mile, an' if you have to ride
her the last quarter, make her sweat for it. She's game fer a drive.
They don't make 'em no gamer."
The lad heard scarcely a word. He wasn't frightened. He was sullen,
rebellious against--against everything. It was one more race to
him--commonplace, perfunctory, tiresome. He was going to get through
with it in the easiest way he could. He thought with relief of the wide
spaces and easy turns of the great track.
"Keep up yer nerve, kid," said Bud Noble, turning in his saddle and
looking back at Tim as the field filed through the paddock gate.
Tim grinned scornfully. What a notion! Why should anybody need nerve
to gallop a horse around a track? He had only one idea--to keep out
of trouble. So, perfectly calm and very much bored, he danced to the
starting-gate on the chestnut filly. He paid little attention to the
fretful doings there. He was haunted by no fear that he might be left.
It was a nuisance to have to keep an eye on the vicious heels of Baldy,
the swayback gelding at his left--that was all.
But Kate Greenaway had no intention of being left. She kept her dainty
nose on the webbing from the instant she got it there, for hadn't
Tim taught her that? And when, at last, all the fussing and fuming
was over, and the whips of the starter's assistants had ceased their
hissing, and the pleadings and threats of the starter himself were
done, and the gate swished up before the fourteen racers, the filly's
first bound beat the gate by half a length.
Tim was a trifle disgusted. "Blast the filly, anyhow!" he thought. It
was no part of his plan to lead that roaring field. He took a double
wrap on the reins, and his mount came back till two lithe, lean forms
slid up abreast her on the rail, and a third on the outside. That
was better, thought Tim, and the sprinters drew out ahead of him.
Contentedly he fell in on the rail behind them.
A storm of dirt clods smote the filly in the face. Another pelted
Tim on the forehead. He took a tighter hold on Kate Greenaway, and
the sprinters drew away another length. It would have been an easy
thing for him to choke her back still further, but somehow a surge
of generous feeling for the game creature beat down his sullen
selfishness, and he hadn't the heart to strangle her.
[Illustration: "IN HIS EARS WAS THE ROAR FROM THIRTY THOUSAND THROATS
IN THE GRANDSTAND"]
The leaders had by this time swung around the first turn, and as they
passed the half-mile mark two noses intruded themselves on Tim's vision
on the outside.
"Hello," he thought, "old long-distance Boston is movin' up. An'
Carley, to keep him from gettin' lonesome." But the track was wide,
they ran straight and true and kept their distance.
Suddenly the sprinters began to come back. In five seconds Tim would
have to pull up behind them. This was disgusting! If only he were on
the outside! A clod of earth struck his breast. Instinctively he let
out a wrap on the reins.
The filly went up to the sprinters in ten jumps. As he ranged
alongside, Tim took another hold on her. No more front positions for
him. He was outside, and he meant to stay there and be derned to 'em!
Then one of the sprinters fell back, beaten already, and as Boston
somehow sifted into the vacant place Tim noted with a gasp that here
was the far turn already, and he was with the leaders. This surprised
him so much that the last turn leaped past before he realised that
there were only two horses between him and the rail. One of them was
black Boston, top-weight at one hundred and twenty-nine; the other was
Carley.
He was getting a bit interested in spite of himself. The boys on the
older horses began to urge them a bit, and as they swung around the
turn and into the stretch they drew away a couple of lengths. Tim sat
still. He was in that delightful outside place, with acres of room. He
even glanced over at the in-field where the patrol judge stood with his
glasses to his eyes. He remembered afterward that that official's weird
whiskers amused him. Then something happened.
Kate Greenaway became mistress of herself. As she swung round the turn,
a wide space confronted her, left by the leaders between themselves and
the rail. Kate Greenaway had been taught to hunt that rail as a homing
pigeon its cote. She sought it now so sharply that Tim all but lost his
seat.
Instantly the boy awoke. He remembered the prize he was riding for--the
Suburban! the Suburban! Straight before him for a quarter of a mile
gleamed the track, yellow in the June sunlight. Nothing to do but
ride--straight--straight to the wire.
All the slumbering life in his body awoke from its sullen sleep. He
blessed the splendid filly racing so true and so strong beneath him,
and he sat down for the first time to help her with every ounce of his
power and every trace of his skill.
He knew she could win. He knew she had been going well within herself,
and still she was where she could strike. Now was the time to ride,
and he rode as he had never ridden before, standing in the stirrups,
crouched over the gallant filly's neck, rising and falling in perfect
rhythm with her every stride. And, bless her! that stride had not begun
to shorten yet.
Steadily she crept up on the older horses fighting their duel before
her. Tim could see from the tail of his eye that both their riders were
working for dear life--and he had only just begun to ride. His heart
bounded again beneath his brilliant jacket, and again he urged the
filly.
But what was that? Surely, surely his path was growing narrower. In six
strides more he was sure of it. Carley, on the outside, was boring in
under the drive, and Boston was pulling in to keep from fouling.
There's no time to pick daisies in the last furlong of the Suburban.
All the months of Tim's purgatory called to him to pull up before
they squeezed him against that deadly rail. He tried to do it, but
his wrists had gone limp. The next instant the bay and the black were
running stride for stride half a length before the filly--and closing
in.
Then rose the Terror and gripped Tim by the throat. The moment had
come. They had pinned him on the rail.
Under the gruelling drive Carley staggered again. He bumped Boston. Tim
felt the big horse graze his boot as he wavered. Instantly that pungent
smell of sweating horseflesh stung his nostrils, and with it flashed
the memory of that awful day to smite him helpless.
Again he tried to pull up, and again he failed. His wrists were
palsied. Why didn't he fall! Oh, why didn't he fall!
Under his quaking knees the withers of the gallant filly still rose and
fell, mightily, rhythmically; her lean, beautiful neck stretched out
as if to meet the goal, her nostrils wide and blood-red, through which
the air came and went, roaring, like the escape of steam from a mighty
valve, her eyeballs starting from their sockets.
Then sickening shame smote him on his quivering lips. He seemed to
realise for the first time that the filly was waging her terrible fight
alone.
The Terror dropped from the boy like a bad dream when one awakes. A
frenzy of pride and love for the filly swept over him. He had no hope.
The next instant he would hear that terrified roar of the crowd, the
track would leap up to meet him, that flash of red would smite him,
and blackness would fold him about. But the beautiful filly should not
go down with a coward astride her! He found himself talking to her as
of old, crouching low till his lips all but brushed her fine, straight
ears:
"Come on, yew gal! Katie--yew Katie! Come on! Almos' home! Almos'!
Come--come, yew darlin'!"
Closer pressed the driven Boston, till his rider's stirrup locked
Tim's. And then the boy knew that the last moment had come. It was fall
or win and instantly. In his ears was the creak and protest of the
straining saddles and girths, the roar from thirty thousand throats in
the grandstand, the whistle of the breath of three great horses locked
in a desperate struggle, the thunder of the flying hoofs behind him. He
had the right of way--let them unbar it, or crash to destruction--all
three!
Gripping the reins with his right hand, he raised his whip in his left
and let it fall, once--twice--three times. Somewhere in her straining,
breathless, driven body the filly had one ounce more left. Gallantly,
instantly, she gave it. The rail grazed the boy's left boot. His right
was driven up to the filly's loins.
She faltered--but she was through--through that strangling pocket,
reeling, staggering, half-blind and splendid, and the Suburban was hers
by a nod.
They lifted Tim in the famous floral horse-shoe, and they cheered and
cheered him again. "Grandest finish I ever see," said Faulkner, and "My
Gawd! what a drive!" said the stable foreman, gaping.
But to little Tim it meant only one thing--the greatest, most beautiful
thing that could be--the Terror was gone forever. He took a deep breath
and looked about him on a new world.
[Illustration]