The Project Gutenberg EBook of Thoroughbreds, by W. A. Fraser

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Title: Thoroughbreds

Author: W. A. Fraser

Release Date: October, 2005 [EBook #9088]
Posting Date: July 23, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOROUGHBREDS ***

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THOROUGHBREDS

by W. A. Fraser

Dedicated to a THOROUGHBRED MY WIFE

I

Less than a hundred miles from the city of Gotham, across broad green
fields, dotted into squares and oblong valleys by full-leafed maple,
and elm, and mulberry, was the village of Brookfield. A hundred years
of expansion in the surrounding land had acted inversely with the little
hamlet, and had pinched it into a hermitical isolation.

The Brookfieldians had discovered a huge beetle in the amber of their
serene existence; it was really the Reverend Dolman who had unearthed
the monster. The beetle in the amber was horse racing, and the prime
offender, practically the sole culprit, was John Porter.

By an inconsistent twist of fate he was known as Honest John. His father
before him had raced in old Kentucky to considerable purpose, and with
the full vigor of a man who races for sport; and so to the son John,
in consequence, had come little beyond a not-to-be-eradicated love
of thoroughbreds. To race squarely, honestly, and to the glory of
high-couraged horses was to him as much a matter of religion as the
consistent guardianship of parish morals was to the Reverend George
Dolman. Therefore, two men of strong beliefs were set on opposite sides
of the fence.

Even in the Porter household, which was at Ringwood Farm, was divided
allegiance. Mrs. Porter was possessed of an abhorrent detestation of
horse racing; also an assertive Christianity. The daughter, Allison, had
inherited the horse taint. The swinging gallop of a striving horse was
to her the obliteration of everything but sunshine, and the smile of
fields, and the blur of swift-gliding hedges, and the driving perfume
of clover-laden winds that passed strong into spread nostrils. For
Alan Porter, the son, there were columns of figures and musty-smelling
bundles of tattered paper