Stories of the Soil
The Little Things of Life, Happening All Over the World and Caught in Ink for Trotwood’s Monthly.
About every year or two the question is sprung whether or not a horse is a natural swimmer. It appears that some horses are and some are not, if the statements of various persons interested be true. An old soldier, who was a colonel in the big fight, once told me that in a close place he rode his horse in the Tennessee River, hoping to swim across. The animal never struck a lick at swimming, but simply waded in until it committed suicide, and but for the timely arrival of a friend in a canoe, the rider would have drowned also. On the other hand, it is an historical fact that Weatherford, the Indian chief whom Jackson defeated and captured in the Creek War, and who always rode a gray horse which was at least half thoroughbred, when surrounded by soldiers and crowded to a big bluff on the Alabama River, took a running start, drove the spurs into his horse, who jumped off a bluff fully twenty feet high, into the river. Horse and rider went out of sight, but rose again and struck out, the chief still on his back, to the distant bank. So daring and brave was the act that Jackson’s soldiers would not shoot at them, but let them escape into the forest.
There is one horse in Tennessee that I will make affidavit to the fact that he is a swimmer, as well as a lightning pacer. It is Brown Hal Jr. 2:10¼.
On Good Friday, 1902, the heavens simply opened on the South. Never has such a flood been heard of—at least since Noah’s day. Creeks became surging rivers, rivers vast lakes of water rushing seaward. Mr. Robt. Hutton, one of the owners of Brown Hal Jr. 2:10¼, writes that that game son of the old horse was in a large stable, in which a half dozen mules were also confined on the creek near the town. Mr. Hutton is a banker and was busy in his bank. The cloudburst came so suddenly that people indoors did not appreciate the extent of the downfall of rain.
“Is there anything in your barn, Bob,” asked a friend as he stuck his head in the door. “I see it is about to float away.”
“I should say there is,” he said, as he started on a run for the barn. A boat was procured and the door finally reached, when the gallant horse was found swimming around for his life and doubtless wondering why he had been shut up to drown. Once out he left no doubt of his ability to breast a flood.
But talking of the flood, I suspect I will have to make affidavit to this, but unless several friends in whose word I have the greatest confidence have prevaricated, I am willing to do so. Down in Giles, where it seems everything happens now and then, Col. Martin Houston, of near Pulaski, had two lovely asses of the Mockingbird breed. These wandered by day in a delightful paddock in Richland Creek, and at night sang in basso profundo to the listening lady loves. The floods came and Richland Creek became a Mississippi, and before the festal asses could consult the weather bureau at Nashville (which, by the way, I will solemnly swear published it the day before that it would be “cold and fair,” the next day), these two Romeos went floating away on the deep, with nowhere to lay their heads. Colonel Martin grieved sorely, for they were worth many shekels while the South African war was on. After the floods subsided Colonel Martin went out to examine things, and down the creek, a mile or so, high up in the top of a tall sycamore tree, hung one of his Romeos, alive and kicking. Ropes were got and neighbors came. The tree was tied on four sides, then cut in two, at the base, and gradually lowered until the animal was released sound and all right. Now, the above is vouched for by many citizens, but what became of the other ass I am unwilling to publish over my own signature, as I have some respect even for the reputation of a maker of rhymes. I clip this from the Nashville Banner of April 23:
Columbia, April 23.—An unusual storycomes from Glendale of the endurance of a jack. Two of these animals were in pasture on the banks of Fountain Creek, at the time of the big flood three weeks since, and were swept away. The body of one of them was found, but nothing was heard of the other one till last Friday, when, it is said, some workmen found him buried in a sandbar with only his head out, still alive.
Spades were secured and the animal exhumed, when, so the story goes, he ate food offered him and lived till Saturday, when he died as the result of over-indulgence after the long fast.
Here is Conductor Pat Connolly’s experience as he related himself. Conductor Connolly is an Irishman and hates snakes now worse than ever.
“When my train reached the creek at Wales Station, faith I never seen sich a flood. The track was gone—washed away for twenty yards or more, and the water over everything else. I walked out on the track ahead of the engine to see her sweep by—me an’ Jim Tally, the fireman, when I felt the cross-ties I was on turn over and I went with ’em. The water had washed the track and embankment up that we stood on, so sudden we never knowed it, an’ me an’ Jim was jus’ washed along in the flood. It was aisy swimmin’ for we just scooted along like a mill-race, an’ by an’ by when I passed a big sycamore with its top just out, I hung on an’ clambered up. Jim followed an’ we set there on a limb, way up in the top, with our legs in the water. We was feelin’ pretty good an’ comfort’ble till our company came. I felt something wrop round my leg—faith, it was a snake. They simply hung to every limb of that tree. They was there by the hundreds, all kinds an’ conditions of ’em. I went up to the top notch an’ Jim after me. I never stopped to dispute the pint with ’em, as to who was entitled to the lower limbs. They seemed to have got there fust an’ I gave ’em the benefit of the doubt, anyway. They hissed and wiggled around an’ looked meaner than original sin. I never seen as many snakes in my life. Night came on, but the moon rose up an’ we could see everything plain. The water was rising a foot an hour, an’ Jim an’ me put up some silent prayer that it wouldn’t get over that treetop. Well, sah, about ten o’clock we seen something that made our hair rise. It was a dead nigger floatin’ round that tree dressed in a long, white robe. He floated under my limb and gazed up at me, an’ I’ll swear I nearly fell off my perch. Then here come another, an’ another—nigger babies, old niggers, mammies, young niggers—dozens of ’em; some in coffins and some out. None of ’em didn’t wanter go by that tree, but just floated around an’ around an’ grinned at me an’ Jim. We didn’t kno’ then, of course, what it was, but we learned afterwards the high water had washed up a nigger graveyard about three miles above. It was midnight before they got a boat from Pulaski and took us down. I had lost forty pounds, an’ Jim’s hair was as white as snow.”
The above sounds fishy, but it was the actual experience of Conductor Pat Connolly. But a stranger thing happened than the washing up of the negro graveyard, and one which is greatly interesting the Tennessee Historical Society. At a little station a few miles below Pulaski, in Giles County, there is a very rich field which old men know has been cultivated for seventy-five years. Nor was the water ever known to rise over it before. Before it was known to the ploughshare, it was a great forest, covered with trees of great age, many of them there when De Soto’s Spaniards marched through in the sixteenth century. Last month I went down into that county to hunt squirrels, and as we rested in the woods, turned into bouquets by blooming dogwood and red-buds, to eat our noon lunch by a big, cool spring, Mr. Bob Brannon, of Lynnville, who was in our party of hunters, told me this incident.
“When the waters subsided over this field,” said Mr. Brannon, “the current at one place had taken off two feet or more of soil, and there fully exposed as if laid bare by hand, was a burial ground of some ancient people. The tombs had been nicely built of slabs of rocks, enclosingthe body, of which a number were found, some of them as perfect skeletons as I ever saw. Infants lay side by side with father and mother and how long they had slept there only the Great Father knows, for not a descendant of this ancient race now lives on the earth, every vestige of its cultivation has passed away and forest trees, centuries old, have grown over their graves, which might have slumbered on till eternity but for the flood. I handled the skulls and bones, but I felt as if I was touching sacred things, relics of civilization older than any we know of.”
This started John W. Alexander, the Lynnville druggist and horseman, and the present owner of Brown Hal, Jr., He had been eating a currant pie and stopped long enough to say: “My flood yarn is the greatest thing that I ever heard of. An old man—a good, honest, but poor farmer—has been tilling a hillside field three miles above Lynnville for years. The week after that flood, while plowing in the hillside, suddenly, without any warning, his team and plow disappeared in the furrow ahead of him. The man stopped and found that he stood on the brink of a hole that had suddenly opened in the earth and taken his team in. Peering down he saw his poor horses, piled on one another fully twenty feet below. They were groaning and calling pitifully for him to help them, but in a half hour their groans ceased and they were dead. The explanation is simple: The heavy rains had cut out a sink hole in a few feet of the surface, which broke under the weight of the team. We raised, by public subscription, enough money to buy him another team.”
By this time, Geo. Campbell Brown, of Ewell Farm, had eaten the other pie. “Do you all know old man Simpson, of Richland Creek?” he asked innocently. We all knew him.
“Well, you know, he was drowned in that flood while trying to drive some colts out of the bottom lands before the water was too high. His wife told him not to go into that swamp, but you never heard of a man taking his wife’s advice when it comes to horses, so he was drowned, and went on to a better land. He hadn’t more than arrived before he was telling it to listening crowds what a terrible flood they had in Tennessee and how old Richland Creek spread all over the state of Giles. Finally he went on and told about Pat Connolly and the snake, the jackass tale, and the Indian graveyard and all that, and closed by telling that Richland Creek was twenty feet higher than the high-water mark of 1834, registered on the old elm at Possum Bend School House. When he said this he noticed an old, gray-headed man turn up his nose disdainfully and walk off without saying a word.
“‘Why, that old man seems offended,’ said Simpson—‘who is he?’
“‘Why, don’t you know him?’ said a listener—‘that’s Noah!’”
“I think it is time for the squirrels to begin to come out again,” I said, as I picked up my gun and started into the woods.
TROTWOOD.
December, 1863, the night before Christmas (the time above all others when our thoughts were of home), found the Seventh Ohio Cavalry on outpost duty closely observing the veteran army of General Longstreet, then in upper East Tennessee.
The Christmas dinner was by no means ready for either the Confederate or the Union troops in East Tennessee, as both armies were then living off the country, which had long before been denuded of almost every edible thing suitable for man or beast. The veteran cavalrymen of our regiment were sharing their exceedingly light rations with their horses, five nubbins of corn per day for each man and his horse being the scanty allowance from our limited supplies.
Under this circumstance, it was necessary to postpone our Christmas dinner until February following. By this time Longstreet had retired from East Tennessee to rejoin General Lee’s Army preparatory to the campaign in Virginia against General Grant.
In February we found ourselves relieved from duty in close proximity to the enemy, and in order to recuperate our men and horses took station in Tuckaleechee Cove, at the base of the Great Smoky Mountains, south of Knoxville, near the North Carolina line.
Here there was fairly good grazing for our horses and moderately good foraging opportunities for the men. It was here, and in the month of February, that we had our Christmas dinner. Somewhere and somehow (it was not for me to know or to ask) our mess had secured a turkey, maybe a wild one which had been killed in trying to bite some of our boys, and under the skillful hands of Private Sam Wood, of Company I, the most expert cook in the regiment, this turkey was roasted over a fire of live coals, which Sam, with the utmost care, had prepared and arranged. The turkey was suspended from a rigging of poles at the proper distance from the fire and by the dexterous hand of Sam was kept gently turning around and around, that the roasting process might properly proceed. Out of the sky had dropped a mess of sweet potatoes, along with some pickled cabbage, much like sauerkraut, which went to complete our Christmas dinner. Our mess, composed of the colonel, the surgeon and the adjutant, sat close by to watch proceedings, and to “shoo away” self-invited guests who had been attracted to our camp fire by the aroma of the roasting turkey, and incidentally to frequently wipe our watering mouths and ask Sam if he could not hurry matters along a little faster, as we had our appetites with us. It seemed to us hungry souls that never before did it take so long to roast a turkey.
As we were nearing the completion of the repast a little rain storm passed over, but soon the sun shone brightly, showing the tops of the mountains tipped with snow. We were all in a frame of mind to enjoy this beautiful but fleeting scene, when Sam, the cook, pointing to the snow-capped mountains, said, “Gentlemen, there is ice cream for dessert, help yourselves.”
As I look back now through the vista of more than forty years, never before or since did a Christmas dinner taste so good as that one of turkey, sweet potatoes and sauerkraut, all topped off with ice cream on the mountains!
THEODORE F. ALLEN.
It was plain from the old man’s demeanor that he was “up against” something unusual.
“What’s the matter now,” I asked; “did you lose out in the crap game, or has Taylor sent for you?”
Taylor is Judge of the Criminal Court, and, according to Uncle Jake, when any colored citizen is guilty of an offence against the peace and dignity of the State, Taylor very promptly sends for him.
Uncle Jake, however, is a leading member of Bethel church, and prides himself on his ability to keep out of scraps which are likely to involve him in trouble with Taylor.
Ordinarily the old man would have answered my banter good-humoredly; as it was he only shook his head and sighed. It was evident that he had had a very extraordinary experience. I continued, however, in my same tone: “Oh, you’d as well tell me; I haven’t ever refused to go on your bond, have I?”
“Has I ever axed yer ter go on my bon’? Naw, sah, an de nex’ time yer hear frum me I ain’t axin yer nuther, case I ain’t aimin’ ter git inter nothin’ to need no bon’.”
The old man was plainly in no joking humor. So I said, “Well, tell me about it anyway; you surely haven’t got into anything you’re ashamed of, have you?”
“Naw, sah, I ain’t,” he answered, very positively. “Naw, sah, I ain’t, case I’m plum dead shore ef I’der had my sayso erbout hit, hit never der happened. Yer see hit ’us dis er way: De yuther night atter I’d et my supper I saddled up my little ole mule, Jack, and started to de sto’. When I’d got up on de yuther side er de creek, all ’twonst I seed er light flare up ergin de telephone wires, en fore I had time ter think erbout enything tall, dar come ober de rise de awfullest lookin’ thing I eber seed in my life.”
“What did it look like?”
“Well, sah, de best I can tell yer, hit looked like er great, monstros inseck, wid eyes er flah as big as the head uv er sugar bar’l, an’ jest er comin’ er gittin’. I say, ‘Jack, I specks we’d better be goin’ back.’ Well, we started back, Jack er doin’ his levelin bes’, but shucks! t’wawnt narry biter use; that thing jes crope right up on us like we’d er bin stanin’ still. And all de time I could hear it sayin’ right fas’ like hit meant it, ‘Gittin’, gittin’, gittin’, gittin’. Purty quick Jack, he seed ’twant no use ter try ter git erway, en jest stopped an’ turned ’round facin’ the thing. I looked at hit de bes’ I could an’ I’s jes plum shore hit’s de debil’s own wagin. When hit gunter git up purty clost, all ’twonst Jack he ’menced buck-jumpin’ right todes the thing, an’ fore I knowed whut wus er happenin’ he throwed me er plum somerset and sot me down in de thing right side er de man whut wus drivin’. I looked er ’roun’ sorter kurful like, en bless Gracious! hit wan’t no man.”
“Wan’t no man!” I exclaimed in feigned surprise, “what was it?”
“Ay Lawd, don’t ax me, case I don’t know. He had des one big glass eye right in de middle er ’is for’ed, an’ dat thing whut ’es on des er fryin’ an’ er stewin’, en er goin’ right on down de road. I tell yer, I’s sheer fer sho’ nuff; en I say, ‘O please, Mars Debil, hab mussey on me!’ En he sorter ris up, he did, and say, plum savage like, ‘Here, you ole black rascal, you git outen my ’cheen, fore I knocks all de flah outen yer!’ En, sah, I didn’t take time ter say er nother word; I des fell outen de hine een er dat thing right flat er my back in de middle er de big road, en hit like ter busted me wide open. Time I got up an’ sorter scratch de grabel outen my years, I could hear dat thing er spit-spitten, en er git-gitten way on down dar erbout de creek, des clar gone. I gunter sorter look er roun’ fer Jack, en ’ud you bleeve it? dat ole mule wus down dar er grazin’ side de road, des es innercent as er lam’ in de spring er de year. I went on down dar, I did, en tuck hol’ ’im an’ I say, ‘You ole hippercrit, I’ll larn you how ter ’have de nex time we meet de debil an’ hees wagin.’ An’ I gib dat mule de awfulest beaten!”
STERLING C. BREWER.
It’s a cold day, indeed, when a drummer has not got a good yarn up his coat-sleeve, and the narrator of this swears to its truth in every particular.
We were sitting around a good fire the other evening when the subject of last winter’s cold spell came up and how much fun the boys over the line were having on the path; and, incidentally, how greatly the interest in snow races among gentlemen drivers was increasing each winter.
“But, say,” said the drummer, who was selling cigars and had just passed around some to sample, “talking about the fun the boys had up North on the snow last winter reminds me how a farmer and an old pacer, up in a fashionable little town in the State of York, where I happened to be last month, hit the snow enthusiasm of that class of fellows who thought they owned the best snow horse in the world with a blizzard that will cool them off till the spring time comes, gentle Annie. At least, they hadn’t got over it when I left two weeks ago,” he laughed. “We didn’t have any snow until after Christmas, and when the cold wave, with snow, did come, you bet they were all waiting for it. Fellows with fine sleighs bought in October and put in the carriage house began to think they would have to wait another year, while the trotters and pacers were eating their heads off, and hundreds of friendly wagers lay in pigeon holes, waiting for the snow. Well, when it came, it was a dandy, and the snow path soon saw dozens of races a day, with fine rigs and fun galore.
“I’ve got a driver friend who lives near the big town mentioned—runs a training stable in the suburbs. You’d know him in a minute if I’d call his name, for he has driven many a good one to victory, and he’s got a pacer you’d know, too, for he has a mark below 2:12. But this pacer is an onery-looking thing, if I ever saw one. He wouldn’t sell on his looksfor fifteen dollars, yet he won thirty-five hundred dollars last year clear of expenses. My friend bought him out of a log-wagon—a curby-legged thing, with log spavins and splints in swarms, but gee whiz, how he could pace! Jim—that’s my friend’s name—loves a little fun about as well as anybody. He didn’t go out on the snow path the first week until he found out just who could go and how fast, and then he just laid for the whole gang with that old pacer. The boys drove out to his stable time and again and bantered him, guyed him, made fun of him and all that, but he laid low and said nothing. One evening he sent for me and whispered:
“‘Want to make your winter oats tomorrow?’
“‘I don’t care,’ I laughed, ‘if it’s a dead sure thing. Haven’t got any money to burn up in an experiment.’
“Jim laughed and handed me a hundred in ten-dollar bills. ‘This shows my faith; play it for me on the farmer and the old pacer to-morrow, any way or odds you want to, and if you don’t make some yourself while you’re at it, why, it’s your own fault.’ And then he took me in the harness room and told me a little tale that made me laugh all over.
“Well, to-morrow meant there was going to be several races on the snow, and all the fashionable end of town was to be out. One or two fellows with pretty good horses had beat everything and were looking for more worlds to conquer. Just after dinner Jim put on snow goggles, a hayseed hat, the rustiest coat he could borrow, clapped that curby-legged pacer in an old sleigh that looked like it had stood up in a mouldy carriage house for fifty years, with harness to match, put a few bundles of oats, farmer like, in behind to save feed, of course, in town, and jogged on in with a sort of an ain’t-been-to-town-for-ten-years look written all over the whole turnout.
“He wasn’t looking for the first suckers he did up, though. He heard a jingling of bells behind him some two miles out, and came very near being run over by a happy lot of young fellows with their girls on a bob-sleigh, drawn by four spanking horses. The fun they had over Jim and his queer turnout was immense—for about five minutes. They dashed up beside him, asked him the price of oats, and all that and finally hollered out:
“‘Get out of the road, old man, or we’ll run over you!’
“‘But I be goin’ to town, too,’ Jim drawled out in the nasalest twang that ever came out of a down-easter’s nose. Then he shook up the old pacer just enough to stay tantalisingly in front in spite of everything they could do. The bob-sleigh crowd couldn’t go in six minutes at a trot to save their necks, so they put the teams out in full run, but that was just fun for the old pacer. They never came in twenty yards of his oats in the rear of the sleigh. After teasing the babies enough, Jim turned at the first good stretch, looked back, winked his off eye, and said: ‘Yes, chillun, I be goin’ to town, too, so good-bye to you babies, an’ heaven bless you,’ and he shot away and left them.
“You have heard of blackbirds chattering in a tree, and then all of them suddenly stop, haven’t you? The silence is painful. Well, that’s the way it was in that bob-sleigh.
“But Jim was after bigger game than that, though he couldn’t resist the temptation to have a little fun with every nobby turnout he met.
“‘Cawn’t you pass that old fellah, James,’ the male occupant of a swell rig would call out to his coachman, after Jim would wiggle along, half asleep, beside the fancy turnout.
“‘Oh, yes, your ’oner,’ James would say, and swell up in the true English style and pull at his ’ackneys and spread around blustering, and cast withering glances on the innocent looking hayseed rig. Then Jim would wake up, shake the old pacer, and leave them like Mark Twain’s coyote on the desert left the ambitious dog—a gray crack in the air and he was gone while the English coachman cussed those “low-down Hamerican ’osses” with the best mixture of Billingsgate and flunky at his command.
“But he got off the best one on two young fellows who thought they had a fast trotter. They came tearing downon Jim, intending to go by him like a flash. But just as they came up Jim shook up the old pacer, and he threw up his tail for all the world like he was frightened nearly to death, and with that wild look that made Jim afterwards declare he really believed the old rascal was onto the game himself, he would dart away, threatening to break and go all to pieces every minute. This would make the trotting fellows come faster, and Jim would make it worse by looking like he was ‘skeered’ nearly to death, and shouting out:
“‘Gentlemen, hold up, please; you’ll skeer the old hoss to death. He allers runs away at a pace when he’s skeered. Hold up. Hold up, for heaven’s sake!’
“Jim would let them chase him that way for a mile, till their horse was blown and would go to a break before they’d catch on, and try to sneak away down some side street. Then Jim would holler out:
“‘Gentlemen, don’t never do that no more—don’t never do it ergin, on your life! This old hoss might ’er run erway an’ ruined me! He always would run away in a pace when he got skeered. Learned it when he was a colt—got skeered at a trottin’ hoss haulin’ a load of manure through the medder lot, where he was grazin’, an’ he can’t stan’ it to this day!’ Then he would chuckle out loud and throw this parting shot at them: ‘But, say, young fellers, don’t you wish sumpin’ would skeer that thar trotter of yours, good, once?’
“But the meanest thing Jim and that old pacer did was to break up a love match. It was a young fellow and his girl, and Jim says when he came up behind them their horse was in a slow walk, like they wanted that ride to last forever—and they were so interested in looking in each other’s eyes, and holding hands under the robe, and they never knew that it was daytime and that it was the sun, and not a low-turned gas jet, that was burning overhead. Jim knew the young fellow, and the horse he was driving, too. The horse was quite a fancy looking trotter, just pretty enough to catch anybody’s eye that wanted a Sunday-go-to-meetin’ kind of a horse. He had once taken a tincup record of 2:26¼ by some hook and crook, and on the road for a quarter of a mile, he could trot a buzz-saw clip, as long as he thought he was beating all creation, and didn’t get another crotch in his head—for he had clock works, with a chimes attachment there, and no mistake. There was plenty of room for Jim to go around and let those young people alone, but he saw too good a chance for fun, and that’s what he was out for. He wiggled up right behind the hand-holding pair, and, pulling out a red silk handkerchief, he blew his nose with a terrible blast. He did it to attract their attention and let them know that the rest of the world ‘do move, too,’ but it was more effectual than he had hoped. That chimes-headed horse must have thought it was Gabriel’s trumpet, for he jumped ten feet when Jim gave that blast, shook the lovers like an earthquake and banged the girl’s best hat up against the back of the sleigh. The young fellow pulled his horse down and looked back daggers at Jim, then touched him up and lit out to leave him. This was just what Jim wanted, and he sailed after them in great shape. It was an awful pretty race for about two hundred yards, and then Jim let the old pacer glide up nose and nose with the trotter, who was walling his eye around and already showing signs of quitting with a little more collaring. When Jim did that he heard the girl say excitedly, ‘Oh, Harry, is that horrid old horse going to beat Sir Charles Grandeville?’
“‘I’m just feeling him, now,’ Harry replied. ‘Wait a minute, darling, and I will make him sick. There’s nothing on this road can beat Sir Charles!’
“Jim chuckled and let out a link or two, and the old pacer forged ahead.
“‘Oh, Harry, but he is beating us—hurry up, dear, let him show that 2:20 clip, or lock, or whatever you told me about Just now. O-o-o-o Harry!!’
“This last remark was caused by Sir Charles going into as many different breaks as there are pieces in a jointed snake, while Harry laid the whip on him with something that sounded, under his breath, like ‘Whoa! Dash blank yourjumping-jack, white-livered hide! I’ll teach you how to quit every time an ox cart tries to pass you!’
“And as Jim sailed away he heard the girl haughtily and freezingly saying:
“‘Mr. Harry Smith, I’ll thank you, sir, to put me out at the first house you pass! I’m glad I found you out in time. Any man who will beat and swear at his horse as you have done will beat and swear at his wife, and I’ll never marry you, sir, never!’
“As I said above, that was the meanest thing Jim did that day.
“Well, we harvested our winter oats two hours afterwards, when Jim entered his pacer in the free-for-all down the boulevard. Some few had caught on, but I found enough that hadn’t to cover Jim’s hundred I held and another for myself, and when the old farmer and the pacer beat the gang further than any of them cared to tell about afterwards, as I said before, it brought on a blizzard that cooled all the racing enthusiasm in that town up to the time I left, and many of them hadn’t discovered then that they had been racing green horses and two-thirty roadsters against one of the best known drivers in the East, up behind a pacer who started ten times last year, won eight first moneys and two seconds, and took a mark close down to 2:10.”
“I see from the paper,” he said, as he pulled out a local paper, “that they are racing there on the snow path this week, but I’ll bet my winter overcoat they have taken the precaution to bar all hayseeds and curby-legged pacers in the country.”