FullReads

“Aw, what ‘re you giffin us!” jeered a dusky young mulatto, clad in a ragged striped sweater, recently discharged as a stable-boy. “What wus the time then? Why ‘n’t you read the book?”

This was a dig at Robin, for he was “no great hand at reading,” and the crowd knew it and laughed. The old man turned on the speaker.

“Races now ain’t no mo’ than quarter-dashes. Let ’em try ’em in fo’-mile heats if they want to see what ‘s in a hoss. Dat ‘s the test o’ wind an’ bottom. Our hosses used to run fo’-mile heats from New York to New Orleans, an’ come in with their heads up high enough to look over dis gate.”

“Why ‘n’t you read the books?” persisted the other, facing him.

“I can’t read not much better than you ken ride,” retorted Robin. This was a crusher in that company, where riding stood high above any literary attainment; for the other had been a failure as a jockey.

He tried to rally.

“I ‘ll bet you a hundred dollars I can—-“

Robin gazed at him witheringly.

“You ain’ got a hunderd dollars; you ain’t got a hunderd cents! You would n’t ‘a’ been wuth a hunderd dollars in slave-times, an’ I know you ain’ wuth it now.”

The old man, with a final observation that he did n’t want to have to go to court as a witness when folks were taken up for stealing their master’s money, took out and consulted his big gold stop-watch. That was his conclusive and clinching argument. It was surprising what an influence that watch exercised. Everyone who knew Robin knew that watch had been given him before the war as a testimonial by the stewards of the Jockey Club. It had the indisputable record engraved on the case, and had been held over the greatest race-horses of the country. Robin could go up to the front door of the club and ask for the president–he possessed this exclusive privilege–and be received with an open hand and a smile, and dismissed with a jest. Had not Major McDowell met him, and introduced him to a duke as one of his oldest friends on the turf, and one who could give the duke more interesting information about the horses of the past than any other man he knew? Did not Colonel Clark always shake hands with him when they met, and compare watches? So now, when, as the throng of horse-boys and stable-attendants stood about him, Robin drew his watch and consulted it, it concluded his argument and left him the victor. The old trainer himself, however, was somewhat disturbed, and once more he gazed up the road anxiously. The ground on which he had predicted the greatness of the next day was not that the noted horses already present were entered for the race, but much more because he had received a letter from one whom he sometimes spoke of as “one of his childern,” and sometimes as “one of his young masters”–a grandson of his old master, Colonel Theodoric Johnston of Bullfield–telling him that he was going to bring one of his horses, a colt his grandfather had given him, and try for the big steeplechase stake.

Old Robin had arranged the whole matter for him, and was now awaiting him, for he had written that he could not get there until late in the day before the race, as he had to travel by road from the old place.

Though old Robin let no one know of his uneasiness, he was watching now with great anxiety, for the sun was sinking down the western sky toward the green bank of trees beyond the turn into the home stretch, and in an hour more the entries would be closed.

While he waited he beguiled the time with stories about his old master’s stable, and about the equine “stars” that shone in the pedigree of this horse.