II
Hawkins, who had jumped into his clothes and hurried to the scene from a nearby hotel, behaved disappointingly. He cursed no one, he did not even kick a stable boy. He just peeled to his undershirt and went to work. He stripped blankets and hood from the wretched Bonfire, grabbed a bunch of straw in either hand and began to rub. It was no chamois polishing. It was a raking, scraping, rib-bending rub, applied with all the force in Hawkins's sinewy arms. It sent the sluggish blood pounding through every artery of Bonfire's congested system and it made the perspiration ooze from the red face of Hawkins.
At the end of forty minutes' work Bonfire half believed he had been skinned alive. But he had stopped trembling and he held up his head. Next he saw Hawkins shaking something in a thick, long-necked bottle. Suddenly two grooms held Bonfire's jaws apart while Hawkins poured a liquid down his throat. It was fiery stuff that seemed to burn its way, and its immediate effect was to revive Bonfire's appetite.
Hour after hour Hawkins worked and watched the son of Sir Bardolph, and when the get-ready bell sounded he remarked:
"Now, blarst you, we'll see if you're goin' to go to heverlastin' smash in the ring. Tommy, dig out a pair o' them burrs."
Not until he reached the tanbark did Bonfire understand what burrs were. Then, as a rein was pulled, he felt a hundred sharp points pricking the sensitive skin around his mouth. With a bound he leaped into the ring.
It was a very pretty sight presented to the horse experts lining the rail and to persons in boxes and tier seats. They saw a blockily built strawberry roan, his chiselled neck arched in a perfect crest, his rigid thigh muscles rippling under a shiny coat as he swung his hocks, his slim forelegs sweeping up and out, and every curve of his rounded body, from the tip of his absurd whisk-broom tail to the white snip on the end of his tossing nose, expressing that exuberance of spirits, that jaunty abandon of motion which is the very apex of hackney style. Behind him a short-legged groom bounced through the air at the end of the reins, keeping his feet only by means of most amazing strides.
It was a woman in one of the promenade boxes, a young woman wearing a stunning gown and a preposterous picture-hat, who started the applause. Her hand-clapping was echoed all around the rail, was taken up in the boxes and finally woke a rattling chorus from the crowded tiers above. The three judges, men with whips and long-tailed coats, looked earnestly at the strawberry roan.
Bonfire heard, too, but vaguely. There was a ringing in his ears. Flashes of light half blinded his eyes. The concoction from the long-necked bottle was doing its work. Also the jaw-stinging burrs kept his mind busy. On he danced in a mad effort to escape the pain, and only by careful man[oe]uvring could the grooms get him to stand still long enough for the judges to use the tape.
And when it was all over, after the judges had grouped and regrouped the entries, compared figures and whispered in the ring centre; out of sheer defiance to the preference of the spectators they gave the blue to a chestnut filly with black points—at which the tier seats hissed mightily—and tied a red ribbon to Bonfire's bridle. Thereupon the strawberry roan, who had looked fit for a girthsling three hours before, tossed his head and pranced daintily out of the arena amid a ringing round of applause.