“But, I’ll tell you what is, if you have got a hoss that can do it, and no mistake: back him, hoss agin hoss, or what’s safer still, hoss agin time, and you can’t be tricked. Now, I’ll send for Old Clay, to come in Cunard’s steamer, and cuss ‘em they ought to bring over the old hoss and his fixins, free, for it was me first started that line. The way old Mr. Glenelg stared, when I told him it was thirty-six miles shorter to go from Bristol to New York by the way of Halifax, than to go direct warn’t slow. It stopt steam for that hitch, that’s a fact, for he thort I was mad. He sent it down to the Admiralty to get it ciphered right, and it took them old seagulls, the Admirals a month to find it out.
“And when they did, what did they say? Why, cuss ‘em, says they, ‘any fool knows that.’ Says I, ‘If that’s the case you are jist the boys then that ought to have found it out right off at oncet.’
“Yes, Old Clay ought to go free, but he won’t; and guess I am able to pay freight for him, and no thanks to nobody. Now, I’ll tell you what, English trottin’ is about a mile in two minutes and forty-seven seconds, and that don’t happen oftener than oncet in fifty years, if it was ever done at all, for the English brag so there is no telling right. Old Clay can do his mile in two minutes and thirty-eight seconds. He has done that, and I guess he could do more. I have got a car, that is as light as whalebone, and I’ll bet to do it with wheels and drive myself. I’ll go in up to the handle, on Old Clay. I have a hundred thousand dollars of hard cash made in the colonies, I’ll go half of it on the old hoss, hang me if I don’t, and I’ll make him as well knowd to England as he is to Nova Scotia.
“I’ll allow him to be beat at fust, so as to lead ‘em on, and Clay is as cunnin’ as a coon too, if he don’t get the word g’lang (go along) and the Indgian skelpin’ yell with it, he knows I ain’t in airnest, and he’ll allow me to beat him and bully him like nothin’. He’ll pretend to do his best, and sputter away like a hen scratchin’ gravel, but he won’t go one mossel faster, for he knows I never lick a free hoss.
“Won’t it be beautiful? How they’ll all larf and crow, when they see me a thrashin’ away at the hoss, and then him goin’ slower, the faster I thrash, and me a threatenin’ to shoot the brute, and a talkin’ at the tip eend of my tongue like a ravin’ distracted bed bug, and offerin’ to back him agin, if they dare, and planken down the pewter all round, takin’ every one up that will go the figur’, till I raise the bets to the tune of fifty thousand dollars. When I get that far, they may stop their larfin’ till next time, I guess. That’s the turn of the fever—that’s the crisis—that’s my time to larf then.
“I’ll mount the car then, take the bits of list up, put ‘em into right shape, talk a little Connecticut Yankee to the old hoss, to set his ebenezer up, and make him rise inwardly, and then give the yell,” (which he uttered in his excitement in earnest; and a most diabolical one it was. It pierced me through and through, and curdled my very blood, it was the death shout of a savage.) “G’lang you skunk, and turn out your toes pretty,” said he, and he again repeated this long protracted, shrill, infernal yell, a second time.
Every eye was instantly turned upon us. Even Tattersall suspended his “he is five years old—a good hack—and is to be sold,” to give time for the general exclamation of surprise. “Who the devil is that? Is he mad? Where did he come from? Does any body know him? He is a devilish keen-lookin’ fellow that; what an eye he has! He looks like a Yankee, that fellow.”
“He’s been here, your honour, several days, examines every thing and says nothing; looks like a knowing one, your honour. He handles a hoss as if he’d seen one afore to-day, Sir.”
“Who is that gentleman with him?”
“Don’t know, your honour, never saw him before; he looks like a furriner, too.”