Perhaps nothing else would have aroused vengeful hate in the bosom of Hardshell, but to speak scornfully of Sword of Gideon was the unbearable insult. The Sword was Hardshell’s weakness, the consummation of his life’s ambition gone wrong. It was as if he had reared a strong, handsome son and seen him crippled and then laughed at. Hardshell had bred and reared the colt and named him, as he did all his other colts, from the Bible. As a two-year-old, racing against the best of the baby thoroughbreds of the West, the Sword had shown stamina, gameness, a racing instinct, and a dazzling burst of speed. He was royally sired, and even the millionaire owners agreed that Hardshell had at last produced a great colt. In mid-season he was rated as one of the two best two-year-olds of the year, and offers of large sums were made for him. He was eligible to race in all the big three-year-old stake races the next season, and Hardshell had refused to listen to any offer or set any price. He had set out to develop a champion racer down there on the little farm in the Big Bend of the Tennessee, a champion which would outrun and outgame the best of the country and win the American derby--then the greatest of all turf prizes. Late in August the thing happened. The colt was at the starting post in a six-furlong dash on the Hawthorne track when the barrier, a band of elastic, was broken by the lunging of another colt. The elastic band struck Sword of Gideon in the eye and maddened him with fright and pain. The accident seemed trivial, but the effect was the destruction of Hardshell’s life dream. Never thereafter would Sword of Gideon face the barrier without a fight. The memory of the stinging agony of that flying elastic was not to be effaced. A dozen times exasperated starters ordered him out of races and sent him back for further schooling at the barrier. Schooling was useless. He refused to face the thing which had hurt him. The only way in which he could be handled at the start of a race was for the jockey to turn his head away from the barrier, wait until the other horses started, then throw him around and send him after the flying field. Occasionally when the jockey swung him at the right second he had a chance to win. The majority of times he was handicapped five or six lengths on every start, and not infrequently when he heard the swish of the barrier he bolted the wrong way of the track. Look in the guide and after his name in many races you will find the brief record of a tragedy in the words, “Left at post.” The champion was ruined. But in the heart of Hardshell Gaines Sword of Gideon still was the champion. He worked over him as tenderly as a mother over a crippled child, and for him he sang his favorite hymns, as if striving to comfort the horse when he had behaved badly at the post. The newspapers, on account of his bad acting at the start, wrote of him as “Swored at Gideon.”