HISTORY OF THE HALS

By John Trotwood Moore

[Note.—The History of this remarkable family of horses was begun in the first number ofTrotwood’s Monthly, and has proven to be so popular that nearly all of the back numbers of the magazine have been bought up and bound by the admirers of this great family of horses. Orders are coming in daily, often as many as ten to twenty, for a complete set of last year’sTrotwood. We regret, therefore, that we will be unable to furnish back numbers much longer. This History will be continued during the year, including the story of Brown Hal, Star Pointer, Mattie Hunter, Hal Dillard, Old Brooks, Star Hal, Hal B., and many others now known to fame. It will close with a beautiful tribute to the life and the career of Edward F. Geers, the “Silent Man from Tennessee,” who is to the turf world what Napoleon was to war.—Pubs.Taylor-Trotwood.]

Quadrupe dante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum.—Virgil.

In days agone,Upon that shore which mortals call the Unreturning Past,What bursts of speed from gallant steed have come like bugle blast!What battles have been fought and won, what names to fame been given,What mighty shout has put to rout the thunder notes of heaven,When, coming in his pride and scornThe old horse won in days agone!In days to come,Upon that shore where Memory’s twilight skies hang o’er,Oft will the old horse race as he has never raced before!His silent ghost will come to post while spectral grandstands listenTo the noiseless beat of his phantom feet—as the silver moonbeams glistenOn the gray-haired horseman who tells it o’er—How the old horse won in days of yore!—John Trotwood Moore.

In days agone,

Upon that shore which mortals call the Unreturning Past,

What bursts of speed from gallant steed have come like bugle blast!

What battles have been fought and won, what names to fame been given,

What mighty shout has put to rout the thunder notes of heaven,

When, coming in his pride and scorn

The old horse won in days agone!

In days to come,Upon that shore where Memory’s twilight skies hang o’er,Oft will the old horse race as he has never raced before!His silent ghost will come to post while spectral grandstands listenTo the noiseless beat of his phantom feet—as the silver moonbeams glistenOn the gray-haired horseman who tells it o’er—How the old horse won in days of yore!

In days to come,

Upon that shore where Memory’s twilight skies hang o’er,

Oft will the old horse race as he has never raced before!

His silent ghost will come to post while spectral grandstands listen

To the noiseless beat of his phantom feet—as the silver moonbeams glisten

On the gray-haired horseman who tells it o’er—

How the old horse won in days of yore!

—John Trotwood Moore.

“Seeing an article in a turf paper about pacing horses being natural swimmers,” remarked a friend to Trotwood a few days ago, “reminds me of an experience I had a dozen years ago down in the piney woods of Alabama, that convinced me that whether a pacer is a born swimmer or not, one thing is certain, the trotting horse I was driving that February day didn’t act like he was a South Sea Islander, by any means.

“You see,” he said, as a companionable crowd of horsemen gathered around him, and passed around the cigar box, as a sign that a story was about to begin, “I had been courting down in that state and made up my mind that I wanted to marry a blue-eyed, pretty daughter of old Major Blank, and I had about half way convinced the girl that she wanted to marry me, when this infernal non-swimming horse had about upset the whole thing. I hadn’t seen the girl for about a month, so I boarded the cars one bright day in February for a short visit. I took precaution to get the best ring I could find in Nashville within my means—I knew the fit of her finger pretty well—and I was as dead certain of leaving that ring inAlabama on the fourth finger of a dimpled hand as I am to-day that little Robert J. could pace round a draft horse.

“I stopped at a small town, ten miles from where she lived in the country, at the house of a friend of mine, for I had to hire a buggy and drive through to the Major’s, as he lived off the railroad. According to agreement, the young lady had written me a letter to that point, telling me how glad they all would be to see me, accenting the “all,” and ending up with a message that made my heart beat like a thumped horse, and enclosing a bunch of violets tied with a fewdeshabillestrands of her own sunset hair. By the way, this was in February as I remarked, but what was the name of that poet that said, ‘love comes like a summer’s sigh?’

“Well, that letter made it July with me.

“I would have been a married man with an interesting family to-day,” he remarked after a pause, with a sigh, “if that friend of mine hadn’t been so everlastingly clever. He had a dish-faced trotter he had bought up in Kentucky, at one of Shanklin’s sales, that could go a mile in that Alabama sand in about five minutes, and do it with such a rip and tear and splutter and dirt throwing that you would think he was trotting ’round the world in eighty days. I had often bragged on the beast, just to please my clerking friend, who thought I knew every trotting horse personally, in the world, and now I got in to it by being so complimentary. Nothing would do but I must drive that old, shying, crow-hopping fool. And I had it to do. After I got him out of town he quit shying at the tree shadows and the black-jack stumps on the road side, and I thought I was getting along pretty well. Considering the fact that I was looking into a pair of blue eyes all the way, and putting a ring on an imaginary finger every mile I went, while the trusting hand to which it was attached nestled coyly between my two big ones, and I smelt the sweet perfume of violets in a wavy mass of auburn hair that nestled, in my mind’s eye, on my breast, I got along without any other accident; but was about to drive into a pretty rapid sheet of water in my dreaming, and perhaps end my own and Old Crow’s—the horse’s—career at the same time, when I heard a gruff voice with true Southern accent and a native nonchalance, say:

“‘You doan’t wanter go in washin’ this early in the season, do you, sah?”

“Well, I didn’t, and I waked up in time to stop the fool horse and back him out. The stranger watched me get out and then proceeded to tell me what I hadn’t had sense enough to see before—that Raccoon Creek was on a boom and Dead Deer Slough, into which I was driving, would swim a horse most anywhere. Now, a slough, in the far South, is a low, marshy place near the borders of a creek or lake, and, while generally dry in summer, in winter it manages to get plenty of water from the overflowing creek or lake nearby. This one ran directly across the road leading up to the foot of the bridge spanning Raccoon Creek beyond, and, though the bridge was partly under water, I could see it was all right and fully half of it, on the highest curve, was clear of water. Moreover, the other part was built on the bluff side of the creek and seemed to be entirely clear. So if I could only get to the bridge I would be all right.

“‘You had better give it up to-day, sah, and wait till mornin’,’ said the stranger, who appeared much interested in my movements. ‘The slough will run down by then, and you can get on the bridge easy. If there are no stoops in it’—I afterwards learned that stoops meant holes washed out by the water—‘you will find no trouble getting over. I’ll take keer of you, sah,’ he added, with true Southern hospitality, ‘for I want somebody to play euchre with to-night. It’s been raining for five days, and I knew old Rack would be scudding along, so I just rode down here to watch her, sah.’

“I thanked him, but told him I was going over. I was young, boys, and the picture of the old Major’s parlor with the big wood fire sending sparks up the chimney and then dying down to adjust the shadowy light necessary for the ring scene and the tableau act, was too much for my youthful head.

“‘But can that horse there swim?’ said the Southerner, with a more serious expression. ‘It isn’t every horse that can, my young frien’, an’ you had better know what he can do before you go into this mud-hole, sah.’

“‘Oh, I’ll soon teach him,’ I said, with one of those laughs that a man with more brass than sense is frequently caught indulging in. ‘He’ll have to swim or drown and you know he’ll swim before he’ll do that.’

“But right there is where I failed to size up that slanting-headed descendant of old Messenger.

“Well, the Southerner was very quiet and did not intrude his opinion on me further. He sized me up about right and decided to let me go it. The buggy was out of the question so I took old Crow out. Stripped him of everything but the bridle and put the lap robe on his back to help break the angularity of my seat. By the Southerner’s advice I pulled off my pants and underclothing, tying them around my shoulders, thrust my stockings in my upper coat pocket to keep them dry, tied my shoestrings together and threw my shoes over my shoulders, mounted my steed and spurred him with my trembling heels—for I was beginning to shake a little—into the slough. The stranger told me to let the horse have the bit and keep him to the right of a line of willows which he said skirted the road. By no means was I to jerk the beast, but guide him gently to right or left with the line.

“Right here, I want to explain to you that that horse had been listening to us and had decided that now was the time for him to suicide—a thought he had had in his mind for a year or two, I am sure. By doing the job now he expected to kill two birds with one stone, and I was the other bird—a jay at that—for, looking back at that roaring flood from the standpoint of fifteen years’ more sense, I am sure nobody but an idiot would ever have tried it. Well, we went in and I headed him for the willows, and the water crept up to my feet, then to my knees and was soon on the horse’s withers. Right here I expected to see him sail off with me on his back, his tail streaming out, his head on the wave, his ears laid back and his nostrils dilated and sending his steamy breath right and left; but not much of a sail he made. I forgot to tell you he had the longest neck I ever saw on a horse, but I didn’t know it was as long as it was, or I’d never have gone in that slough. Why, that neck was a telescope, and after he got me in up to the armpits he just lengthened it out a notch or two above the waves whenever he wanted to. I am not much on mathematics, but I saw that, as he then held it, it was fully six inches higher than the top of my hat, and I imagined I saw the faintest trace of a satanic grin on his under lip as he let her out another link and looked back at me, as much as to say:

“‘Well, how do you like swimming?”

“I reached for my pocket knife to cut his throat, but found I didn’t even have on my drawers, and just then the water gurgled up under my chin and splashed in my ears and that brute winked his left eye as he let out another notch in that old telescopic neck of his and walked along like he was on dress parade. By this time we were half-way across, and nothing but my nose was out. I was just thinking of getting up on his back on my knees, when he stepped in a little washout and my head went under like a cork. I turned loose everything to get air again, and was swept off before I could say ‘Scat.’ I grasped a willow just as I heard the stranger, who had been sitting on a big, sloping-shouldered gray Hal pacer, hello to meto hold on, and his horse soon swam out to the willow as naturally as if he had done it every day for a year. He circled in about forty feet of water before reaching me, and, telling me to catch his horse by the tail, he swam quietly by and I lost no time in doing as he said and getting back to land. I lost my ten-dollar pants, but this was more than offset by the hundred-dollars’ worth of common sense I had tucked away in my head on the different ways in which horses swim.

“And that horse—well, we sat on the bank and watched that head go leisurely across, lengthening out when it struck a washout and contracting on the ridges, with that same ironical grin part—the ugliest mouth I ever saw on a horse. At last he struck the bridge, clambered up, shook himself like a wet dog, looked back to see if I was taking it all in, and struck out to the Major’s on his own hook.

“But the worst was yet to come. Just as I landed I heard a buggy turn a sharp bend in the road, drive up to where the Southerner and his horse were pulling me out and—great Caesar!—there sat in the buggy old Major Blank and the angel of my dreams. The girl shrieked and ducked her head under the lap robe, while I jumped back in that slough to hide the southern half of me, and tried to commit suicide by drowning, but my youthful head was so corky I couldn’t keep it under water long enough. The old Major drove off and started to his home by another route, the kind gentleman fished me out again, more dead than alive and I went home, with my new friend just in time to have a hard chill. I was sick two weeks, during which time I got it pretty straight that my clerking friend had been courting my blue-eyed beauty for six months himself, and I will always believe that he loaned me that horse just to get me out of the way. Anyway, three days afterwards he went down to the Major’s to get the old horse, stayed all night and fixed the wedding day, while I was swimming imaginary sloughs with my pulse at 105½.

“I got back home as quickly as I could, and now, when I go to buy a horse, I never ask, ‘How fast can he go?’ but ‘How far can he swim?’”

And my bachelor friend struck up a whistle which sounded like “After the Ball” and walked off.

“Very few people”, said Capt. Robert D. Smith, of Columbia, Tenn., “know that the late Gen. Wm. B. Bate, who died United States Senator from Tennessee, told one of the most pathetic horse stories of the war. General Bate was here before his death, attending the Confederate reunion, and I reminded him of the incident and got him to relate it again as it happened. I never saw him so much touched as when he told again of the attachment of his horse, Black Hawk, for him, and the animal’s pathetic death at Shiloh. General Bate is very modest and no braver man ever lived; but I was there and saw the incident and can tell you how it was. At the battle of Shiloh General Bate was then colonel of the Second Tennessee. He had two horses which he used; one, an ordinary, everyday horse which he rode on the march and other rough service; the other was a magnificent black stallion—a thoroughbred and Hal horse—black as a crow and as beautiful as you ever saw. He was a very stout horse, not leggy as some thoroughbreds are, but symmetrical and shapely, and as the General always took a lively interest in horses, this one had been selected for him with great care and at a good deal of expense. By the way, General Bate says he has since heard of a number of Black Hawk’s sons and other descendants making most creditable races. This horse was splendidly equipped and used by Colonel Bate only for parades, long marches where stamina was needed and for battle. The night before the battle of Shiloh the commoner horse was stolen, and the next morning at daylight I rememberwhat a superb looking object our colonel presented on this magnificent animal, who looked fit to race for a kingdom or charge over the guns of Balaklava.

“Men may talk about Gettysburg, Franklin and other battles of the war, but I want to see no stubborner or bloodier fight than we had down there amid the woods, around that little church and on the banks of the Tennessee. You may know what kind of company we had to entertain us, when I say that we struck Sherman’s line first. Time and again we drove them back and as often they reformed and stubbornly contested every foot of the way. The usual position of a colonel is thirty feet to the rear of his regiment, and it was in that position that Colonel Bate first went into the fight. The enemy gave way after the first hard fight—in fact, I will always think we took them a little unawares, though I know that both Generals Sherman and Grant did not think so, probably owing to the fact that they were not at the front when we began the fight, not having anticipated it to begin so soon—but arriving soon after they heard the guns. At the next stand they gave it to us hot, and it was here our lines were nearly broken and it was here that Colonel Bate had to put himself in front of his regiment before they would charge with enough determination to drive the boys in blue again. All this time the battle was raging everywhere. We had driven the Federal army past Shiloh church, and towards the river, where they finally made the desperate stand that stopped us the next day after Buell’s arrival.

“Time and again Colonel Bate led us against Sherman’s brave boys—that thoroughbred horse and rider always in front. Once he made us a short speech just before we had to charge again, having been repulsed at the first attempt. He said he wanted us only to follow him and he would not take us where he would not go himself. This last fight was terrible. Before we struck the enemy Colonel Bate was shot out of the saddle, the men fell around us right and left and we charged on leaving all as they fell.

“Now the remarkable thing was that horse. When Colonel Bate fell the horse seemed to be at a loss what to do. But as the regiment swept on, he quickly fell into his place just in the rear of the regiment and followed us on into battle. We must have fought on for a half mile after that, and it was a strange sight to see that horse following the regiment as stately as if on dress parade, and it touched every man to see him riderless.

“At the first opportunity an ambulance was sent back to find the colonel and take him to the field hospital, some three miles in the rear. In the confusion no one had thought of Black Hawk, but it seemed he had not forgotten his brave rider, for he actually followed the path made by his colonel, or rather those who carried him to the hospital—almost tracking him by his blood—straight up to the hospital tent, and to the surprise of Colonel Bate, who had been badly but not seriously wounded in two places, one ball going through his shoulder, he poked his head in the tent door and affectionately whinnied to his master while the surgeon was dressing his wound. The next instant he walked a few paces in the weeds, staggered and fell down dead. An examination showed what no one had noticed: he had been badly wounded in several places, one of which proved fatal. General Bate says he can still see that almost human look Black Hawk gave him and that last pathetic whinny as he walked off to fall down and die.”

[Trotwood has heard Senator Bate relate this incident himself and the last time he met the old warrior at dinner at the Maxwell House, Nashville, Senator Bate related the above incident and discussed very fondly the pedigree and value of the Southern breed of horses that could produce such intelligent animals as Black Hawk.]

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