Part 6 (1/2)
I had now been making a business of training athletes for nearly a year, getting a good living out of it, and had at the beginning a nice little nest-egg in the bank, ready for a rainy day.
Exactly how this was acc.u.mulated I do not care to say. These tales are in no sense confessions, and I shall avoid the ”strutting I” as much as possible.
After my defeat of ”Chipper” Simmons, at Hacking's Brighton track, there were a couple of years pa.s.sed not at all to my liking, though profitably enough for one of small ideas. I took on matches wherever they promised a dollar. I ran everybody, and every distance, from a fifty-yard dash to a mile run, and almost invariably won, largely because of the pains I took with myself, and my careful training. I learned all the tricks of the trade, gave close finishes always, did an artistic ”fainting act,”
and made myself a subject of regretful, not to say painful, remembrance to a large part of the sporting fraternity.
They stood it all right for a couple of years, but the summer before I met MacLeod I suddenly discovered I had about squeezed the orange dry.
They had, very naturally, grown more and more shy of me, until it had become impossible to obtain a match, except under prohibitive conditions. I tried giving good men eight yards in the ”hundred” and one hundred yards in the mile for a while, but discovered it was a hard business, with nothing in it. My only profit, as far as I could see, was to run crooked, and fake a race or two, but at this, though not over-nice, I drew the line.
I was willing to underrate my powers, and fool the fancy on my condition; to win by a scant yard with pretended effort, in order to pull on my opponent to another race; but to back him on the sly and lie down, to pull money from my friends, I could not. A gentleman I might not be, but honest I would be still. Indeed, despite the ”winning way” I had, my reputation was of the best as a rare, good runner, as a square man who gave his backers a straight run for their money, and as the most knowing man in the States concerning work and training for the cinder-path.
On this last I made up my mind to trade. I announced my absolute retirement as a contestant, and my intention to make a business of training and handling others.
My prices startled them a bit at the beginning, but after I had made a few winners out of almost impossible timber, I was kept fairly well occupied. When the winter put a stop to my out-of-doors work, I became instructor in a gymnasium, and gave lessons in boxing and fencing. I even prepared one man for a ring contest, which he won, thanks to his perfect condition, after acting as a chopping-block to a better boxer for a couple of hours, this affair satisfying me at once and forever with the prize ring.
At the coming of the spring I found my book very well filled, and would by June have been quite content to have trained Mac with no recompense whatever.
Yet I had no objections to make money from others, and discovered a very fair opportunity, as I thought, about two weeks before the games. I then received a bit of information that there was a dark horse grooming for the hammer throw, in the person of an Irishman by the name of Duffy. He was an enormous fellow, as strong as an ox, could do nearly one hundred feet, and the tip made him a sure winner.
Now, I was very confident I knew better, though ninety feet, in those days, was phenomenal for an amateur, and a throw of one hundred had not been made in any previous contest. The best of the news was kept for the last, and that was that Duffy had plenty of friends with good money to back him.
I figured at once that MacLeod could just about call the trick, that being a smaller man would help the odds, and that, properly managed, there was a pretty penny in it.
Mac was now doing from one hundred to one hundred and five in the most consistent manner, and I made up my mind to plunge on him a bit, keeping quiet so that Duffy's friends might show their hands first. This was easy enough, for Mac did all his work after supper in the vacant lot back of his house, where no one could pull a tape over his throws. It was prudent, also, for MacLeod had very rigid ideas about betting (gambling he called it), and would undoubtedly have protested, if he had not declined to show at all.
Duffy's friends began very cautiously with small figures, and I took all that showed through a third party. When one hundred dollars was promptly covered, however, they made up their minds there was something else good, and became a bit shy.
I let them alone until the evening before the excursion, when I sallied into the Duffy neighborhood, and at one to two offered to produce a man weighing under one hundred and seventy pounds who would win against all.
Now, a hammer-thrower of this weight is rare, and I found all the money I cared to cover. Indeed, I exceeded my limit a trifle. Then I wandered over to Mac's field, pulled the tape over his throw of one hundred and eight, and went home and to sleep, for not a grain of anxiety had I over the result. I doubt if I should have given five per cent. to be insured a winner.
The day dawned, fine and hot. We went down from Boston a good three hundred strong, men, women, and children, the last turning out a whole clan by themselves. There were bagpipes squealing, babies crying, and a Babel of rough Scotch tongues. Tartans were displayed in all the colors of the rainbow. Some were content to show only a tie, ribbon, or shawl, but a fair percentage were in full Highland costume, and far from comfortable many of them looked.
The dress is wonderfully picturesque, and nothing is more becoming to an athletic man with straight legs and strong brown knees. But for a petty tradesman with legs like pipe-stems, knock-kneed, and ghastly white it is particularly trying, and many of the gallant Scots looked as if they would like to don the protecting ”breeks” to which they had become accustomed.
We all piled into the hot and dusty cars, and after an hour and a half were glad to get a breath of fresh air as we steamed down the bay.
Indeed, when we reached the ”Point,” a little before noon, I was loath to go ash.o.r.e, for the trees on a ridge of land cut off the wind, and the place was like a furnace.
Nothing looked comfortable but a pair of bronze lions who flanked the roadway to the hotel, and had they been alive I am sure they would have found the day altogether too tropical.
I could see the crowds flocking around the swings, merry-go-rounds, and the monkey cage, and there was a motley crowd in hired bathing-suits enjoying a dip in the salt water. Of these last only was I in the least envious.
The clans, immediately upon landing, formed in procession, and marched off in the broiling sun, a half-dozen pipers playing ”The Campbells are coming” as loudly as possible, skirling like so many pigs under a gate.
The most conspicuous figure was an old fellow who blew as if his life depended on the effort, and until I feared he would burst his bagpipe if he did not rupture a blood-vessel first.
He seemed to feel that the world was looking at him, and he was well conscious of its admiration. He was big-boned, loose-jointed, and so sandy that it was a riddle to guess his age. His shoulders were badly rounded, but he straightened up every few seconds in an abortive effort to appear erect on this occasion, if never again. He was clad in full Highland costume, even to dirk and claymore,--a rather unusual accompaniment, and dangerous as well, for a Scot on a merry-making where Scotch whiskey and Scotch ale mingle freely. He wore the MacNab tartan, and the kilt looked as if it had been slept in, all twisted and wrinkled.
As the clans marched up the hill and between the lions, I could see the bright red tartans of the Frasers, the black and green of the Gordons, and the beautiful parti-colors of the Stewarts. There were many others, all showing bright in the sun; and there was a lift to the heels of the marchers which nothing could have caused but the shrill notes of the bagpipes. Indeed, they were enough to start the sluggish blood in my veins, though I suppose my ancestors had long years ago heard the same sounds with resentment, as the Scots swarmed over the border. As a parlor instrument I should admit it had its superiors, but for strong men going to battle I doubt if it has its equal.
There were all kinds of men in the crowd, from the gray-haired veteran to the little fellow, born on American soil, who had never seen the tartan kilts except on a holiday. There were a number of contestants in the line, with strong, athletic figures, but not one could compare with Angus, in the yellow and black of the MacLeods, as he marched, almost the last. I saw the girls had their eyes on him, though Mac neither noticed nor cared, for he thought them ”kittle cattle,” and was much fonder of handling hammer and shot.