The Broken Link Handicapped
While the snaffle holds, or the "long-neck" stings,
While the big beam tilts, or the last bell rings,
While horses are horses to train and to race,
Then women and wine take a second place
For me--for me--
While a short "ten-three"
Has a field to squander or fence to face!
Song of the G. R.
There are more ways of running a horse to suit your book than
pulling his head off in the straight. Some men forget this.
Understand clearly that all racing is rotten--as everything
connected with losing money must be. Out here, in addition to its
inherent rottenness, it has the merit of being two-thirds sham;
looking pretty on paper only. Every one knows every one else far
too well for business purposes. How on earth can you rack and harry
and post a man for his losings, when you are fond of his wife, and
live in the same Station with him? He says, "on the Monday
following," "I can't settle just yet." "You say, "All right, old
man," and think your self lucky if you pull off nine hundred out of
a two-thousand rupee debt. Any way you look at it, Indian racing is
immoral, and expensively immoral. Which is much worse. If a man
wants your money, he ought to ask for it, or send round a
subscription-list, instead of juggling about the country, with an
Australian larrikin; a "brumby," with as much breed as the boy; a
brace of chumars in gold-laced caps; three or four ekka-ponies with
hogged manes, and a switch-tailed demirep of a mare called Arab
because she has a kink in her flag. Racing leads to the shroff
quicker than anything else. But if you have no conscience and no
sentiments, and good hands, and some knowledge of pace, and ten
years' experience of horses, and several thousand rupees a month, I
believe that you can occasionally contrive to pay your shoeing-
bills.
Did you ever know Shackles--b. w. g., 15.13.8--coarse, loose, mule-
like ears--barrel as long as a gate-post--tough as a telegraph-wire--
and the queerest brute that ever looked through a bridle? He was
of no brand, being one of an ear-nicked mob taken into the
Bucephalus at 4l.-10s. a head to make up freight, and sold raw and
out of condition at Calcutta for Rs. 275. People who lost money on
him called him a "brumby;" but if ever any horse had Harpoon's
shoulders and The Gin's temper, Shackles was that horse. Two miles
was his own particular distance. He trained himself, ran himself,
and rode himself; and, if his jockey insulted him by giving him
hints, he shut up at once and bucked the boy off. He objected to
dictation. Two or three of his owners did not understand this, and
lost money in consequence. At last he was bought by a man who
discovered that, if a race was to be won, Shackles, and Shackles
only, would win it in his own way, so long as his jockey sat still.
This man had a riding-boy called Brunt--a lad from Perth, West
Australia--and he taught Brunt, with a trainer's whip, the hardest
thing a jock can learn--to sit still, to sit still, and to keep on
sitting still. When Brunt fairly grasped this truth, Shackles
devastated the country. No weight could stop him at his own
distance; and The fame of Shackles spread from Ajmir in the South,
to Chedputter in the North. There was no horse like Shackles, so
long as he was allowed to do his work in his own way. But he was
beaten in the end; and the story of his fall is enough to make
angels weep.
At the lower end of the Chedputter racecourse, just before the turn
into the straight, the track passes close to a couple of old brick-
mounds enclosing a funnel-shaped hollow. The big end of the funnel
is not six feet from the railings on the off-side. The astounding
peculiarity of the course is that, if you stand at one particular
place, about half a mile away, inside the course, and speak at an
ordinary pitch, your voice just hits the funnel of the brick-mounds
and makes a curious whining echo there. A man discovered this one
morning by accident while out training with a friend. He marked the
place to stand and speak from with a couple of bricks, and he kept
his knowledge to himself. EVERY peculiarity of a course is worth
remembering in a country where rats play the mischief with the
elephant-litter, and Stewards build jumps to suit their own stables.
This man ran a very fairish country-bred, a long, racking high mare
with the temper of a fiend, and the paces of an airy wandering
seraph--a drifty, glidy stretch. The mare was, as a delicate
tribute to Mrs. Reiver, called "The Lady Regula Baddun"--or for
short, Regula Baddun.
Shackles' jockey, Brunt, was a quiet, well-behaved boy, but his
nerves had been shaken. He began his career by riding jump-races in
Melbourne, where a few Stewards want lynching, and was one of the
jockeys who came through the awful butchery--perhaps you will
recollect it--of the Maribyrnong Plate. The walls were colonial
ramparts--logs of jarrak spiked into masonry--with wings as strong
as Church buttresses. Once in his stride, a horse had to jump or
fall. He couldn't run out. In the Maribyrnong Plate, twelve horses
were jammed at the second wall. Red Hat, leading, fell this side,
and threw out The Glen, and the ruck came up behind and the space
between wing and wing was one struggling, screaming, kicking
shambles. Four jockeys were taken out dead; three were very badly
hurt, and Brunt was among the three. He told the story of the
Maribyrnong Plate sometimes; and when he described how Whalley on
Red Hat, said, as the mare fell under him:--"God ha' mercy, I'm done
for!" and how, next instant, Sithee There and White Otter had
crushed the life out of poor Whalley, and the dust hid a small hell
of men and horses, no one marvelled that Brunt had dropped jump-
races and Australia together. Regula Baddun's owner knew that story
by heart. Brunt never varied it in the telling. He had no
education.
Shackles came to the Chedputter Autumn races one year, and his owner
walked about insulting the sportsmen of Chedputter generally, till
they went to the Honorary Secretary in a body and said:--"Appoint
Handicappers, and arrange a race which shall break Shackles and
humble the pride of his owner." The Districts rose against Shackles
and sent up of their best; Ousel, who was supposed to be able to do
his mile in 1-53; Petard, the stud-bred, trained by a cavalry
regiment who knew how to train; Gringalet, the ewe-lamb of the 75th;
Bobolink, the pride of Peshawar; and many others.
They called that race The Broken-Link Handicap, because it was to
smash Shackles; and the Handicappers piled on the weights, and the
Fund gave eight hundred rupees, and the distance was "round the
course for all horses." Shackles' owner said:--"You can arrange the
race with regard to Shackles only. So long as you don't bury him
under weight-cloths, I don't mind. Regula Baddun's owner said:--"I
throw in my mare to fret Ousel. Six furlongs is Regula's distance,
and she will then lie down and die. So also will Ousel, for his
jockey doesn't understand a waiting race." Now, this was a lie, for
Regula had been in work for two months at Dehra, and her chances
were good, always supposing that Shackles broke a blood-vessel--OR
BRUNT MOVED ON HIM.
The plunging in the lotteries was fine. They filled eight thousand-
rupee lotteries on the Broken Link Handicap, and the account in the
Pioneer said that "favoritism was divided." In plain English, the
various contingents were wild on their respective horses; for the
Handicappers had done their work well. The Honorary Secretary
shouted himself hoarse through the din; and the smoke of the
cheroots was like the smoke, and the rattling of the dice-boxes like
the rattle of small-arm fire.
Ten horses started--very level--and Regula Baddun's owner cantered
out on his back to a place inside the circle of the course, where
two bricks had been thrown. He faced towards the brick-mounds at
the lower end of the course and waited.
The story of the running is in the Pioneer. At the end of the first
mile, Shackles crept out of the ruck, well on the outside, ready to
get round the turn, lay hold of the bit and spin up the straight
before the others knew he had got away. Brunt was sitting still,
perfectly happy, listening to the "drum, drum, drum" of the hoofs
behind, and knowing that, in about twenty strides, Shackles would
draw one deep breath and go up the last half-mile like the "Flying
Dutchman." As Shackles went short to take the turn and came abreast
of the brick-mound, Brunt heard, above the noise of the wind in his
ears, a whining, wailing voice on the offside, saying:--"God ha'
mercy, I'm done for!" In one stride, Brunt saw the whole seething
smash of the Maribyrnong Plate before him, started in his saddle and
gave a yell of terror. The start brought the heels into Shackles'
side, and the scream hurt Shackles' feelings. He couldn't stop
dead; but he put out his feet and slid along for fifty yards, and
then, very gravely and judicially, bucked off Brunt--a shaking,
terror-stricken lump, while Regula Baddun made a neck-and-neck race
with Bobolink up the straight, and won by a short head--Petard a bad
third. Shackles' owner, in the Stand, tried to think that his
field-glasses had gone wrong. Regula Baddun's owner, waiting by the
two bricks, gave one deep sigh of relief, and cantered back to the
stand. He had won, in lotteries and bets, about fifteen thousand.
It was a broken-link Handicap with a vengeance. It broke nearly all
the men concerned, and nearly broke the heart of Shackles' owner.
He went down to interview Brunt. The boy lay, livid and gasping
with fright, where he had tumbled off. The sin of losing the race
never seemed to strike him. All he knew was that Whalley had
"called" him, that the "call" was a warning; and, were he cut in two
for it, he would never get up again. His nerve had gone altogether,
and he only asked his master to give him a good thrashing, and let
him go. He was fit for nothing, he said. He got his dismissal, and
crept up to the paddock, white as chalk, with blue lips, his knees
giving way under him. People said nasty things in the paddock; but
Brunt never heeded. He changed into tweeds, took his stick and went
down the road, still shaking with fright, and muttering over and
over again:--"God ha' mercy, I'm done for!" To the best of my
knowledge and belief he spoke the truth.
So now you know how the Broken-Link Handicap was run and won. Of
course you don't believe it. You would credit anything about
Russia's designs on India, or the recommendations of the Currency
Commission; but a little bit of sober fact is more than you can
stand!
-THE END-
Rudyard Kipling's short story: The Broken Link Handicapped
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