The start brought the heels into Shackles'
side, and the scream hurt Shackles' feelings. He couldn't stop
dead; but he put out his feet and slid along for fifty yards, and
then, very gravely and judicially, bucked off Brunt--a shaking,
terror-stricken lump, while Regula Baddun made a neck-and-neck race
with Bobolink up the straight, and won by a short head--Petard a bad
third. Shackles' owner, in the Stand, tried to think that his
field-glasses had gone wrong. Regula Baddun's owner, waiting by the
two bricks, gave one deep sigh of relief, and cantered back to the
stand. He had won, in lotteries and bets, about fifteen thousand.
It was a broken-link Handicap with a vengeance. It broke nearly all
the men concerned, and nearly broke the heart of Shackles' owner.
He went down to interview Brunt. The boy lay, livid and gasping
with fright, where he had tumbled off. The sin of losing the race
never seemed to strike him. All he knew was that Whalley had
"called" him, that the "call" was a warning; and, were he cut in two
for it, he would never get up again.
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