"CHERRY AND BLACK" 



Adventurer. As a yearling, his trial of ^ mile in 36 

 was so good that he was shipped to Eng- 

 y ,. J. . , land, but performed so indifferently that, 

 as a three-year-old in 1884, he was 

 brought home with several others. Byrnes was ordered 

 to "sell the lot," but keep one of them "if he thought 

 him worth it." It narrowed down to Choctaw and 

 Pontiac which should be retained, and Byrnes' fondness 

 for Pizarro decided him in favor of Pontiac as "the 

 nephew of his uncle." 



Pontiac managed to get into the Suburban of 1885 

 with 102 lbs. and defeated a field of fifteen in a romp, 

 Byrnes having to shout to Olney to "take it easy." It 

 happened that it was one of those days when the au- 

 thorities stopped the betting, or Mr. Lorillard would 

 have won a fortune, as Emperor and Heva both won 

 races and Pontiac had been kept so "dark" that it 

 would have been good odds. Emperor, too, had failed 

 in England. He had contracted feet, but Byrnes had 

 fitted him with Dan Mace's foot-expander and brought 

 him to a race. 



Winning the Suburban, Pontiac was "an exposed 

 horse," and could not get into another race with any 

 advantage in weight. Yet he won seven races 

 c I 1 that season, among them the Passaic, Eaton- 



town and the Manhattan Handicap, and at 

 a mile he defeated even the celebrated Miss Wood- 

 ford. While he won the Suburban and other races 



