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The Owners. While the jockeys, obedient to the voice that barked at them from the starter's platform, worked into line at the head of the stretch, their sleeves flashing, their caps bobbing, ten millionaires watched their maneuvers with an intimate and peculiar interest. They were the owners— all rich then, but nine of them due to be poorer in a few minutes. There were W. R. Coe, Standard oil mines; Colonel Bradley, who once owned the Del Prado hotel in Chicago and whose racing stable, the Idle Hour Farm, has derived many benefits from a clothing store he formerly conducted on Madison Street, near Clark; J. E. Griffith, owner of Canter and of some profitable phosphate beds; W. J. Salmon, shrewd Manhattan real estate operator; William Ziegler Jr., baking powder magnate; Mrs. Margaret Emerson Baker, owner of Rockman, (bromo seltzer) ; I. B. Humphreys, Denver mine-owner; C. Frank Croissant, Florida real estate operator; Mrs. George B. Cox, shrewd wife of a shrewd Ohio politician; and best known of all, a gentleman who peered through his racing-glasses while nearby touts peered at him, recognizing his florid, dignified countenance as that of Financier Harry Payne Whitney, owner of Blondin, whose stable and whose sportsmanship are famous on every track in the U. S.
The Race. "They'r-r-re OFF!"... The long roar thundered like a wave, grumbled like a rising sea-surge through the crowd down the long stretch. The stands seemed to sway, to swell with it; hats and parasols and a foam of faces rose, hesitated for an instant on the top of the wave, settled slowly down into a whisperless silence. The horses moved down the stretch.
It was a perfect start. Johnson on Bubbling Over was out ahead from the eleventh post position; he wouldn't be able to stay there long. Canter and Display, the horses that had been giving the starter such trouble, were running on each side of Pompey. Recollection swerved almost to the outside rail but he was behind the field and there was no interference. They broke at the turn; the thud of their racing-plates sounded incredibly loud, a prolonged piratical drum-roll, in the silence that replaced the crowd's first roar.
"Rockman! Rockman!" screamed a very old lady in the centre stand. She was Mrs Susan Sherley, 95, who saw Aristides win the first Kentucky Derby in 1875. A princess,¹ an alderman² who writes poetry, a descendant³ of a famous merchant, an internationally notorious gambler,4 a yachtsman,5 a former governor6 of Kentucky, and the brother7 of a murderer — rose suddenly in their seats. Rockman was certainly gaining. He moved up beside Bubbling Over, to his withers, to his shoulder, and then what everyone had waited for happened — Pompey began to close up.