Читать книгу Thoroughbreds - William Alexander Fraser - Страница 4

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It was the May meeting at Morris Park, and Morris Park is the most beautiful race course in all America.

John Porter, walking up the steps of the Grand Stand, heard some one call him by name. Turning his head, he saw it was James Danby, an owner, sitting in his private box. Porter turned into the box, and taking the chair the other pushed toward him, sat down.

“What about Lucretia?” asked Danby, with the air of an established friendship which permitted the asking of such questions.

“She's ready to the minute,” replied Porter.

“Can she get the five furlongs?” queried Danby. “She's by Assassin, and some of them were quitters.”

“She'll quit if she falls dead,” replied the other man, quietly. “I've worked her good enough to win, and I'm backing her.”

“That'll do for me,” declared Danby. “To tell you the truth, John, I like the little mare myself; but I hear that Langdon, who trained Lauzanne, expects to win.”

“The mare'll be there, or thereabouts,” asserted her owner; “I never knew a Lazzarone yet much good as a two-year-old. They're sulky brutes, like the old horse; and if Lucretia's beat, it won't be Lauzanne that'll turn the trick.”

The bell clanged imperiously at the Judges' Stand. Porter pulled out his watch and looked at it.

“That's saddling,” he remarked, laconically; “I must go and have a bit on the mare, and then take a look at her before she goes out.”

As Porter went down the steps his companion leaned over the rail and crooked his fingers at a thin-faced man with a blond mustache who had been keeping a corner of his eye on the box.

“What are they making favorite, Lewis?” queried Danby, as the thin-faced man stood beside him.

“Lucretia.”

“What's her price?”

“Two to one.”

“What's second favorite?”

“Lauzanne—five to two.”

“Porter tells me Lucretia is good business,” said Danby, in a tentative tone.

“Langdon thinks it's all over bar the shouting; he says Lauzanne outclasses his field,” retorted Lewis.

“Langdon's a betting man; Porter's an owner, and a good judge,” objected Danby; “and he's got a good boy up, too, McKay,” he added, slowly focusing his field glasses on the jockey board opposite the Stand.

“Crooked as a dog's hind legs,” snarled Lewis, biting viciously at his cigar.

“Bob, it's damned hard to find a straight-legged dog,” laughed Danby. “And when John Porter starts a horse, there's never anything doing. Here's six hundred; put' it on the mare—straight.”

As Lewis pushed his way into the shoving, seething, elbowing crowd in the betting ring, he was suddenly struck in the chest by something which apparently had the momentum of an eight-inch shell; but it was only John Porter, who, in breaking through the outer crust of the living mass, had been ejected with more speed than was of his own volition.

Bob smothered the expletive that had risen to his lip when he saw who the unwitting offender was, and asked, “What are they doin' to the mare in the ring?”

“Not much,” answered his assailant, catching his breath; “there's a strong play on Langdon's horse, and if I didn't know my boy pretty well, and Lucretia better, I'd have weakened a bit. But she can't lose, she can't lose!” he repeated in the tone of a man who is reassuring himself.

Lewis battled his way along till he stood in front of a bookmaker with a face cast very much on the lines of a Rubens' cherub; but the cherub-type ended abruptly with the plump frontispiece of “Jakey” Faust, the bookmaker. Lewis knew that. “If there's anythin' doin', I'm up against it here,” he muttered to himself. “What's Lauzanne's price?” he asked, in an indifferent voice, for the bookmaker's assistant was busy changing the figures on his list.

Faust pretended not to hear him.

“Sure thing!” whispered Lewis to himself. Then aloud he repeated the question, touching the bookmaker on the elbow.

The Cherub smiled blandly. “Not takin' any,” he answered, nodding his head in the pleasant manner of a man who knows when he's got a good thing.

“What's Lucretia?” persisted Lewis.

“Oh! that's it, is it? I'll lay you two to one.”

The questioner edged away, shaking his head solemnly.

“Here! five to two—how much—” but Lewis was gone.

He burrowed like a mole most industriously, regardless of people's toes, their ribs, their dark looks, and even angry expressions of strong disapproval, and when he gained the green sward of the lawn, hurried to his friend's box.

“Did you get it on?” queried the latter.

“No; I don't like the look of it. Faust is holding out Lauzanne, and stretched me half a point about the mare. He and Langdon are in the same boat.”

“But that won't win the race,” remonstrated Danby. “Lauzanne is a maiden, and Porter doesn't often make a mistake about any of his own stock.”

“I thought I'd come back and tell you,” said Bob Lewis, apologetically.

“And you did right; but if the mare wins, and I'm not on, after getting it straight from Porter, I'd want to go out and kick myself good and hard. But put it on straight and place; then if Lauzanne's the goods we'll save.”

Lewis was gone about four minutes.

“You're on,” he said, when he returned; “I've two hundred on the Chestnut for myself.”

“Lauzanne?”

“It's booked that way; but I'm backin' the Trainer, Langdon. I went on my uppers two years ago backing horses; I'm following men now.”

“Bad business,” objected his stout friend; “it's bad business to back anything that talks.”

When John Porter reached the saddling paddock, his brown mare, Lucretia, was being led around in a circle in the lower corner. As he walked down toward her his trainer, Andy Dixon, came forward a few paces to meet him.

“Are they hammerin' Crane's horse in the ring, sir?” he asked, smoothing down the grass with the toe of one foot, watching this physical process with extreme interest.

“Just what you'd notice,” replied Porter. “Why?”

“Well, I don't like the look of it a little bit. Here's this Lauzanne runs like a dog the last time out—last by the length of a street—and now I've got it pretty straight they're out for the stuff.”

“They'd a stable-boy up on him that time.”

“That's just it,” cried Dixon. “Grant comes to me that day—you know Grant, he works the commission for Dick Langdon—and tells me to leave the horse alone; and to-day he comes and—” he hesitated.

“And what?”

“Tells me to go light on our mare.”

“Isn't Grant broke?” asked Porter, with seeming irrelevance.

“He's close next it,” answered the Trainer.

“Aren't his friends that follow him all broke?”

“A good many of them have their address in Queer Street.”

“Look here, Andy,” said the owner, “there isn't a man with a horse in this stake that doesn't think he's going to win; and when it's all over we'll see Lucretia's number go up. Grant's a fool,” he added, viciously. “Didn't he break Fisher-didn't he break every other man that ever stuck to him?”

“It's not Grant at all,” replied Dixon, rubbing the palms of his hands together thoughtfully—a way he had when he wished to concentrate in concrete form the result of some deep cogitation—“it's Langdon, an' he's several blocks away from an asylum.”

“Langdon makes mistakes too.”

“He cashes in often when he's credited with a mistake,” retorted the other.

“Well, I've played the little mare,” asserted Porter.

“Much, sir?” asked Dixon, solicitously.

“All I can stand—and a little more,” he added, falteringly; “I needed a win, a good win,” he offered, in an explanatory voice. “I want to clear Ringwood—but never mind about that, Andy. The mare's well—ain't she? There can't be anything doing with McKay—we've only put him up a few times, but he seems all right.”

“I think we'll win,” answered the Trainer; “I didn't get anythin' straight—just that there seemed a deuced strong tip on Lauzanne, considerin' that he'd never showed any form to warrant it. Yonder he is, sir, in number five—go and have a look at him.”

As John Porter walked across the paddock a horseman touched the fingers of his right hand to his cap. There was a half-concealed look of interest in the man's eye that Porter knew from experience meant something.

“What do you know, Mike?” he asked, carelessly, only half halting in his stride.

“Nottin' sir; but dere's somebody in de know dis trip. Yer mare's a good little filly, w'en she's right, but ye'r up against it.”

Porter stopped and looked at the horseman. He was Mike Gaynor, a trainer, and more than once Porter had stood his friend. Mike always had on hand three or four horses of inconceivable slowness, and uncertainty of wind and limb; consequently there was an ever-recurring inability to pay feed bills, so he had every chance to know just who was his friend and who was not, for he tried them most sorely.

Porter knew all this quite well; also that in spite of Mike's chronic impecuniosity he was honest, and true as steel to a benefactor. He waited, feeling sure that Gaynor had something to tell.

“There's a strong play on Lauzanne, ain't there, sir?”

Porter nodded.

“Sure t'ing! That Langdon's a crook. I knowed him when he was ridin' on freight cars; now he's a swell, though he's a long sprint from bein' a gentleman. I got de tip dat dere was a killin' on, an' I axed Dick Langdon if dere was anyt'ing doin'; an' Dick says to me, says he, puttin' hot' t'umbs up”—and Mike held both hands out horizontally with the thumbs stiff and vertical to illustrate this form of oath—“'there's nottin' doin', Mike,' says he. What d'ye t'ink of that, sir, an' me knowin' there was?” asked Mike, tragically.

“It's the biggest tip that always falls down, Gaynor; and they've got to be pretty swift to beat Lucretia.”

“That filly's all right; she's worked out well enough to do up that field of stiffs. I ain't no rail bird, but I've hed me eye on her. But I ain't doin' no stunt about horses, Mister Porter; I'm talkin' about men. Th' filly's honest, and ye'r honest sir, but ye don't roide th' mare yerself, do ye?”

“You think, Mike—” began Mr. Porter, questioningly; but Gaynor interrupted him with: “I don't think nothin', sir, an' I ain't sayin' nothin. I ain't never been before the Stewards yet for crooked work, or crooked talk; but there's a boy ridin' in dat bunch to-day w'at got six hundred for t'rowing me down once, see? S'elp me God! he pulled Blue Smoke to a standstill on me, knowin' that it would break me. That was at Coney Island, two years ago.”

“And you don't remember his name, I suppose, Mike?”

“I don't remember not'in' but that I got it in th' neck. But ye keep yer eye open, sir. Ye t'ink that none of the b'ys would t'row ye down cause ye've been good to 'em; but some of 'em are that mean they'd steal th' sugar from a fly. I know 'em. I hears 'em talk, cause they don't mind me—t'ink I'm one of th' gang.”

“Thank you very much, Gaynor; I appreciate your kindly warning; but I hope you're mistaken, all the same,” said Porter. Then he proceeded on his way toward stall five, in which was Lauzanne.

“How are you, Mr. Porter?”

It was Philip Crane, standing just outside of the stall, who thus addressed him. “Got something running today?” he continued, with vague innocence.

Langdon, just inside the box, chuckled softly. Surely Crane was a past master in duplicity.

“I'm starting Lucretia in this race,” replied Honest John.

“Oh!” Then Crane took Porter gently by the sleeve and drew him half within the stall. “Mr. Langdon, who trains a horse or two for me, says this one'll win;” and he indicated the big chestnut colt that the Trainer was binding tight to a light racing saddle. “You'd better have a bit on, Mr. Porter,” Crane added.

“Lucretia carries my money,” answered Porter in loyalty.

Langdon looked up, having cinched the girth tight, and took a step toward the two men.

“Well, we both can't win,” he said, half insolently; “an' I don't think there's anything out to-day'll beat Lauzanne.”

“That mare'll beat him,” retorted Porter, curtly, nettled by the other's cocksureness.

“I'll bet you one horse against the other, the winner to take both,” cried Langdon in a sneering, defiant tone.

“I've made my bets,” said Lucretia's owner, quietly.

“I hear you had an offer of five thousand for your filly, Mr. Porter,” half queried Crane.

“I did, and I refused it.”

“And here's the one that'll beat her to-day, an' I'll sell him for half that,” asserted the Trainer, putting his hand on Lauzanne's neck.

Exasperated by the persistent boastfulness of Langdon, Porter was angered into saying, “If he beats my mare, I'll give you that for him myself.”

“Done!” snapped Langdon. “I've said it, an' I'll stick to it.”

“I don't want the horse—” began Porter; but Langdon interrupted him.

“Oh, if you want to crawl.”

“I never crawl,” said Porter fiercely. “I don't want your horse, but just to show you what I think of your chance of winning, I'll give you two thousand and a half if you beat my mare, no matter what wins the race.”

“I think you'd better call this bargain off, Mr. Porter,” remonstrated Crane.

“Oh, the bargain will be off,” answered John Porter; “if I'm any judge, Lauzanne's running his race right here in the stall.”

His practiced eye had summed up Lauzanne as chicken-hearted; the sweat was running in little streams down the big Chestnut's legs, and dripping from his belly into the drinking earth spit-spit, drip-drip; his head was high held in nervous apprehension; his lips twitched, his flanks trembled like wind-distressed water, and the white of his eye was showing ominously.

Langdon cast a quick, significant, cautioning look at Crane as Porter spoke of the horse; then he said, “You're a fair judge, an' if you're right you get all the stuff an' no horse.”

“I stand to my bargain whatever happens,” Porter retorted.

At that instant the bugle sounded.

“Get up, Westley,” Langdon said to his jockey, “they're going out.”

As he lifted the boy to the saddle, the Trainer whispered a few concise directions.

“Hold him steady at the post,” he muttered; “I've got him a bit on edge to-day. Get off in front and stay there; he's feelin' good enough to leave the earth. This'll be a matter of a couple of hundred to you if you win.”

“All out! all out!” called the voice, of the paddock offcial. “Number one!” then, “Come on you, Wesltey! they're all out.”

The ten starters passed in stately procession from the green-swarded paddock through an open gate to the soft harrowed earth, gleaming pink-brown in the sunlight, of the course. How consciously beautiful the thoroughbreds looked! The long sweeping step; the supple bend of the fetlock as it gave like a wire spring under the weight of great broad quarters, all sinewy strength and tapered perfection; the stretch of gentle-curved neck, sweet-lined as a greyhound's, bearing a lean, bony head, set with two great jewels of eyes, in which were honesty and courage, and eager longing for the battle of strength and stamina, and stoutness of heart; even the nostrils, with a red transparency as of silk, spread and drank eagerly the warm summer air that was full of the perfume of new-growing clover and green pasture-land.

Surely the spectacle of these lovely creatures, nearest to man in their thoughts and their desires, and superior in their honesty and truth, was a sight to gladden the hearts of kings. Of a great certainty it was a sport of kings; and also most certainly had it at times come into the hands of highway robbers.

Some such bitter thought as this came into the heart of John Porter as he stood and watched his beautiful brown mare, Lucretia, trailing with stately step behind the others. He loved good horses with all the fervor of his own strong, simple, honest nature. Their walk was a delight to him, their roaring gallop a frenzy of eager sensation. There was nothing in the world he loved so well. Yes—his daughter Allis. But just now he was thinking of Lucretia—Lucretia and her rival, the golden-haired chestnut, Lauzanne.

He passed through the narrow gate leading from the paddock to the Grand Stand. The gate keeper nodded pleasantly to him and said: “Hope you'll do the trick with the little mare, sir. I'm twenty years at the business, and I haven't got over my likin' for an honest horse and an honest owner yet.”

There was covert insinuation of suspicion, albeit a kindly one, in the man's voice. The very air was full of the taint of crookedness; else why should the official speak of honesty at all? Everyone knew that John Porter raced to win.

He crossed the lawn and leaned against the course fence, to take a deciding look at the mare and the Chestnut as they circled past the stand in the little view-promenade which preceded the race.

His trained eye told him that Lauzanne was a grand-looking horse; big, well-developed shoulders reached back toward the huge quarters until the small racing saddle almost covered the short back. What great promise of weight-carrying was there!

He laughed a little at the irrelevance of this thought, for it was not a question of weight-carrying at all; two-year-olds at a hundred pounds in a sprint of only five furlongs. Speed was the great factor to be considered, and surely Lucretia outclassed the other in that way. The long, well-ribbed-up body, with just a trace of gauntness in the flank; the slim neck; the deep chest; the broad, flat canon bones, and the well-let-down hocks, giving a length of thigh like a greyhound's—and the thighs themselves, as John Porter looked at them under the tucked-up belly of the gentle mare, big, and strong, and full of a driving force that should make the others break a record to beat her.

From the inquisition of the owner's study Lucretia stood forth triumphant; neither the Chestnut nor anything else in the race could beat her. And Jockey McKay—Porter raised his eyes involuntarily, seeking for some occult refutation of the implied dishonesty of the boy he had trusted. He found himself gazing straight into the small shifty eyes of Lucretia's midget rider, and such a hungry, wolfish look of mingled cunning and cupidity was there that Porter almost shuddered. The insinuations of Mike Gaynor, and the other things that pointed at a job being on, hadn't half the force of the dishonesty that was so apparent in the tell-tale look of the morally, irresponsible boy in whose hands he was so completely helpless. All the careful preparation of the mare, the economical saving, even to the self-denial of almost necessary things to the end that he might have funds to back her heavily when she ran; and the high trials she had given him when asked the question, and which had gladdened his heart and brought an exclamation of satisfaction from his phlegmatic trainer; the girlish interest of his daughter in the expected triumph—all these contingencies were as less than nothing should the boy, with the look of a demon in his eyes, not ride straight and honest.

Even then it was not too late to ask the Stewards to set McKay down, but what proof had he to offer that there was anything wrong? The boy's good name would be blasted should he, John Porter, say at the last minute that he did not trust him; and perhaps the lad was innocent. Race people were ready to cry out that a jockey was fixed-that there was something wrong, when their own judgment was at fault and they lost.

Suddenly Porter gave a cry of astonishment. “My God!” he muttered, “the boy has got spurs on. That'll set the mare clean crazy.”

He turned to Dixon, who was at his elbow: “Why did you let McKay put on the steels?”

“I told him not to.” “He's got them on.”

“They've got to come off,” and the Trainer dashed up the steps to the Stewards. In two minutes he returned, a heavy frown on his face.

“Well?” queried Porter.

“I've made a mess of it,” answered Dixon, sullenly. “It seems there's hints of a job on, an' the Stewards have got the wrong end of the stick.”

“They refused to let the mare go back to the paddock?” queried Porter.

“Yes; an' one of them said that if trainers would stick closer to their horses, an' keep out of the bettin' ring, that the public'd get a better run for their money.”

“I'm sorry, Andy,” said Porter, consolingly.

“It's pretty tough on me, but it's worse on you, sir. That boy hadn't spurs when he weighed, an' there's the rankest kind of a job on, I'll take me oath.”

“We've got to stand to it, Andy.”

“That we have; we've just got to take our medicine like little men. Even if we make a break an' take McKay off there isn't another good boy left. If he jabs the little mare with them steels she'll go clean crazy.”

“It's my fault, Andy. I guess I've saved and petted her a bit too much. But she never needed spurs—she'd break her heart trying without them.”

“By God!” muttered Dixon as he went back to the paddock, “if the boy stops the mare he'll never get another mount, if I can help it. It's this sort of thing that kills the whole business of racing. Here's a stable that's straight from owner to exercise boy, and now likely to throw down the public and stand a chance of getting ruled off ourselves because of a gambling little thief that can spend the income of a prince. But after all it isn't his fault. I know who ought to be warned off if this race is fixed; but they won't be able to touch a hair of him; he's too damn slick. But his time'll come—God knows how many men he'll break in the meantime, though.”

As John Porter passed Danby's box going up into the stand, the latter leaned over in his chair, touched him on the arm and said, “Come in and take a seat.”

“I can't,” replied the other man, “my daughter is up there somewhere.”

“I've played the mare,” declared Danby, showing Porter a memo written in a small betting book.

The latter started and a frown crossed his brown face.

“I'm sorry—I'm afraid it's no cinch.”

“Five to two never is,” laughed his friend. “But she's a right smart filly; she looks much the best of the lot. Dixon's got her as fit as a fiddle string. When you're done with that man you might turn him over to me, John.”

“The mare's good enough,” said Porter, “and I've played her myself—a stiffish bit, too; but all the same, if you asked me now, I'd tell you to keep your money in your pocket. I must go,” he added, his eye catching the flutter of a race card which was waving to him three seats up.

“Here's a seat, Dad,” cried the girl, cheeringly, lifting her coat from a chair she had kept for her father.

For an instant John Porter forgot all about Lucretia and her troubles. The winsome little woman had the faculty of always making him forget his trials; she had to the fullest extent that power so often found in plain faces. Strictly speaking, she wasn't beautiful—any man would have passed that opinion if suddenly asked the question upon first seeing her. Doubt of the excellence of this judgment might have crept into his mind after he had felt the converting influence of the blue-gray eyes that were so much like her father's; in them was the most beautiful thing in the world, an undoubted evidence of truth and honesty and sympathy. She was small and slender, but no one had ever likened her to a flower. There was apparent sinewy strength and vigor in the small form. Her life, claimed by the open air, had its reward—the saddle is no cradle for weaklings. Bred in an atmosphere of racing, and surrounded as she had always been by thoroughbreds, Allis had grown up full of admiration for their honesty, and courage, and sweet temper.