Candian Schemers Frustrated: People Who Owned Garnish Try New Roguery at Lexington, Daily Racing Form, 1907-12-10

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CANADIAN SCHEMERS FRUSTRATED. People Who Owned Garnish Try New Roguery at Lexington. Lexington, Ky., December 9. W. B. Nichol, a boyish looking chap who hails from Waterloo, Ontario, and who, it will be remembered, bought the horse Garnish from Bob Rogers after he had been ruled off in the east, left here Saturday for his home in Canada. Mr. Nichol departed rather sooner than ho expected and ho left behind an irate fellow-countryman who has a tale to tell that will not help the standing of the man from Waterloo when he takes up the circuit of small tracks in Manitoba and Alberta again next summer. When Nichol came here last week the sales were in progress and be said he expected to buy three or four nice yearlings, no said a friend of his would swap him some Canadian land for the horses ho would buy. He couldnt get anything out of the sales, but he visited around among the horsemen and finally located a couple of fillies ah Eimendorf . The folks out there were willing to let them go cheap. The probabilities arc that they would have given them to him if he had promised to feed them, for they did let him take them to the Kentucky Association track and put them in a barn without paying for them. The remainder of the story is best told in the language of the irate man, who is John Fry, a real estate broker at Brandon, Manitoba, and likewise the secretary of the half-mile track there. "Nichol lias been coming up our way for a year or two or three," said he to Daily Racing Form, "and I thought he was all right. I have made some money out of land, love horses and got to the point where I can afford to own a few, though I have not been long enough interested to know much about the politics of racing or the practices of tricksters in buying and selling. "Last summer Nichol came along with the horse Garnish and I bought him for ,000. He looked like a mighty good race horse to me, andhe is a good race horse, but I did not know anything about his having been ruled off the turf. If I had I would not have bought him, for I am not the sort that would try to race a banished horse. I have written a letter or two to the Jockey Club about Garnish and from the way things stand I doubt if there is a chance of getting him reinstated. This man Farley, who has the reputation of racing ringers, was up in our country with old man Klein, who comes from around Chicago, and Farley wanted the horse from me. He has since written me from Texas wanting him, but I have made up my mind to keep him out of the hands of anybody I think might want to cheat with him and if I cant get him reinstated he will stay around my barn as a riding horse. I can use him in the real estate business. "Well, Nichol made me believe that he did not know Garnish was ruled off, and when lie came around this fall with a proposition to come down to Kentucky and swap some of my land for a couple or so good horses I told him to go ahead. He wired me from here that he had picked out a filly at ,500 and another at 1907.sh00, and wired me to send on the deed to ,400 worth of land, giving me the name of the man to whom the deed should be made. I had the papers drawn up and was on the verge of mailing them when I concluded that since I had never seen this country and had the time to spare I would just run down here with the papers myself. "I did not wire Nichol that I was coming. Just s;xid papers are on the way. When I landed he was, to be sure, surprised to see me. I had expected1 that he would be, but not for the reason that afterward developed. He told me that he had the horses out at the track and took me out there to see them. I did not like the looks of them and and told him so. Honest, I would not have given 00 for the two of them. He said he had closed the deal and would be compelled to take them. I told him to show me the man that he had been dealing with and that I would call the deal off. He said the man was out of town and wanted me to leave the deed to the land and go on back home and let him do the best he could. I began to suspect that there was something crooked about it all, and began talking around among the people here. I soon found out that Nichol had not agreed to swap the land for them, but had set a price at 50 for the two, and that he had arranged to pay for them himself and then take oyer the deed to my ,100 of land as his own. "I called the whole thing off, and when the gentleman who owned the horses heard of it he sent a man in and got them. I was mad enough to liave punched Nichols he-ad, and would have done it if we had been up In Canada, but I was afraid to do it down here. I have since learned that a fellow gets a medal here when he lambasts a bucko like that. I have found out, too, that horses dont cost near as much down here as we have been in the habit of paying up our way, and I am coming down next March and buy tbree or four good ones that can win on the half-mile tracks. There are some folks In my town that I would like to beat. I have ten horses now, but Garnish is the only one that Can. really run aM X cant Wp Wm,"-


Persistent Link: https://drf.uky.edu/catalog/1900s/drf1907121001/drf1907121001_2_6
Local Identifier: drf1907121001_2_6
Library of Congress Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/unk82075800