“Now about the best horse Stu Gallon ever trained was a grey stallion named Silver Spectre. Ever heard of him?”
I shook my head. And I knew most of the good horses in those days.
“It was thirty or more years ago, of course, and the Spectre never got to show what he could really do. But he was a good one — right, Fred?”
Fred nodded solemnly. “He could have been a great one. He was a beautiful thing too. His coat was nearly white, and that was a time when grey horses were a novelty on American tracks. I remember folks used to say that grey horses were bad luck, but I never bought that.”
The bartender, who had established himself through the evening as the best raconteur of the group, took up the story again. “Well, Silver Spectre became a real favorite of the track patrons, for his style as much as for his color. He won four straight races at the Downs that year, beating a tougher field each time he went to the post. And every single time he’d enter the first turn at the rear of the field, and on the backstretch he’d sometimes be fifteen or twenty lengths behind the leader, but on the far turn he’d suddenly start to get himself in gear and make his move. As they turned into the stretch he’d be picking up his opposition one by one, and by the finish line he’d have his grey neck in front one way or another. He was a real crowd pleaser, I can tell you. I won some money on him in my day.”
Fred allowed a suggestion of a smile to crease his grim face. “You were lucky, Charley. I just ate his dust.”
“Well, came the week of the Blakemore Handicap — that was a real big race in those days. Horses used to ship in for it from all over the East. One year Equipoise was supposed to come—”
“And another year,” Fred added, “Seabiscuit was supposed to come.”
I laughed. “But who did come?”
“A lot of big horses came,” said Fred. “It really was a big race.”
“Sure it was,” I said. “I remember.”
They seemed mollified. Charley went on. “Well, this particular year everybody was talking about Silver Spectre and whether he was good enough to challenge the great field that would be going to the post that Saturday. He’d beaten the best horses stabled on the grounds, but he hadn’t yet faced any horses as good as some of the ones shipping in. I remember on Tuesday of that week there was a rumor going around that he had hurt himself in his stall and it was doubtful Stu Gallon would run him. All week it was touch and go. But on Saturday, sure enough, his name turned up in the entries.
“Well, the weather that day was typical of the kind of luck that dogged the Downs all the years it was in business—”
“Dogged this whole town, in fact,” another of the regulars amended.
“That’s right. The fog rolled in. The folks in the grandstand — I wasn’t there, I had to work the bar that day — could only see the stretch run. Beyond the turns, around the backside, you couldn’t see a thing. All in all it was a crummy day to have to run the Blakemore Handicap, but they had a big crowd just the same. And sure enough, when the bugler played ‘Boots and Saddles,’ there was Silver Spectre going to the post with Ike McCann on his back.”
Fred tilted his glass in a suggestion of a toast. “A great rider,” he said.
“Some of the folks that were there that day swear that Silver Spectre looked lame in the post parade.”
“If it were now,” Fred put in, “the vet would have scratched him on the spot. They weren’t as careful in them days.”
“Did you think he looked lame?” I asked Fred.
“I wasn’t there — I had a mount in New York that day. I’m glad I missed it.”
I looked around at the other regulars. “Were any of you there?”
None of them had been. I sighed. This was a second- or third-hand story I was getting. And when was the ghost coming into it?
“I’ve seen pictures,” said Charley. “And I know from the pictures that he had one foreleg wrapped going to the post — the right, I think. And we all know that any kind of front bandage makes a bettor wary. But to have just one leg bandaged! You might as well hang a sign reading UNSOUND around the horse’s neck.
“It was a big field for the race — fifteen. They started from behind the webbing — that was before the days of the starting gate, you know. It was a mile-and-a-quarter race, so they went all the way down the homestretch once, in front of the crowd, then all the way around again. Silver Spectre broke with his field, but as usual he dropped quickly to the rear of the pack. He looked to be running O.K. though, and his fans were yelling encouragement to him and Ike McCann as the field passed the stands. If anything, the Spectre was closer to the pace than usual, even though all fourteen others had him beat going to the turn. Then the field swept past the clubhouse and out of sight into the fog.”
Charley paused a beat for emphasis, then gave me the next bit dramatically.
“My friend, fifteen horses entered that fog, and only fourteen returned. It was much later before most of the spectators were to learn that Silver Spectre had gone down on the backstretch, his right foreleg broken. The vet put him down on the spot. What was worse, Ike McCann had fallen on his head, and after a couple of days in a coma he was dead too.”
“It was a terrible tragedy,” said Fred. “They buried Silver Spectre in the infield at the Downs. Ike’s family had him buried in a regular cemetery but, knowing him, I think he’d have liked to be buried alongside the Spectre. He loved that horse.”
“And he hated Gallon,” said Charley.
“Sure. The two emotions went together.”
“Everybody figured Gallon ran the horse when he shouldn’t have,” said Charley.
“And everybody was right,” said Fred. “He did.”
“Up to then, Stu Gallon was unpopular only with people who knew him. Now he was hated by a world of horse lovers who had never met him. Stu Gallon had become the most despised man on the American turf.”
A touch of hyperbole there, I thought. I’d never even heard of Stu Gallon until that evening.
“For a while at least,” Charley went on, “it didn’t seem to make that much difference to Gallon’s career. As I say, he was a good trainer, nasty as he was, and his horses won their share of purses. But then things started to go bad for Stu Gallon. We ought to tell you about a certain morning in October, some thirty years back. It was during the morning training period out at the Downs, and it was pea-soup foggy. You were there, weren’t you, Fred?”
The ex-rider nodded his head. “Yeah, I can give you this part first hand. It was a terrible morning, but the business of training horses went on as usual. The dockers had to keep a close watch on horses going on and off the track. They didn’t want any expensive pieces of horseflesh running into each other in that treacherous fog. Oh, I guess they didn’t want any of us jockeys getting ourselves killed either, but that wasn’t uppermost.
“I remember I was sitting on a brown two-year-old filly. I don’t remember her name — she wasn’t much. We were at the gap on the back-stretch where you could go from the stable area onto the track to work out. The ground crew had been renovating the track, so no one had been allowed to go out for several minutes. The filly’s trainer and I were about to take her onto the track — the chief docker had given us the nod — when all of a sudden this big grey stallion comes charging out of the fog, hell bent for leather. He was hugging the rail, and the boy on his back was pumping him for all he was worth. As he streaked past us, the chief docker was sputtering about how he hadn’t let any horse on the track and where the hell had the grey come from. He told his outrider to go after the horse and rider, but the outrider, who’d turned downright pale, said to him, ‘Not me, boss. I ain’t chasin’ no ghosts.’