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Chicago Herald June 28

BERRY WINS THE RACE
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MAKES AN AVERAGE OF 73 MILES A DAY
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Gillespie and Smith Come in Next--This Remarkable Contest Will Attract World-Wide Attention to American Horses' Endurance.
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John Berry won the great Chadron-Chicago 1,000-mile horse race. Of the ten men who left Chadron, Neb., for Chicago the 13th of this month, he was the first to register at the finishing station. The statement that Berry won the race means only that he covered the required distance in the shortest time. The selection of the official winner, who will be awarded the purse, hinges upon several questions to be settled later. In whatever way these questions may be decided, the glory of winning the race rests with Berry and his two splendid horses, specimens of what the west can produce in the line of horseflesh.

The last two days of this contest were exciting. The story of Monday--a day of dogged endeavor and hard though careful riding--has already been told. While not so stirring as Monday, yesterday promised infinitely more.

The last day of the race began at DeKalb just as Monday was merging into Tuesday. At that point in the progress toward Chicago it looked like anybody's race really, with the odds a trifle in Berry's favor. THE HERALD dispatches from DeKalb related yesterday morning how Berry left the town after giving his brown stallion, Turene, a big drink of whisky, only an hour before Joe Gillespie and Charley Smith appeared to feed and rub down their animals. When they departed, with their horses strong and fresh and pulling on the bit, it looked as if they might overhaul Berry before he could reach Chicago. This view of the situation was heightened by the position occupied by the humane society officers at that point. The conditions prevailing at DeKalb were sufficient to keep knots of watchers on the streets until daylight.

Human Society Officers Confidenced.

In DeKalb the Humane Societies' officers were confidenced. Tatro and Fontaine, who accompanied the riders from the starting point, managed everything in their own way until the Mississippi river was reached, and their relations with the riders were of the most friendly and confidential nature. At the Mississippi Oscar Little, representing the Illinois society, accompanied by Charles Williams, took hold. When DeKalb was reached the feeling between the two factions among the race followers, which had sumbered all along the route, ran high,

(Drawing)
JOHN BERRY, THE FIRST ONE TO REACH CHICAGO.

as interest was centered by the prospect of a close finish. The Berry men became suspicious of Agent Tatro. Tatro had been insisting, for several days, that Berry's stallion was in poor condition. Therefore, when Berry selected that horse alone to carry him the sixty miles into Chicago his friends feared that Tatro might interfere. Cillespie and Smith, who were chasing Berry, were afraid of the Illinois men. The Humane Society representatives had planned to send a man with each rider from DeKalb to Chicago to see that the horses were not pushed too hard. The first man got away all right with Berry and he was a man who thought that Berry's horse was all right. When the second team was expected to leave with Gillespie and Smith the Humane Society men found out that the cowboys' friends had outbid them with the liveryman and that they hadno team to follow with. They could do nothing but wait and fret. ANd their fretting helped to stimulate the excitement in DeKalb until that little city took on the appearance of a consolidated Fourth of July and circus day.

Berry Reaches Chicago.

John Berry expected to be chased into Chicago from DeKalb. His one horse, the other having been left in the stable, was in excellent condition and ready for any kind of a contest. Berry pushed him into Elburn in three hours. He stopped on the road between Elburn and Maple Park to feet. At 2:15 he was in Turner Junction, twenty-eight miles this side of DeKalb. There he received a telegram from a friend in DeKalb saying that Gillespie and Smith were three hours behind him in leaving DeKalb, so he began to loaf. At 7 o'clock he had reached the Chicago suburb, Maywood. Up to that point he had been piloted along the good road through Geneva and neighboring towns by W. H. Miller, of DeKalb. At Maywood Humane Society Agent Williams took the lead. Berry's route through Chicago to the registering station at the finish lay through Madison street, California avenue, Jackson street, Ashland boulevard, Twenty-second street and Michigan avenue to Sixty-third street.

It was exactly 9:30 o'clock when Berry drew rein in front of Buffalo Bill's tent on the Wild West show grounds. He had made the pace frmo Iowa Falls, had never been headed and had arrived at the finish before his competitors. His horse was in

(Drawing)
OFFICER FONTAINE, OF THE HUMANE SOCIETY

excellent condition and took to his feed as if he had merely been out for a warming up. Berry showed more of the effect of the race than his horse. He had slept little at any time since leaving Chadron, and for the last three days not at all. He was provided with a breakfast and then with a bed. He will go back to the plains as king of the Black Hills country, for he rode Black Hills horses to success under adverse conditions. Berry could have brought his second horse into Chicago but that beast had carried him ninety miles the day before, so he left him behind to be driven in slowly.

Gillespie Boasts His Riding Abilities.

Charley Smith and Joe Gillespie did not give Berry the chase into Chicago that was expected. Gillespie says it was because they lost their way in the outskirts; Smith says it was because they rode slowly, knowing that Berry would not be given the prize, as he had been barred, and having no one else to fear.

It was just 1:30 p. m. yesterday when Gillespie, yelling like a Comanche, rode up to the finish, threw himself from his horse, shouted "I'm the lightest rider in the west," and opened bids for congratulations. A few minutes later he declared that he would meet any heavy weight rider on earth--Joe started in the race weighing 190 pounds--and that he stood ready to bet that he could ride 1,000 miles in 10 days.

Fifteen minutes later Charley Smith rode in. He had been with Joe since leaving Freeport until a short time before the finish. "I just natchully had 't leave 'im, boys," is the way Joe explains how he finished first. Smith says nothing, but it looks as if he let Joe come first to please the old man. Gillespie and Smith broke away from DeKalb two hours after Berry after promising to beat him into Chicago. H. A. Sylvester, who followed them part of the way in, says they followed the township line until they struck St. Charles. They reached that point at 4:30 a. m. He chased them on to Glen Ellyn, which was passed at 5:45 o'clock. There he lost their track. Neither of them knows just when they made other points, as they were piloted through byways.

Albright Second to Berry.

Emmet Albright was the first cowboy rider to reach the finish line after Berry. He arrived at 11:13. But Albright does not count. Albright has been the clown of the race all along, but he cannot deceive everybody with his fun. He finished yesterday

(Drawing)
JOE GILLESPIE'S RECEPTION.

with a flourish and quite a lot of talk, but that does not settle it. He tried to make people believe that he made a furious ride from Dubuque and had finished after Berry on his own and his horses' merits. There is a well grounded suspicion, however, that Albright's position was due to the speed of freight trains. When Berry and Gillespie had left Dubuque Sunday afternoon Albright was away back with Doe Middleton at Manchester, sixty odd miles west. By the time he reached Dubuque he had made an apparently wonderful gain. But nothing is known of what he did after leaving there. He is not known to have passed through Freeport at all, one of the registering points. If he did, he rode from Freeport to DeKalb faster than passenger trains run. He had not arrived in Freeport Monday evening, when Secretary Weir left there on a fast train, but he showed up in DeKalb an hour or so after Weir did.

With the arrival of Berry, Gillespie and Smith, the cowboy race practically ends. Stephens, or "Rattlesnake Pete," and Jones are still on the road somewhere and will ride through, but the real race is over. They are so far behind that no one cares particularly when they arrive. They were reduced to one horse so early in the race that they had no show.

Secretary Weir did not arrive from DeKalb early enough to officially register Smith and Gillespie, but there will be no friction on this point, as the time was taken and will sworn to in affidavits. All that remains to be settled now, before the prizes are distributed, are the several charges preferred against the contestants during the race and Berry's position.

Why Berry Was Barred.

Berry was barred ostensibly because he prepared maps for the guidance of the riders before announcing his intention to enter, and he is alleged to have gained an advantage by making himself familiar with the route. The lame spot in this reasoning is that, while Berry was barred, his entrance money was never returned to him. It was thought, before Chicago was reached, that Jack Hale, the owner of the horses Berry rode, would enjoin the payment of the first prize to anyone but Berry. Mr. Hale says, however, that he does not want any trouble over the matter. He is willing to

(Drawing)
ALBRIGHT EATS HIS FIRST MEAL IN CHICAGO.

do anything fair, so this matter will probably be compromised. Should Berry be declared out altogether, it is almost a certainty that Gillespie and Smith will cut the first and second prizes in half. Gillespie, in an unguarded moment yesterday, said he and Smith had agreed to do that, and that they had tossed a coin as to who should have the honor of coming in first.

The other points to be settled related to complaints made by Rattlesnake Pete. He alleges that Gillespie and Smith have been riding in carriages and leading their horses without any weights on their backs. These charges will be investigated.

The main prize is the $1,000 hung up by the citizens of Chadron, to which Buffalo Bill added $500. Cody's prize will probably go to Berry anyhow. The race committee, of course, has the distribution of the Chadron purse. Another prize is a handsome ivory handled, gold mounted six-shooter.

Now that it is all over, it is interesting to look at the different phases of this long-distance horse race.

Men Who Rode the Race.

While it was called a cowboy's race, genuine cowboys had little to do with it. They originated the idea, perhaps, but that was about all. Of the original then starters, only two were bona fide cowboys, in the strict meaning of the term. Berry follows the business of pathfinder for the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad. He goes ahead for the surveyors and locates routes for them across the plains and through the wilderness. He rode horses owned by Jack Hale and George Boland, of Sturgis, S. D., in the Black hills country.

Gillespie is a stock farmer. He rode one of his own horses (Billy Shafer) and the other belongs to William Cooper, a Chadron stockman. Smith is a stockman in partnership with his brother. Jones was another stock rancher riding his own horses. Emmett Albright rode William Cooper's horses. Doc Middleton had one of his own and one of Cooper's James H. Stephens, called "Rattlesnake Pete, and Joe Campbell were cowboys. They, with another cowboy naemd Nessig, had planned to enter, but the three could not raise money enough to enter two men, so Nessig gave his horse to Stephens. "Rattlesnake Pete" was the only typical cowboy, and for that reason his hard luck is regretted. All through the race he has been the real cowboy, treating his horse as a brother and always sleeping in the same stall with his pet, his saddle for a pillow.

The idea of this race was conceived in a spirit of raillery. Then it grew to a plan for an advertising hippodrome and finally developed into an honest, earnest contest, out of which good may come.

Inception of the Contest.

Early last winter some of the Chadron stockmen got to talking about riding overland to the world's fair. The idea took and they began to prepare an elaborate programme for the trip. It was proposed to collect several hundred ranchmen and cowboys and rie to Chicago by easy stages, taking in all the big towns and participating in revels along the way. Some Chadron business men thought it would be a good thing to offer a purse for the first to arrive in Chicago and make the event an advertisement for their city and surrounding country. From that idea was evolved the project to advertise the country at the least cost and most effectively. Who would be a good man to have win the race? Clearly some one with more than a local reputation. Doc Middleton was selected as the best known man in that section and put down as the winner. Immediately an obstacle arose. And this has a bearing upon the protest against John Berry.

Jack Hale entered a couple of horses for the race. Hale's friends say that the appearance of his stock frightened the Chadron men. They did not want Black Hills horses to win in a Chadron event. The story, as told by the men from Hale's section, is that the Chadron people demanded that he withdraw his horses. He would not do it. He wanted the advertising of the race for his stock farm. Then, as the story goes, they said to Hale: "We will let your horses enter and we will put them into every registering town first, and let them win, but you must let Doc Middleton ride them. A Chadron man must be the first at the finish." Hale is said to have refused that too. Then his horses and rider were barred. He determined to start them anyhow. He did, and they have finished first.

Real Race for Honors.

If this story be true--and it bears the weight of authority--the presence of Berry in the race made it an honest race. Berry was out to win and the others had to fight him. An amusing feature of it all is that Doc Middleton was entered as the Chadron champion and Joe Gillespie was induced to start just to help Middleton along in the early part of the race or until Middleton could put his animals in shape to let out and win. It turned out that Middleton was not much of a rider and Gillespie became the support of Chadron pride.

The attitude of the humane societies toward and their connection with the race is also interesting. When the humane people heard this contest called a race over a 1,000-mile stretch of country they saw, in fanc y the scenes of the famous Austrian long distance race, in which a number of horses were killed and ruined, rise upon their vision. They would stop it. Fortunately a couple of agents with sense, Tatro and Fontaine, of Minneapolis, took hold of the work. They went into the cowboy country, learned all the details of the race plans and found that it would not be such a horrible thing after all. They were invited to accompany the racers. They did so, and they and the cowboy riders have become fast friends.

As a result the Humane Society agents found that this race was not a horse-killing match, but a contest of endurance between well-trained, carefully attended horses, which would not be pushed to the point of suffering. The riders and the whole world have learned that the Humane Society people are not mere sentimentalists, meddlers or cranks, but that they are people of sense who will not interfere with anyone without cause. This will have the effect of strengthening the humane movement.

Horsemen maintain taht this race has been of wonderful benefit to the west as showing what western horses can do. The

(Drawing)
ALBRIGHT'S GUIDES FROM DE KALB.

performances of some of these animals have been wonderful--superior to anything ever known before. John Berry, whose business has made him an excellent judge of distance, estimates that the crooks in the roads followed will make the distance from Chadron to Chicago fully a thousand miles. He was on the road just thirteen days and sixteen hours. That means that his horses have made a daily average of a little over seventy-three miles without suffering. In the last forty hours of the race Charley Smith covered about two hundred miles, and his horses finished in excellent condition. Yesteday Joe Gillespie's gray "Billy Shafer" trotted into Chicago under a pull, after carrying 180 pounds of flesh and a forty-pound saddle 150 miles in thirty-six hours.

These are but samples of the kind of work all the horses have done. And the best evidence that such tasks have not hurt the horses is found in this: That John G. Shorttall, president of the Illinois Humane Society, and the man who was most rampant against this race, and expert veterinary surgeons examined these horses yesterday after they had completed these big drives and found the horses uninjured. It was not cruelty, but work for which the horses were fitted.

Enthusiastic horsemen see in this race the opening of a new branch of commerce. These horses, which have shown that they are fitted for long, hard journeys, are the product of western plains, where the horse must range for a living on bunch grass. They are of good blood and their rearing makes them tough. Plainsmen say this race has been in the nature of an exhibit which will make the western American horse the cavalry horse of the world.
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JONES MAY ARRIVE THIS MORNING.
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"Rattlesnake Pete" at De Kalb and Doc Middleton Takes to the Cars.

DE KALB, Ill., June 26.--"Rattlesnake Pete," one of the cowboy riders, reached here at 11:15 this morning. His horse was completely used up and it is unlikely that he will be in shape to take the road again before to-morrow. Pete made an effort to get out of town at 3 o'clock but was obliged to give it up, as the horse was absolutely unable to proceed farther. Jones came in at 12:20 o'clock and left at 2:45. His handsome brown horse appeared to be in good trim and he is confident of appearing at Buffalo Bill's show grounds in the early morning.

DIXON, Ill., June 27.--Doc Middleton, of the cowboy racers, passed through Dixon to-day. He was not in the race, one of his horses being disabled. He took the cars for Chicago from here.