The Skipper and the Skipped, Holman Day [book recommendations for teens TXT] 📗

produced a vehicle that somewhat resembled half a watermelon. Ferd drove, adorned also with a plug hat from the stock of the Honorable Percival.
Just inside the gate of the fair-grounds waited the Smyrna "Silver Cornet Band." It struck up "Hail to the Chief," to the violent alarm of the hack-horses.
"We're goin' to get run away with sure's you're above hatches!" bellowed Cap'n Sproul, standing up and making ready to leap over the edge of the watermelon. But Hiram Look restrained him, and the band, its trombones splitting the atmosphere, led away with a merry march.
When they had circled the track, from the three-quarters pole to the stand, and the crowd broke into plaudits, Cap'n Sproul felt a bit more comfortable, and dared to straighten his neck and lift his head-gear further into the sunshine.
He even forgot the hateful presence of his seat-mate, a huge dog that Mr. Bickford had invited into the fourth place in the carriage.
"A very valuable animal, gentlemen," he said. "Intelligent as a man, and my constant companion. To-day is the day of two of man's best friends--the horse and the dog--and Hector will be in his element."
But Hector, wagging and slavering amiably about in the narrow confines of the little stand to which they climbed, snapped the Cap'n's leash of self-control ere five minutes passed.
"Say, Mr. Bickford," he growled, after one or two efforts to crowd past the ubiquitous canine and get to the rail, "either me or your dog is in the way here."
"Charge, Hector!" commanded Mr. Bickford, taking one eye from the cheering multitude. The dog "clumped" down reluctantly.
"We might just as well get to an understandin'," said the Cap'n, not yet placated. "I ain't used to a dog underfoot, I don't like a dog, and I won't associate with a dog. Next thing I know I'll be makin' a misstep onto him, and he'll have a hunk out of me."
"Why, my dear captain," oozed Hector's proprietor, "that dog is as intelligent as a man, as mild as a kitten, and a very--"
"Don't care if he's writ a dictionary and nussed infants," cried the Cap'n, slatting out his arm defiantly; "it's him or me, here; take your choice!"
"I--I think your dog would be all right if you let him stay down-stairs under the stand," ventured President Kitchen, diplomatically.
"He's a valuable animal," demurred Mr. Bickford, "and--" He caught the flaming eye of the Cap'n, and added: "But if you'll have a man sit with him he may go.
"Now we'll settle down for a real nice afternoon," he went on, conciliatingly. "Let's see: This here is the cord that I pull to signal the horses to start, is it?"
"No, no!" expostulated President Kitchen, "you pull that bell-cord to call them back if the field isn't bunched all right at the wire when they score down for the word. If all the horses are in position and are all leveled, you shout 'Go!' and start your watch."
"Precisely," said Mr. Bickford.
"It's the custom," went on the president, solicitous for the success of his strange assortment of judges, yet with heart almost failing him, "for each judge to have certain horses that he watches during the mile for breaks or fouls. Then he places them as they come under the wire. That is so one man won't have too much on his mind."
"Very, very nice!" murmured the Honorable J. Percival. "We are here to enjoy the beautiful day and the music and the happy throngs, and we don't want to be too much taken up with our duties." He pushed himself well out into view over the rail, held his new gold watch in one gloved hand, and tapped time to the band with the other.


XII
A narrow flight of rickety, dusty stairs conducted one from the dim, lower region of the little stand through an opening in the floor of the judge's aerie. There was a drop-door over the opening, held up by a hasp.
Now came a thumping of resolute feet on the stairs; a head projected just above the edge of the opening, and stopped there.
"President, trustees, and judges!" hailed a squeaky voice.
Cap'n Sproul recognized the speaker with an uncontrollable snort of disgust.
It was Marengo Todd, most obnoxious of all that hateful crowd of the Cap'n's "wife's relations"--the man who had misused the Cap'n's honeymoon guilelessness in order to borrow money and sell him spavined horses.
Marengo surveyed them gloomily from under a driving-cap visor huge as a sugar-scoop. He flourished at them a grimy sheet of paper.
"Mister President, trustees, and judges, I've got here a dockyment signed by seventeen--"
President Kitchen knew that Marengo Todd had been running his bow-legs off all the forenoon securing signatures to a petition of protest that had been inspired by Trustee Silas Wallace. The president pushed away the hand that brandished the paper.
"What do you take this for--an afternoon readin'-circle?" he demanded. "If you're goin' to start your hoss in this thirty-four class you want to get harnessed. We're here to trot hosses, not to peruse dockyments."
"This 'ere ain't no pome on spring," yelled Marengo, banging the dust out of the floor with his whip-butt and courageously coming up one step on the stairs. "It's a protest, signed by seventeen drivers, and says if you start these events with them three old sofy pillers, there, stuffed into plug hats, for judges, we'll take this thing clear up to the Nayshunal 'Sociation and show up this fair management. There, chaw on that!"
"Why, bless my soul!" chirruped the Honorable Bickford, "this man seems very much excited. You'll have to run away, my good man! We're very busy up here, and have no time to subscribe to any papers."
Mr. Bickford evidently believed that this was one of the daily "touches" to which he had become accustomed.
"Don't ye talk to me like I was one of your salaried spittoon-cleaners," squealed Marengo, emboldened by the hoarse and encouraging whispers of Trustee Wallace in the dim depths below. The name that much repetition by Wallace had made familiar slipped out before he had time for second thought. "I knowed ye, Kittle-belly Bickford, when ye wore patches on your pants bigger'n dinner-plates and--"
President Kitchen let loose the hasp that held up the drop-door and fairly "pegged" Mr. Todd out of sight. He grinned apologetically at a furious Mr. Bickford.
"Order the marshal to call the hosses for the thirty-four trot, Honer'ble," he directed, anxious to give the starter something to do to take his mind off present matters.
Mr. Bickford obeyed, finding this exercise of authority a partial sop to his wounded feelings.
Cap'n Sproul pendulumed dispiritedly to and fro in the little enclosure, gloomily and obstinately waiting for the disaster that his seaman's sense of impending trouble scented. Hiram Look was frankly and joyously enjoying a scene that revived his old circus memories.
Eleven starters finally appeared, mostly green horses. The drivers were sullen and resentful. Marengo Todd was up behind a Gothic ruin that he called "Maria M." When he jogged past the judges' stand to get position, elbows on his knees and shoulders hunched up, the glare that he levelled on Bickford from under his scoop visor was absolutely demoniac. The mutter of his denunciation could be heard above the yells of the fakers and the squawk of penny whistles.
Occasionally he scruffed his forearm over his head as though fondling something that hurt him.
To start those eleven rank brutes on that cow-lane of a track would have tested the resources and language of a professional. When they swung at the foot of the stretch and came scoring for the first time it was a mix-up that excited the vociferous derision of the crowd. Nearly every horse was off his stride, the drivers sawing at the bits.
Marengo Todd had drawn the pole, but by delaying, in order to blast the Honorable J. Percival with his glances, he was not down to turn with the others, and now came pelting a dozen lengths behind, howling like a Modoc.
Some railbird satirist near the wire bawled "Go!" as the unspeakable riot swept past in dust-clouds. The Honorable Bickford had early possessed himself of the bell-cord as his inalienable privilege. He did not ring the bell to call the field back. He merely leaned far out, clutching the cord, endeavoring to get his eye on the man who had shouted "Go!" He declaimed above the uproar that the man who would do such a thing as that was no gentleman, and declared that he should certainly have a constable arrest the next man who interfered with his duties.
In the mean time President Kitchen was frantically calling to him to ring the gong. The horses kept going, for a driver takes no chances of losing a heat by coming back to ask questions. It was different in the case of Marengo Todd, driver of the pole-horse, and entitled to "protection." He pulled "Maria M." to a snorting halt under the wire and poured forth the vials of his artistic profanity in a way that piqued Cap'n Sproul's professional interest, he having heard more or less eminent efforts in his days of seafaring.
Lashed in this manner, the Honorable J. Percival Bickford began retort of a nature that reminded his fellow-townsmen that he was "Jabe" Bickford, of Smyrna, before he was donor of public benefits and libraries.
The grimness of Cap'n Sproul's face relaxed a little. He forgot even the incubus of the plug hat. He nudged Hiram.
"I didn't know he had it in him," he whispered. "I was afraid he was jest a dude and northin' else."
In this instance the dog Hector seemed to know his master's voice, and realized that something untoward was occurring. He came bounding out from under the stand and frisked backward toward the centre of the track in order to get a square look at his lord. In this blind progress he bumped against the nervous legs of "Maria M." She promptly expressed her opinion of the Bickford family and its attaches by rattling the ribs of Hector by a swift poke with her hoof.
The dog barked one astonished yap of indignation and came back with a snap that started the crimson on "Maria's" fetlock. She kicked him between the eyes this time--a blow that floored him. The next instant "Maria M." was away, Todd vainly struggling with the reins and trailing the last of his remarks over his shoulder. The dog was no quitter. He appeared to have the noble blood of which his master had boasted. After a dizzy stagger, he shot away after his assailant--a cloud of dust with a core of dog.
The other drivers, their chins apprehensively over their shoulders, took to the inner oval of the course or to the side lines. Todd, "Maria M.," and Hector were, by general impulse, allowed to become the whole show.
When the mare came under the wire the first time two swipes attempted to stop her by the usual method of suddenly stretching a blanket before her. She spread her legs and squatted. Todd shot forward. The mare had a long, stiff neck. Her driver went astraddle of it and stuck there like a clothes-pin on a line. Hector, in his cloud of dust, dove under the sulky and once more snapped the mare's leg, this time with a vigor that brought a squeal of fright and pain out of her. She went over the blanket and away again. The dog, having received another kick, and evidently realizing that he was still "it" in this grotesque game of tag, kept up the chase.
No one who was at Smyrna fair that day ever remembered just how many times the antagonists circled the track. But when the mare at last began to