In November, Red Pollard left the hospital in Boston where he had been for five months. The Howards invited him to stay with them, so he headed west for California. He had courted and become engaged to one of his nurses, Agnes Conlon, and she would join him once he got settled. He tried walking without crutches, determined to fully heal and return to riding. While walking outside one day, he stepped in a hole hidden by grass and hurt his leg again. He was taken to the hospital that Howard had built after the death of his son. There the doctor said his leg had not been set correctly by the doctors in Boston and had healed wrong. It would need to be broken yet again and reset properly.

At the end of December, while training in South Carolina, Seabiscuit dinged his foreleg with a back hoof while running, and the area swelled up a bit. Smith put the workouts on hold and bandaged up all four legs for good measure. The horse’s weight crept up, and reporters peppered Smith with questions about Seabiscuit’s health. Always happy to do an end run around the press, Smith told one reporter, “All four of his legs are broken” (283).