be brought out again and raced over the track. We 

 continued this process for so long a period that I 

 became thoroughly tired of training and racing sheep. 

 The condition of affairs gave me no peace in the day 

 time and at night I would dream of bleating sheep, 

 and at breakfast imagined I could taste wool in the 

 doughnuts, and I scarcely dared venture on the streets 

 for fear of meeting an old ram with a wicked look on 

 his sobercountenance,as though hewaslookingfor some 

 one upon whom to wreak his vengeance for disturbing 

 his peaceful flock. Finally, one evening, we agreed to 

 have the race the next day, however muddy the track 

 might be ; and when the race was called the track re- 

 sembled a mortar bed more than a race track, and 

 every time a horse would pull one of his feet from 

 the mud it would sound like the good-night parting 

 of a young man and his best girl. The mud flying in 

 all directions subjected both drivers and horses to a 

 genuine mud bath, and made Robert J. nervous, and 

 he broke in the last two heats, and Joe Patchen won 

 the race. 



After the race was over I returned to the stall of 

 Robert J. and endeavored to separate myself from a 

 portion of the real estate of Fresno, which covered me 

 so completely that I resembled a clay model of an 

 artist. John Easely, the colored groom who cared for 

 Robert J., fairly worshiped the little horse, and took 

 his defeat very much to heart. He said to me as I 

 entered the stall : '' Look dar, boss, no wonder dis hoss 

 couldn't win dat race," and looking up over the door 

 of the stall where John's finger pointed, I saw the 

 ominous figure 13, and John continued: "Dat is the 

 hoodoo what caused us to lose, and no hoss can eber 

 win a race hitched in dis stall; and old Joe Patchen 



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