The Hammond girl flushed—that was what she had said of Allys when people laughed over the Rhett mots. But before she could counter, Allys cried joyously: “At last! The Heathflower thing! Really, she hasn’t any looks—but see her run, will you?”
“She does move like a winner—but it’s impossible she can stay,” Hilary said, almost arrogantly. “Pedigree is all very well—until it runs up against performance——”
“Right you are! Quite mighty right, Rich, me boy,” old Van Ammerer interrupted. “But I didn’t know they let dark horses run in the Far and Near——”
“Lucky you are young, Van—you have such a lot to learn,” Adair said, brusquely, as they went toward the paddock. It was thronged, but somehow at sight of Hilary the human masses fell respectfully apart—albeit the men and women there had forgotten themselves, even forgotten each other for the time being, in their poignant eagerness over the big race.
They were hardly through the gate and well established in an eddy when the bell brought the racers pacing or scurrying in. The Heathflower thing came straight off the course, and stood spiritlessly, drooping her head and blinking her eyes. Clear eyes, matching the loose, satiny skin, beneath which whipcord muscles stood out, or played at each least motion, they told the eye initiate that she was in the pink of condition. Like her so-famous ancestors, a bay with black points, neither under nor over size, with a fine, lean head, a long neck, and four splendid legs, it was a marvel that she could so utterly lack any trace of equine comeliness. Her chest was noticeably narrow, her barrel out of proportion to shoulders and quarters. Still, against those patent blemishes, a judge of conformation would have set the splendid sloping shoulders, the reaching forearm, the bunches of massy muscle in the long loin, the quarters well let down into perfect houghs, the fine, clean bone of knees and ankles, the firm, close-grained hoofs spreading faintly from coronet to base.
Clean-limbed throughout, with ears that, if they drooped, had no trace of coarseness and were set wide apart above a basin face, the mare showed race indisputably, notwithstanding the white in her forehead was too smudgy to be called a star, or that, though her muzzle tapered finely, the lower lip habitually protruded a bit. A four-year-old, she was still a maiden—consequently had but a feather on her back in the Far and Near. The handicapper had laughed, half wearily, half compassionately as he allotted it, muttering something about the jockey club robbing the cradle and the grave—that poor old Major Meriwether, it was well known, hadn’t any money to spare; what he did have was the gambler’s instinct to sit into any game where the stakes were big.
The race was open to three-year-olds and upward, and run over a distance—two miles and a half. The distance kept out the sprinters—it also, now and again, played hob with racing idols. To win a horse must be able to go—also to stay. With twenty thousand of added money, there was sure to be always a long list of entries. The conditions held one curious survival from the original fixture—namely, that, horses brought over three hundred miles to run in it got a three-pound allowance if they reached the course less than a week before the day of the race.
Major Meriwether had chuckled whenever he thought of that. He knew “the weight of a stable key may win or lose a race.” And the Heathflower thing was a splendid traveler, coming out of her padded stall as ready to run as when she went into it. She had got to the Bay Park only two days back, in charge of her rubber, Amos, and Black Tim, her jockey. Tim stood at her head, Amos was giving her lank sides their last polish, as Allys and her train swept down upon them.
Allys nodded to them gayly, as she asked: “Tim, have you come up to break New York? I hear your stable will need a special car to take home its money—after the Far and Near.”
“Yessum, dat’s so!” Tim said.