Dan Rooney's That's the Boy was an easy favourite from James Rourke's dun gelding, unnamed—That's the Boy being a great over-lopped, leggy bay, almost in the book, with a whistler's head and no bone, and the dun a scrubby beast, hiding a certain amount of quality behind a goose rump and a ewe neck, but with great second thighs and nine inches below the knee. A weedy grey mare was the only other animal expected to complete the course. There were four three-year-olds willing to go until they fell from exhaustion, and Andy on the Rat, which he had begged leave to enter.
"You'll never get him round the turns," was what Darby said to young Rooney, "and you're backing the horse as if the race was over."
Mr. Rooney replied contemptuously that That's the Boy had time to run out and back and catch what was against him, and that he hoped there'd be no talks of this race when he pulled the horse out to win in Cork Park.
"I'm allowing for a fall or two even," observed Rooney, as he pulled off his coat to display a silk jacket and a pair of very baggy drab breeches.
The dun's owner affected a flannel shirt and trousers tied in below the knee with string, and this, with varieties of shirts and trousers, was the fashionable and favourite get-up.
Darby, with the hounds grouped patiently in the background, was starter and judge. He dropped the flag directly they came at all near him, knowing the handiness of their heels, and saw them tear off in a bunch, the Rat scuttling along in the rear and the rush of That's the Boy knocking over one horse at the first fence.
"Bedam to himself an' his breedin'," commented the fallen jockey bitterly. "An' me mare gone home on me for certainty, an' maybe a boy away for the coffin before I'd be back meself."
That's the Boy's great stride carried him out with a clean lead, his Roman-nosed head in air; he shaved two banks with nerve-shattering carelessness, and being pulled in from the first turn, was crossed by a three-year-old, ridden out with whip and spur, and came down handsomely.
"There's the price of him," commented the knocked-out jockey by Darby's side.
The Field's snatched lead was easily taken back, but they had some way to go, and Darby still prophesied that the turns would do for the great big horse, even if he did not come down again.