_But When He Did Take It Into His Head to Run One Day, the Bookmakers Were Damaged._
An old-time trainer, who is trying out a bunch of yearlings and keeping up a lot of old campaigners out at the old Ivy City track near Washington, was chewing wisps of hay the other afternoon and thinking aloud.
"One of the things that I can’t exactly figure out," said he, "is whether I’m a ringer-worker or on the level. That proposition has been bothering me a heap in the middle of nights right along since the fall of ’87. I got into the center of a game then that has kept me apologizing to myself ever since. And, then, again, that plug wasn’t a sure-enough proper ringer. And I didn’t put him over the plate, either. My end of it was only to cop out a few, and all I had to do was to——
"Well, anyhow, I went down to a yearling sale in Kentucky for the man I was training for in 1885. There were some Fonso bull-pups to be auctioned off, and the boss wanted a Fonso or two. You remember Fonso, don’t you? He’s the old nag, a great one in his times, who got the blue ribbon only the other day at the age of twenty-three for being still the finest specimen of a thoroughbred in Kentucky. The boss wanted a couple of Fonsos and I went after them. I got him two and myself one. The one I got was the worst-looking he-scrag that ever wore hoofs. He was out of a good mare, but he upset all the calculations of breeding. He was the worst seed in looks that ever I clapped my eyes on; and I’ve been fooling with yearlings for a quarter of a century. He was an angular swayback, leggy, low-spirited, thick-headed, and as fast as a caterpillar. Yet I bought him. I didn’t expect ever to make anything out of him, but I was pretty flush then, and I didn’t want to see a Fonso pulling a dray if there was a chance in a thousand of making anything out of him. That colt was a joke. The whole crowd gave him the hoot when he was led into the auction ring, and I couldn’t hold down a grin myself when I sized up the poor mutt of a camel, the worst libel on a great sire that ever crawled into an auction ring for a bid. The whole gang jeered me when I offered $100 for the skate. I didn’t blame ’em. But I led the colt out, put him in a stall, and then went back to the sale. I got two high-grade Fonsos for my boss, and they won themselves out for him twenty times over in the next three years. But they don’t figure in this story.