At Reiser's Farm

One spring day in 1894, five Maryland gentlemen sat on the steps of the Elkridge Kennels and decided to challenge their neighbors of the Green Spring Valley Hunt to a steeplechase meeting. Not since that first meeting has the field of the Maryland Hunt Cup race in Worthington Valley been so small as it was last week. Some of the best "leppers" in the U. S. were entered, but many were scratched from the post list. Only seven were at the barrier when the starter sent them off into the mist and drizzle. Only one seemed to count. That was Reel Foot. He was running what trainers call a Billy Barton race, a smothering race, pulling away in great bounds at the start with a speed clearly geared to last to the finish. At the first mile he was four lengths in front. Brose Hover, even money favorite and last year's winner, with seasoned Crawford Burton up, took a nasty fall at the second jump, but Burton had remounted and was coming on behind. Sea Soldier was running easily in second place. Well back, though still in it, were the black & white silks of Bostonian Sumner Pingree's Soissons, ridden by Jack Skinner.

Owners who had scratched their horses were not sorry about it as they watched the field go round the four-mile 22-jump course on Charles L. A. Reiser's farm. It is no course for a brush horse; these are true U. S. fences, the hazards of a nation of timber-jumpers. It was boggy in the standing land and treacherous in the hollow. Bunching himself for a takeoff, Hubar slipped and his front legs crashed into one of those top rails no horse can take out and stay on his feet. Now Davis was taking off Sea Soldier's wraps and the lean horse stretched out on the flat three jumps from home and passed Reel Foot. The two horses converged at the water, and then the thing that happens so often when a tired horse is taking a bad jump happened to Sea Soldier and Reel Foot at the same time: the riders checked a little, the horses made rough, desperate lunges to carry, and threw the men. All that Jockey Skinner on Soissons had to do was put the chestnut carefully over the brook and the shallow finish fence and down the midway to win. Reel Foot and Sea Soldier galloped riderless to the finish, Sea Soldier reaching the judges' stand just behind the winner. Brose Hover took second in spite of his fall. For five minutes the judges stood around in the rain waiting for a third, but nothing came along.

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