Good Old Bess.
Supper was over at Shingle Hut, and we were all seated round the fire--all except Joe. He was mousing. He stood on the sofa with one ear to the wall in a listening attitude, and brandished a table-fork. There were mice--mobs of them--between the slabs and the paper--layers of newspapers that had been pasted one on the other for years until they were an inch thick; and whenever Joe located a mouse he drove the fork into the wall and pinned it--or reckoned he did.
Dad sat pensively at one corner of the fire-place--Dave at the other with his elbows on his knees and his chin resting in his palms.
"Think you could ride a race, Dave?" asked Dad.
"Yairs," answered Dave, without taking his eyes off the fire, or his chin from his palms--"could, I suppose, if I'd a pair o' lighter boots 'n these."Again they reflected.
Joe triumphantly held up the mutilated form of a murdered mouse and invited the household to "Look!" No one heeded him.
"Would your Mother's go on you?"
"Might," and Dave spat into the fire.
"Anyway," Dad went on, "we must have a go at this handicap with the old mare; it's worth trying for, and, believe me, now! she'll surprise a few of their flash hacks, will Bess.""Yairs, she can go all right." And Dave spat again into the fire.
" GO! I've never known anything to keep up with her. Why, bless my soul, seventeen years ago, when old Redwood owned her, there was n't a horse in the district could come within coo-ee of her. All she wants is a few feeds of corn and a gallop or two, and mark my words she'll show some of them the way."Some horse-races were being promoted by the shanty-keeper at the Overhaul--seven miles from our selection. They were the first of the kind held in the district, and the stake for the principal event was five pounds. It was n't because Dad was a racing man or subject to turf hallucinations in any way that he thought of preparing Bess for the meeting. We sadly needed those five pounds, and, as Dad put it, if the mare could only win, it would be an easier and much quicker way of making a bit of money than waiting for a crop to grow.
Bess was hobbled and put into a two-acre paddock near the house. We put her there because of her wisdom. She was a chestnut, full of villainy, an absolutely incorrigible old rogue. If at any time she was wanted when in the grass paddock, it required the lot of us from Dad down to yard her, as well as the dogs, and every other dog in the neighbourhood. Not that she had any brumby element in her--she would have been easier to yard if she had--but she would drive steadily enough, alone or with other horses, until she saw the yard, when she would turn and deliberately walk away.
If we walked to head her she beat us by half a length; if we ran she ran, and stopped when we stopped. That was the aggravating part of her! When it was only to go to the store or the post-office that we wanted her, we could have walked there and back a dozen times before we could run her down; but, somehow, we generally preferred to work hard catching her rather than walk.
When we had spent half the day hunting for the curry-comb, which we did n't find, Dad began to rub Bess down with a corn-cob--a shelled one--and trim her up a bit. He pulled her tail and cut the hair off her heels with a knife; then he gave her some corn to eat, and told Joe he was to have a bundle of thistles cut for her every night. Now and again, while grooming her, Dad would step back a few paces and look upon her with pride.
"There's great breeding in the old mare," he would say, "great breeding;look at the shoulder on her, and the loin she has; and where did ever you see a horse with the same nostril? Believe me, she'll surprise a few of them!"We began to regard Bess with profound respect; hitherto we had been accustomed to pelt her with potatoes and blue-metal.
The only thing likely to prejudice her chance in the race, Dad reckoned, was a small sore on her back about the size of a foal's foot. She had had that sore for upwards of ten years to our knowledge, but Dad hoped to have it cured before the race came off with a never-failing remedy he had discovered--burnt leather and fat.
Every day, along with Dad, we would stand on the fence near the house to watch Dave gallop Bess from the bottom of the lane to the barn--about a mile. We could always see him start, but immediately after he would disappear down a big gully, and we would see nothing more of the gallop till he came to within a hundred yards of us. And would n't Bess bend to it once she got up the hill, and fly past with Dave in the stirrups watching her shadow!--when there was one: she was a little too fine to throw a shadow always. And when Dave and Bess had got back and Joe had led her round the yard a few times, Dad would rub the corn-cob over her again and apply more burnt-leather and fat to her back.
