Читать книгу Thoroughbreds - William Alexander Fraser - Страница 11

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Porter was an easy man with his horses. Though he could not afford, because of his needs, to work out his theory that two-year-olds should not be raced, yet he utilized it as far as possible by running them at longer intervals than was general.

“I'll start the little mare about once more this season,” he told Dixon. “The babes can't cut teeth, and grow, and fight it out in punishing races on dusty hay and hard-shelled oats, when they ought to be picking grass in an open field. She's too good a beast to do up in her young days. The Assassins made good three-year-olds, and the little mare's dam, Maid of Rome, wasn't much her first year out—only won once—but as a three-year-old she won three out of four starts, and the fourth year never lost a race. Lucretia ought to be a great mare next year if I lay her by early this season. She's in a couple of stakes at Gravesend and Sheepshead, and we'll just fit her into the softest spot.”

“What about Lauzanne?” asked the Trainer, “I'm afraid he's a bad horse.”

“How is he doing?”

“He's stale. He's a bad doer—doesn't clean up his oats, an' mopes.”

“I guess that killing finish with The Dutchman took the life out of him. That sort of thing often settles a soft-hearted horse for all time.”

“I don't think it was the race, sir,” Dixon replied; “they just pumped the cocaine into him till he was fair blind drunk; he must a' swallowed the bottle. I give him a ball, a bran mash, and Lord knows what all, an' the poison's workin' out of him. He's all breakin' out in lumps; you'd think he'd been stung by bees.”

“I never heard of such a thing,” commented Porter. “A man that would dope a two-year-old ought to be ruled off, sure.”

“I think you oughter make a kick, sir,” said Dixon, hesitatingly.

“I don't. When I squeal, Andy, it'll be when there's nothing but the voice left. I bought a horse from a man once just as he stood. I happened to know the horse, and said I didn't want any inspection—didn't want to see him, but bought him, as I say, just as he stood. When I went to the stable to get him he wasn't worth much, Andy—he was dead. Perhaps I might have made a kick about his not standing up, but I didn't.”

“Well, sir, I'm thinkin' Lauzanne's a deuced sight worse'n a dead horse; he'll cost more tryin' to win with him.”

“I dare say you're right, but he can gallop a bit.”

“When he's primed.”

“No dope for me, Andy. I never ran a dope horse and never will—I'm too fond of them to poison them.”

“I'll freshen him up a bit, sir, and we'll give him a try in a day or two. Would you mind puttin' him in a sellin' race?—he cost a bit.”

“He couldn't win anything else, and if anybody wants to claim him they can.”

“I thought of starting Diablo in that mile handicap; he's in pretty light. He's about all we've got ready.”

“All right, Dixon,” Porter replied. “It may be that we've broke our bad luck with the little mare.”

They were standing in the paddock during this conversation. It was in the forenoon; Dixon had come over to the Secretary's office to see about some entries before twelve o'clock. When the Trainer had finished his business, the two men walked across the course and infield to Stable 12, where Dixon had his horses. As they passed over the “Withers Course,” as the circular track was called, Dixon pointed to the dip near the lower far turn.

“It's a deuced funny thing,” he said, speaking reminiscently, “but that little hollow there settles more horses than the last fifty yards of the finish; it seems to make the soft ones remember that they're runnin' when they get that change, an' they stop. I bet Diablo'll quit right there, he's done it three or four times.”

“He was the making of a great horse as a two-year-old, wasn't he, Andy?”

“They paid a long price for him, if that's any line; but I think he never was no good. It don't matter how fast a horse is if he won't try.”

“I've an idea Diablo'll be a good horse yet,” mused Porter. “You can't make a slow horse gallop, but there's a chance of curing a horse's temper by kind treatment. I've noticed that a squealing pig generally runs like the devil when he takes it into his head.”

“Diablo's a squealing pig if there ever was one,” growled Dixon.

They reached the track stable, and, as if by a mutual instinct, the two men walked on till they stood in front of Lauzanne's stall.

“He's a good enough looker, ain't he?” commented Dixon, as he dipped under the door bar, went into the stall, and turned the horse about. “He's the picture of his old sire, Lazzarone,” he continued, looking the horse over critically; “an' a damned sight bigger rogue, though the old one was bad enough. Lazzarone won the Suburban with blinkers on his head, bandages on his legs, an' God knows what in his stomach. He was second in the Brooklyn that same year. I've always heard he was a mule, an' I guess this one got it all, an' none of the gallopin'.”

“How does he work with the others?” queried Porter.

“Runs a bit, an' then cuts it—won't try a yard. Of course he's sick from the dope, an' the others are a bit fast for him. If we put him in a sellin' race, cheap, he'd have a light weight, an' might do better.”

Porter walked on to Lucretia's stall, and the trainer continued in a monologue to Lauzanne: “You big slob! you're a counterfeit, if there ever was one. But I'll stand you a drink just to get rid of you; I'll put a bottle of whisky inside of your vest day after to-morrow, an' if you win p'raps somebody'll buy you.”

Lauzanne did not answer-it's a way horses have. It is doubtful if his mind quite grasped the situation, even. That neither Dixon, nor Langdon, nor the jockey boys understood him he knew—not clearly, but approximately enough to increase his stubbornness, to rouse his resentment. They had not even studied out the pathology of his descent sufficiently well to give him a fair show, to train him intelligently. They remembered that his sire, Lazzarone, had a bad temper; but they forgot that he was a stayer, not 'given to sprinting. Even Lauzanne's dam, Bric-a-brac, was fond of a long route, was better at a mile-and-a-half than five furlongs.

Lauzanne knew what had come to him of genealogy, not in his mind so much as in his muscles. They were strong but sluggish, not active but non-tiring. Langdon had raced Lauzanne with sprinting colts, and when they ran away from him at the start he had been unequal to the task of overhauling them in the short two-year-old run of half-a-mile. Then the wise man had said that Lauzanne's courage was at fault; the jockeys had called it laziness, and applied the whip. And out of all this uselessness, this unthinking philosophy, the colt had come with a soured temper, a broken belief in his masters—“Lauzanne the Despised.”

Porter's trust that his ill luck had been changed by a win was a faith of short life, for Diablo was most emphatically beaten in his race.

And then came the day of forlorn hope, the day of Lauzanne's disgrace, inasmuch as it de-graduated him into the selling-platter class.

Bad horse as Langdon knew Lauzanne to be, it occurred to him that Porter had planned a clever coup. He had an interview with Crane over the subject, but his master did not at all share the Trainer's belief.

“What price would Lucretia, or The Dutchman, be in with the same lot?” Langdon asked, argumentatively.

“About one to ten,” Crane replied. “But the Chestnut's beating them had no bearing on this race. From what I see of Mr. Dixon, I don't at all class him with you as a trainer—he hasn't the same resource.”

Langdon stood silent, sullenly turning over in his mind this doubtful compliment.

“I'm not sure,” continued the Banker, “but that having stuck Porter with Lauzanne, you shouldn't give him a hint about—well, as to what course of preparation would make Lauzanne win a race for him. The ordinary diet of oats is hardly stimulating enough for such a sluggish animal.”

Langdon frowned. If Crane had not been quite so strong, quite so full of unexpressed power, he would have rebelled at the assertion that he had stuck Porter; but he answered, and his voice struggled between asperity and deprecation, “There ain't no call for me to give that stable any pointers; Porter put it to me pretty straight that the horse had been helped.”

“And what did you say?” blandly inquired Crane.

“Told him to go to hell.”

This wasn't exactly truthful as we remember the interview, but its terseness appealed to Crane, and he smiled as he said: “Porter probably won't take your advice, Langdon; he's stubborn enough at times. And even if he does know that—that—Lauzanne' requires special treatment, he won't indulge him—he's got a lot of old-fashioned ideas about racing. So you see Lauzanne is a bad betting proposition.”

After Langdon had left Crane's thoughts dwelt on the subject they had just discussed.

“From a backer's point of view Lauzanne is certainly bad business,” he mused; “but the public will reason just as Langdon does. And what's bad for the backers is good for the layers; I must see Faust.”

“You had better make a book to beat Lauzanne,” Crane said to Jakey Faust, just before business had commenced in the ring that afternoon.

The Cherub stared in astonishment; his eyes opened wide. That was nearly the limit of his fat little face's expression, no matter what the occasion.

“You don't own him now, do you, sir?” he blurted out, with unthinking candor.

“I do not.”

“He's dropped into a soft spot—he rates best in the percentage card.”

“Figures sometimes lie,” commented Crane.

“Every handicapper tips him to win.”

“They're all broke because of their knowledge.”

“The books'll mark him up first choice.”

“That's why it will be worth while playing the field to beat him.”

“He's in with a gang of muts to-day, an' he beat some cracker-jacks last time out.”

“You were hypnotized that day, Mr. Faust; so was the Judge. Lauzanne didn't beat anything.”

“Didn't beat—what the hell—didn't the Chestnut get the verdict?”

“He did; but—” and Crane looked at Faust, with patient toleration of his lack of perception.

The Cherub waited for an explanation of these contradictory remarks. But he might have waited indefinitely—Crane had quite finished. The Cherub raised his little round eyes, that were like glass alleys, green and red and blue-streaked, to the other's face inquiringly, and encountered a pair of penetrating orbs peering at him over some sort of a mask—the face that sustained the eyes was certainly a mask—as expressionless. Then it came to Jakey Faust that there was nothing left to do but fill the Lauzanne column in his book with the many bets that would come his way and make much money.

Crane watched Lauzanne go lazily, sluggishly down to the post for his race. He knew the horse's moods; the walk of the Chestnut was the indifferent stroll of a horse that is thinking only of his dinner.

“They've given him nothing,” the Banker muttered to himself; “the heavy-headed brute won't try a yard. But he'll fight the boy when he tries to ride him out.”

The whisky that Dixon had surreptitiously given Lauzanne had been as inefficacious as so much ginger beer; and in the race Lauzanne drew back out of the bustle and clash of the striving horses as quickly as he could. In vain his jockey used whip and spur; Lauzanne simply put his ears back, switched his tail, and loafed along, a dozen lengths behind his field.

In the straight he made up a little of the lost ground, but he was securely out of the money at the finish. Fate still sat and threw the dice as he had for many moons—a deuce for John Porter, and a six for Philip Crane.