by Mike Ashley
“Well, everything went along all right for about six months. Me and Vertigo was as happy as kittens under a stove and Rover was thriving to beat three of a kind. Not a cloud was upon our horizons. We dwelt in the soft sunshine of sweet content and wouldn’t have swapped places with the Czar of all the Rooshias and some of the Rooshians.
“That’s always the way, I’ve noticed. It’s always serene just before something’s doo to be handed to you in the place where it will hurt the worst. Whenever things is going along on castors, and you’re liking yourself particularly well, and feeling particularly good, and beginning to believe that the Golden Rule might possibly not be a fake after all, you’re doo for a bump.
“We got ours. It come in the night. It usually does.
“I had just rolled over on the other side and was getting nicely started away on the second lap of the Morpheus handicap, when I heard a noise that sounded like the end of the world.
“I come out of it, and fetched Vertigo a kick.
“‘You’re on your back,’ I hollered in his ear.
“But then the noise come again; and I knowed I was wrong. And additional proof come in another minute; for the house was yanked right off from over me and I was gazing up into the starry heavens and wondering what had happened.
“And then it burst forth in all its fury. The air was filled with wild, discordant yells and yowls. The redwood trees was falling like grain before the patent reaper; and our D. T. menagerie could be heard in a little concerted specialty that sounded, however, feeble and unimpressive in comparison to the main noise.
“It come to me in a flash. It was Rover! We had injected too much elephant and rhinoceros! Our impetuousness had made us incautious. Alas! How true it is that careless work carries its own penalties.
“I lay there in the Californy midnight and my union suit thinking over these things when, all of a sudden, the diplodocus, who had just finished filling the middle distance with the contents of our coop of jackassowaries, got his lamps on me.
“Giving a wild shake of his head, and emitting a horrid snort, he threw the last jackassowary straight up at Cassyopeer’s chair and charged at me.
“It took me less’n a fraction of a split second to leave the woven wire. Vertigo was already standing in the middle of what had once been the room, combing his whiskers with a shoe and staring helplessly about.
“‘The horsetriches!’ I yelled at him, as I flew past.
“A word to the wise, you know; and he was wise, all right, and getting wiser every minute.
“The barnyard was a sight. Rover had done a clean job. There was jest one horsetrich left out of all the strange creations of Vertigo’s great genius. Even the diplodocus old lady was a contribution to the festival.
“I grabbed the horsetrich by one wing, and Vertigo he grabbed the other. We swung ourselves upon his back, me in front, and stuck our heels into its sides. It responded nobly to our encouragements and slid off down the valley at a rate of speed that would have had the Empire State Express looking like a traction engine.
“But did we lose the diplodocus? Never on your immortal life! He hadn’t missed our steed’s tail feathers by a foot when we started forth from the barnyard. As we passed what had once been our happy home, he was spreading himself for further orders, emitting the most blood-chilling yelps at every leap; and every third jump his kangaroo blood would assert itself and he’d slam his tail down on the ground, give himself a push, and hurtle through the air for a good ninety foot.
“The memory of that ride is with me yet, particularly after a bedtime snack of pigs’ feet and ice cream, or mince pie and Welch rarebit. Often, in the still watches, I awaken the house with weird yells and the affrighted boarders come running to my room to find me astride of the radiator, urging it on to frantic endeavor, while the cold sweat runs down my pallid, somnambulistic visage in streams, by heck!
“As we flashed past the end of the valley, I could hear those frightful yowls coming nearer and nearer. I dared not look around. We were covering the ground at a rate of at least three miles per minute, and it required all my skill to keep my place.
“I clutched our faithful horsetrich around the neck. On we raced, and on, and on . . . I heard a shrill yell in my ear. Vertigo’s hand suddenly slipped from the waistband of my union suit. Our steed (ours no longer, alas, but now mine alone) pressed on more swiftly; and I knew that Vertigo was gone. Poor Vertigo! . . . Poor, poor Vertigo! He come down three days later in San Antonio, Texas, and broke up one of the most successful revival services they’d ever had there . . .
“Another fifty or seventy-five miles, and I felt, rather than heard, the diplodocus again at our heels. I stole a hurried glance over my shoulder. Yes, there he was, his bared, glistening teeth not a yard away, his little eyes flashing venomously. He made a swipe for me – and missed. Another – and suddenly my poor horsetrich was yanked out from under me and I was going on alone, through the air.
“I lit in a small but well-ventilated hole in the ground that turned out to be the other end of the Mammoth Cave. It was too small for the diplodocus to enter. That is the only thing that saved my life.
“For three weeks I subsisted on fish. They were blind, and a cinch to catch; though much harder to eat. And at length I was found by a guide who was taking a party of school-teachers from Beebe, Indiana, through the simplest ramifications of the wonderful burrow. I was delirious, they told me, and sadly emaciated; and when they discovers me, I’m setting on a stalagmite, with a blind tadpole in each hand, singing, in feeble accents. However, I know nothing of all that myself; for I was out of my head for weeks.”
He ceased.
“But did you never go back?” I queried.
He eyed me with squelching scorn.
“Did I ever go back!” he repeated. “Did I ever go back!” And then, “Say, what do yer take me for, anyhow, hay?”
I didn’t answer his question. It would not have been polite. And, besides, he was much bigger than I.
NOTHING IN THE RULES
Nelson Bond
Nelson Bond’s writing career spanned some seventy years from his first sales in 1935 to his death in 2006. He soon made a name for himself as a writer of weird and wacky fantasies, his first success coming with “Mr Mergenthwirker’s Lobblies” in Scribner’s in 1937, which formed the title story for his first collection in 1946. He sold over two hundred stories during the next twenty years but when his main market, Blue Book, shifted away from light fiction, Bond turned to his other interests as a bookdealer and expert on philately. Several of his stories were collected as The Thirty-First of February (1949), No Time Like the Future (1954) and Nightmares and Daydreams (1968). Among his stories for Blue Book were a series of tall tales narrated by “Square-deal Sam”. For some reason the following story, the second in the series, has never been reprinted, so here’s a chance to savour another rare treat.
“UNTIL next spring,” said “Squaredeal Sam” McGhee, “or August at the latest. It ain’t like I was astin’ you to give me the money. It’s just a loan, on an investment as sound as the Rock o’ Prudential, so to speak—” He eyed me with hope.
I frowned at him severely. “And just why,” I asked, “do you need three hundred dollars?”
“Well,” said Squaredeal Sam, “it’s a long story—” His gaze wandered to the box of cigars on my desk. I nodded; he took one, and lighting it, he leaned back, exuding wreaths of Havana fragrance.
Like maybe I sometime told you (Sam began), I’m the original hard-luck kid. Everything happens to me – most of it bad. For instance, just atter I signed a contract with Marty Kildare, the smoothest light heavy which ever flang leather in a squared circle, along come Pearl Harbor, an’ Marty switched over to another manager named Sam for the duration.
Course, bein’ an honest kid like he is, Marty sends me my right an’ legal commission every month, but ten per cent of a private’s pay ain’t exactly what’ll support me in the style to which I’d like to
become accustomed.
So, since it looks like the boxfightin’ game is all washed up till atter Hitler an’ Hirohito is likewise, I began lookin’ around for a job in some more essential war industry. The way I figger it, one o’ the most essential war industries in these times is the racetrack racket. Guys can’t squander their money on frivialities like silk shirts an’ the etcetera if the bookies got it, an’ that prevents inflation. So I ast a few questions an’ pulled strings, an’ come spring, I was in Florida with the gee-gee circuit.
Well, right off the bat I got a break. I hooked up with this guy name of Tom Akers – the owner of a small stable – which he was reclassified 1-A when his draft-board happened to find out he could see lightnin’ an’ hear thunder. So he’d been called up, an’ he ast would I run his string till he got back. Which I would.
Atter we signed a contract, I seen Akers down to the depot, an’ since the train was a couple hours late, I an’ him sat around bendin’ elbows to wild the time away. First Akers toasted me; then I toasted him, an’ vicey-versy – an’ to make a long story short, by the time the train arrove, we was both pretty well done on both sides. So I poured him into his car an’ went back to the stables to have a look at the nags I was now manager of which.
Confidentially, they wasn’t the classiest outfit of hay-burners I ever met up with. They looked less like racin’ horses than fugitives from a black market.
Readin’ from left to right in the stalls, there was Robin Hood, a geldin’ with bow legs, a narrow forehead, an’ a quiver; a colt named Runningboard, who done the first like he was the second; one named Pitiful, who was; one named Speedy, who wasn’t; an’ one named Willwin, who wouldn’t.
The only likely-lookin’ prospect of the bunch was a filly named Princess Sally, a two-year old maiden which Akers hadn’t never raced yet on account of she was a bag of nerves. Accordin’ to her test runs, she was greased lightnin’, but she was scared of startin’-gates. Every time they put her in, she started kickin’ like a front-row chorine.
To make matters worse, along with this accumulation of unground round-steaks, I’d inherited an alleged assistant by name of Dumbo, a tow-headed little squirt with oversized ears an’ adenoids. He had five thumbs on each hand an’ an impediment in his brain. He served as a combination trainer, swipe an’ jockey for the Akers colours. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe the fact that Akers owed him seventeen months’ back pay had somethin’ to do with it.
He was in Princess Sally’s stall, rubbin’ her down, when I wandered by. I stared at him for a minute.
“Hi!” I said.
He looked up, noddin’ an’ flappin’ his ears gently.
“’Lo!” he said.
“Jack an’ game!” chimed in a voice from the adjoinin’ stall. “Down two, doubled an’ vulnerable. Wheeee!”
I started. “Who’s that?” I ast.
Dumbo shrugged. “Oh, just him,” he said. “Pretend like you don’t hear him, an’ he’ll shut up. What can I do for you, Mister?”
“The name’s McGhee,” I told him, “an’ I’ll tell you atter I’ve had a look around. I’m your new manager. Your old boss has gone to war.”
He gawked at me. “What for?”
“Because he had to. The Government called him up.”
“They did?” said Dumbo. “Gee! That must have cost a lot of money, huh?”
“What cost a lot of money?”
“A telephone call all the way from Washington.”
I glared at him suspiciously. “Now, looky here!” I said. “If you’re tryin’ to be funny—”
Dumbo wriggled, sort of embarrassed-like. He said: “D-did I say somethin’ wrong, Mr McGhee? I’m sorry. Honest, I am. Seems like I’m always sayin’ the wrong thing. I guess I better rub down the Princess.” An’ he started spongin’ the filly again. But not for long. That voice from the next-door stall called him.
“Never mind her – come in here an’ take care of me! I want my back curried!” The voice lifted in sudden raucous song: “Curry me back to old Virginny—”
“Hey!” I demanded. “What is this?”
Dumbo said: “I told you, Mister, he’s a pest. Just let on like you don’t hear him.”
“But who’s in there?” I said. “A talkin’ horse? It ain’t that Egbert Haw I read about in a magazine?”
The ears waggled negatively. “I don’t know nothin’ about no talkin’ horses, Mr McGhee. But he ain’t one.”
“It’s a man, then? But what in blazes is a man doin’ in a horse’s stall?”
“We-e-ell,” said Dumbo dubiously, “he ain’t exactly a man, neither. He’s sort of – well, sort of peculiar.”
I strode to the other stall. The door was shut. I opened the top half – an’ jumped a yard. Leanin’ with folded arms over the lower gate was a glinty-eyed little rascal with a fringe of chin-whiskers an’ an impy grin. Or not exactly a grin – a leer, more like. An’ no wonder. ’Cause as far as I could see, he didn’t have a stitch of clothes on!
I yelled: “For cryin’ out loud – what makes here?”
“I do,” said the guy, “when I can. Hyah, chum! So you’re the new boss?”
“Who are you?” I hollered. “An’ what are you doin’ in there? An’ where did you come from? An’ for Pete’s sake, go get some clothes on!”
“Nestros,” smirked the stranger, “waitin’ for something to eat, Thessaly, an’ don’t ask questions so fast. Did you say clothes? Nonsense! Garments are for stupid humans!”
Sayin’ which, he swished a long bushy tail into my eyes, turned an’ cantered around the stall proudly. I stared at him – an’ moaned. He had the body of a man down as far as his floatin’ ribs. From there on – he was a horse! . . .
An inch of ash tumbled from Sam’s cigar to the rug. He said, “Damn!” and scrubbed it into the nap. I squinted at him dazedly. “Sam!” I said. “Are you crazy? Are you telling me you met a Centaur?”
“Centaur!” said Sam. “That’s the word. I tried to remember it for weeks, but all I could think of was ‘senator.’ . . . An’ this guy was a front of a horse, too. Yep, a Centaur. That’s what Nestros was.”
“B-but,” I protested, “centaurs were fabulous monsters who lived in ancient Greece! They don’t really exist!”
“This one did,” said Sam.
“Nonsense! They were wild woodland creatures, sly and treacherous, given to drink and mad orgies—”
“You’re tellin’ me!” said Sam.
Course I don’t blame you (he continued) for not believin’ me. It’s a cockeyed set-up, I know. But there it is. An’ I can prove it, too – I hope.
Naturally, the first thing I done was to holler for Dumbo. He came shufflin’ in from the Princess’ stall, an’ ast me questions with his eyebrows.
I said: “Dumbo, am I in my right mind, or have I got delirious tantrums? Do you see what I see in there – a horse with a man’s head?”
“Where?” ast Dumbo, an’ looked at Nestros. Then he shrugged. “Oh, you mean him? Gosh, you had me excited for a minute. A horse with a man’s head—”
“Well, ain’t that what he is?”
“Shucks, no!” said Dumbo. “He aint nothin’ only a man with a horse’s body. I better go now. I got to rub down the Princess.”
Nestros leered at him. “Give her my love, bud,” he said.
Dumbo scowled. “Never mind that! You just let the Princess alone, that’s all. The next time I catch you tryin’ to kick down the p’tition between your stalls—”
“Aw, don’t be such an old grouch!” said the Centaur sulkily. “It’s no skin off your nose if me an’ Her Nibs want to fling a little whoa.”
“It’ll be skin off your hide,” said Dumbo grimly.
Nestros snorted. “Great Zeus! You think she wants to be a filly all her life?”
“As far as you’re concerned,” said Dumbo, “yes! Or you’ll be a filly-mignon.”
I stared at him. “For gosh sakes, Dumbo,” I busted in, “ho
w can you be so calm? Don’t you realize we’re lookin’ at a real, live centaur?”
“I don’t care,” he sniffed, “if he’s an All-America halfback. I’ll comb his mane with a cobble if he don’t leave the Princess be.”
An’ he stomped away. Nestros said glumly: “There’s a killjoy for you! For two drachmas, I’d kick his ears off!”
“What’s the matter?” I ast. “What do you want with the Princess, anyway?”
He grinned. “What do you think?”
“If it’s companionship,” I said, “there’s six other horses in this paddock—”
“It’s a moot question,” said Nestros. “Sex of one, an’ half a dozen of the other. Oh, well – this ain’t gettin’ us nowhere. The question is, when do I start to see a little action around here?”
“Action?” I repeated.
“Don’t be a dope!” snorted Nestros. “This here’s a racetrack, ain’t it?”
“W-why, sure. Of course.”
“Well, when do I make with the hoofs? I’m gettin’ tired of standin’ around here like a stuffed owl.”
“You mean you want to race?”
“Why not?” he demanded. “For three weeks Akers has been stallin’ me; if you do the same, I’m signin’ myself up a new boss. So what do you say, chum? Do I run or don’t I?”
“What I want to know,” I countered, “is can you run or can’t you?”
“Can I run!” he snorted. “Can I run? Listen, pal, I’m the fastest thing on four legs you ever saw. Why, I gave the Minotaur a ten-mile start an’ beat him from East Phrygia to Peiraeus by the Marathon route. I’m Greece lightning. I run faster than a lisle stocking. Ever hear of the ‘Trudgin’ Horse’? I’m the one who made him look slow. I can outrace, outdrink an’ outsmart any equine you ever heard of!”
“An’ outbrag,” I added, “any I ever heard, period. But okay. If the Commission’ll stand for it, I’ll play ball. Let’s go see the racetrack papas.”