commenced his front feet became sore, a condition 

 which continued during the whole of that season. I 

 shod him with bar shoes and pads, which greatly helped 

 to break the concussion ; but still in jog work he 

 would nod, and a stranger would think him unable to 

 stand the hardships of a hotly-contested race ; but as 

 soon as the excitement of a race was on he seemed to 

 forget all about his tender feet, and his pace was as 

 even and true as any horse ever seen in a race. I won 

 the race at Cleveland and moved down through the 

 Grand Circuit and started him at every meeting ; and 

 after that I went to St. Louis, Terre Haute and other 

 places and he won every race in which he was started 

 that year, except at Rochester. 



Everything considered, Hal Pointer was the greatest 

 race horse I have ever driven. I always drove him 

 with an open bridle, and as soon as he had had a little 

 experience he seemed to know how to rate his speed 

 just as well as I did ; and also that the purse belonged 

 to the horse that first passed under the wire rather 

 than the one that reached the quarter or half-mile pole 

 in advance of the field, and when in the lead he 

 would watch the attempts of a rival to pass him with 

 the same degree of interest as his driver, and was ever 

 on the alert to prevent another horse from getting 

 dangerously close. This characteristic was well illus- 

 trated in the race at Terre Haute, in the fall of 1889, 

 in which was the pacer B. B. who had been defeating 

 everything he had met that season, and many pre- 

 dicted that when these two horses met, Hal Pointer 

 would taste the bitter pangs of defeat. In one of the 

 heats of that race I had passed B. B. in the stretch 

 and, expecting him to make a rush near the wire, was 

 watching him and so was Pointer; and after the race 



61 



