Part 9

“To the circus,” said Van Bibber. It was a long ride, and he had time to make up his mind that he had been foolish in starting out; but as he was already more than half-way there he kept on. He had determined to see that circus himself in solitary state from that box, notwithstanding his irresponsive friends.

But at the entrance to the circus three small boys, in every way representatives of the coming “tough,” waylaid him for ten cents to get into the side show--only ten cents, that was all they wanted. They did not aspire to such a pinnacle of happiness as the circus itself. But Young Van Bibber saw a way to use his box and to show his smart friends how somebody, at least, appreciated his invitations.

“Go get three more boys like you,” he said; “dirty boys that haven’t seen the circus, and I’ll take you in.”

The three youths looked at him uncertainly for a moment.

“Ah, he’s kiddin’ us,” said one of them, doubtfully.

But there was such an innocent and embarrassed expression on young Van Bibber’s face that they concluded he must mean it.

“Besides,” said one of them, “don’t you’se see he’s a priest? He wouldn’t tell no lies.”

Van Bibber for the first time became conscious of his white lawn tie and his long cape-cloak.

“Priests don’t go to circuses,” suggested one of the trio.

“Are you going to get those other boys or not?” asked Van Bibber, impatiently. It really seemed as if nobody was willing to go with him. But there was over a dozen boys about him by this time, and he picked out three of the smallest and raggedest. Then he shoved them all into the circus before him like so many chickens and saw, without caring, that the men by the door were laughing at him.

The boys raced about at first and yelled to each other to come see this animal, and to watch that one shaking the bars. Van Bibber wandered around after them. They seemed to be having a very good time, and he felt a queer sensation of satisfaction in some one else’s pleasure which was oddly pleasing. Then they flocked back to him again and informed him it was time to “get into the show part,” and so he led them, to the grave disgust of the attendants, to the principal box in the place.

“My eyes! but I wish de boys could see me now,” said one of them, pride and happiness beaming from every feature of his face. “I guess this is old man Barnum’s box, for sure.”

Van Bibber sat in the back of the box. He didn’t mind how the people around them smiled. He felt himself very far above them, and in a position to do as many eccentric things as he pleased. And he found himself enjoying the show and the friendly interest his guests took in him, and in their fear lest he couldn’t see everything, or that he might miss what the clowns said.

He stopped the man who sold peanuts and candies, and distributed them lavishly. It was cheaper by far than a Delmonico supper, and he enjoyed seeing the half-famished way in which the young rascals fell upon the supplies and stowed them away. They were really very noisy and wildly excited, but he didn’t care. He never remembered having given anybody so much extreme pleasure before in his life.

When it was all over and the big spectacular show that had held them breathless had ended, he fought his way out to the waiting hansom, very well pleased with the night’s experience. But before he got away his guests crowded around him at the door, and one of them, who, as they had privately informed him, was no less distinguished an individual than the captain of Open Lots Baseball Club, of which they were all members, thanked him very civilly and asked him his name. He gave the captain his card with grave politeness and shook hands with all of them with equal solemnity, and then drove down town and had a solitary supper. On the whole, he concluded that though he had made nothing by it, he had not wasted the box, and he went to bed satisfied.

And two days later he received in a very dirty envelope the following epistle:

DEAR SIR--At a meeting of the Open Lots Baseball Club it was voted, on account of your kindness, to change the name to the Courtland Van Bibber Baseball Club, which it is now, as a mark of our apreshun of your kindness. Truly yours,

TERENCE FAHEY MCGLOIN, _Capt. C. Van. B. B. B. C._

“So,” said Van Bibber, as he put the letter carefully away, “It pays to go out into the highways, after all.”

THE STORY OF A JOCKEY.

Young Charley Chadwick had been brought up on his father’s farm in New Jersey. The farm had been his father’s before his father died, and was still called Chadwick’s Meadows in his memory. It was a very small farm, and for the most part covered with clover and long, rich grass, that were good for pasturing, and nothing else. Charley was too young, and Mrs. Chadwick was too much of a housekeeper and not enough of a farmer’s wife, to make the most out of the farm, and so she let the meadows to the manager of the Cloverdale Stock Farm. This farm is only half a mile back from the Monmouth Park race track at Long Branch.

The manager put a number of young colts in it to pasture, and took what grass they did not eat to the farm. Charley used to ride these colts back to the big stables at night, and soon grew to ride very well, and to know a great deal about horses and horse breeding and horse racing. Sometimes they gave him a mount at the stables, and he was permitted to ride one of the race horses around the private track, while the owner took the time from the judges’ stand.

There was nothing in his life that he enjoyed like this. He had had very few pleasures, and the excitement and delight of tearing through the air on the back of a great animal, was something he thought must amount to more than anything else in the world. His mother did not approve of his spending his time at the stables, but she found it very hard to refuse him, and he seemed to have a happy faculty of picking up only what was good, and letting what was evil pass by him and leave him unhurt. The good that he picked up was his love for animals, his thoughtfulness for them, and the forbearance and gentleness it taught him to use, with even the higher class of animals who walk on two legs.

He was fond of all the horses, because they were horses; but the one he liked best was Heroine, a big black mare that ran like an express train. He and Heroine were the two greatest friends in the stable. The horse loved him as a horse does love its master sometimes, and though Charley was not her owner, he was in reality her master, for Heroine would have left her stall and carried Charley off to the ends of the continent if he had asked her to run away.

When a man named Oscar Behren bought Heroine, Charley thought he would never be contented again. He cried about it all along the country road from the stables to his home, and cried about it again that night in bed. He knew Heroine would feel just as badly about it as he did, if she could know they were to be separated. Heroine went off to run in the races for which her new master had entered her, and Charley heard of her only through the newspapers. She won often, and became a great favorite, and Charley was afraid she would forget the master of her earlier days before she became so famous. And when he found that Heroine was entered to run at the Monmouth Park race track, he became as excited over the prospect of seeing his old friend again, as though he were going to meet his promised bride, or a long-lost brother who had accumulated several millions in South America.

He was at the station to meet the Behren horses, and Heroine knew him at once and he knew Heroine, although she was all blanketed up and had grown so much more beautiful to look at, that it seemed like a second and improved edition of the horse he had known. Heroine won several races at Long Branch, and though her owner was an unpopular one, and one of whom many queer stories were told, still Heroine was always ridden to win, and win she generally did.

The race for the July Stakes was the big race of the meeting, and Heroine was the favorite. Behren was known to be backing her with thousands of dollars, and it was almost impossible to get anything but even money on her. The day before the race McCallen, the jockey who was to ride her, was taken ill, and Behren was in great anxiety and greatly disturbed as to where he could get a good substitute. Several people told him it made no difference, for the mare was as sure as sure could be, no matter who rode her. Then some one told him of Charley, who had taken out a license when the racing season began, and who had ridden a few unimportant mounts.

Behren looked for Charley and told him he would want him to ride for the July Stakes, and Charley went home to tell his mother about it, in a state of wild delight. To ride the favorite, and that favorite in such a great race, was as much to him as to own and steer the winning yacht in the transatlantic match for the cup.

He told Heroine all about it, and Heroine seemed very well pleased. But while he was standing hidden in Heroine’s box stall, he heard something outside that made him wonder. It was Behren’s voice, and he said in a low tone:--

“Oh, McCallen’s well enough, but I didn’t want him for this race. He knows too much. The lad I’ve got now, this country boy, wouldn’t know if the mare had the blind staggers.”

Charley thought over this a great deal, and all that he had learned on the tracks and around the stables came to assist him in judging what it was that Behren meant; and that afternoon he found out.

The race track with the great green enclosures and the grand stand as high as a hill, were as empty as a college campus in vacation time, but for a few of the stable boys and some of the owners, and a colored waiter or two. It was interesting to think what it would be like a few hours later when the trains had arrived from New York with eleven cars each and the passengers hanging from the steps, and the carriages stretched all the way from Long Branch. Then there would not be a vacant seat on the grand stand or a blade of grass untrampled.

Charley was not nervous when he thought of this, but he was very much excited. Howland S. Maitland, who owned a stable of horses and a great many other expensive things, and who was one of those gentlemen who make the racing of horses possible, and Curtis, the secretary of the meeting, came walking towards Charley looking in at the different horses in the stalls.

“Heroine,” said Mr. Maitland, as he read the name over the door. “Can we have a look at her?” he said.

Charley got up and took off his hat.

“I am sorry, Mr. Maitland,” he said, “but my orders from Mr. Behren are not to allow any one inside. I am sure if Mr. Behren were here he would be very glad to show you the horse; but you see, I’m responsible, sir, and--”

“Oh, that’s all right!” said Mr. Maitland pleasantly, as he moved on.

“There’s Mr. Behren now,” Charley called after him, as Behren turned the corner. “I’ll run and ask him.”

“No, no, thank you,” said Mr. Maitland hurriedly, and Charley heard him add to Mr. Curtis, “I don’t want to know the man.” It hurt Charley to find that the owner of Heroine and the man for whom he was to ride was held in such bad repute that a gentleman like Mr. Maitland would not know him, and he tried to console himself by thinking that it was better he rode Heroine than some less conscientious jockey whom Behren might order to play tricks with the horse and the public. Mr. Behren came up with a friend, a red-faced man with a white derby hat. He pointed at Charley with his cane. “My new jockey,” he said. “How’s the mare?” he asked.

“Very fit, sir,” Charley answered.

“Had her feed yet?”

“No,” Charley said.

The feed was in a trough which the stable boy had lifted outside into the sun. They were mixing it under Charley’s supervision, for as a rider he did not stoop to such menial work as carrying the water and feed; but he always overlooked the others when they did it. Behren scooped up a handful and examined it carefully.

“It’s not as fresh as it ought to be for the price they ask,” he said to the friend with him. Then he threw the handful of feed back into the trough and ran his hand through it again, rubbing it between his thumb and fingers and tasting it critically. Then they passed on up the row.

Charley sat down again on an overturned bucket and looked at the feed trough, then he said to the stable boys, “You fellows can go now and get something to eat if you want to.” They did not wait to be urged. Charley carried the trough inside the stable and took up a handful of the feed and looked and sniffed at it. It was fresh from his own barn; he had brought it over himself in a cart that morning. Then he tasted it with the end of his tongue and his face changed. He glanced around him quickly to see if any one had noticed, and then, with the feed still clenched in his hand, ran out and looked anxiously up and down the length of the stable. Mr. Maitland and Curtis were returning from the other end of the road.

“Can I speak to you a moment, sir?” said Charley anxiously; “will you come in here just a minute? It’s most important, sir. I have something to show you.”

The two men looked at the boy curiously, and halted in front of the door. Charley added nothing further to what he had said, but spread a newspaper over the floor of the stable and turned the feed trough over on it. Then he stood up over the pile and said, “Would you both please taste that?”

There was something in his manner which made questions unnecessary. The two gentlemen did as he asked. Then Mr. Curtis looked into Mr. Maitland’s face, which was full of doubt and perplexity, with one of angry suspicion.

“Cooked,” he said.

“It does taste strangely,” commented the horse owner gravely.

“Look at it; you can see if you look close enough,” urged Curtis excitedly. “Do you see that green powder on my finger? Do you know what that is? An ounce of that would turn a horse’s stomach as dry as a lime-kiln. Where did you get this feed?” he demanded of Charley.

“Out of our barn,” said the boy. “And no one has touched it except myself, the stable boys, and the owner.”

“Who are the stable boys?” demanded Mr. Curtis.

“Who’s the owner?” asked Charley.

“Do you know what you are saying?” warned Mr. Maitland sharply. “You had better be careful.”

“Careful!” said Charley indignantly. “I will be careful enough.”

He went over to Heroine, and threw his arm up over her neck. He was terribly excited and trembling all over. The mare turned her head towards him and rubbed her nose against his face.

“That’s all right,” said Charley. “Don’t you be afraid. I’ll take care of _you_.”

The two men were whispering together.

“I don’t know anything about you,” said Mr. Maitland to Charley. “I don’t know what your idea was in dragging me into this. I’m sure I wish I was out of it. But this I do know, if Heroine isn’t herself to-day, and doesn’t run as she has run before, and I say it though my own horses are in against her, I’ll have you and your owner before the Racing Board, and you’ll lose your license and be ruled off every track in the country.”

“One of us will,” said Charley stubbornly. “All I want you to do, Mr. Maitland, is to put some of that stuff in your pocket. If anything is wrong they will believe what you say, when they wouldn’t listen to me. That’s why I called you in. I haven’t charged any one with anything. I only asked you and Mr. Curtis to taste the feed that this horse was to have eaten. That’s all. And I’m not afraid of the Racing Board, either, if the men on it are honest.”

Mr. Curtis took some letters out of his pocket and filled the envelopes with the feed, and then put them back in his pocket, and Charley gathered up the feed in a bucket and emptied it out of the window at the back of the stable.

“I think Behren should be told of this,” said Mr. Maitland.

Charley laughed; he was still excited and angry. “You had better find out which way Mr. Behren is betting, first,” he said,--“if you can.”

“Don’t mind the boy. Come away,” said Mr. Curtis. “We must look into this.”

The Fourth of July holiday makers had begun to arrive; and there were thousands of them, and they had a great deal of money, and they wanted to bet it all on Heroine. Everybody wanted to bet on Heroine; and the men in the betting ring obliged them. But there were three men from Boston who were betting on the field against the favorite. They distributed their bets in small sums of money among a great many different book-makers; even the oldest of the racing men did not know them. But Mr. Behren seemed to know them. He met one of them openly, in front of the grand stand, and the stranger from Boston asked politely if he could trouble him for a light. Mr. Behren handed him his cigar, and while the man puffed at it he said:--

“We’ve got $50,000 of it up. It’s too much to risk on that powder. Something might go wrong; you mightn’t have mixed it properly, or there mayn’t be enough. I’ve known it miss before this. Minerva she won once with an ounce of it inside her. You’d better fix that jockey.”

Mr. Behren’s face was troubled, and he puffed quickly at his cigar as the man walked away. Then he turned and moved slowly towards the stables. A gentleman with a field-glass across his shoulder stopped him and asked, “How’s Heroine?” and Mr. Behren answered, “Never better; I’ve $10,000 on her,” and passed on with a confident smile. Charley saw Mr. Behren coming, and bit his lip and tried to make his face look less conscious. He was not used to deception. He felt much more like plunging a pitchfork into Mr. Behren’s legs; but he restrained that impulse, and chewed gravely on a straw. Mr. Behren looked carefully around the stable, and wiped the perspiration from his fat red face. The day was warm, and he was excited.

“Well, my boy,” he said in a friendly, familiar tone as he seated himself, “it’s almost time. I hope you are not rattled.” Charley said, “No,” he felt confident enough.

“It would be a big surprise if she went back on us, wouldn’t it?” suggested the owner gloomily.

“It would, indeed,” said Charley.

“Still,” said Mr. Behren, “such things have been. Racin’ is full of surprises, and horses are full of tricks. I’ve known a horse, now, get pocketed behind two or three others and never show to the front at all. Though she was the best of the field, too. And I’ve known horses go wild and jump over the rail and run away with the jock, and, sometimes, they fall. And sometimes I’ve had a jockey pull a horse on me and make me drop every cent I had up. You wouldn’t do that, would you?” he asked. He looked up at Charley with a smile that might mean anything. Charley looked at the floor and shrugged his shoulders.

“I ride to orders, I do,” he said. “I guess the owner knows his own business best. When I ride for a man and take his money I believe he should have his say. Some jockeys ride to win. I ride according to orders.” He did not look up after this, and he felt thankful that Heroine could not understand the language of human beings. Mr. Behren’s face rippled with smiles. This was a jockey after his own heart. “If Heroine should lose,” he said,--“I say, if she should, for no one knows what might happen,--I’d have to abuse you fearful right before all the people. I’d swear at you and say you lost me all my money, and that you should never ride for me again. And they might suspend you for a month or two, which would be very hard on you,” he added reflectively. “But then,” he said more cheerfully, “if you had a little money to live on while you were suspended it wouldn’t be so hard, would it?” He took a large roll of bank bills from his pocket and counted them, smoothing them out on his fat knee and smiling up at the boy.

“It wouldn’t be so bad, would it?” he repeated. Then he counted aloud, “Eight hundred, nine hundred, one thousand.” He rose and placed the bills under a loose plank of the floor, and stamped it down on them. “I guess we understand each other, eh?” he said.

“I guess we do,” said Charley.

“I’ll have to swear at you, you know,” said Behren, smiling.

“I can stand that,” Charley answered.

* * * * *

As the horses paraded past for the July Stakes, the people rushed forward down the inclined enclosure and crushed against the rail and cheered whichever horse they best fancied.

“Say, you,” called one of the crowd to Charley, “you want to win, you do. I’ve got $5 on that horse you’re a-riding.” Charley ran his eyes over the crowd that were applauding and cheering him and Heroine, and calculated coolly that if every one had only $5 on Heroine there would be at least $100,000 on the horse in all.

The man from Boston stepped up beside Mr. Behren as he sat on his dog-cart alone.

“The mare looks very fit,” he said anxiously. “Her eyes are like diamonds. I don’t believe that stuff affected her at all.”

“It’s all right,” whispered Behren calmly. “I’ve fixed the boy.” The man dropped back off the wheel of the cart with a sigh of relief, and disappeared in the crowd. Mr. Maitland and Mr. Curtis sat together on the top of the former’s coach. Mr. Curtis had his hand over the packages of feed in his pockets. “If the mare don’t win,” he said, “there will be the worst scandal this track has ever known.” The perspiration was rolling down his face. “It will be the death of honest racing.”

“I cannot understand it,” said Mr. Maitland. “The boy seemed honest, too.”

The horses got off together. There were eleven of them. Heroine was amongst the last, but no one minded that because the race was a long one. And within three-quarters of a mile of home Heroine began to shake off the others and came up slowly through the crowd, and her thousands of admirers yelled. And then Maitland’s Good Morning and Reilly swerved in front of her, or else Heroine fell behind them, it was hard to tell which, and Lady Betty closed in on her from the right. Her jockey seemed to be trying his best to get her out of the triangular pocket into which she had run. The great crowd simultaneously gave an anxious questioning gasp. Then two more horses pushed to the front, closing the favorite in and shutting her off altogether.

“The horse is pocketed,” cried Mr. Curtis, “and not one man out of a thousand would know that it was done on purpose.”

“Wait!” said Mr. Maitland.

“Bless that boy!” murmured Behren, trying his best to look anxious. “She can never pull out of that.” They were within half a mile of home. The crowd was panic-stricken and jumping up and down. “Heroine!” they cried, as wildly as though they were calling for help, or the police--“Heroine!”

Charley heard them above the noise of the pounding hoofs, and smiled in spite of the mud and dirt that the great horses in front flung in his face and eyes.

“Heroine,” he said, “I think we’ve scared that crowd about long enough. Now, punish Behren.” He sank his spurs into the horse’s sides and jerked her head towards a little opening between Lady Betty and Chubb. Heroine sprang at it like a tiger and came neck to neck with the leader. And then, as she saw the wide track empty before her, and no longer felt the hard backward pull on her mouth, she tossed her head with a snort, and flew down the stretch like an express, with her jockey whispering fiercely in her ear.

Heroine won with a grand rush, by three lengths, but Charley’s face was filled with anxiety as he tossed up his arm in front of the judges’ stand. He was covered with mud and perspiration, and panting with exertion and excitement. He distinguished Mr. Curtis’ face in the middle of the wild crowd around him, that patted his legs and hugged and kissed Heroine’s head, and danced up and down in the ecstasy of delight.