“Jim McCleevy was attached to the string of a good trainer, who saw at once that the horse had been underestimated, that he had been badly handled, and that it would be worth the effort to try to make something of him. He spent two or three weeks monkeying with the skate and fixing him up, and then he sent him out one morning with a lummux of a stable boy on his back and put the watch on him. Jim McCleevy breezed a mile in 1:44, fighting for his head at the finish, and two days later he was slapped into a selling race at a mile and a sixteenth, with light weight, a bum apprentice lad up, and all kinds of a price, for there were some good ones in the race, which was at the Harlem track, in Chicago. The girl’s uncle scattered a few dollars around the ring on the mutt, all three ways, and McCleevy came home on the bit. That was the beginning of McCleevy. He was put into a couple of races a week at a mile and more, at the Harlem and Hawthorne tracks, during the entire racing season at Chicago, and he won race after race, no matter how they piled the weight penalties up on him. When he didn’t win he broke into the money, and as there was always a good price on him, seeing that almost every time he raced he was pitted against horses that seemed to outclass him, the uncle of the girl who owned him got some of the money every time. He parleyed the money that he won for his niece on Jim McCleevy’s first race, and he got it back and a bunch besides every time. The fame of Jim McCleevy spread around Chicago, and a Chicago newspaper man went down to Iowa to interview the young woman who owned the horse. She told him, artlessly, that while she abhorred gambling—well, she certainly did enjoy the prospect of being enabled to complete her education. Her uncle deposited between $8,000 and $9,000 in her name, the amount he had won for her in purses and bets on Jim McCleevy, at the wind-up of the racing season, and the horse, which developed quite a bit of real class, still belongs to her.
“Odd, isn’t it, that an underestimated race-horse should hop out and not only give a nice girl that had never so much as has stroked his sleek neck a chance to fulfill her ambition for an education, but win her a start in life that’ll probably make her one of the eligible girls in the State of Iowa? But I recall a queerer one than that—how a cast-off crab suddenly developed into a race-horse and paid off a mortgage on a church.
“That happened out at Latonia four years ago. I was racing a few of my own out there at the time, and saw the affair from the beginning to the wind-up. I’ll have to duck giving the names, for the good man who profited by the sudden development of the nag he accidentally became possessed of is still the pastor of a flock that congregates in a pretty little debt-free, brick and stone Roman Catholic church on the outskirts of Cincinnati.
“There was an old trainer hanging around the Latonia barns at that time who was in hard luck from a whole lot of different points of view. I’d known him on the metropolitan tracks years before, and he had been, in his day of prosperity, a good fellow and a horse-wise man, if ever one chewed a straw. When his health went back on him, however, six or seven years ago, and he couldn’t personally attend to his work—he ran an open training stable—it was all off with him. The strings that he had been handling were taken away from him by the owners and put in other hands, and he went up against the day of adversity with a rattle. He had a few horses of his own, but these proved worthless, and most of them were finally taken away from him to pay feed bills. On top of it all he developed locomotor ataxia, and when I got out to the Latonia barns, four years ago, he could barely move around. How he contrived to exist I don’t know, but I guess the boys chipped in a dollar or so every once in a while for the old man. The only horse that he had left when I reached Latonia with my little bunch was an old six-year-old gelding that was a joke. Well, call him Caspar. The mention of Caspar’s name made even the stable-boy grin. Caspar looked a good deal like Diggs, that camel horse that’s pulling down the purses now in New Orleans. He was all out of shape, with a pair of knees on him each as big as your hat; of all the bunged up, soured, chalky old skates that ever I looked over, this Caspar gelding was the limit. Yet he had been a pretty good two-year-old and a more than fair three-year-old. He had won four races as a two-year-old, and six as a three-year-old, but he was campaigned and drummed a heap, and when the old man shot him as a four-year-old Caspar could just walk, and that’s all. He was a cripple from every point of the compass. He was chronically sour and sore, and he was as vicious and ugly as the devil, into the bargain. He never got anywhere near the money as a four and five-year-old, and he hadn’t been raced at all as a six-year-old, when I first clapped an eye on his rheumatic old shape. But the old man was a sentimentalist in his way, and he couldn’t stand the idea of selling a horse that he had taken care of as a baby to some truck driver to be overworked and abused. So he hung on to Caspar, fed him, nursed him and took care of him generally, just as if the old plug was making good for all of this attention. Caspar was a standing gag around the Latonia stables.
“‘Wait’ll I joggle Caspar under the string by four lengths in the Kentucky Derby!’ a monkey-faced apprentice jockey would say solemnly to the other kids, and then they’d all holler.
“Well, about a month after I struck Latonia—it was then getting on toward midsummer—the old trainer in hard luck who owned Caspar took to his bunk, not to get up any more. He only lasted two weeks. Two days before he died he sent for an old Irish priest that he had known for a number of years. The priest was the pastor of that little brick and stone church on the outskirts of Cincinnati that I spoke about. The old trainer had been a good Catholic all his life, and he received the last offices of his faith. Then he said to the priest:
“‘Father, there’s a crabbed, battered-up old dog of mine over at Latonia that I’ll make you a present of. He’s worth about one dollar and eighty cents, but he was a good racing tool when he was young, and I’ve never felt like turning him loose to hustle for himself. He’s crippled up some, but you might get him broken to harness, so that he could haul your buggy around. I wish you’d take him and see that he doesn’t get the worst of it. Caspar was pretty good to me a few times when I was up against it.’
“When the old man turns up his toes and dies the kindly priest came over to the barns to see if he could get any assistance in the way of putting our old hard-luck pal under the ground. He got it, of course, and enough for a tombstone besides. While he was at the stables the father thought he might as well have a look at the piece of horse-flesh that had been presented to him by the old man. So one of the trainers escorted him to Caspar’s stall.
“‘Could he ever be made any good for driving purposes?’ the priest asked the trainer, who smiled.
“‘He’d kick a piano-mover’s truck into matchwood the first clatter out of the box,’ replied the trainer.
“‘I’ll just let him stay over here for awhile until I decide what to do with him,’ said the priest, and he went back to Cincinnati and buried the old trainer.
“Well, a couple of mornings later a fresh stable-boy who had just got a job in one of the barns put a bridle and saddle on old Caspar and took him for a breeze around the course just for fun. It was just at dawn, and a lot of us trainers were watching the early morning work of the horses. It struck me when Caspar passed by the rail where I was standing that the old devil looked mighty skittish, and was doing a lot of prancing for a hammered-to-death skate, with bum knees and all sorts of other complaints. About a minute later there was a yawp all along the rail.
“‘Get next to that old Caspar!’ a lot of the trainers shouted. I looked over toward the back-stretch, and there was the old skate with his head down, eating up the ground like a race-horse. We all jerked out our watches just as he flashed by the five-furlong pole and put them on him. It was amazing to see the old mutt make the turn and come a-tearing down the stretch. If he didn’t do that five furlongs in 1:02, darn me. All of our watches told the same story, and there was no mistake about it. When he passed the judges’ stand Caspar wanted to go right ahead and work himself out, but we all hollered at the boy to pull him up. The kid s
topped the old gelding with difficulty. Caspar wanted to run, and he had a mouth on him as hard as nails.
“We got together and talked about Caspar. We were dumbfounded, and didn’t know what to make of that exhibition of speed. Then a trainer who was, and still is, noted throughout the country as the most skilful horse-patcher that ever got into the game spoke up.
“‘The old devil’s just come back to himself, that’s all there is about it,’ he said. ‘There are a lot of sprints in his old carcass yet. All he needs is some patching. If he’ll run like this work he’s just done in five-furlong dashes, there’s a chance for a slaughter with him. I’m going to ask the father to let me handle him and see if he can’t be oiled up.’
“The trainer went over to Cincinnati that same morning and saw the priest.
“‘Father,’ said he, ‘I don’t want to get a man of your cloth mixed up with the racing game, but I think I can do something with that old racing tool, the old man bequeathed to you.’ Then he told the priest about Caspar’s phenomenal work that morning.
“‘Bless me!’ said the good man, ‘I fear it would not be seemly for me to’____
“‘Oh, that end of it’ll be all right, father,’ said the trainer. ‘If I find I can do anything with the old rogue I’ll shoot him into a dash under my own colors, and you won’t be entangled with the thing a little bit. It won’t cost you anything to let me try him out, and if I find that he’ll do I’ll get my end of it by putting down—er—uh—well. I won’t lose anything anyhow.’
“Well, when he left the kindly man of the cloth he had the permission to see what could be done with old Caspar. ‘Let me know how you progress,’ the priest had asked him.
“The trainer seeing a chance to make a killing—and we all vowed ourselves to secrecy about the matter—went to old Caspar. He was a nag-patcher, as I say, from the foot-hills, and the way he applied himself to the reduction of Caspar’s inflammations, and to the tonicking up in general of the old beast, was a caution to grasshoppers. And it came about that early morning’s work of Caspar’s that had surprised us so was no flash in the pan at all. The old ’possum had somehow or another recovered his speed all of a sudden, in addition to a willingness to run, in spite of his infirmities. At the end of two weeks Caspar, as fine a bit of patched-work as you ever saw, was ready. The trainer went over to Cincinnati and told the father so.
“‘Well,’ inquired the priest.
“‘He’s going to run in a five-furlong dash day after to-morrow,’ said the trainer. ‘And he’ll walk. It is a copper-riveted cinch—er-uh—I mean, that is, Caspar will win, you see. It’ll be write your own ticket, too. Any price. In fact when the gang sees his name among the entries, they’ll think it’s a joke.’
“‘My son,’ said the father, with a certain twinkle lurking in the corner of his eye, ‘gaming is a demoralizing passion. Nevertheless, if this animal, that came into my possession by such odd chance, possesses sufficient speed to—er’____
“‘Oh, that’s all right, father,’ said the trainer and he bolted for it.
“As the trainer had said to the priest, there was an all-around chuckle the following afternoon when the entry sheets were distributed and it was seen that Caspar was in the five-furlong dash the next day. For a wonder, not a word had got out about the patching job that had been in progress on the old horse, nor about his remarkable work. The stable lads and railbirds who were on kept their heads closed and saved their nickels for the day of Caspar’s victory.
“Well, to curl this up some, the field that we confidently expected Caspar to beat was made up of nine rattling good sprinters—one of them was so good that his price opened and closed at 4 to 5 on. Caspar was the rank outsider at 150 to 1. We all got on at that figure, the bookies giving us the laugh at first, and only a few of them wise enough to rub when they suspected that there was something doing. The trainers’, railbirds’, and stable-boys’ money that went in forced the old skate’s price down to 75 to 1 at post time. A number of us took small chunks of 100 to 1 in the poolrooms in Cincinnati—wired our commissions over. The old horse favored his left forefoot a trifle in walking around to the starting pole, and that worried us a bit, for he’d been all right on his pin the night before. We didn’t do any hedging, however, but stood by to see what was going to happen. All of us, of course, had enough down on him to finish third to pull us out in case he couldn’t get the big end of the money.
“It was a romp for Caspar. If I’d tell you the real name of the horse you’d remember the race well. Caspar, with a perfect incompetent of a jockey on his back, jumped off in the lead, and was never headed, winning, pulled double and to a walk, by three lengths. The bookies made all colors of a howl over it, but their howls didn’t go. They had to cough. It was the biggest killing that bunch of Latonia trainers, including myself, had ever made, and there wasn’t a stable boy on the grounds that didn’t have money to cremate for months afterward.
“After the race the trainer who had patched old Caspar up for the hogslaughtering—he was close on to $15,000 to the good, and he didn’t have me skinned any, at that—hustled over to the priest’s house.
“‘Father, the plug made monkeys of ’em,’ is the way he announced Caspar’s victory.
“‘Truly?’ said the priest.
“‘Monkeys,’ repeated the trainer, and then he pulled out a huge new wallet that he had bought on the way to the priest’s residence. He handed the wallet to the father. ‘When I was here, a couple o’ days ago,’ said the trainer, looking interestedly out of the window, ‘I had along with me a fifty-dollar bill that, feeling pretty prosperous that morning, I intended to hand to you to be distributed among the poor of the parish—used to be an acolyte and serve mass myself, a good many years ago, when I was a kid. Well, I forgot to pass you the fifty, you see, and so I invested it in—er-uh—a little matter of speculation, to your account, so that it amounts to—er-uh—well, I understood there’s a bit of a mortgage on your church, you know.”
“The priest opened the wallet and counted out seven one thousands, one five hundred and one fifty-dollar bill. The trainer had put the $50 down on Caspar for the priest—without the father’s sanction or countenance, of course—at 150 to 1.
“‘Well,’ went on the trainer, anxious to talk so as to save any questions as to the nature of his speculation, ‘it certainly would have done your heart good if you could have seen that old nag cantering down the stretch’____
“‘It did,’ said the father, with a smile. ‘It is no sin, I conceive, for even a man of my cloth to watch noble beasts battling for the supremacy, there being, I take it, nothing cruel in such contests. I saw the race.’
“Old Caspar was wound up by that race. He went to the paddock as sore as a boil, all of his old infirmities breaking out with renewed strength, and he was turned out to grass and died comfortably two years ago. If he could have known, it might have cheered his declining days to realize that he had paid off the mortgage on a nice little brick and stone edifice of worship on the outskirts of Cincinnati.”
THE REIGN OF THE REINING HORSE
If the stable is a cathedral, reining is my prayer book.
I don’t say that with any disrespect. To the contrary: it shows the considerable reverence I have for both.
Reining incorporates so many of the things I’ve spoken about. In a way, you can reverse-engineer my education: a lot of what I’ve learned, a lot of what I’ve been able to retrofit in my understanding of horses and horsemanship, comes from this sport.
A reining horse is trained to execute extraordinary bursts of energy, of galloping and sliding, for example, and then to stand absolutely still. That stillness is part of the equestrian skill. In that state, the horse meditates for an instant and then whirls into action for another completion of a move, and then stops and is still.
The ability to achieve this, with a horse, has been instilled in me in all these years of training. I have learned that in reining, as in life, periods of st
illness and reflection are essential. In the sport, it becomes rhythmic expression at its best. This is not unique to reining—as we’ll be discussing later in other disciplines such as martial arts, in that instant when Annie Oakley jumps a fence and shoots, in baseball during that heartbeat when batter and pitcher size one another up just before the pitch.
In that stillness you become totally aware, and then you ease into the next move using that pause, using that instant where the energy was trapped, tapped, and then released.
I can guarantee you that this was part of the training, part of the martial movements of horses in war. They would explode into motion at both ends, the front and back, kicking out, laying waste to the soldiers in front of them, and then coming to a stillness while the rider used his sword, and then doing the same thing again.
You see it in ancient art, certainly in the terra-cotta Chinese statues I will be discussing later: the utter stillness of the horses. They were caught in a moment at rest, as they paid obeisance to the emperor. But there was also inherent in those statues the ability to explode into action in a moment.
Spirit of the Horse Page 14