Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-01-20


passenger train bound for Cincinnati. The
train was filled with a soused and noisy
bunch of Ohio mlitiamen returning to C1n-
cinnau from their summer encampment.
assistant stable foreman, who was rather
grouchy sort Of a chap, passed from the
freight car In which the horse was Into the
smoker to get drink of water for himself
He found a big mob Of the national guard
soldiers packed around the water cooler
in the smoker. pouring out the hard booze
from their bottles into the drinking glass
and gulping 1t down that way When my
assistant foreman got hold of the glass he
found inch of booze and water at the
bottom of it. He tossed the mixture out OF
the glass and on to the floor with some sort
of a growled crack about tin soldier rum
merinoes that didn't know how to behave
after they'd got couple of sarsapar1llas
under their belts The soldiers heard the
crack. and in something less than four
seconds they had my assistant foreman
down In the car aisle. They forced his
teeth open, and, while a couple Of them ga
on his chest they poured a quart or so Of
bad bug-juice into his system. He was so
spifIilcated when they led him up that they
had to lift him bodily and plant him in a
seat Then the guardsmen piled out OF the
smoker and into the freight car to look my
horse over. They decided that the horse,
too, was built too much on the Carrie Ma
ton plan. and half a dozen of them I'M
shipped their TASKS and began to pour
booze into the horse. Inside of five min
utes the horse was para!yzed and rocking
around in his stall lise a man-o wars man
on a shutdown liberty after three months
quarantinng.
When the freight car was shunted
from the passenger train l was on hand to
meet my horse. l found the horse and
the man lying down alongside each other
both drunkern fiddlers' gyps. and all in, to
the final ounce. The horse wasn't over his
katZenjammer for a week, and of course
had to scratch him from his race which
NV ,,,,tf fIof ny,11
have gone away and hid from at thirty
pounds difference in the weight scheme
Then I got it in some other ways. In
81 l had my string quartered in an outside
barn about quarter of a mile from the old
Roby track, near Chicago, or within hitting
distance of Chicago. l should say. One day
going to cut up and smoke down
enough hog meat to last me a dozen win
tiers with aged sprinter, a famous old
gelding of his day, whose condition / had
been keeping under the kettle lid for
months, waiting for just such an oppor-
tunity. On the afternoon of the race l
hitched the old geldng to a sulky and
started with him to the track myself. /
had often done this before, for the speedy
old duffer was restless and impatient at
his end of leading halter and even hated
to be led around the paddock for a Joint
Numbering before a race. Half way to
the Roby track l hoped down from the
sulky to go into little tobacco store for
a paper of chewing tobacco hooking the
old fellow to a ring post. l chatted for
moment with the tobacco man, and | was
just starting out of the little shop when
l heard a shot coming from the direction
of the office of a lumber yard across the
street l hustled to the door in time to see
fellow jumping into my sulky. The fell
low had already unhitched my horse from
the ring post
The boss has just shot himself and
I'm going after a DOCTOR he yelled at me.
Getting sudden rap of the reins on
his back. my old horse darted forward like
a lead slug out of a beanshooter, and in
half a minute he was clean out of sight
in cloud of dust down the road. And
| was due to saddle that horse al Roby
for race in three-quarters of an hour.
Worse than that, ] had $1,000 of my cold
hard, iron men already bet on the old
horses chance to cop that race, making
me stand-for I'd got the prce-to cop
10000 if he gathered in the sprint
II skated into the office of the lumber
yard and found the cashier of the plant
all alone, with bullet in his shoulder.
The fellow who had grabbed my nag to go
for a doctor was stick-up man who had
plugged the cashier and then corralled the
canvas bag filled with bills and silver junk
with which the employees of the lumber
yard were to be paid off that evening,
Saturday. 1 didn't feel any better when
/ found that a Chicago stick-up man was
ing outfit that l sent out found the old
horse grazing, still hitched to the sulky
but unchecked on the prairie near Chica-
go the following morning. But my old
gelding had been abused like an Eskimo
dog, and l never got another good race
out of him. The Roby stewards fined me
500 for not having my horse in the pad
dock with his running gear on when the
enough to take that all back when they
heard how l had got mine at the hands
of the gun man who required the hurry-up
ride.
"The last time that l was smudged out
of money already down right here at
Benning five years ago. The trick was
three-year-old fall maiden that had shown
me seven-furlong work on the then sandy
Benning track In 1.29, which was about the
time they made it in races then. l shot
him in with a pack of skates that ought
to've been hauling ambulances and began
to count my money. l had the dust put
down in New York on the morning of the
race. An hour or so before the people be-
gan to arrive at the track l gave coon
boy the leg up on my horse and told him
to just jog the maiden once around the cir
Gle al legstretching gait The boy had
just started to guide the horse out of the
paddock when program seller near by
blew up paper bag that had held his
nickel's worth of peanuts and then explod-
ed 1t with his fist,
over the fence went my horse, tossing
the coon off like sack of salt The mutt
bulled around the empty betting ring,
knocking over stools and gear for min
ute or So with lot of stable hand idiots
trying to shoe him in different directions
at once. Then he just ambled leisurely
out of the wide-open main entrance for
badgcholders. When he found himself out
side the gate on the long, yellow clay road
he pulled his ears back and decided that
right then was about good a time for
him to race any.
We got him over near Bls.densburg
along toward shutdown. And my hard
wrung kale had been pasted in him in the
pool rooms of New York at 10 o'clock that
morning at 20 TO /.
It's hard money to lose, even when you
get an imitation of run for it. When
you're passed along to the crags, without
airy an amble for it, you're liable to find
yourself INDUCING in that wish that you'd
stayed back on the old farm and never
even heard of the gee-gees.