Mr. Behren came up with a friend, a red-faced man with a white derby hat. He pointed at Charley with his cane.
“My new jockey,” he said. “How’s the mare?” he asked.
“Very fit, sir,” Charley answered.
“Had her feed yet?”
“No,” Charley said.
The feed was in a trough, which the stable boy had lifted outside into the sun. They were mixing it under Charley’s supervision, for as a rider he did not stoop to such menial work as carrying the water and feed, but he always overlooked the others when they did it. Behren scooped up a handful and examined it carefully.
“It’s not as fresh as it ought to be for the price they ask,” he said to the friend with him. Then he threw the handful of feed back into the trough and ran his hand through it again, rubbing it between his thumb and fingers and tasting it critically. Then they passed on up the row.
Charley sat down again on an overturned bucket and looked at the feed trough, then he said to the stable boys, “You fellows can go now and get something to eat if you want to.” They did not wait to be urged. Charley carried the trough inside the stable and took up a handful of the feed and looked and sniffed at it. It was fresh from his own barn; he had brought it over himself in a cart that morning.
Then he tasted it with the end of his tongue and his face changed. He glanced around him quickly to see if any one had noticed, and then, with the feed still clenched in his hand, ran out and looked anxiously up and down the length of the stable. Mr. Maitland and Curtis were returning from the other end of the road.
“Can I speak to you a moment, sir?” said Charley anxiously. “Will you come in here just a minute? It’s most important, sir. I have something to show you.”
The two men looked at the boy curiously and halted in front of the door. Charley added nothing further to what he had said but spread a newspaper over the floor of the stable and turned the feed trough over on it. Then he stood up over the pile and said, “Would you both please taste that?”
There was something in his manner which made questions unnecessary. The two gentlemen did as he asked. Then Mr. Curtis looked into Mr. Maitland’s face, which was full of doubt and perplexity, with one of angry suspicion.
“Cooked,” he said.
“It does taste strangely,” commented the horse owner gravely.
“Look at it; you can see if you look close enough,” urged Curtis excitedly. “Do you see that green powder on my finger? Do you know what that is? An ounce of that would turn a horse’s stomach as dry as a limekiln. Where did you get this feed?” he demanded of Charley.
“Out of our barn,” said the boy. “And no one has touched it except myself, the stable boys, and the owner.”
“Who are the stable boys?” demanded Mr. Curtis.
“Who’s the owner?” asked Charley.
“Do you know what you are saying?” warned Mr. Maitland sharply. “You had better be careful.”
“Careful!” said Charley indignantly. “I will be careful enough.” He went over to Heroine, and threw his arm up over her neck. He was terribly excited and trembling all over. The mare turned her head towards him and rubbed her nose against his face.
“That’s all right,” said Charley. “Don’t you be afraid. I’ll take care of you.”
The two men were whispering together. “I don’t know anything about you,” said Mr. Maitland to Charley. “I don’t know what your idea was in dragging me into this. I’m sure I wish I was out of it. But this I do know, if Heroine isn’t herself today, and doesn’t run as she has run before, and I say it though my own horses are in against her, I’ll have you and your owner before the Racing Board, and you’ll lose your license and be ruled off every track in the country.”
“One of us will,” said Charley stubbornly. “All I want you to do, Mr. Maitland, is to put some of that stuff in your pocket. If anything is wrong they will believe what you say, when they wouldn’t listen to me. That’s why I called you in. I haven’t charged any one with anything. I only asked you and Mr. Curtis to taste the feed that this horse was to have eaten. That’s all. And I’m not afraid of the Racing Board, either, if the men on it are honest.”
Mr. Curtis took some letters out of his pocket and filled the envelopes with the feed, and then put them back in his pocket, and Charley gathered up the feed in a bucket and emptied it out of the window at the back of the stable.
“I think Behren should be told of this,” said Mr. Maitland.
Charley laughed; he was still excited and angry. “You had better find out which way Mr. Behren is betting first,” he said, “if you can.”
“Don’t mind the boy. Come away,” said Mr. Curtis. “We must look into this.”
The Fourth of July holidaymakers had begun to arrive; and there were thousands of them, and they had a great deal of money, and they wanted to bet it all on Heroine. Everybody wanted to bet on Heroine; and the men in the betting ring obliged them.
But there were three men from Boston who were betting on the field against the favorite. They distributed their bets in small sums of money among a great many different bookmakers; even the oldest of the racing men did not know them.
But Mr. Behren seemed to know them. He met one of them openly in front of the grandstand, and the stranger from Boston asked politely if he could trouble him for a light. Mr. Behren handed him his cigar, and while the man puffed at it he said, “We’ve got $50,000 of it up. It’s too much to risk on that powder. Something might go wrong; you mightn’t have mixed it properly, or there mayn’t be enough. I’ve known it miss before this. Minerva, she won once with an ounce of it inside her. You’d better fix that jockey.”
Mr. Behren’s face was troubled, and he puffed quickly at his cigar as the man walked away. Then he turned and moved slowly towards the stables.
A gentleman with a field glass across his shoulder stopped him and asked, “How’s Heroine?” and Mr. Behren answered, “Never better; I’ve $10,000 on her,” and passed on with a confident smile.
Charley saw Mr. Behren coming, and bit his lip and tried to make his face look less conscious. He was not used to deception. He felt much more like plunging a pitchfork into Mr. Behren’s legs, but he restrained that impulse, and chewed gravely on a straw. Mr. Behren looked carefully around the stable, and wiped the perspiration from his fat red face. The day was warm, and he was excited.
“Well, my boy,” he said in a friendly, familiar tone as he seated himself, “it’s almost time. I hope you are not rattled.”
Charley said “No.” He felt confident enough.
“It would be a big surprise if she went back on us, wouldn’t it?” suggested the owner gloomily.
“It would, indeed,” said Charley.
“Still,” said Mr. Behren, “such things have been. Racin’ is full of surprises, and horses are full of tricks. I’ve known a horse, now, get pocketed behind two or three others and never show to the front at all. Though she was the best of the field, too. And I’ve known horses go wild and jump over the rail and run away with the jock, and sometimes they fall. And sometimes I’ve had a jockey pull a horse on me and make me drop every cent I had up. You wouldn’t do that, would you?” he asked. He looked up at Charley with a smile that might mean anything.
Charley looked at the floor and shrugged his shoulders. “I ride to orders, I do,” he said. “I guess the owner knows his own business best. When I ride for a man and take his money I believe he should have his say. Some jockeys ride to win. I ride according to orders.”
He did not look up after this, and he felt thankful that Heroine could not understand the language of human beings. Mr. Behren’s face rippled with smiles. This was a jockey after his own heart.
“If Heroine should lose,” he said, “I say, if she should, for no one knows what might happen, I’d have to abuse you fearful right before all the people. I’d sw
ear at you and say you lost me all my money, and that you should never ride for me again. And they might suspend you for a month or two, which would be very hard on you,” he added reflectively.
“But then,” he said more cheerfully, “if you had a little money to live on while you were suspended it wouldn’t be so hard, would it?” He took a large roll of bank bills from his pocket and counted them, smoothing them out on his fat knee and smiling up at the boy. “It wouldn’t be so bad, would it?” he repeated. Then he counted aloud, “Eight hundred, nine hundred, one thousand.”
He rose and placed the bills under a loose plank of the floor, and stamped it down on them. “I guess we understand each other, eh?” he said.
“I guess we do,” said Charley.
“I’ll have to swear at you, you know,” said Behren, smiling.
“I can stand that,” Charley answered.
As the horses paraded past for the July Stakes, the people rushed forward down the inclined enclosure and crushed against the rail and cheered whichever horse they best fancied.
“Say, you,” called one of the crowd to Charley, “you want to win, you do. I’ve got $5 on that horse you’re a-riding.”
Charley ran his eyes over the crowd that were applauding and cheering him and Heroine, and calculated coolly that if every one had only $5 on Heroine there would be at least $100,000 on the horse in all.
The man from Boston stepped up beside Mr. Behren as he sat on his dogcart alone.
“The mare looks very fit,” he said anxiously. “Her eyes are like diamonds. I don’t believe that stuff affected her at all.”
“It’s all right,” whispered Behren calmly. “I’ve fixed the boy.”
The man dropped back off the wheel of the cart with a sigh of relief, and disappeared in the crowd. Mr. Maitland and Mr. Curtis sat together on the top of the former’s coach. Mr. Curtis had his hand over the packages of feed in his pockets.
“If the mare don’t win,” he said, “there will be the worst scandal this track has ever known.” The perspiration was rolling down his face. “It will be the death of honest racing.”
“I cannot understand it,” said Mr. Maitland. “The boy seemed honest, too.”
The horses got off together. There were eleven of them. Heroine was amongst the last, but no one minded that because the race was a long one. And within three-quarters of a mile of home Heroine began to shake off the others and came up slowly through the crowd, and her thousands of admirers yelled. And then Maitland’s Good Morning and Reilly swerved in front of her, or else Heroine fell behind them, it was hard to tell which, and Lady Betty closed in on her from the right. Her jockey seemed to be trying his best to get her out of the triangular pocket into which she had run. The great crowd simultaneously gave an anxious questioning gasp. Then two more horses pushed to the front, closing the favorite in and shutting her off altogether.
“The horse is pocketed,” cried Mr. Curtis, “and not one man out of a thousand would know that it was done on purpose.”
“Wait!” said Mr. Maitland.
“Bless that boy!” murmured Behren, trying his best to look anxious. “She can never pull out of that.”
They were within half a mile of home. The crowd was panic-stricken and jumping up and down.
“Heroine!” they cried, as wildly as though they were calling for help, or the police. “Heroine!” Charley heard them above the noise of the pounding hoofs, and smiled in spite of the mud and dirt that the great horses in front flung in his face and eyes.
“Heroine,” he said, “I think we’ve scared that crowd about long enough. Now, punish Behren.” He sank his spurs into the horse’s sides and jerked her head towards a little opening between Lady Betty and Chubb. Heroine sprang at it like a tiger and came neck to neck with the leader. And then, as she saw the wide track empty before her, and no longer felt the hard backward pull on her mouth, she tossed her head with a snort, and flew down the stretch like an express, with her jockey whispering fiercely in her ear.
Heroine won with a grand rush, by three lengths, but Charley’s face was filled with anxiety as he tossed up his arm in front of the judges’ stand. He was covered with mud and perspiration, and panting with exertion and excitement. He distinguished Mr. Curtis’s face in the middle of the wild crowd around him, then patted his legs and hugged and kissed Heroine’s head, and danced up and down in the ecstasy of delight.
“Mr. Curtis,” he cried, raising his voice above the tumult of the crowd, and forgetting, or not caring, that they could hear, “send some one to the stable, quick. There’s a thousand dollars there Behren offered me to pull the horse. It’s under a plank near the back door. Get it before he does. That’s evidence the Racing Board can’t—”
But before he could finish, or before Mr. Curtis could push his way towards him, a dozen stable boys and betting men had sprung away with a yell towards the stable, and the mob dashed after them. It gathered in volume as a landslide does when it goes down hill; and the people in the grandstand and on the coaches stood up and asked what was the matter; and some cried “Stop thief!” and others cried “Fight!” and others said that a bookmaker had given big odds against Heroine, and was “doing a welsh.” The mob swept around the corner of the long line of stables like a charge of cavalry, and dashed at Heroine’s lodgings.
The door was open, and on his knees at the other end was Behren, digging at the planks with his fingernails. He had seen that the boy had intentionally deceived him, and his first thought, even before that of his great losses, was to get possession of the thousand dollars that might be used against him. He turned his fat face, now white with terror, over his shoulder, as the crowd rushed into the stable, and tried to rise from his knees; but before he could get up, the first man struck him between the eyes, and others fell on him, pummeling him and kicking him and beating him down.
If they had lost their money, instead of having won, they could not have handled him more brutally. Two policemen and a couple of men with pitchforks drove them back; and one of the officers lifted up the plank, and counted the thousand dollars before the crowd.
Either Mr. Maitland felt badly at having doubted Charley, or else he admired his riding, for he bought Heroine when Behren was ruled off the racetracks and had to sell his horses, and Charley became his head jockey. And just as soon as Heroine began to lose, Mr. Maitland refused to have her suffer such degradation, and said she should stop while she could still win. And then he presented her to Charley, who had won so much and so often with her, and Charley gave up his license and went back to the farm to take care of his mother, and Heroine played all day in the clover fields.
21
World Record Is Set by Man o’ War
From the New York Times, June 13, 1920
Riddle’s Speed Miracle Shatters All Previous Marks for Mile and Three Furlongs
Wins Belmont by a Block
Finishes Half-Furlong before Donnacona
Great Throng Is Amazed
Horse racing found itself in a struggle for its life as the 1920s approached. The sport had survived the anti-gambling fervor of ten years earlier (reformers had moved on to alcoholic beverages) but the World War had badly damaged the international breeding and racing industries.
By June 13, 1920, when the story of Man o’ War’s victory in the previous day’s Belmont Stakes appeared in the New York Times, the sport had already begun to climb out of the doldrums, thanks at least partially to the charismatic red colt. Thousands crowded the grandstands when he raced. Millions of dollars were bet on him during his sixteen-month racing career. His Belmont Stakes was fully representative of his career: a great throng was indeed amazed by his accomplishment.
The Times article displays the combination of straightforward reporting and adulation that was typical of news coverage of the remarkable horse. It appeared without a byline, customary at the time in racing jou
rnalism.
Samuel D. Riddle’s great race horse, Man o’ War, gave at Belmont Park yesterday what was beyond a doubt the greatest exhibition of speed ever witnessed on any racetrack when he shattered the world’s record for a mile and three furlongs in winning the $10,000 Belmont Stakes, while a crowd of 25,000 sat stunned by the almost unbelievably brilliant performance. The champion did not just clip the mark, but literally shattered it, for he ran the distance in 2:14 1-5, which is two and three-fifths seconds faster than any horse had ever run it before.
The world’s record was previously held by Dean Swift, which ran the mile and three furlongs in 2:16 4-5 at Liverpool, England, in 1908. The next lowest mark was made in the running of the Belmont last year when Sir Barton set a new American record for the distance of 2:17 2-5. The Canadian and Australian records do not even closely approach the English and American marks, which stood until yesterday afternoon.
When the figures were posted there was a hum of amazement in the packed stands. Every one had been expecting Man o’ War to lower the record made by Sir Barton last year, but no one was quite ready to believe it would be lowered to the extent of several seconds and take the world’s mark with it. Not even his owner had thought he would stage such a performance, for he had not sent his colt out with the expectation of making such wonderful time.
Best of All Times and Climes
The race left no doubt in the minds of all turfmen present that they had seen the greatest horse of this or any other age. Up to this time they had been content to say that he was America’s finest product, but after he had crossed the line in the Belmont and his time was flashed there were none among the veterans of the turf who could think of a horse who compared with him. It is safe to say that Man o’ War is the superhorse of the ages as far as records go back; a horse the likes of which will probably never be seen by the present generation of horsemen. Man o’ War would seem to typify the final goal of breeders, the perfect racehorse, gifted with all the essentials of greatness. The son of Fair Play has set a mark which all horses save himself are likely to shoot at vainly for many years to come.
Great American Horse Stories Page 21
