Burning Horses

It was dawn outside, but in the long stables at the New Orleans Fair Grounds where week before last the winter race meeting was at its height, the horses, lying down or standing motionless in their stalls, slept in darkness. The smell in the wooden barns was a smell of hay, liniment and leather. Through these pleasant smells there drifted presently the acrid odor of smoke. A tall chestnut plater flicked his ears and stumbled to his feet, making a sudden muffled thunder in the darkness.

Fire moves quickly in wooden barns. An oil stove in the men's quarters of the Reether Stable had somehow exploded. Two minutes later a snake of fire ran down the corridor between the stalls of the horses, licking at wisps of straw. All the horses were awake now. They stood tense and beautiful in the darkness, sucking in the smell of smoke with deep, noisy snorts. Men were running about outside.

The flames were in the stalls now. The horses were neighing above the battering thunder of their hoofs. In the stable-yard a crowd of men ran about, shouting for water, making mad shadows in the light of flames. Joe Cavens, a jockey who had been suspended for whipping his mount's head in the homestretch of a race, ran three times through the stable door and each time came out with two race horses prancing beside him in an ecstasy of terror. At last his clothing caught fire; he beat it out with his hands and stood with the rest of the race track people, silently watching the flames.

Two horses broke loose in the stable yard and ran, loudly neighing, blinded by fire and smoke, back into the barn, which now shivered and rocked as it burned.

Eighteen selling platers, worth from $1,000 to $3,000 each, were burned to death, among them names often shouted by the crowds along the rail--Dude Girl, Leisure Hour, Rogue's Gold, Bourbon, Royal Ruby and two western platers, Pik Quik and Flapjack, owned by Major R. Nicholas of Big Horn, Wyo. One hour after the chestnut horse had kicked the boards in his stall at the smell of smoke there were no more screams of burning horses. The reluctant dawn sky had turned bright blue; smoke still curled into the still air; and exercise boys were breezing their colts around the soft dirt track.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.