From time to
time a warm moist breath, accompanied by a gigantic sigh, would play
against the back of my neck; or my hat would be pushed a bit farther
over my eyes by a wrinkling muzzle--for Tambourine, gazing out into the
green of the center-field, felt a vague longing and wished to tell me
about it.
The track, a broad tawny ribbon with a lace-work edging of white fence,
was before us; the "upper-turn" with its striped five-eighths pole, not
fifty feet away. Some men came and set up the starting device at this
red and white pole, and I asked Blister to explain to me just what it
meant.
"Goin' to school two-year-olds at the barrier," he explained. And
presently--mincing, sidling, making futile leaps to get away, the boys
on their backs standing clear above them in the short stirrups--a band
of deer-like young thoroughbreds assembled, thirty feet or so from the
barrier.
Then there was trouble. Those sweet young things performed, with the
rapidity of thought, every lawless act known to the equine brain. They
reared. They plunged. They bucked. They spun. They surged together.
They scattered like startled quail. I heard squeals, and saw vicious
shiny hoofs lash out in every direction; and the dust spun a yellow
haze over it all.
"Those jockeys will be killed!" I gasped.
"Jockeys!" exclaimed Blister contemptuously. "Them ain't
jockeys--they're exercise-boys. Do you think a jock would school a
two-year-old?"
A man, who Blister said was a trainer, stood on the fence and acted as
starter.
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