Chapter X

Tar had got, through Doctor Reefy, who came to the house when he was ill, a man friend. His name was Tom Whitehead and he was fat and forty-two and owned race horses and a farm and had a fat wife and no children.

He was a friend of Doctor Reefy who also had no children. The Doctor had married, when he was past forty, a young woman of twenty, but she only lived for a year. After his wife’s death and when he was not at work, the Doctor went around with Tom Whitehead, with an old tree nurseryman named John Spaniard, with Judge Blair and with a young dudish fellow who got drunk a lot but who said funny, sarcastic things. The young man was the son of a United States Senator, now dead, and had been left some money every one said he was fooling away as fast as he could.

All of the men who were the Doctor’s friends had taken a sudden fancy for the Moorehead children and the race-horse man seemed to have picked out Tar.

The others helped John make money and gave presents to Margaret and Robert. The Doctor did it all. He managed everything without any fuss.

What happened to Tar was that in the late afternoons or on Saturdays or sometimes on Sundays, Tom Whitehead drove along the road past the Moorehead place and stopped for him.

He was in a jogging cart and Tar sat on his knees.

First they went along a dusty road, past waterworks pond, then up a little hill and in at the fair ground gate. Tom Whitehead had a stable over near the fair ground and a house near it, but it was more fun to go to the race track itself.

Not many boys had such chances, Tar thought. John didn’t because he had to work so much and Jim Moore didn’t. Jim lived alone with his mother, who was a widow and she fussed over him a lot. When he went anywhere with Tar his mother gave a lot of directions. “Now it’s early in the spring and the ground is damp. Don’t sit on the ground.

“No, you can’t go in swimming, not yet. I don’t want you little fellows to be going in swimming when there are no older people about. You might get cramps. Don’t go into the woods. There are always hunters around shooting off guns. I read in the paper only last week where a boy got killed.”

Better to get killed right out than be fussed at all the time. If you’ve got such a mother, the loving fussy kind, you’ve got to stand for it but it’s tough luck. A good thing Mary Moorehead had so many children. It kept her busy. She could not be thinking up a lot of things for a boy not to do.

Jim and Tar had talked it over. The Moores had some money. Mrs. Moore owned a farm. In some ways it is fine to be the only child a woman has but on the whole you lose by it. “It’s the same way with a hen and chicks,” Tar said to Jim and Jim agreed. Jim did not know how it hurts sometimes--when you want your mother to fuss over you and she is so busy with one of the other kids she can’t pay you any attention.

Not many boys had the chance Tar had after Tom Whitehead took him up. After Tom called for him a few times he did not wait to be asked but went almost every day. If he went to the stables there were always men sitting around. Tom had a farm in the country where he raised some colts and others he bought as yearlings at the Cleveland sale in the spring. At such a sale other men who raise racing colts bring them in and they are sold at auction. You stand around and bid. That’s where a good horse eye comes in.

You buy a colt that hasn’t had any training, or two or four or maybe a dozen colts. Some will turn out corkers and some will be dubs. As good an eye as Tom Whitehead had, and he was known to horsemen all over the state, he made a lot of mistakes. When a colt turned out no good he said to the men sitting around, “I’m slipping. I thought that bay was all right. He has good blood in him but he won’t ever go fast. He hasn’t got that little extra something. It ain’t in him. I guess I better go to an eye doctor and get my eyes fixed up. Maybe I’m getting old and a little blind.”

It was good fun over at the Whitehead stables but better fun at the fairground tracks where Tom trained his colts. At the stables Doctor Reefy came and sat around, Will Truesdale, the young swell who was good to Margaret and gave her presents, came, Judge Blair came.

A lot of men sitting and talking--always of horses. There was a bench along the front. Neighbor women told Mary Moorehead she shouldn’t let her boy keep such company but she went right on. Many times Tar couldn’t understand the talk. The men were always making little sarcastic cracks at each other, like his mother did sometimes to people.

The men talked of religion and politics and whether or not a man has a soul and a horse hasn’t. Some of the men held to one set of opinions, some to another. The best thing, Tar thought, was to go back into the stable itself.

There was a board floor and a long row of box stalls on each side and in the front of each stall there was an opening with iron bars so he could look through but the horse inside could not get out. A good thing, too. Tar walked along slow, looking in.

“Fassig’s Irish Maid; Old Hundred; Tipton Ten; Willing-to-Please; Saul, The First; Passenger Boy; Holy Mackerel.”

The names were on little tickets fastened on the front of the stalls.

Passenger Boy was as black as a black cat and went like a cat when he was going fast. One of the stablemen, Henry Bardshare, said he would kick the crown off a king’s head if he got a chance. “Say, he’d kick the stars out of the flag, he’d kick the beard off your face. When he gets through racing I’m going to set him up for a barber.”

On the bench in front of the stable, on summer afternoons when there weren’t any horses being worked at the track, the men talked--sometimes of women, sometimes of why God lets certain things happen, sometimes of why is a farmer always growling. Tar soon grew tired of the talk. There was too much talk in his head already, he thought.