Jim and the Old Pacer.
It’s a cold day, indeed, when a drummer has not got a good yarn up his coat-sleeve, and the narrator of this swears to its truth in every particular.
We were sitting around a good fire the other evening when the subject of last winter’s cold spell came up and how much fun the boys over the line were having on the path; and, incidentally, how greatly the interest in snow races among gentlemen drivers was increasing each winter.
“But, say,” said the drummer, who was selling cigars and had just passed around some to sample, “talking about the fun the boys had up North on the snow last winter reminds me how a farmer and an old pacer, up in a fashionable little town in the State of York, where I happened to be last month, hit the snow enthusiasm of that class of fellows who thought they owned the best snow horse in the world with a blizzard that will cool them off till the spring time comes, gentle Annie. At least, they hadn’t got over it when I left two weeks ago,” he laughed. “We didn’t have any snow until after Christmas, and when the cold wave, with snow, did come, you bet they were all waiting for it. Fellows with fine sleighs bought in October and put in the carriage house began to think they would have to wait another year, while the trotters and pacers were eating their heads off, and hundreds of friendly wagers lay in pigeon holes, waiting for the snow. Well, when it came, it was a dandy, and the snow path soon saw dozens of races a day, with fine rigs and fun galore.
“I’ve got a driver friend who lives near the big town mentioned—runs a training stable in the suburbs. You’d know him in a minute if I’d call his name, for he has driven many a good one to victory, and he’s got a pacer you’d know, too, for he has a mark below 2:12. But this pacer is an onery-looking thing, if I ever saw one. He wouldn’t sell on his looks for fifteen dollars, yet he won thirty-five hundred dollars last year clear of expenses. My friend bought him out of a log-wagon—a curby-legged thing, with log spavins and splints in swarms, but gee whiz, how he could pace! Jim—that’s my friend’s name—loves a little fun about as well as anybody. He didn’t go out on the snow path the first week until he found out just who could go and how fast, and then he just laid for the whole gang with that old pacer. The boys drove out to his stable time and again and bantered him, guyed him, made fun of him and all that, but he laid low and said nothing. One evening he sent for me and whispered:
“‘Want to make your winter oats tomorrow?’
“‘I don’t care,’ I laughed, ‘if it’s a dead sure thing. Haven’t got any money to burn up in an experiment.’
“Jim laughed and handed me a hundred in ten-dollar bills. ‘This shows my faith; play it for me on the farmer and the old pacer to-morrow, any way or odds you want to, and if you don’t make some yourself while you’re at it, why, it’s your own fault.’ And then he took me in the harness room and told me a little tale that made me laugh all over.
“Well, to-morrow meant there was going to be several races on the snow, and all the fashionable end of town was to be out. One or two fellows with pretty good horses had beat everything and were looking for more worlds to conquer. Just after dinner Jim put on snow goggles, a hayseed hat, the rustiest coat he could borrow, clapped that curby-legged pacer in an old sleigh that looked like it had stood up in a mouldy carriage house for fifty years, with harness to match, put a few bundles of oats, farmer like, in behind to save feed, of course, in town, and jogged on in with a sort of an ain’t-been-to-town-for-ten-years look written all over the whole turnout.
“He wasn’t looking for the first suckers he did up, though. He heard a jingling of bells behind him some two miles out, and came very near being run over by a happy lot of young fellows with their girls on a bob-sleigh, drawn by four spanking horses. The fun they had over Jim and his queer turnout was immense—for about five minutes. They dashed up beside him, asked him the price of oats, and all that and finally hollered out:
“‘Get out of the road, old man, or we’ll run over you!’
“‘But I be goin’ to town, too,’ Jim drawled out in the nasalest twang that ever came out of a down-easter’s nose. Then he shook up the old pacer just enough to stay tantalisingly in front in spite of everything they could do. The bob-sleigh crowd couldn’t go in six minutes at a trot to save their necks, so they put the teams out in full run, but that was just fun for the old pacer. They never came in twenty yards of his oats in the rear of the sleigh. After teasing the babies enough, Jim turned at the first good stretch, looked back, winked his off eye, and said: ‘Yes, chillun, I be goin’ to town, too, so good-bye to you babies, an’ heaven bless you,’ and he shot away and left them.
“You have heard of blackbirds chattering in a tree, and then all of them suddenly stop, haven’t you? The silence is painful. Well, that’s the way it was in that bob-sleigh.
“But Jim was after bigger game than that, though he couldn’t resist the temptation to have a little fun with every nobby turnout he met.
“‘Cawn’t you pass that old fellah, James,’ the male occupant of a swell rig would call out to his coachman, after Jim would wiggle along, half asleep, beside the fancy turnout.
“‘Oh, yes, your ’oner,’ James would say, and swell up in the true English style and pull at his ’ackneys and spread around blustering, and cast withering glances on the innocent looking hayseed rig. Then Jim would wake up, shake the old pacer, and leave them like Mark Twain’s coyote on the desert left the ambitious dog—a gray crack in the air and he was gone while the English coachman cussed those “low-down Hamerican ’osses” with the best mixture of Billingsgate and flunky at his command.
“But he got off the best one on two young fellows who thought they had a fast trotter. They came tearing down on Jim, intending to go by him like a flash. But just as they came up Jim shook up the old pacer, and he threw up his tail for all the world like he was frightened nearly to death, and with that wild look that made Jim afterwards declare he really believed the old rascal was onto the game himself, he would dart away, threatening to break and go all to pieces every minute. This would make the trotting fellows come faster, and Jim would make it worse by looking like he was ‘skeered’ nearly to death, and shouting out:
“‘Gentlemen, hold up, please; you’ll skeer the old hoss to death. He allers runs away at a pace when he’s skeered. Hold up. Hold up, for heaven’s sake!’
“Jim would let them chase him that way for a mile, till their horse was blown and would go to a break before they’d catch on, and try to sneak away down some side street. Then Jim would holler out:
“‘Gentlemen, don’t never do that no more—don’t never do it ergin, on your life! This old hoss might ’er run erway an’ ruined me! He always would run away in a pace when he got skeered. Learned it when he was a colt—got skeered at a trottin’ hoss haulin’ a load of manure through the medder lot, where he was grazin’, an’ he can’t stan’ it to this day!’ Then he would chuckle out loud and throw this parting shot at them: ‘But, say, young fellers, don’t you wish sumpin’ would skeer that thar trotter of yours, good, once?’
“But the meanest thing Jim and that old pacer did was to break up a love match. It was a young fellow and his girl, and Jim says when he came up behind them their horse was in a slow walk, like they wanted that ride to last forever—and they were so interested in looking in each other’s eyes, and holding hands under the robe, and they never knew that it was daytime and that it was the sun, and not a low-turned gas jet, that was burning overhead. Jim knew the young fellow, and the horse he was driving, too. The horse was quite a fancy looking trotter, just pretty enough to catch anybody’s eye that wanted a Sunday-go-to-meetin’ kind of a horse. He had once taken a tincup record of 2:26¼ by some hook and crook, and on the road for a quarter of a mile, he could trot a buzz-saw clip, as long as he thought he was beating all creation, and didn’t get another crotch in his head—for he had clock works, with a chimes attachment there, and no mistake. There was plenty of room for Jim to go around and let those young people alone, but he saw too good a chance for fun, and that’s what he was out for. He wiggled up right behind the hand-holding pair, and, pulling out a red silk handkerchief, he blew his nose with a terrible blast. He did it to attract their attention and let them know that the rest of the world ‘do move, too,’ but it was more effectual than he had hoped. That chimes-headed horse must have thought it was Gabriel’s trumpet, for he jumped ten feet when Jim gave that blast, shook the lovers like an earthquake and banged the girl’s best hat up against the back of the sleigh. The young fellow pulled his horse down and looked back daggers at Jim, then touched him up and lit out to leave him. This was just what Jim wanted, and he sailed after them in great shape. It was an awful pretty race for about two hundred yards, and then Jim let the old pacer glide up nose and nose with the trotter, who was walling his eye around and already showing signs of quitting with a little more collaring. When Jim did that he heard the girl say excitedly, ‘Oh, Harry, is that horrid old horse going to beat Sir Charles Grandeville?’
“‘I’m just feeling him, now,’ Harry replied. ‘Wait a minute, darling, and I will make him sick. There’s nothing on this road can beat Sir Charles!’
“Jim chuckled and let out a link or two, and the old pacer forged ahead.
“‘Oh, Harry, but he is beating us—hurry up, dear, let him show that 2:20 clip, or lock, or whatever you told me about Just now. O-o-o-o Harry!!’
“This last remark was caused by Sir Charles going into as many different breaks as there are pieces in a jointed snake, while Harry laid the whip on him with something that sounded, under his breath, like ‘Whoa! Dash blank your jumping-jack, white-livered hide! I’ll teach you how to quit every time an ox cart tries to pass you!’
“And as Jim sailed away he heard the girl haughtily and freezingly saying:
“‘Mr. Harry Smith, I’ll thank you, sir, to put me out at the first house you pass! I’m glad I found you out in time. Any man who will beat and swear at his horse as you have done will beat and swear at his wife, and I’ll never marry you, sir, never!’
“As I said above, that was the meanest thing Jim did that day.
“Well, we harvested our winter oats two hours afterwards, when Jim entered his pacer in the free-for-all down the boulevard. Some few had caught on, but I found enough that hadn’t to cover Jim’s hundred I held and another for myself, and when the old farmer and the pacer beat the gang further than any of them cared to tell about afterwards, as I said before, it brought on a blizzard that cooled all the racing enthusiasm in that town up to the time I left, and many of them hadn’t discovered then that they had been racing green horses and two-thirty roadsters against one of the best known drivers in the East, up behind a pacer who started ten times last year, won eight first moneys and two seconds, and took a mark close down to 2:10.”
“I see from the paper,” he said, as he pulled out a local paper, “that they are racing there on the snow path this week, but I’ll bet my winter overcoat they have taken the precaution to bar all hayseeds and curby-legged pacers in the country.”
