The Australasian/1936/11/21/The Shearer's Colt

Harry Raynham was a tall, bearded Australian of about fifty—so like a bushman that urgers had more than once tried to "tell him the tale" about his own horses.

Born of a farming family, he had run away from home to join a circus at the age of 12, but the nauseous medicine given to circus boys to make their bones supple soon tired him of that business. Running away from the circus, he joined a country racing stable, where he worked for a bachelor boss who did his own cooking, and who fed him mostly on a diet of sausages, they being a form of food that could be cooked with very little trouble and with a fair chance of satisfactory result.

By the time that he had eaten about half a mile of sausages he was a competent horseman and got a job in Sydney breaking in yearlings for one of the big stables. Here he stayed on for some years, working as a breaker, jockey, and stable-hand, and he soon distinguished himself. not only by his instinct for horses, but by an ability to handle punters and owners. From presents and a few judicious bets of his own, he put together a couple of thousand pounds while still working as a stable-hand.

Then his boss died, and it looked as though the string would be dispersed to the four winds of heaven. A very wealthy old lady, however, for whom Harry had found several winners, bought the dead man's stables and installed Harry there as her trainer. Other patrons left their horses with him, just to see how he would get on.

Harry Raynham knew nothing except horses, but he knew them thoroughly. By spending a few shillings among the men who came down with yearlings, he would get to know which yearling was the winner of the races that the foals and yearlings hold among themselves in the paddocks, and so he picked up some amazing bargains.

For instance, he gave 40 guineas for an unfashionably-bred, ungainly yearling which afterwards, under the name of Masterpiece, won £40,000 in stakes. From that time he could pick and choose among the wealthiest owners as patrons. ••••• In anticipation of the Governor's visit, Long Harry, as Raynham was habitually called, had put on his best clothes, consisting of a reach-me-down suit of tweeds and a cabbage-tree hat—the latter costing five pounds, though it looked the sort of thing you could buy in any draper's for five shillings.

His wife had put on everything she had, including four bracelets, valued at a hundred guineas each, that had been won by the horses at various times.

Of course the party had to have tea—nothing is done in Australia without tea. While Mrs. Harry poured out the tea, displaying her bracelets to the best advantage, the Governor tried to engage Harry in conversation; but he could get nothing out of Harry except "Yes, Your Lord" and "No, Your Lord." When the conversation looked like dying in its tracks one of the semi-vice-regal sisters, aching to patronise somebody, started on Long Harry.

"What a beautiful place you have here, Mr. Raynham." she said. "The grass all cut and everything so neat. You must tell us all the winners at the races on Saturday."

This was like striking artesian water, for it unloosed the flow of Harry's conversation with a rush.

"Lady," he said, "if I knew all the winners, do you think I'd get up at 4 o'clock in the morning and get me feet wet watchin' horses work? Do you think I'd go down to the track with a string of yearlings playin' about on the asphalt, and me wonderin' whether they'd break their own necks or the boys'? If I knew the winner of one race at each meeting I'd never get up till 10 o'clock in the morning. And I'd play cards all night and go fishing all day. Have some more tea."

It is one of the penalties of Governorship that when any difficult situation arises, the holder of that exalted rank is expected, in the words of the American baseball game, to step to the bat and hit a home run. Like a star actor, he must not linger in the wings while the lesser characters brawl upon the stage. His Excellency knew that the semi-vice-regal sister had a tongue of her own, and might resent the trainer's remarks in a regrettable way, so he hastened to take charge of the proceedings.

In the ponderous manner he found most effective on official occasions he delivered his judgment:

"I am sure, Mr. Raynham." he said, "that trainers have to contend with a lot of difficulties in their arduous and exacting occupation. The responsibility of a long string of valuable horses must be very great. The public are apt to attribute to trainers an omniscience which they do not possess."

Here he turned suddenly on Mrs. Raynham, who became terrified and held up her bracelets in an attitude of self-defence.

"No doubt, you have heard, Mrs. Raynham," he went on, "of the Shah of Persia who refused to go to a race meeting because he said he already knew that one horse could run faster than the others. But he seems to me to have missed the point, because thousands of our struggling fellow citizens spend most of their waking hours in an attempt to find out which horse can run faster than the others.

"There are some people, of course, who detest the sport of racing. The last time that I visited a trainer's establishment I received from the Society for the Prevention of Human Enjoyment a circular headed 'You are on the road to hell.' But Captain Salter has had experience in such matters, and I have no doubt that his judgment, aided by what your husband may care to tell him, should enable the ladies to participate profitably in what is, in their case, a very harmless enjoyment. Let us now go and look at the horses."

As the procession moved through the yard His Excellency drew his aide aside, and with the air of a man delivering an important order he muttered:—

"Psalmsey, try to find out from this old savage whether he fancies his two-year-old next Saturday. I might as well have a tenner on it." ••••• The loose-boxes occupied three sides of a quadrangle, with a neatly kept grass plot in the centre. The half-doors of the boxes were open, and from each box there showed the lean head and bright eyes of a thoroughbred. All greeted Long Harry with a chorus of whinnies. Affecting to despise his popularity, the trainer waved his hand towards them and said:

"'Ark to 'em. You'd think they was fond o' me. But when I come down to the track of a mornin' they all start to fidget and darnce. They know they've got to gallop. Would you like the boys to bring 'em out, Your Lord?"

Having to preside at a meeting of the Anti-Gambling Society in half an hour, His Lordship was pressed for time; so he said that he could only wait to see Mr. Carstairs's horse. At a nod from the trainer a boy led into the centre of the grass plot the finest horse that any of those present had ever seen.

Dark chestnut in colour, with a long, narrow blaze down his face, Sensation strode out on to the grass with the easy stride of a panther. It seemed strange that so massive a creature could move so daintily. His silky, tapering ears and steel-like legs told of a throwback to his Arab ancestry, while his size was evidently an inheritance from the other blood —possibly Spanish—that goes to make up the thoroughbred. His head was set on at an obtuse angle, throwing his nostrils forward, and the width of his gullet, left room, as his trainer said, for a bird to build its nest between his jaws.

His neck was only slightly arched and appeared light for so big a horse, but the arch and the solidity would come later on in life. He presented a sort of stream-line effect; for his neck ran back into his shoulders, and his shoulders ran back into his ribs, with a smoothness that made it hard to say where the one ended and the other began. A deep, but by no means broad, chest was another streamline feature. And he had no suspicion of a "waist," for his ribs ran back to a slightly arched loin, which gave the impression of the strength and suppleness of a steel spring. His hips were broad and his rump was carried back for an appreciable distance without any droop—much as one sees it in the old pictures of Stockwell taken in the days when the thoroughbreds were closer to the Arab type than they are to-day.

Everything about him fitted so perfectly that it was only by standing behind him that his breadth and weight could be realised. Red Fred's starved soul had never dreamed of owning a horse like this. At last he felt that he was really getting something for his money. Though he knew little about racing, Red Fred had made friends with horses on many a long shearing trip, and when his new owner walked up to him the big horse recognised a man who had the love of horses in his system. He rubbed his nose against his owner's waistcoat and the trainer called out:

"Rub him round the lips and the mouth, boss. That's what he likes. Some days I'll put in an hour talkin' to him and rubbin' him about the head. Keeps him contented-like, and makes him take to his grub."

In a sort of daze Red Fred turned to the trainer: "What has this horse won?" he said.

"What has he won? Lor' blime, what hasn't he won? Breeders' Plate, Sydney and Melbourne Derbies, Craven Plate, Melbourne Cup with seven pounds over weight for age—everything he ever went for. Never been beaten, this feller. He's in the Leger and the Sydney Cup now. But they've put the grandstand on him for the Sydney Cup, and I won't run him in that. He's a horse, not a weightlifter."

The Government House party then took their departure, without having had a chance to ask any questions about the stable two-year-old, leaving the trainer, the owner, his secretary and Charley Stone to discuss the campaign. Red Fred was so frightened of the trainer that only by a desperate effort could he bring himself to say that he was thinking of taking the horse to England.

"I'll send you a couple of horses I have in Queensland," he added, by way of propitiating the autocrat. If Red Fred expected an argument on the point, he did not get it, for the matter was settled in a couple of sentences.

"Go to England!" said Long Harry, staring at him as a schoolmaster might stare at a pupil who asked leave to swim the Channel. "Go to England! What's the sense of that? It costs half a crown a minute to live there, they tell me! Top hats an' spats and all the like o' that! Oh, no, this 'orse don't go to England. Come and I'll show you a two-year-old that might make something if he goes on the right way."

This closed the matter for the time being, and Red Fred and his satellites retired in disorder and a taxi-cab. But Fitzroy had heard from the semi-vice-regal sister that Moira Delahunty was coming to Sydney on a visit, and was then going on to England. So he decided that he and his employer and Sensation would all go to England, even if he had to forge Fred's name to the order for the shipment of the horse.

During the next few days Moira Delahunty and her father arrived from Queensland and went to stay with relatives in a fashionable suburb. Red Fred and his secretary still remained at their unpretentious hotel; the millionaire had made friends with the landlord's children and refused to move. Getting a day off from his secretarial duties (which were practically nil) Fitzroy went out to call on Moira and her father.

As the old gentleman was away, he took Moira for a run round the harbour suburbs in a car, and they were soon discussing the happenings since the affair with the Chinaman at Calabash.

"How have you been getting on?" Moira asked. "Have you had to carry Red Fred lately? I knew him when he used to shear for us and he was the quietest man I have ever known. And now look at him! You can't pick up a newspaper without seeing his name in it and all about his horse. We're off to England soon. Couldn't you get away and come, too?"

"That's just it," said Fitzroy. "He bought this horse to take to England, and now his trainer won't let him go. We'll have to fix that up somehow. The boss has let other people order him about all his life, so that now if anybody stamps a foot at him he wants to run under the bed. Fancy, if we could get away to England with that horse on board, what a trip we'd have! Did you hear any word about that stolen yearling of mine?"

"Yes. The black-tracker got on to the tracks of some horses and he ran them for a mile. Then he came on to two white men and a Chinaman leading three beautiful young horses. He told me: 'I been think it better I arrest them feller, but the Chinaman he pull out a revolver and he say, Go back, you black mongrel, or we shoot you.' So I said to him: 'What did you do then, Billy?' 'I went back,' said Billy. But father says the horse will turn up all right; they're sure to race him."

Then they discussed hunting in Ireland with the soft light on the hills, and the dewdrops on the hedges, and the Irish hunters springing on to the banks and off again, and the ladies of title (with horses to sell) who would jump on a fallen man to attract his attention to their horses. Fitzroy inquired after Maggie. Moira told him that at the last shearing Maggie had strolled up to the shed when shearing was over and found the shearers' cook going away with some kerosene tins of kitchen fat, which were his perquisite. But a dab of Maggie's knife into the fat had revealed that the tins were full of plates, knives, and forks, covered over with fat. Maggie had confiscated fat and all. Then they talked of Sensation's chance in England. Moira said:

"I stick up for the Irish when I'm here, but I stick up for the Australians when I'm at Home, for that's the way the Irish are. I'll cheer this horse over there and and I'd cheer an Irish horse here."

By the time the drive was over they were, in their minds, writing the name of Sensation on the hearts of the English bookmakers. ••••• Leger day at Randwick drew all parties to the course as a magnet draws steel filings. The cynosure of all eyes was Red Fred who was invited—one had better say compelled—to join the Government House party.

In the days when he had been chipped by a soulless boss of the board for making second cuts in a sheep's fleece, he had solaced his feelings by dreams of the days when he would be wealthy and powerful and generally admired, and able to walk round his own shed with every shearer keeping close to the skin while the boss's eye was on him. Now that those days had arrived they fell far short of the dreams. Everybody turned to stare at him as he went into the ring.

By way of escaping public notice, he went inside the rails to Sensation's stall, and they mutually enjoyed themselves while he rubbed the chestnut horse about the mouth. But somebody passed the word, and press photographers arrived in shoals, knocking people out of the way, and calling out to him, "Turn round a bit, mister, so that we can get your face."

When the Governor's wife congratulated him on the ownership of such a beautiful horse he thought with horror of the fight ahead of him before he could get the horse away from Long Harry. When he drifted down to stand for a while alongside his old friend Jim Fraser, the crowd that came to gape and not to bet was so dense that Fraser asked him to go away.

"I won't hold five shillings while you're standing there. Fred," he complained.

At this juncture Long Harry arrived and cut Red Fred out of the crowd as skilfully as a stockman cuts out a steer from a mob. The trainer had been handling owners all his life, and had no idea of letting such a Koh-i-noor of the punting world lie round loose to be picked up by any adventurer.

"Come along o' me," he said, "and I'll tell you what to back. The favourite in this fust race is drawn right away from the rails and he'll want to be a flying machine to come in from there and win. Now, this tiling 'ere—Snowfire," he went on, turning over his book and dropping his voice, to the discomfiture of some loiterers who appeared to be enlarging their ears in an effort to hear what was said, "this thing 'ere, Snowfire, belongs to a mate o' mine, and we gave 'im a run with your 'orse, and it made the big feller stretch out to beat him."

"The crowd are backing one of mine in this race, a thing called Sylvester. He's second favourite. If I had a donkey in, they'd make it second favourite. But you might as well ask a fish to climb a tree as ask mine to beat Snowfire. Go and put a hundred on Snowfire and see me at my stall after lunch."

Following, as usual, the line of least resistance. Red Fred went and put a hundred on Snowfire at six to one. and then, with a sinking heart, he rejoined the Government House party. He found things less strenuous than he expected. The party were listening spellbound to a very large and confident young man who had just arrived from England.

This was a Mr. Noall. In England he was secretary to a Prime Minister, and was himself in line for political honours; also, he owned a string of racehorses and was just as sure about racehorses as he was about everything else.

He was the glass of fashion and the mould of form. But to the eyes of the two Englishmen—Captain Salter and Fitzroy—he didn't seem quite right. He was just a little too loud in the neck-tie and too large in the tie-pin for their money. If they had been asked to name his nationality they would have said that he was a Levantine Greek; and they would not have been far wrong.

"I won't have the favourite for this race," said Mr. Noall with the air of a man whose decision is final and subject to no appeal.

"This thing of Harry Raynham's, Sylvester—he's a stone certainty. He was strangled by his rider last time he ran. The stewards never saw it; but I saw it. They let that stable get away with murder. They're putting a thousand on him to-day, so you must all be on it. You can get sixes. Go and get on before they shorten it."

Fearing to be drawn into an argument with this omniscient person. Red Fred looked round for a way of escape, and to his delight he saw Moira smiling at him from the crowd. She and Fitzroy had also been asked to the official luncheon, and were only waiting for the first race to be run before joining the select band for the vice-regal table.

"Oh, Fred," said Moira, "I've got such a lot of things to talk to you about. You must sit next me at lunch. There's no time to talk now. Did Raynham tell you anything about this race?"

"Yes, he said his horse was no good, and that Snowfire would win. But you heard what that young fellow said? He said Raynham's horse was a certainty. Raynham must ha' been tellin' me lies. They're terribly crook some of these racin' chaps."

"Don't you believe it. Fred. Father says that the racecourses are full of people who like to show off and tell everybody the winner, and when their certainty gets beaten they say it was pulled. And the worst of it is that the crowd believes them. Father heard a man talking like that about one of his horses, and he tried to ram the man's racebook down his throat. Father said it was the only remedy an owner had. … Now, Fitz, we've got this beautiful tip about Snowfire, and I'm going to have a tenner on it. Run down and put it on for me, quick. They're at the post."