I
Down in Maine or up in Vermont, anywhere, in fact, save on a fancy stud-farm, his color would have passed for sorrel. Being a high-bred hackney, and the pick of the Sir Bardolph three-year-olds, he was put down as a strawberry roan. Also he was the pride of Lochlynne.
"'Osses, women, and the weather, sir, ain't to be depended on; but, barrin' haccidents, that 'ere Bonfire'll fetch us a ribbon if any does, sir." Hawkins, the stud-groom, made this prophecy, not in haste or out of hand, but as one who has a reputation to maintain and who speaks by the card.
So the word was passed among the under-grooms and stable-boys that Bonfire was the best of the Sir Bardolph get, and that he was going to the Garden for the honor and profit of the farm.
Well, Bonfire had come to the Garden. He had been there two days. It was within a few hours of the time when the hackneys were to take the ring—and look at him! His eyes were dull, his head was down, his nostrils wept, his legs trembled.
About his stall was gathered a little group of discouraged men and boys who spoke in low tones and gazed gloomily through the murky atmosphere at the blanket-swathed, hooded figure that seemed about to collapse on the straw.
"'E ain't got no more life in 'im than a sick cat," said one. "The Bellair folks will beat us 'oller; every one o' their blooming hentries is as fit as fiddles."
"Ain't we worked on 'im for four mortal hours?" demanded another. "Wot more can we do?"
"Send for old 'Awkins an' tell 'im, that's all."
A shudder seemed to shake the group in the stall. It was clear that Mr. Hawkins would be displeased, and that his displeasure was something to be dreaded. Bonfire, too, was seen to shudder, but it was not from fear of Hawkins's wrath. Little did Bonfire care just then for grooms, head or ordinary. He shuddered because of certain aches that dwelt within him.
In his stomach was a queer feeling which he did not at all understand. In his head was a dizziness which made him wish that the stall would not move about so. Streaks of pain shot along his backbone and slid down his legs. Hot and cold flashes swept over his body. For Bonfire had a bad case of car-sickness—a malady differing from sea-sickness largely in name only—also a well-developed cold complicated by nervous indigestion.
Tuned to the key, he had left the home stables. Then they had led him into that box on wheels and the trouble had begun. Men shouted, bells clanged, whistles shrieked. Bonfire felt the box start with a jerk, and, thumping, rumbling, jolting, swaying, move somewhere off into the night.
In an agony of apprehension—neck stretched, eyes staring, ears pointed, nostrils quivering, legs stiffened, Bonfire waited for the end. But of end there seemed to be none. Shock after shock Bonfire withstood, and still found himself waiting. What it all meant he could not guess. There were the other horses that had been taken with him into the box, some placidly munching hay, others looking curiously about. There were the familiar grooms who talked soothingly in his ear and patted his neck in vain. The terror of the thing, this being whirled noisily away in a box, had struck deep into Bonfire's brain, and he could not get it out. So he stood for many hours, neither eating nor sleeping, listening to the noises, feeling the motion, and trembling as one with ague.
Of course it was absurd for Bonfire to go to pieces in that fashion. You can ship a Missouri Modoc around the world and he will finish almost as sound as he started. But Bonfire had blood and breeding and a pedigree which went back to Lady Alice of Burn Brae, Yorkshire.
His coltdom had been a sort of hothouse existence; for Lochlynne, you know, is the toy of a Pennsylvania coal baron, who breeds hackneys, not for profit, but for the joy there is in it; just as other men grow orchids and build cup defenders. At the Lochlynne stables they turn on the steam heat in November. On rainy days you are exercised in a glass-roofed tanbark ring, and hour after hour you are handled over deep straw to improve your action. You breathe outdoor air only in high-fenced grass paddocks around which you are driven in surcingle rig by a Cockney groom imported with the pigskin saddles and British condition powders. From the day your name is written in the stud-book until you leave, you have balanced feed, all-wool blankets, fly-nettings, and coddling that never ceases. Yet this is the method that rounds you into perfect hackney form.
All this had been done for Bonfire and with apparent success, but a few hours of railroad travel had left him with a set of nerves as tensely strung as those of a high-school girl on graduation-day. That is why a draught of cold air had chilled him to the bone; that is why, after reaching the Garden, he had gone as limp as a cut rose at a ball.