Scout

They rumbled into the trial grounds in the familiar old red Dodge two-ton, found a depression to back into. The scout, a black man, eased out the driver-side door and let the tall tailgate down, allowing the four dog horses to walk down it and off the wood-floored bed onto welcome grassy turf. They had driven through the night from the last trial where they’d handled a dog in the final brace, leaving with no share of the purse. They needed a share of this one or they’d be looking for a loan to cover gas (and motor oil) money to get home to south Alabama. 

The handler, a white man, climbed stiffly down from the truck’s right running board and tried to clear his addled mind from the effects of a long sleep. The cool breeze helped, and his thoughts collected somewhat, he walked toward the clubhouse to get a copy of the drawsheet (the All-Age and following Derby stakes had been drawn the evening before while the were en route to the trial). He found the brown thermo-faxed sheets stacked by the coffee pot in the empty clubhouse and was relieved to see they had drawn nothing to run today, though they had entries in the first two braces tomorrow. They and their mounts could use the day of rest after the long drive and several consecutive races near the end of the trial just ended, run in Ohio on pheasants. 

They were at the Wheeler Plantation in North Alabama for a trial run on quail. Ed Mack Farrior operated the grounds for commercial quail shooting on a membership basis. Though no longer training and handling trial dogs for the public as he had before and after the War, Ed Mack still felt a strong bond with the field trial fraternity. The year was 1950. (Ed Mack would return to field trial handling for a time, winning the National Championship in 1954 with Warhoop Jake). 

The scout soon had their stock fed, watered and stalled and their dogs (four all-age, three derbies) in kennel runs with food and fresh water. They would share a bedroom in a tenant house on the grounds after a meal in the clubhouse prepared by the women of the Grange. 

The scout had worked for the handler since returning from military service in Europe at the end of hostilities. He had advanced to sergeant and driven a truck there too, a truck carrying infantrymen advancing in support of General George Patton’s tanks, including through ice and snow to relieve the freezing infantry and artillery men at Bastion at the Battle of the Bulge. He was twenty-seven years old. His father was a sharecropper working a hundred acres of cotton land near Montgomery with mules for the same white family since he was the scout’s age. 

The scout was worried about the handler, who had been in physical and mental decline since July when they had left home with hunting and field trial dogs to train in North  Dakota. Most of that training had been accomplished by him, for his boss could not ride more than a couple hours without dismounting and lying down. They had scored only four placements—no firsts—since the trial season opened in August on the prairies. It was now mid November. 

The handler’s decline was the talk of all at the trial. They were speculating on the nature of his ailments, but none doubted they were real and serious. The scout thought he knew what was ailing his boss and that there would be no recovery. He was fifty-two years old but looked sixty-five. He too had served in the War, as a Marine officer in the Pacific Theater, rising from sergeant by a battlefield commission earned when all officers in his outfit had been killed or wounded. 

The scout figured this would be his last season working in field trials, and that his employment by the handler would end soon. What to do when it happened occupied his thoughts briefly when he lay down to sleep, but only briefly before he fell asleep. 

The day of rest served the scout well, the handler less so. Next morning, the second day of the trial, their best dog would go down in the first brace. A first-year all-age, the handler and scout had high hopes for its future. Its owner would come to the trial and ride front—he had not seen it since the handler and scout had left for summer training. He had received postcard weekly reports from the handler at first, then the scout. His excitement was apparent on his face when he arrived at the Wheeler Plantation thirty minutes before breakaway, having driven from his home in Birmingham where he worked as a banker, on track he hoped to be president when the incumbent retired. 

The owner was shocked when he saw the handler. Taking the scout aside, he asked, “What has happened to him?” 

“Not sure, Sir. I suspect cancer.” With that the scout said, “You ride front please Sir, and keep an eye out for me. I will be doing more than usual to guide your dog.” 

With that it was breakaway time. Their entry, a son ot Ariel out of a Bobbit-bred bitch, was a natural front runner. Its call name was Sam. The horse the scout rode was the one the handler usually rode when he handled in a morning brace. The scout was counting on Sam taking direction from the path of his mount as he rode just to the right of the gallery and slightly behind the judges. The owner quickly understood what the scout was doing. The handler rode like a zombie beside his fellow handler whose dog was short in range. 

Miraculously, it seemed to the owner but not to the scout, Sam was hunting a hell of a race, staying deep at the front and taking turn directions from the scout’s mount. When its hour ended the owner had flushed for Sam three times, the scout having asked permission for that before the breakaway. When a judge yelled “Pick him up!” (the other handler having picked up on his own motion mid-heat) no one riding doubted Sam had set a winning standard and was unlikely to be bested. 

The owner was thrilled. The handler was oblivious to what had happened. The scout saw the handler needed to get home to Selma where his wife could take charge of his care. He told the owner this and proposed he and the handler leave immediately, delegating the handling of their remaining entries to other handlers and scouts and leaving the horses for use by the owner who could ride front (he was sure to stay to the trial’s end to hear his Sam declared winner of the All-Age and see in the following derby stake the race of a derby he owned). The owner directed the scout to take his sedan to drive the handler home, then return to the trial. 

On the drive to Selma, the scout decided what he would do next. He would reenlist in the Army. (In two months he would be on a troop ship bound for Korea). He delivered the handler into the hands of his tearful wife before suppertime and after grabbing a pork chop sandwich prepared for him by the handler’s daughter drove back to the Wheeler Plantation. 

There he proposed to handle the remaining entries in the handler’s string. This proposal was rejected by the other handlers, despite lobbying by Sam’s owner (Black men were welcome as scouts, indeed most scouts were black men, but not as handlers in field trials in the south). 

Sam was declared winner of the hour All-Age, making him eligible for the National Championship the following February where he would be handled by Paul Walker. None of the team’s other entries placed. 

The handler died of stomach cancer the week after Christmas. Sam ran a creditable race at the National, where first-year dogs seldom showed well, much less won. 

The scout returned from Korea after the armistice and became manager of Sam’s owner’s plantation, purchased after his elevation to president of the bank.