Jim and the Old Pacer.
It’s a cold day, indeed, when a drummer has not got a good yarn up his
coat-sleeve, and the narrator of this swears to its truth in every
particular.
We were sitting around a good fire the other evening when the subject of
last winter’s cold spell came up and how much fun the boys over the line
were having on the path; and, incidentally, how greatly the interest in
snow races among gentlemen drivers was increasing each winter.
“But, say,” said the drummer, who was selling cigars and had just passed
around some to sample, “talking about the fun the boys had up North on
the snow last winter reminds me how a farmer and an old pacer, up in a
fashionable little town in the State of York, where I happened to be last
month, hit the snow enthusiasm of that class of fellows who thought they
owned the best snow horse in the world with a blizzard that will cool
them off till the spring time comes, gentle Annie. At least, they hadn’t
got over it when I left two weeks ago,” he laughed. “We didn’t have any
snow until after Christmas, and when the cold wave, with snow, did come,
you bet they were all waiting for it. Fellows with fine sleighs bought in
October and put in the carriage house began to think they would have to
wait another year, while the trotters and pacers were eating their heads
off, and hundreds of friendly wagers lay in pigeon holes, waiting for
the snow. Well, when it came, it was a dandy, and the snow path soon saw
dozens of races a day, with fine rigs and fun galore.
“I’ve got a driver friend who lives near the big town mentioned—runs a
training stable in the suburbs. You’d know him in a minute if I’d call
his name, for he has driven many a good one to victory, and he’s got a
pacer you’d know, too, for he has a mark below 2:12. But this pacer is an
onery-looking thing, if I ever saw one. He wouldn’t sell on his looks
for fifteen dollars, yet he won thirty-five hundred dollars last year
clear of expenses. My friend bought him out of a log-wagon—a curby-legged
thing, with log spavins and splints in swarms, but gee whiz, how he could
pace! Jim—that’s my friend’s name—loves a little fun about as well as
anybody. He didn’t go out on the snow path the first week until he found
out just who could go and how fast, and then he just laid for the whole
gang with that old pacer. The boys drove out to his stable time and again
and bantered him, guyed him, made fun of him and all that, but he laid
low and said nothing. One evening he sent for me and whispered:
“‘Want to make your winter oats tomorrow?’
“‘I don’t care,’ I laughed, ‘if it’s a dead sure thing. Haven’t got any
money to burn up in an experiment.’
“Jim laughed and handed me a hundred in ten-dollar bills. ‘This shows my
faith; play it for me on the farmer and the old pacer to-morrow, any way
or odds you want to, and if you don’t make some yourself while you’re at
it, why, it’s your own fault.’ And then he took me in the harness room
and told me a little tale that made me laugh all over.
“Well, to-morrow meant there was going to be several races on the snow,
and all the fashionable end of town was to be out. One or two fellows
with pretty good horses had beat everything and were looking for more
worlds to conquer. Just after dinner Jim put on snow goggles, a hayseed
hat, the rustiest coat he could borrow, clapped that curby-legged pacer
in an old sleigh that looked like it had stood up in a mouldy carriage
house for fifty years, with harness to match, put a few bundles of oats,
farmer like, in behind to save feed, of course, in town, and jogged on in
with a sort of an ain’t-been-to-town-for-ten-years look written all over
the whole turnout.
“He wasn’t looking for the first suckers he did up, though. He heard
a jingling of bells behind him some two miles out, and came very near
being run over by a happy lot of young fellows with their girls on a
bob-sleigh, drawn by four spanking horses. The fun they had over Jim
and his queer turnout was immense—for about five minutes. They dashed
up beside him, asked him the price of oats, and all that and finally
hollered out:
“‘Get out of the road, old man, or we’ll run over you!’
“‘But I be goin’ to town, too,’ Jim drawled out in the nasalest twang
that ever came out of a down-easter’s nose. Then he shook up the old
pacer just enough to stay tantalisingly in front in spite of everything
they could do. The bob-sleigh crowd couldn’t go in six minutes at a trot
to save their necks, so they put the teams out in full run, but that was
just fun for the old pacer. They never came in twenty yards of his oats
in the rear of the sleigh. After teasing the babies enough, Jim turned at
the first good stretch, looked back, winked his off eye, and said: ‘Yes,
chillun, I be goin’ to town, too, so good-bye to you babies, an’ heaven
bless you,’ and he shot away and left them.
“You have heard of blackbirds chattering in a tree, and then all of them
suddenly stop, haven’t you? The silence is painful. Well, that’s the way
it was in that bob-sleigh.
“But Jim was after bigger game than that, though he couldn’t resist the
temptation to have a little fun with every nobby turnout he met.
“‘Cawn’t you pass that old fellah, James,’ the male occupant of a swell
rig would call out to his coachman, after Jim would wiggle along, half
asleep, beside the fancy turnout.
“‘Oh, yes, your ’oner,’ James would say, and swell up in the true English
style and pull at his ’ackneys and spread around blustering, and cast
withering glances on the innocent looking hayseed rig. Then Jim would
wake up, shake the old pacer, and leave them like Mark Twain’s coyote on
the desert left the ambitious dog—a gray crack in the air and he was gone
while the English coachman cussed those “low-down Hamerican ’osses” with
the best mixture of Billingsgate and flunky at his command.
“But he got off the best one on two young fellows who thought they had
a fast trotter. They came tearing down on Jim, intending to go by him
like a flash. But just as they came up Jim shook up the old pacer, and
he threw up his tail for all the world like he was frightened nearly to
death, and with that wild look that made Jim afterwards declare he really
believed the old rascal was onto the game himself, he would dart away,
threatening to break and go all to pieces every minute. This would make
the trotting fellows come faster, and Jim would make it worse by looking
like he was ‘skeered’ nearly to death, and shouting out:
“‘Gentlemen, hold up, please; you’ll skeer the old hoss to death. He
allers runs away at a pace when he’s skeered. Hold up. Hold up, for
heaven’s sake!’
“Jim would let them chase him that way for a mile, till their horse was
blown and would go to a break before they’d catch on, and try to sneak
away down some side street. Then Jim would holler out:
“‘Gentlemen, don’t never do that no more—don’t never do it ergin, on your
life! This old hoss might ’er run erway an’ ruined me! He always would
run away in a pace when he got skeered. Learned it when he was a colt—got
skeered at a trottin’ hoss haulin’ a load of manure through the medder
lot, where he was grazin’, an’ he can’t stan’ it to this day!’ Then he
would chuckle out loud and throw this parting shot at them: ‘But, say,
young fellers, don’t you wish sumpin’ would skeer that thar trotter of
yours, good, once?’
“But the meanest thing Jim and that old pacer did was to break up a love
match. It was a young fellow and his girl, and Jim says when he came up
behind them their horse was in a slow walk, like they wanted that ride to
last forever—and they were so interested in looking in each other’s eyes,
and holding hands under the robe, and they never knew that it was daytime
and that it was the sun, and not a low-turned gas jet, that was burning
overhead. Jim knew the young fellow, and the horse he was driving, too.
The horse was quite a fancy looking trotter, just pretty enough to catch
anybody’s eye that wanted a Sunday-go-to-meetin’ kind of a horse. He
had once taken a tincup record of 2:26¼ by some hook and crook, and on
the road for a quarter of a mile, he could trot a buzz-saw clip, as long
as he thought he was beating all creation, and didn’t get another crotch
in his head—for he had clock works, with a chimes attachment there, and
no mistake. There was plenty of room for Jim to go around and let those
young people alone, but he saw too good a chance for fun, and that’s what
he was out for. He wiggled up right behind the hand-holding pair, and,
pulling out a red silk handkerchief, he blew his nose with a terrible
blast. He did it to attract their attention and let them know that the
rest of the world ‘do move, too,’ but it was more effectual than he
had hoped. That chimes-headed horse must have thought it was Gabriel’s
trumpet, for he jumped ten feet when Jim gave that blast, shook the
lovers like an earthquake and banged the girl’s best hat up against the
back of the sleigh. The young fellow pulled his horse down and looked
back daggers at Jim, then touched him up and lit out to leave him. This
was just what Jim wanted, and he sailed after them in great shape. It
was an awful pretty race for about two hundred yards, and then Jim let
the old pacer glide up nose and nose with the trotter, who was walling
his eye around and already showing signs of quitting with a little more
collaring. When Jim did that he heard the girl say excitedly, ‘Oh, Harry,
is that horrid old horse going to beat Sir Charles Grandeville?’
“‘I’m just feeling him, now,’ Harry replied. ‘Wait a minute, darling, and
I will make him sick. There’s nothing on this road can beat Sir Charles!’
“Jim chuckled and let out a link or two, and the old pacer forged ahead.
“‘Oh, Harry, but he is beating us—hurry up, dear, let him show that 2:20
clip, or lock, or whatever you told me about Just now. O-o-o-o Harry!!’
“This last remark was caused by Sir Charles going into as many different
breaks as there are pieces in a jointed snake, while Harry laid the whip
on him with something that sounded, under his breath, like ‘Whoa! Dash
blank your jumping-jack, white-livered hide! I’ll teach you how to quit
every time an ox cart tries to pass you!’
“And as Jim sailed away he heard the girl haughtily and freezingly saying:
“‘Mr. Harry Smith, I’ll thank you, sir, to put me out at the first house
you pass! I’m glad I found you out in time. Any man who will beat and
swear at his horse as you have done will beat and swear at his wife, and
I’ll never marry you, sir, never!’
“As I said above, that was the meanest thing Jim did that day.
“Well, we harvested our winter oats two hours afterwards, when Jim
entered his pacer in the free-for-all down the boulevard. Some few had
caught on, but I found enough that hadn’t to cover Jim’s hundred I held
and another for myself, and when the old farmer and the pacer beat the
gang further than any of them cared to tell about afterwards, as I said
before, it brought on a blizzard that cooled all the racing enthusiasm in
that town up to the time I left, and many of them hadn’t discovered then
that they had been racing green horses and two-thirty roadsters against
one of the best known drivers in the East, up behind a pacer who started
ten times last year, won eight first moneys and two seconds, and took a
mark close down to 2:10.”
“I see from the paper,” he said, as he pulled out a local paper, “that
they are racing there on the snow path this week, but I’ll bet my
winter overcoat they have taken the precaution to bar all hayseeds and
curby-legged pacers in the country.”
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