6 7 



all the big stakes, and when he met Buchanan, who had 

 beaten him at Louisville, he quickly took the measure of his 

 one-time conqueror. Even Troubadour had beaten poor old 

 Loftin when he was too sick to run and give an account of 

 himself, and this made the victory a doubly interesting one. 

 It illustrates very clearly the point I have always made, that 

 a trainer must understand his horses before he can make 

 them do their best. Then a horse should always be fit before 

 he is started. Otherwise you injure the horse and perhaps 

 destroy his chances forever. 



Over at Churchill Downs, in Louisville, I found stable 

 room, and in a race of a mile and three-eighths, in which I 

 ran Powhattan, he was beaten a head on the post because 

 the boy could not get him out of a pocket. I warned him 

 against it, but cunning little Stoval and another boy pulled 

 together, wedge-like, and shut him off. They held him for 

 a mile. If he could have got out at any time during this 

 period he would have won. 



In a two-mile-heat race later Powhattan was a winner, 

 and Col. Sam Bryant, who once owned the famous Proctor 

 Knott and won thousands of dollars with him, remarked 

 that my work on the horse was something so remarkable 

 that it was beyond his comprehension. He had left Louis- 

 ville in the spring a cripple, sick, broken down and abso- 

 lutely of no account, and now he had returned one of the 

 best horses of the year. 



That fall I fired Loftin and brought him back to St. 

 Louis. During the ensuing spring Col. Johnson died at 

 Knoxville, and thus passed away one of the truest and best 

 friends any man ever had. He was often called the " Mag- 

 net of the American Turf/' so attractive was his personality, 

 and no man so well deserved the title. Everybody liked him 

 and he liked everybody. 



This untimely and sorrowful incident necessitated the 

 settling up of his estate, and I repaired to Lexington with 

 the horses that had made his name famous all over the 

 country and that had won him so many thousands of dollars. 

 Even now, as I write it, tears come to the eyes of the man 

 who loved him as devotedly as a brother. 



The horses were sold at public sale and the string drifted 

 apart. This ended the association of two men who had been 



