Читать книгу Thoroughbreds - William Alexander Fraser - Страница 6

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In John Porter's home horse racing had no debasing effect. If a man couldn't race squarely—run to win every time—he had better quit the game, Porter had always asserted. He raced honestly and bet openly, without cant and without hypocrisy; just as a financier might have traded in stocks in Wall Street; or a farmer might plant his crops and trust to the future and fair weather to yield him a harvest in return.

So much of the racing life was on honor—so much of the working out of it was in the open, where purple-clovered fields gave rest, and health, and strength, that the home atmosphere was impregnated with moral truth, and courage, and frankness, in its influence on the girl's development.

Every twist of her sinewy figure bore mute testimony to this; every glance from her wondrous eyes was an eloquent substantiating argument in favor of the life she affected. John Porter looked down at the small, rather dark, upturned face, and a half-amused smile of content came to his lips. “Did you see Lucretia?” he asked. “Isn't she a beauty? Hasn't Dixon got her in the pink of condition?”

“I saw nothing else, father.” She beckoned to him with her eyes, tipped her head forward, and whispered: “Those people behind us have backed Lauzanne. I think they're racing folks.”

The father smiled as an uncultured woman's voice from one row back jarred on his ear. Allis noticed the smile and its provocation, and said, speaking hastily, “I don't mean like you, father—”

“Like us,” he corrected.

“Well, perhaps; they're more like betting or training people, though.” She put her hand on his arm warningly, as a high-pitched falsetto penetrated the drone of their half-whispered words, saying, “I tell you Dick knows all about this Porter mare, Lucretia.”

“But I like her,” a baritone voice answered. “She looks a rattlin' filly.”

“You'll dine off zwieback and by your lonely, Ned, if you play horses on their looks—”

“Or women either,” the baritone cut in.

“You're a fair judge, Ned. But Dick told me to go the limit on Lauzanne, and to leave the filly alone.”

“On form Lucretia ought to win,” the man persisted; “an' there's never anythin' doin' with Porter.”

“Perhaps not;” the unpleasant feminine voice sneered mockingly, with an ill-conditioned drawl on the “perhaps”; “but he doesn't ride his own mare, does he?”

John Porter started. Again that distasteful expression fraught with distrust and insinuation. There was a strong evil odor of stephanotis wafted to his nostrils as the speaker shook her fan with impatient decision. The perfume affected him disagreeably; it was like the exhalation of some noisome drug; quite in keeping with the covert insinuation of her words that Dick, as she called him—it must be Dick Langdon, the trainer of Lauzanne, Porter mused—had given her advice based on a knowledge quite irrespective of the galloping powers of the two horses.

“Did you hear that, father?” Allis whispered.

He nodded his head.

“What does it all mean?”

“It means, girl,” he said, slowly, “that all the trouble and pains I have taken over Lucretia since she was foaled, two years ago, and her dam, the old mare, Maid of Rome, died, even to raising the little filly on a bottle, and watching over her temper that it should not be ruined by brutal savages of stable-boys, whose one idea of a horse is that he must be clubbed into submission—that all the care taken in her training, and the money spent for her keep and entries goes for nothing in this race, if Jockey McKay is the rascal I fear he is.”

“You think some one has got at him, Dad?”

Her father nodded again.

“I wish I'd been a boy, so that I could have ridden Lucretia for you to-day,” Allis exclaimed with sudden emphasis.

“I almost wish you had, Little Woman; you'd have ridden straight anyway—there never was a crooked one of our blood.”

“I don't see why a jockey or anybody else should be dishonest—I'm sure it must take too much valuable time to cover up crooked ways.”

“Yes, you'd have made a great jock, Little Woman;” the father went on, musingly, as he watched the horses lining up for the start. “Men think if a boy is a featherweight, and tough as a Bowery loafer, he's sure to be a success in the saddle. That's what beats me—a boy of that sort wouldn't be trusted to carry a letter with ten dollars in it, and on the back of a good horse he's, piloting thousands. Unless a jockey has the instincts of a gentleman, naturally, he's almost certain to turn out a blackguard sooner or later, and throw down his owner. He'll have more temptations in a week to violate his trust than a bank clerk would have in a lifetime.”

“Is that why you put Alan in the bank, father?”

Porter went on as though he had not heard the daughter's query. “To make a first-class jock, a boy must have nerves of steel, the courage of a bulldog, the self-controlling honesty of a monk. You've got all these right enough, Allis, only you're a girl, don't you see—just a good little woman,” and he patted her hand affectionately.

“They're off!” exclaimed the baritone.

“Not this trip,” objected the falsetto.

“The spurs—the young fiend!” fiercely ejaculated John Porter.

“What is it, father?”

“The boy on Lucretia is jabbing her with the spurs, and she's cutting up.”

“That's the fourth false start,” said Ned, the baritone. “I don't think much of your Lauzanne, he's like a crazy horse.”

Allis heard the woman's shrill voice, smothered to a hissing whisper, answer something. Two distinct words, “the hop,” carried to her ears. There was a long-drawnout baritone, “Oh-h!” then, in the same key, “I knew Lauzanne was a sluggard, and couldn't make out why he was so frisky to-day.”

“Dick's got it down fine”—just audibly from the woman; “Lauzanne'll try right enough this time out.”

“The mare's actin' as if she'd a cup of tea, too,” muttered her companion, Ned.

This elicited a dry chuckle from the woman.

Allis pinched her father's arm again, and looked up in his face inquiringly, as from the seat behind them the jumbled conversation came to their ears. Porter nodded his head understandingly, and frowned. The stephanotis was choking his nostrils, and an occasional word was filling his heart with confirmation of his suspicions.

“I don't like it,” he muttered to Allis. “They've had four breaks, and the mare's been left each time. The Chestnut's the worst actor I ever saw at the post. But I'm thinking he'll leave the race right there, the way he's cutting up.”

“My God!” he exclaimed in the next breath. He had startled the girl with the fierce emphasis he threw into the words; she sprang to her feet in excitement.

A bell had clanged noisily, there was the shuffle of thousands of eager feet; a hoarse cry, “They're off!” went rolling from tier to tier, from seat to seat, to the topmost row of the huge stand.

“Lauzanne is off with a flying lead of three lengths, and the mare is left absolutely-absolutely last. The boy whipped her about just as the flag fell.” There was the dreary monotone of crushed hope in Porter's voice as he spoke.

“Yes, we're out of it, Little Woman,” he continued; and there was almost a tone of relief, of resignation. Suspense was gone; realization of the disaster seemed to have steadied his nerves again. Allis attempted to speak, but her low voice was hushed to a whisper by the exultant cries that were all about them.

“Didn't I tell you—Lauzanne wins in a walk!” the falsetto voice was an exultant squeak of hilarious excitement.

“You called the turn.” Even Ned's baritone had risen to a false-keyed tenor; he was standing on his toes, peering over the heads of taller men in front.

Allis brushed from her eyes the tears of sympathy that had welled into them, and, raising her voice, spoke bravely, clinging to the vain hope: “Lucretia is game, father—she may win yet—the race is not lost till they're past the post.”

Then her voice died away, and she kept pleading over and over in her heart, “Come on Lucretia—come on, brave little mare! Is she gaining, father—can you see?”

“She'll never make it up,” Porter replied, as he watched the jumble of red, and yellow, and black patterned into a trailing banner, which waved, and vibrated, and streamed in the glittering sunlight, a furlong down the Course—and the tail of it was his own blue, whitestarred jacket. In front, still a good two lengths in front, gleamed scarlet, like an evil eye, the all red of Lauzanne's colors.

“Where is Lucretia, father?” the girl asked again, stretching her slight figure up in a vain endeavor to see over the shoulders of those in front.

“She had an opening there,” Porter replied, speaking his thoughts more than answering the girl, “but the boy pulled her into the bunch on the rail. He doesn't want to get through. Oh!” he exclaimed, as though some one had struck him in the face.

“What's wrong? Has she—”

“It's the Minstrel. His boy threw him fair across Lucretia, and knocked her to her knees.” He lowered his glasses listlessly. “It's Lauzanne all the way, if he lasts out. He's dying fast though, and Westley's gone to the whip.”

He was looking through his glasses again. Though beaten, his racing blood was up. “If Lauzanne wins it will be Westley's riding; the Hanover colt, The Dutchman, is at his quarter. He'll beat him out, for the Hanovers are all game.”

“Come on you, Lauzanne!” Even the exotic stephanotis failed to obliterate the harsh, mercenary intensity of the feminine cry at the back of Allis.

“He's beat!” a deep discordant voice groaned. “I knew he was a quitter;” the woman's companion was pessimistic.

Like trees of a forest, swayed by strong compelling winds, the people rocked in excitement, tiptoed and craned eager necks, as they watched the magnificent struggle that was drawing to a climax in the stretch. Inch by inch the brave son of Hanover was creeping up on Lauzanne. How loosely the big Chestnut galloped—rolling like a drunken man in the hour of his distress. Close pressed to his neck, flat over his wither lay the intense form of his rider—a camel's hump—a part of the racing mechanism, unimpeding the weary horse in the masterly rigidity of his body and legs; but the arms, even the shoulders of the great jockey thrust his mount forward, always forward—forward at each stride; fairly lifting him, till the very lurches of Lauzanne carried him toward the goal. And at his girth raced the compact bay son of Hanover; galloping, galloping with a stout heart and eager reaching head; straining every sinew, and muscle, and nerve; in his eye the brave desire, not to be denied.

Ah, gallant little bay! On his back was the offspring of unthinking parents—a pin-head. Perhaps the Evil One had ordained him to the completion of Langdon's villainy with Lauzanne. At the pinch his judgment had flown—he was become an instrument of torture; with whip and spur he was throwing away the race. Each time he raised his arm and lashed, his poor foolish body swayed in the saddle, and The Dutchman was checked.

“Oh, if he would but sit still!” Porter cried, as he watched the equine battle.

The stand mob clamored as though Nero sat there and lions had been loosed in the arena. The strange medley of cries smote on the ears of Allis. How like wild beasts they were, how like wolves! She closed her eyes, for she was weary of the struggle, and listened. Yes, they were wolves leaping at the throat of her father, and joying in the defeat of Lucretia. Deep-throated howls from full-chested wolves: “Come on you, Lauzanne! On, Westley, on! The Bay wins! The Dutchman—The Dutchman for a thousand!”

“I'll take—”

But the new voice was stilled into nothingness by the shrill, reawakening falsetto. “Go on, Westley! Lauzanne wins—wins—wins!” it seemed to repeat. Allis sank back into her seat. She knew it was all over. The shuffle of many feet hastening madly, the crash of eager heels down the wooden steps, a surging, pushing, as the wolf-pack blocked each passage in its thirstful rush for the gold it had won, told her that the race was over.

No one knew which horse had won. Presently a quiet came over the mob like a lull in a storm. Silently they waited for the winning number to go up.

“I believe it's a dead heat,” said Porter; and Allis noted how calm and restful his voice sounded after the exultant babel of the hoarse-throated watchers.

“Where was Lucretia, father?”

“Third,” he answered, laconically, schooling his voice to indifference. “I hope it's a dead heat, for if Lauzanne gets the verdict I've got to take him. I don't want him after that run; they made him a present of the race at the start, and he only just squeezed home.”

“Why must you take the horse, father, if you don't want him? I don't understand.”

“I suppose there's no law for it—I said I would, that's all. The whole thing is crooked though; they stole the race from Lucretia and planted me with a dope horse, and hanged if I don't feel like backing out. Let Langdon go before the Stewards about the sale if he dare.”

“Did you give your word that you'd buy the horse, father?”

“I did; but it was a plant.”

“Then you'll take him, father. People say that John Porter's word is as good as his bond; and that sounds sweeter in my ears than if I were to hear them say that you were rich, or clever, or almost anything.”

“Lauzanne gets it!” called the eager grating voice behind them. “There go the numbers, Ned—three, five, ten; Lauzanne, The Dutchman, Lucretia. I knew it. Dick don't make no mistakes when he's out for blood.”

“He drew it a bit fine that time,” growled Ned, still in opposition; “it was the closest sort of a shave.”

“Hurrah, Lauzanne!”

Again there was more hurrying of feet as the Chestnut's backers who had waited in the stand for the Judge's decision, hurried down to the gold mart.

“You'll take Lauzanne, father,” Allis said, when the tumult had stilled; “it will come out right somehow—I know it will—he'll win again.”

John Porter stood irresolutely for a minute, not answering the girl, as though he were loath to go close to the contaminating influence that seemed part and parcel of Lauzanne, and which was stretching out to envelop him. He was thinking moodily that he had played against a man who used loaded dice, and had lost through his own rashness. He had staked so much on the race that the loss would cut cripplingly into his affairs.

“I guess you're right, Allis,” he said; “a man's got to keep his word, no matter what happens. I never owned a dope horse yet, and unless I'm mistaken this yellow skate is one to-day. I'll take him though, girl; but he'll get nothing but oats from me to make him gallop.”

Then Porter went resolutely down the steps, smothering in his heart the just rebellion that was tempting him to repudiate his bargain.

As he reached the lawn, a lad swung eagerly up the steps, threw his eye inquiringly along row after row of seats until it stopped at Allis. Then he darted to her side.

“Hello, Sis—been looking for you. Where's Dad?”

“Gone to get Lauzanne.”

“Lauzanne!” and the boy's eyes that were exactly like her own, opened wide in astonishment.

“Yes; father bought him.”

“The deuce! I say, Allis, that won't do. Don't you know there's something wrong about this race? I just saved myself. I backed the little mare for a V—then I heard something. This Langdon's a deuce of a queer fish, I can tell you. I wonder Crane has anything to do with him, for the Boss is straight as they make them.”

“Did you back Lauzanne then, Alan?”

“You bet I did; quick, too; and was hunting all over for the gov'nor to tell him. You see, I know Langdon—he comes to the bank sometimes. He's that slick he'll hardly say 'Good-day,' for fear of giving something away.”

“Then how did you—how did people know there was something wrong?”

“Oh, a woman, of course—she blabbed. I think she's Dick Langdon's sister, and—”

“Hush-hh!” and Allis laid her hand on the boy's arm, indicating with her eyes the woman in the seat behind.

“I'd better go and tell father—”

“You needn't bother; he knows. It's a question of honor. Father said he'd buy the horse, and he's gone to make good.”

“I wouldn't; that sort of thing will break a man.”

“It's a good way to go broke, Alan. Perhaps we'd all be richer if it wasn't so strong in the Porter blood; but all the same, brother, you do just as father is doing to-day—always keep your word. I tell you what it is, boy”—and her face lighted up as she spoke—“father is a hero—that's what he is; he's just the biggest, bravest man ever lived. He couldn't do a mean act. How did you get away from the bank, Alan?” she said, changing the subject; “I didn't know you were coming to-day.”

“Mortimer was light, and took on my work. He's a good sort.”

“Does he bet?”

The boy laughed. “Mortimer bet? That's rich. We call him 'Old Solemnity' in the bank; but he doesn't mean any harm by it—he just can't help it, that's all. If he had a stiff ruff about his neck, you could pose him for a picture of one of those old Dutch burgomasters.”

“He's doing your work, and you're making fun of him, boy.”

“You can't make fun of him, at him, or with him; he's a grave digger; but you can trust him.”

“That's better.”

“If I'd killed a man and needed a friend to help me out, I'd go straight to Mortimer; he's got that kind of eyes. Do you know why he's doing my work to-day?”

“Because you're away, I suppose.”

“Because you recited that doggerel about The Run of Crusader.”

“Alan! I've never spoken to Mr. Mortimer.”

“That's why he choked the butcher the night of the concert—I mean—”

“You're talking nonsense, Alan.”

“I'm not, I know when a man's interested. Hello. Blest if the Boss isn't coming this way—there's Crane. See, Allis? I've a notion to tell him that his trainer is a crook.”

“No, you won't, Alan—you're too young to gabble.”

Philip Crane had evidently intended going higher up in the stand, but his eye lighting on the brother and sister, he stopped, and turned in to where they were sitting.

“Good afternoon, Miss Porter.”

Allis started. Was the stand possessed of unpleasant voices? There was a metallic ring in Crane's voice that affected her disagreeably. He was almost a stranger to her; she hardly remembered ever having spoken to him.

He turned and nodded pleasantly to Alan, saying, “May I take this seat? I'm tired. The Cashier let you oft for the day, eh?” he continued. “Came up to see your father's mare run, I suppose—I'm deuced sorry she was beaten.”

“What are they waiting for—why have they taken the horses' numbers down again? Are they trying to steal the race from Lauzanne now?” It was the woman's voice behind them, petulantly exclaiming.

Crane turned in his seat, looked over his shoulder, and raised his hat.

“The impatient lady is my trainer's sister,” he explained in a modulated tone to Allis. “A trainer is quite an autocrat, I assure you, and one must be very careful not to forget any of the obvious courtesies.”

Allis wondered why he should find it necessary to make any explanation at all.

“I want to thank you, Miss Porter, for that reading about Crusader.”

Allis's eyes opened wide.

“Yes, I was there,” Crane added, answering the question that was in them.

As he said this a man came hurriedly up the steps, spoke to a policeman on guard, and searched the faces with his eyes. Catching sight of Crane, he came quickly forward and whispered something in his ear.

“Excuse me, I must go—I'm wanted,” Crane said to Allis.

As he turned, the Trainer's sister spoke to him.

“What's the matter, Mr. Crane—there's something going on up in the Stewards' Stand?”

“I fancy there's an objection, though I don't know anything about it,” he answered, as he went down the steps with the messenger.

Allis breathed more freely when he had gone. Somehow his presence had oppressed her; perhaps it was the fierce stephanotis that came in clouds from the lady behind that smothered her senses. Crane had said nothing—just an ordinary compliment. Like an inspiration it came to the girl what had affected her so disagreeably in Crane—it was his eyes. They were hard, cold, glittering gray eyes, looking out from between partly closed eyelids. Allis could see them still. The lower lids cut straight across; it was as though the eyes were peeping at her over a stone wall.

“What did I tell you about Crusader?” Alan said, triumphantly. “There's another.”

“Alan!”

“I wondered why Mr. Crane was so deuced friendly; but there's nothing to get cross about, girl, he's a fine old chap, and got lots of wealth.”

He leaned forward till he was close to his sister's ear, and added, in a whisper, “Her ladyship behind, Belle Langdon, is trying to hook him. Phew!—but she's loud. But I'm off—I'm going to see what the row is about.”