Old Police Horse Sold.
Slator was discharged from the New York police force recently. With eleven other horses, condemned by the department, he was auctioned off in the arena of Van Tassel & Kearney. Slator is twenty-two years old, and has behind him sixteen years of honorable service in the traffic squad.
“The gamest little horse that ever looked through a bridle,” the auctioneer called him. He sold for $37.50.
It was hard for Slator to understand yesterday’s proceedings. A little brown horse whose memory holds only the recollection of hours of easy pacing through the park bridle paths, with now and then a thrilling dash after a runaway, or the more serious excitement of pushing back an unruly crowd without stepping on its toes, has no place in his mind for a scene like this. Slator was puzzled.
In the first place, his boss was missing—the man who rode him and was kind to him. Then the night had been spent in a Van Tassel & Kearney stall. That was strange and uncomfortable after having slept on the straw of the police stables since a time when most of the present force were boys.
Slator remembered his manners, though. When he was brought on to the tanbark, he walked up to the auctioneer’s desk, his ears pricked forward and his muzzle twitching a greeting. Then, when the man pushed his head away, he submitted meekly to being dragged up and down the arena by a shouting groom and suffered himself to be poked and handled by various horsy men whom he did not know.
It was years since he had felt a lash, but when they cut him across the flanks to show off his action, he did not kick. Clearly this was some new order of the department which had not been imparted to him. Therefore it was incumbent upon a member of the force to behave himself. Slator showed he was a gentleman.
For many years the little horse was the mount of Patrolman—now Lieutenant—Gumbricht. The price paid for him yesterday was perhaps an eighth of his original value. And Slator is not “all in” yet by a good deal. He is old, but he is wise, and a perfect saddle horse. That is one reason why he did not bring a larger price. The men at the sale were looking for work animals.
Slator always looked down on the patrol-wagon horses as plebeians, yet those sold yesterday brought twice his price. But arithmetic is one of the few things which the little police mount does not know. That is one worry which will be spared him in the future, at any rate.