_But When He Did Take It Into His Head to Run One Day, the Bookmakers
Were Damaged._
An old-time trainer, who is trying out a bunch of yearlings and keeping
up a lot of old campaigners out at the old Ivy City track near
Washington, was chewing wisps of hay the other afternoon and thinking
aloud.
"One of the things that I can't exactly figure out," said he, "is
whether I'm a ringer-worker or on the level. That proposition has been
bothering me a heap in the middle of nights right along since the fall
of '87. I got into the center of a game then that has kept me
apologizing to myself ever since. And, then, again, that plug wasn't a
sure-enough proper ringer. And I didn't put him over the plate, either.
My end of it was only to cop out a few, and all I had to do was to----
"Well, anyhow, I went down to a yearling sale in Kentucky for the man I
was training for in 1885. There were some Fonso bull-pups to be
auctioned off, and the boss wanted a Fonso or two. You remember Fonso,
don't you? He's the old nag, a great one in his times, who got the blue
ribbon only the other day at the age of twenty-three for being still the
finest specimen of a thoroughbred in Kentucky. The boss wanted a couple
of Fonsos and I went after them. I got him two and myself one. The one I
got was the worst-looking he-scrag that ever wore hoofs. He was out of a
good mare, but he upset all the calculations of breeding. He was the
worst seed in looks that ever I clapped my eyes on; and I've been
fooling with yearlings for a quarter of a century. He was an angular
swayback, leggy, low-spirited, thick-headed, and as fast as a
caterpillar. Yet I bought him. I didn't expect ever to make anything out
of him, but I was pretty flush then, and I didn't want to see a Fonso
pulling a dray if there was a chance in a thousand of making anything
out of him. That colt was a joke. The whole crowd gave him the hoot when
he was led into the auction ring, and I couldn't hold down a grin myself
when I sized up the poor mutt of a camel, the worst libel on a great
sire that ever crawled into an auction ring for a bid. The whole gang
jeered me when I offered $100 for the skate. I didn't blame 'em. But I
led the colt out, put him in a stall, and then went back to the sale. I
got two high-grade Fonsos for my boss, and they won themselves out for
him twenty times over in the next three years. But they don't figure in
this story.
"I went at my freak Fonso right away to see if anything could be done
with him. I devoted more time to that one than I did to any of my
two-year-olds or three-year-olds in training, hoping that he might have
something up his sleeve and that it could be dug out of him with careful
handling. It was no go. I couldn't get him to do a quarter in better
than 35 seconds. Bat or steel had no effect on him. He had a hide like a
rhinoceros, and he made the exercise boys weary. Here was a colt born a
Fonso, out of a mare that had been of stake class when in training, that
was no better than a truck-horse, and at the end of two weeks I gave him
up. A circus came along to Lexington, where I had my string, and with
the circus, in charge of the performing horses, was an old trainer
friend of mine from the St. Louis track who had been chased into the
show business by a long run of hard luck. I took him out to look over my
bunch, and when he came to the Fonso colt he laughed.
"'Where did you get that world-beater?' he asked me.
"'Oh, that's a Fonso colt that I picked up down the line at a sale a
while back,' I told him.
"He didn't exactly call me a liar, but he looked as if he wanted to.
Then I told him all about the colt. Like most trainers, he had the blood
and breeding bug pretty bad under his bonnet, and he tried to throw it
into me that I wasn't giving the colt a fair shake. Told me a lot of
stuff that I already knew about some great racehorses that couldn't get
out of their own way as yearlings, and tried to convince me that this
Fonso thing of mine was liable to fool me up a whole lot as a
two-year-old.
"'Well, he doesn't get oats at my expense until he's ready to race,'
said I. 'If you think his chances at next year's stakes are so devilish
big, he's yours for a quarter of a hundred.'
"'I've got you,' said my friend with the show. 'I'll take him along,
anyhow. It's worth that much to a man to be able to say to himself as he
smokes his pipe after his work's done that he's got a Fonso colt of his
own. And I'll bet you an even $100 that I get one race out of that
swayback, anyhow, before he's two years older.'
"I didn't take him. I was disgusted with my hundred dollars' worth of
Fonso, and I was glad to get the $25 that my friend in the show business
gave me for him. He took the mutt away with the show, and I forgot all
about that sentimental purchase of mine for a couple of years.
"I hadn't any killing luck during those two years. In fact, the game
went against me pretty strong. Most of the string that I had in training
went wrong or showed themselves platers, and when the boss decided to
quit racing I was up against it completely. I had two or three platers
of my own that made their oats money and a little more, and these I
raced on the St. Louis track, pulling down a purse once in a while, and
getting second money often enough to keep me in coffee and sinkers. When
the St. Louis game closed down at the end of September, a number of us
that had small strings struck out for the bush-meetings in nearby
States. I shipped my three to a metropolis on the banks of the Missouri
River where a State fair was about to be held and where $200 purses were
offered for running races. I figured my three lobsters to be as good as
any for the bush-meetings, and I calculated on getting one or two of the
purses at this State Fair.
"I got into the town--they call it a city out there--with my horses
three days before the State Fair was to begin. On the day that I got
there a circus that had been exhibiting in the town for two days wound
up its season and started East for its winter quarters. I saw the
boarded-up wagons passing through the streets on their way to the
freight depot. I was watching the dead procession when my circus friend,
the man on whom I had worked off my no-account Fonso colt, picked me out
of the crowd and came up to me. The circus moving out was the one he had
been attached to when last I saw him and sold him the colt.
"'Hello,' said I, 'how many stakes have you pulled down with that one up
to date?'
"He dug his hands into his pockets and grinned but made no reply.
"'Have you still got that colt?' I asked him.
"'Yep,' said he.
"'Going to take him along with you to the show's winter headquarters?' I
inquired.
"'Sh-sh-sh!' said he. 'I'm not going along with the show. I quit 'em
here. Season's over. I've got some business here next week, anyhow. I'm
going to race that Fonso on the Uncle Tom circuit, beginning with the
State Fair here.'
"Of course, I couldn't do anything else but prod him, and I did.
"'Fact,' said he, seriously. 'Got him entered in the first race on the
card--mile.'
"'I've got one in that myself,' I told him. 'Shall we fix it up between
us?' I added, just for fun.
"'You might do worse, at that,' said he, sizing me up out of the tail of
his eye. 'I'm going to win in a walk.'
"Then I hooted him a good deal more, of course. He let me get through,
and he then took me off into a corner and told me some things.
"'That plug like to have broken my heart ever since I got him,' he said.
'I've had him in four or five times already at the bush meetings, but he
was never one, two, three, until the last time, when he took it into his
head to run when they got into the stretch and was only beaten a nose by
a pretty fair bush plug. This was two months ago. The trouble with this
Fonso colt you sawed off on me is that he's a sulker. He's got the speed
in his crazy-shaped bones, but he won't let it out. Well, between you
and me--and I put you next because I know you want a dollar or so as bad
as I do--I'm confident that with a douse out of a pail and a bit of a
punch with a needle just before post time, he can beat anything out this
way. He's out at the Fair grounds now, and I worked him a mile in .48
this morning. He roars like a blast furnace, but his wind is all right,
nevertheless. He's still as ugly as ever, if not uglier. I put you next,
because it might be a good thing for you to scratch your nag out of that
first race and cotton to your cast-off. There'll be a big price on
account of his wheezing and his ragged looks.'
"'How did you enter him?' I asked. 'As a Fonso?'
"'Not on your natural,' said he. 'Any old thing's eligible, and I simply
told 'em I didn't know the mutt's breeding, that I had him along with me
in the show, and just had an idea he might run a little.'
"Well, son, the winter was beginning to loom up, and I wasn't ulstered
and swaddled out for it. I went out to the Fair grounds with my friend
and looked over the Fonso freak. My friend called him Star Boarder,
because he'd been eating circus oats and hay for two years without ever
doing a lick of work to pay for his fodder. The colt had, of course,
filled out and lengthened, but he was still as homely a beast ever I
clapped an eye on. We had him led out on the six-furlong track, and an
exercise boy who weighed about 145 pounds took him over the course at
top speed. The nag did it in 1.21, and the performance tickled me. The
colt had a crazy, jerky, uneven stride, and seemed to go sideways, but
he certainly got over the ground lively with that weight up. I saw the
chance, and I needed the coin.
"'Can he keep that gait up for the mile?' I asked his owner.
"'He wants four miles,' he replied. 'His roaring is a bluff.'
"'Count me in, then,' said I. 'He'll walk in that race. I'll scratch
mine out.'
"We went along the line and looked over the other horses, especially the
twelve that were entered for that first race, and, although there were
some good-lookers in the bunch, they had been campaigned heavily for
months, and were a jaded lot. I scratched my pretty fair horse out of
that first race. Then I sold the poorest nag of my three platers to a
banker in town for a stylish saddle horse. Got $400 for him. I wanted
the money for betting purposes.
"There was a big crowd out at the Fair grounds on the day the racing
began. Four books were on, all of them run by representatives of big
gambling houses in town. My friend had the Fonso colt taken out of his
stall and slowly trotted around the track about three-quarters of an
hour before the first race, that in which the horse was entered. The
gathering crowd in the stand laughed over the horse's awkward, climbing
gait and clumsy appearance. That's what we wanted 'em to do. We wanted
the price, or the horse would have been kept in his stall.
"Only seven of the field originally entered for the race went to the
post. Now, I didn't have anything to do with conditioning Star Boarder,
and I never belonged to the syringe gang, anyhow; I kept strictly away
from the paddock and the barns before the race, because I didn't want to
see anything. But the way that Fonso colt, with all his clumsiness, held
his head up and pranced around as he was going to the post, with a
pretty fair boy that I brought along with me from St. Louis on his back,
by the way, was certainly great. Dope makes a horse about as perky as
three drinks of whisky makes a man who's been off the booze for a long
while. The trouble is that the dope doesn't last so long in a horse as
it does in a man, and I was pretty anxious for a prompt start, so that
the dope in this homely cast-off of mine wouldn't die out.
"The betting on Star Boarder opened at 15, 6, and 3. There was an
even-money favorite, a horse that had pulled down a number of mile
purses at St. Louis, a 2 to 1 shot, and the others slid up to the nag my
friend and I wanted to have win; Star Boarder being the rank outsider at
15 to 1. I put my $400 down on him with the four booked all three ways,
$200 to win, $100 for the place, and $100 to show. In the morning my
friend handed me $200 of his savings from the circus business to bet. I
played his coin $100 to win and $100 a place. I had hardly got the money
down before I heard a big whoop of laughter from the stand, and I rushed
out to see what was the matter. Star Boarder was running away. There had
been a false break, and the fool plug had kept right on going. He had a
mouth like forged steel, and the boy couldn't do anything with him. I
stood and damned Fonso and all his tribe to the last generation, and I
could see my friend in the paddock shaking his fist and grinding his
teeth.
"'Oh, well,' said I to myself, 'it's all off, and it serves you bully
good and right for not racing your own plugs and letting these con and
dope grafts go to the devil.'
"The horse went the full length of the course before he was pulled up,
and then he was roaring and wheezing like a sea-lion. The crowd laughed,
and the books gave the post-time bettors all the 60 to 1 against Star
Boarder that they wanted--which, of course, was none.
"I went back to the paddock then, while the horses were gyrating at the
post, and found the brute's owner. I laid him open.
"'To blazes with casting up!' he said. 'Isn't the last of my cush on the
skate, too?'
"I felt like ten cents' worth of dog's meat when I slunk back to the
stand to see 'em get off. After fifteen minutes' delay at the post--the
starter was a farmer--and Star Boarder blowing like a sand-blast and the
foam standing all over him from that little six-furlong sprint, away
they went in a line, Star Boarder in the lead! Star Boarder at the
quarter by a length! Star Boarder at the half by a length! Star Boarder
at the three-quarters by two lengths! Star Boarder in the stretch by
three lengths! And if that dog-goned, knock-kneed, bone-spavined,
no-account maiden Fonso colt didn't just buck-jump under the wire by six
clear lengths of open daylight, you can feed me hay and carrots until
the next spring meeting and I'll only say thank you kindly, sir!
"I can't, as I say, make out whether that was a case of ringing or not.
Anyhow, it was up to the State fair people to make the holler if any was
coming, wasn't it? They didn't. The Rube bookmakers did, but they
weren't sustained, and they had to dive into their satchels. Star
Boarder is over in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, to-day, pulling an old
lady around in a phaeton, and still holding down the distinction of
being the homeliest son of one of the handsomest sires in the history of
the American stud."