No More Learning

a
head to make up freight, and sold raw and out of condition at Calcutta
for Rs. 275. People who lost money on him called him a "brumby;" but if
ever any horse had Harpoon's shoulders and The Gin's temper, Shackles
was that horse. Two miles was his own particular distance. He trained
himself, ran himself, and rode himself; and, if his jockey insulted
him by giving him hints, he shut up at once and bucked the boy off. He
objected to dictation. Two or three of his owners did not understand
this, and lost money in consequence. At last he was bought by a man who
discovered that, if a race was to be won, Shackles, and Shackles only,
would win it in his own way, so long as his jockey sat still.

This man had a riding-boy called Brunt--a lad from Perth, West
Australia--and he taught Brunt, with a trainer's whip, the hardest thing
a jock can learn--to sit still, to sit still, and to keep on sitting
still. When Brunt fairly grasped this truth, Shackles devastated the
country. No weight could stop him at his own distance; and The fame of
Shackles spread from Ajmir in the South, to Chedputter in the North.
There was no horse like Shackles, so long as he was allowed to do his
work in his own way. But he was beaten in the end; and the story of his
fall is enough to make angels weep.

At the lower end of the Chedputter racecourse, just before the turn into
the straight, the track passes close to a couple of old brick-mounds
enclosing a funnel-shaped hollow. The big end of the funnel is not six
feet from the railings on the off-side.
The astounding peculiarity of
the course is that, if you stand at one particular place, about half a
mile away, inside the course, and speak at an ordinary pitch, your voice
just hits the funnel of the brick-mounds and makes a curious whining
echo there. A man discovered this one morning by accident while out
training with a friend. He marked the place to stand and speak from
with a couple of bricks, and he kept his knowledge to himself. EVERY
peculiarity of a course is worth remembering in a country where rats
play the mischief with the elephant-litter, and Stewards build jumps to
suit their own stables.

This man ran a very fairish country-bred, a long, racking high mare
with the temper of a fiend, and the paces of an airy wandering seraph--a
drifty, glidy stretch. The mare was, as a delicate tribute to Mrs.
Reiver, called "The Lady Regula Baddun"--or for short, Regula Baddun.

Shackles' jockey, Brunt, was a quiet, well-behaved boy, but his nerves
had been shaken. He began his career by riding jump-races in Melbourne,
where a few Stewards want lynching, and was one of the jockeys who
came through the awful butchery--perhaps you will recollect it--of the
Maribyrnong Plate. The walls were colonial ramparts--logs of jarrak
spiked into masonry--with wings as strong as Church buttresses. Once
in his stride, a horse had to jump or fall. He couldn't run out. In the
Maribyrnong Plate, twelve horses were jammed at the second wall. Red
Hat, leading, fell this side, and threw out The Glen, and the ruck
came up behind and the space between wing and wing was one struggling,
screaming, kicking shambles. Four jockeys were taken out dead; three
were very badly hurt, and Brunt was among the three. He told the story
of the Maribyrnong Plate sometimes; and when he described how Whalley
on Red Hat, said, as the mare fell under him:--"God ha' mercy, I'm done
for!