Read Ebook: McClure's Magazine Vol. XXXI No. 6 October 1908 by Various

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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 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.

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.

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!"

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