Читать книгу Garrison's Finish - W. B. M. Ferguson - Страница 5

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As he made his way out of the paddock Garrison carefully tilted his bag of Durham into the curved rice-paper held between nicotine-stained finger and thumb, then deftly rolled his “smoke” with the thumb and forefinger, while tying the bag with practised right hand and even white teeth. Once his reputation had been as spotless as those teeth.

He smiled cynically as he shouldered his way through the slowly moving crowd—that kaleidoscope of the humanities which congregate but do not blend; which coagulate wherever the trial of science, speed, and stamina serves as an excuse for putting fortune to the test.

It was a cynical crowd, a quiet crowd, a sullen crowd. Those who had won, through sheer luck, bottled their joy until they could give it vent in a safer atmosphere—one not so resentful. For it had been a hard day for the field. The favorite beaten in the stretch, choked off, outside the money——

Garrison gasped as the rushing simulacra of the Carter Handicap surged to his beating brain; that brain at bursting pressure. It had recorded so many things—recorded faithfully so many, many things he would give anything to forget.

He was choking, smothering—smothering with shame, hopelessness, despair. He must get away; get away to breathe, to think; get away out of it all; get away anywhere—oblivion.

To the jibes, the sneers flung at him, the innuendos, the open insults, and worst of all, the sad looks of those few friends who gave their friendship without conditions, he was not indifferent, though he seemed so. God knows how he felt it at all. And all the more so because he had once been so high. Now his fall was so low, so pitifully low; so contemptible, so complete.

He knew what the action of the Jockey Club would be. The stewards would do only one thing. His license would be revoked. To-day had seen his finish. This, the ten-thousand dollar Carter Handicap, had seen his final slump to the bottom of the scale. Worse. It had seen him a pauper, ostracized; an unclean thing in the mouth of friend and foe alike. The sporting world was through with him at last. And when the sporting world is through—

Again Garrison laughed harshly, puffing at his cigarette, dragging its fumes into his lungs in a fierce desire to finish his physical cataclysm with his moral. Yes, it had been his last chance. He, the popular idol, had been going lower and lower in the scale, but the sporting world had been loyal, as it always is to “class.” He had been “class,” and they had stuck to him.

Then when he began to go back—No; worse. Not that. They said he had gone crooked. That was it. Crooked as Doyers Street, they said; throwing every race; standing in with his owner to trim the bookies, and they couldn't stand for that. Sport was sport. But they had been loyal. They had warned, implored, begged. What was the use soaking a pile by dirty work? Why not ride straight—ride as he could, as he did, as it had been bred in him to? Any money, any honor was his. Instead—

Garrison, stung to madness by retrospect, humped his way through the crowd at the gates of the Aqueduct. There was not a friendly eye in that crowd. He stuffed his ears with indifference. He would not bear their remarks as they recognized him. He summoned all his nerve to look them in the face unflinchingly—that nerve that had been frayed to ribbons.

And then he heard quick footsteps behind him; a hand was laid heavily on his shoulder, and he was twisted about like a chip. It was his stable owner, his face flushed with passion and drink. Waterbury was stingy of cash, but not of words.

“I've looked for you,” he whipped out venomously, his large hands ravenous for something to rend. “Now I've caught you. Who was in with you on that dirty deal? Answer, you cur! Spit it out before the crowd. Was it me? Was it me?” he reiterated in a frenzy, taking a step forward for each word, his bad grammar coming equally to the fore.

The crowd surged back. Owner and jockey were face to face. “When thieves fall out!” they thought; and they waited for the fun. Something was due them. It came in a flash. Waterbury shot out his big fist, and little Garrison thumped on the turf with a bang, a thin streamer of blood threading its way down his gray-white face.

“You miserable little whelp!” howled his owner. “You've dishonored me. You threw that race, damn you! That's what I get for giving you a chance when you couldn't get a mount anywhere.” His long pent-up venom was unleashed. “You threw it. You've tried to make me party to your dirty work—me, me, me!”—he thumped his heaving chest. “But you can't heap your filth on me. I'm done with you. You're a thief, a cur—”

“Hold on,” cut in Garrison. He had risen slowly, and was dabbing furtively at his nose with a silk red-and-blue handkerchief—the Waterbury colors.

“Just a minute,” he added, striving to keep his voice from sliding the scale. He was horribly calm, but his gray eyes were quivering as was his lip. “I didn't throw it. I—I didn't throw it. I was sick. I—I've been sick. I—I——” Then, for he was only a boy with a man's burdens, his lip began to quiver pitifully; his voice shrilled out and his words came tumbling forth like lava; striving to make up by passion and reiteration what they lacked in logic and coherency. “I'm not a thief. I'm not. I'm honest. I don't know how it happened. Everything became a blur in the stretch. You—you've called me a liar, Mr. Waterbury. You've called me a thief. You struck me. I know you can lick me,” he shrilled. “I'm dishonored—down and out. I know you can lick me, but, by the Lord, you'll do it here and now! You'll fight me. I don't like you. I never liked you. I don't like your face. I don't like your hat, and here's your damn colors in your face.” He fiercely crumpled the silk handkerchief and pushed it swiftly into Waterbury's glowering eye.

Instantly there was a mix-up. The crowd was blood-hungry. They had paid for sport of some kind. There would be no crooked work in this deal. Lustfully they watched. Then the inequality of the boy and the man was at length borne in on them, and it roused their stagnant sense of fair play.

Garrison, a small hell let loose, had risen from the turf for the third time! His face was a smear of blood, venom, and all the bandit passions. Waterbury, the gentleman in him soaked by the taint of a foisted dishonor and his fighting blood roused, waited with clenched fists. As Garrison hopped in for the fourth time, the older man feinted quickly, and then swung right and left savagely.

The blows were caught on the thick arm of a tan box-coat. A big hand was placed over Waterbury's face and he was given a shove backward. He staggered for a ridiculously long time, and then, after an unnecessary waste of minutes, sat down. The tan overcoat stood over him. It was Jimmy Drake, and the chameleonlike crowd applauded.

Jimmy was a popular book-maker with educated fists. The crowd surged closer. It looked as if the fight might change from bantam-heavy to heavy-heavy. And the odds were on Drake.

“If yeh want to fight kids,” said the book-maker, in his slow, drawling voice, “wait till they're grown up. Mebbe then yeh'll change your mind.”

Waterbury was on his feet now. He let loose some vitriolic verbiage, using Drake as the objective-point. He told him to mind his own business, or that he would make it hot for him. He told him that Garrison was a thief and cur; and that he would have no book-maker and tout—

“Hold on,” said Drake. “You're gettin' too flossy right there. When you call me a tout you're exceedin' the speed limit.” He had an uncomfortable steady blue eye and a face like a snow-shovel. “I stepped in here not to argue morals, but to see fair play. If Billy Garrison's done dirt—and I admit it looks close like it—I'll bet that your stable, either trainer or owner, shared the mud-pie, all right—”

“I've stood enough of those slurs,” cried Waterbury, in a frenzy. “You lie.”

Instantly Drake's large face stiffened like cement, and his overcoat was on the ground.

“That's a fighting word where I come from,” he said grimly.

But before Drake could square the insult a crowd of Waterbury's friends swirled up in an auto, and half a dozen peacemakers, mutual acquaintances, together with two somnambulistic policemen, managed to preserve the remains of the badly shattered peace. Drake sullenly resumed his coat, and Waterbury was driven off, leaving a back draft of impolite adjectives and vague threats against everybody. The crowd drifted away. It was a fitting finish for the scotched Carter Handicap.

Meanwhile, Garrison, taking advantage of the switching of the lime-light from himself to Drake, had dodged to oblivion in the crowd.

“I guess I don't forget Jimmy Drake,” he mused grimly to himself. “He's straight cotton. The only one who didn't give me the double-cross out and out. Bud, Bud!” he declared to himself, “this is sure the wind-up. You've struck bed-rock and the tide's coming in—hard. You're all to the weeds. Buck up, buck up,” he growled savagely, in fierce contempt. “What're you dripping about?” He had caught a tear burning its way to his eyes—eyes that had never blinked under Waterbury's savage blows. “What if you are ruled off! What if you are called a liar and crook; thrown the game to soak a pile? What if you couldn't get a clotheshorse to run in a potato-race? Buck up, buck up, and plug your cotton pipe. They say you're a crook. Well, be one. Show 'em you don't care a damn. You're down and out, anyway. What's honesty, anyway, but whether you got the goods or ain't? Shake the bunch. Get out before you're kicked out. Open a pool-room like all the has-beens and trim the suckers right, left, and down the middle. Money's the whole thing. Get it. Don't mind how you do, but just get it. You'll be honest enough for ten men then. Anyway, there's no one cares a curse how you pan out—”

He stopped, and his face slowly relaxed. The hard, vindictive look slowly faded from his narrowed eyes.

“Sis,” he said softly. “Sis—I was going without saying good-by. Forgive me.”

He swung on his heel, and with hunched shoulders made his way back to Aqueduct. Waterbury's training-quarters were adjacent, and, after lurking furtively about like some hunted animal, Garrison summoned all his nerve and walked boldly in.

The only stable-boy about was one with a twisted mouth and flaming red hair, which he was always curling; a remarkably thin youth he was, addicted to green sweaters and sentimental songs. He was singing one now in a key entirely original with himself. “Red's” characteristic was that when happy he wore a face like a tomb-stone. When sad, the sentimental songs were always in evidence.

“Hello, Red!” said Garrison gruffly. He had been Red's idol once. He was quite prepared now, however, to see the other side of the curtain. He was no longer an idol to any one.

“Hello!” returned Red non-committally.

“Where's Crimmins?”

“In there.” Red nodded to the left where were situated the stalls. “Gettin' Sis ready for the Belmont opening.”

“Riding for him now?”

“Yeh. Promised a mount in th' next run-off. 'Bout time, I guess.”

There was silence. Garrison pictured to himself the time when he had won his first mount. How long ago that was! Time is reckoned by events, not years. How glorious the future had seemed! He slowly seated himself on a box by the side of Red and laid a hand on the other's thin leg.

“Kid,” he said, and his voice quivered, “you know I wish you luck. It's a great game—the greatest game in the world, if you play it right.” He blundered to silence as his own condition surged over him.

Red was knocking out his shabby heels against the box in an agony of confusion. Then he grew emboldened by the other's dejected mien. “No, I'd never throw no race,” he said judicially. “It don't pay—”

“Red,” broke in Garrison harshly, “you don't believe I threw that race? Honest, I'm square. Why, I was up on Sis—Sis whom I love, Red—honest, I was sure of the race. Dead sure. I hadn't much money, but I played every cent I had on her. I lost more than any one. I lost—everything. See,” he ran on feverishly, glad of the opportunity to vindicate himself, if only to a stable-boy. “I guess the stewards will let the race stand, even if Waterbury does kick. Rogue won square enough.”

“Yeh, because yeh choked Sis off in th' stretch. She could ha' slept home a winner, an' yeh know it, Billy,” said Red, with sullen regret.

There was a time when he never would have dared to call Garrison by his Christian name. Disgrace is a great leveler. Red grew more conscious of his own rectitude.

“I ain't knockin' yeh, Billy,” he continued, speaking slowly, to lengthen the pleasure of thus monopolizing the pulpit. “What have I to say? Yeh can ride rings round any jockey in the States—at least, yeh could.” And then, like his kind, Red having nothing to say, proceeded to say it.

“But it weren't your first thrown race, Billy. Yeh know that. I know how yeh doped it out. I know we ain't got much time to make a pile if we keep at th' game. Makin' weight makes yeh a lunger. We all die of th' hurry-up stunt. An' yeh're all right to your owner so long's yeh make good. After that it's twenty-three, forty-six, double time for yours. I know what th' game is when you've hit th' top of th' pile. It's a fast mob, an' yeh got to keep up with th' band-wagon. You're makin' money fast and spendin' it faster. Yeh think it'll never stop comin' your way. Yeh dip into everythin'. Then yeh wake up some day without your pants, and yeh breeze about to make th' coin again. There's a lot of wise eggs handin' out crooked advice—they take the coin and you th' big stick. Yeh know, neither Crimmins or the Old Man was in on your deals, but yeh had it all framed up with outside guys. Yeh bled the field to soak a pile. See, Bill,” he finished eloquently, “it weren't your first race.”

“I know, I know,” said Garrison grimly. “Cut it out. You don't understand, and it's no good talking. When you have reached the top of the pile, Red, you'll travel with as fast a mob as I did. But I never threw a race in my life. That's on the level. Somehow I always get blind dizzy in the stretch, and it passed when I crossed the post. I never knew when it was coming on. I felt all right other times. I had to make the coin, as you say, for I lived up to every cent I made. No, I never threw a race—Yes, you can smile, Red,” he finished savagely. “Smile if your face wants stretching. But that's straight. Maybe I've gone back. Maybe I'm all in. Maybe I'm a crook. But there'll come a time, it may be one year, it may be a hundred, when I'll come back—clean. I'll make good, and if you're on the track, Red, I'll show you that Garrison can ride a harder, straighter race than you or any one. This isn't my finish. There's a new deal coming to me, and I'm going to see that I get it.”

Without heeding Red's pessimistic reply. Garrison turned on his heel and entered the stall where Sis, the Carter Handicap favorite, was being boxed for the coming Belmont opening.

Crimmins, the trainer, looked up sharply as Garrison entered. He was a small, hard man, with a face like an ice-pick and eyes devoid of pupils, which fact gave him a stony, blank expression. In fact, he had been likened once, by Jimmy Drake, to a needle with two very sharp eyes, and the simile was merited. But he was an excellent flesh handler; and Waterbury, an old ex-bookie, knew what he was about when he appointed him head of the stable.

“Hello, Dan!” said Garrison, in the same tone he had used to greet Red. He and the trainer had been thick, but it was a question whether that thickness would still be there. Garrison, alone in the world since he had run away from his home years ago, had no owner as most jockeys have, and Crimmins had filled the position of mentor. In fact, he had trained him, though Garrison's riding ability was not a foreign graft, but had been bred in the bone.

“Hello!” echoed Crimmins, coming forward. His manner was cordial, and Garrison's frozen heart warmed. “Of course you'll quit the game,” ran on the trainer, after an exchange of commonalities. “You're queered for good. You couldn't get a mount anywhere. I ain't saying anything about your pulling Sis, 'cause there ain't no use now. But you've got me and Mr. Waterbury in trouble. It looked as if we were in on the deal. I should be sore on you, Garrison, but I can't be. And why? Because Dan Crimmins has a heart, and when he likes a man he likes him even if murder should come 'atween. Dan Crimmins ain't a welcher. You've done me as dirty a deal as one man could hand another, but instead of getting hunk, what does Dan Crimmins do? Why, he agitates his brain thinking of a way for you to make a good living, Bud. That's Dan Crimmins' way.”

Garrison was silent. He did not try to vindicate himself. He had given that up as hopeless. He was thinking, oblivious to Crimmins' eulogy.

“Yeh,” continued the upright trainer; “that's Dan Crimmins' way. And after much agitating of my brain I've hit on a good money-making scheme for you, Bud.”

“Eh?” asked Garrison.

“Yeh.” And the trainer lowered his voice. “I know a man that's goin' to buck the pool-rooms in New York. He needs a chap who knows the ropes—one like you—and I gave him your name. I thought it would come in handy. I saw your finish a long way off. This fellah's in the Western Union; an operator with the pool-room lines. You can run the game. It's easy. See, he holds back the returns, tipping you the winners, and you skin round and lay the bets before he loosens up on the returns. It's easy money; easy and sure.”

Again Garrison was silent. But now a smile was on his face. He had been asking himself what was the use of honesty.

“What d'you say?” asked Crimmins, his head on one side, his small eyes calculating.

The smile was still twisting Garrison's lip. “I was going to light out, anyway,” he answered slowly. “I'll answer you when I say good-by to Sis.”

“All right. She's over there.”

The handlers fell back in silence as Garrison approached the filly. He was softly humming the music-hall song, “Good-by, Sis.” With all his faults, the handlers to a man liked Garrison. They knew how he had professed to love the filly, and now they sensed that he would prefer to say his farewell without an audience. Sis whinnied as Garrison raised her small head and looked steadily into her soft, dark eyes.

“Sis,” he said slowly, “it's good-by. We've been pals, you and I; pals since you were first foaled. You're the only girl I have; the only sweetheart I have; the only one to say good-by to me. Do you care?”

The filly nuzzled at his shoulder. “I've done you dirt to-day,” continued the boy a little unsteadily. “It was your race from the start. You know it; I know it. I can't explain now, Sis, how it came about. But I didn't go to do it. I didn't, girlie. You understand, don't you? I'll square that deal some day, Sis. I'll come back and square it. Don't forget me. I won't forget you—I can't. You don't think me a crook, Sis? Say you don't. Say it,” he pleaded fiercely, raising her head.

The filly understood. She lipped his face, whinnying lovingly. In a moment Garrison's nerve had been swept away, and, arms flung about the dark, arched neck, he was sobbing his heart out on the glossy coat; sobbing like a little child.

How long he stayed there, the filly nuzzling him like a mother, he did not know. It seemed as if he had reached sanctuary after an aeon of chaos. He had found love, understanding in a beast of the field. Where his fellow man had withheld, the filly had given her all and questioned not. For Sis, by Rex out of Reine, two-year filly, blooded stock, was a thoroughbred. And a thoroughbred, be he man, beast, or bird, does not welch on his hand. A stranger only in prosperity; a chum in adversity. He does not question; he gives.

“Well,” said Crimmins, as Garrison slowly emerged from the stall, “you take the partin' pretty next your skin. What's your answer to the game I spoke of? Mulled it over? It don't take much thinking, I guess.” He was paring his mourning fringed nails with great indifference.

“No, it doesn't take much thinking, Dan,” agreed Garrison slowly, his eyes narrowed. “I'll rot first before I touch it.”

“Yes?” The trainer raised his thick eyebrows and lowered his thin voice. “Kind of tony, ain't yeh? Beggars can't be choosers.”

“They needn't be crooks, Dan. I know you meant it all right enough,” said Garrison bitterly. “You think I'm crooked, and that I'd take anything—anything; dirt of any kind, so long's there's money under it.”

“Aw, sneeze!” said Crimmins savagely. Then he checked himself. “It ain't my game. I only knew the man. There's nothing in it for me. Suit yourself;” and he shrugged his shoulders. “It ain't Crimmins' way to hump his services on any man. Take it or leave it.”

“You wanted me to go crooked, Dan,” said Garrison steadily. “Was it friendship—”

“Huh! Wanted you to go crooked?” flashed the trainer with a sneer. “What are y' talking about? Ain't yeh a welcher now? Ain't yeh crooked—hair, teeth, an' skin?”

“You mean that, Dan?” Garrison's face was white. “You've trained me, and yet you, too, believe I was in on those lost races? You know I lost every cent on Sis—”

“It ain't one race, it's six,” snorted Crimmins. “It's Crimmins' way to agitate his brain for a friend, but it ain't his way to be a plumb fool. You can't shoot that bull con into me, Bud. I know you. I give you an offer, friend and friend. You turn it down and 'cuse me of making you play crooked. I'm done with you. It ain't Crimmins' way.”

Billy Garrison eyed his former trainer and mentor steadily for a long time. His lip was quivering.

“Damn your way!” he said hoarsely at length, and turned on his heel. His hands were deep in his pockets, his shoulders hunched as he swung out of the stable. He was humming over and over the old music-hall favorite, “Good-by, Sis”—humming in a desperate effort to keep his nerve. Billy Garrison had touched bottom in the depths.