“Why, we don’t ride horses now in harness races. He was driven to a bicycle sulky. A 2-year-old has paced in 2:07¾, and there are more Hals that have paced better than 2:10 than you could count up in an hour.”
“What’s that?” he said, jumping up. “Don’t you know we never break a horse till he’s three? I can’t sit here, young man, and have you tell me them yarns any longer. Sixty years ago I was a horseman. I told yarns, too, and swapped horses and lied, and bragged, and run down other people’s stock, and well—I came to grief. And if you had been where I have been for sixty years you would be more careful what you say. Tell me the truth about some of them.”
“Why, I thought everybody knew them,” I said. “I can’t imagine where you have been. There was the first great Hal racer, Little Brown Jug. His three-heat record of 2:11¾, 2:11¼, 2:12½, was, for nearly ten years, unbeaten.”
“What!” he cried, “done that three times? Who rode him?”
“Why, hang it,” I cried, impatiently, “nobody rode him! I told you they quit that before I was born. And Mattie Hunter and Bonesetter—they were great racers. Mattie Hunter was a little mare that was one of the Big Four. Then there came later old Hal Pointer—the greatest race horse of them all. Why, he had a record of 2:04½ in a race—”
“Nearly two minutes in a race! Phew!” he cried, blowing vigorously through his long, thin, gray whiskers. “Phew! What a lie!” and something flew out of his dry lips and rattled on the rocks.
I jumped back in astonishment.
“Excuse me,” he said, “them’s three of my front teeth—they’ve been dry for sixty years and hanging loose in the jaw bone, like. I forgot myself and blew too hard—”
He caught at his eye just in time and put that back: “But go on, I never heard anything as interestin’ as them Hals.”
But I had forgotten the story, and was watching him. Never had such an uncanny feeling come over me. I reached around under the rock for the bottle.