They had out the chestnut colt with the one white foot, and the black with the white blaze, and the bay filly by Checkers-Flighty, and a few other individuals, while the trainer felt them over and looked them up and down and round about, and had them walked and trotted and cantered through the stable yard.
When it was all over, and he knew that here was material that would make his rivals sit up, Faulkner's eyes fell upon a slim shape sitting on the white rail fence.
"What's the kid?" he demanded.
"That?" said the Colonel, with a smile, "why, that's Tim Doolin, a champion jockey I've brought you." The trainer grunted.
"How old?" he asked.
"Going on fifteen, weighs seventy-three pounds, is kind and clever, knows the hosses, and they'll do for him. Try him out at exercise work, and if he makes good, give him a chance to ride."
That same night the Colonel departed.
After that Tim's work was cut out for him. There were twenty-six two-year-olds in the Holland stables, twelve three-year-olds, and six or eight thoroughbreds in the aged division. Faulkner kept a big staff of grooms and exercise boys, but there was always a day's work for each of them. Aside from the routine exercise for every horse in training, the feeding, the grooming, and so on, all the youngsters had to be broken to the starting barrier. Some trainers didn't pay much attention to that.
"Let 'em come to it in their races," said they. Not so, Faulkner. He drilled every last one of his two-year-olds till the starting gate was no more to them than so much steel and wood and webbing.
Tim was not long in winning the trainer's confidence. The job of breaking to the barrier was turned over to the stable foreman, under whose eyes the grooms and exercise boys worked. But one afternoon Faulkner himself came out to see how things were going. He noticed that the three two-year-olds that were Tim's especial care were already barrier-broken. He cross-examined the lad. Tim was reticent.