Part 9

"Well, about a month after I struck Latonia--it was then getting on toward midsummer--the old trainer in hard luck who owned Caspar took to his bunk, not to get up any more. He only lasted two weeks. Two days before he died he sent for an old Irish priest that he had known for a number of years. The priest was the pastor of that little brick and stone church on the outskirts of Cincinnati that I spoke about. The old trainer had been a good Catholic all his life, and he received the last offices of his faith. Then he said to the priest:

"'Father, there's a crabbed, battered-up old dog of mine over at Latonia that I'll make you a present of. He's worth about one dollar and eighty cents, but he was a good racing tool when he was young, and I've never felt like turning him loose to hustle for himself. He's crippled up some, but you might get him broken to harness, so that he could haul your buggy around. I wish you'd take him and see that he doesn't get the worst of it. Caspar was pretty good to me a few times when I was up against it.'

"When the old man turns up his toes and dies the kindly priest came over to the barns to see if he could get any assistance in the way of putting our old hard-luck pal under the ground. He got it, of course, and enough for a tombstone besides. While he was at the stables the father thought he might as well have a look at the piece of horse-flesh that had been presented to him by the old man. So one of the trainers escorted him to Caspar's stall.

"'Could he ever be made any good for driving purposes?' the priest asked the trainer, who smiled.

"'He'd kick a piano-mover's truck into matchwood the first clatter out of the box,' replied the trainer.

"'I'll just let him stay over here for awhile until I decide what to do with him,' said the priest, and he went back to Cincinnati and buried the old trainer.

"Well, a couple of mornings later a fresh stable-boy who had just got a job in one of the barns put a bridle and saddle on old Caspar and took him for a breeze around the course just for fun. It was just at dawn, and a lot of us trainers were watching the early morning work of the horses. It struck me when Caspar passed by the rail where I was standing that the old devil looked mighty skittish, and was doing a lot of prancing for a hammered-to-death skate, with bum knees and all sorts of other complaints. About a minute later there was a yawp all along the rail.

"'Get next to that old Caspar!' a lot of the trainers shouted. I looked over toward the back-stretch, and there was the old skate with his head down, eating up the ground like a race-horse. We all jerked out our watches just as he flashed by the five-furlong pole and put them on him. It was amazing to see the old mutt make the turn and come a-tearing down the stretch. If he didn't do that five furlongs in 1:02, darn me. All of our watches told the same story, and there was no mistake about it. When he passed the judges' stand Caspar wanted to go right ahead and work himself out, but we all hollered at the boy to pull him up. The kid stopped the old gelding with difficulty. Caspar wanted to run, and he had a mouth on him as hard as nails.

"We got together and talked about Caspar. We were dumbfounded, and didn't know what to make of that exhibition of speed. Then a trainer who was, and still is, noted throughout the country as the most skilful horse-patcher that ever got into the game spoke up.

"'The old devil's just come back to himself, that's all there is about it,' he said. 'There are a lot of sprints in his old carcass yet. All he needs is some patching. If he'll run like this work he's just done in five-furlong dashes, there's a chance for a slaughter with him. I'm going to ask the father to let me handle him and see if he can't be oiled up.'

"The trainer went over to Cincinnati that same morning and saw the priest.

"'Father,' said he, 'I don't want to get a man of your cloth mixed up with the racing game, but I think I can do something with that old racing tool, the old man bequeathed to you.' Then he told the priest about Caspar's phenomenal work that morning.

"'Bless me!' said the good man, 'I fear it would not be seemly for me to'----

"'Oh, that end of it'll be all right, father,' said the trainer. 'If I find I can do anything with the old rogue I'll shoot him into a dash under my own colors, and you won't be entangled with the thing a little bit. It won't cost you anything to let me try him out, and if I find that he'll do I'll get my end of it by putting down--er--uh--well. I won't lose anything anyhow.'

"Well, when he left the kindly man of the cloth he had the permission to see what could be done with old Caspar. "'Let me know how you progress,' the priest had asked him.

"The trainer seeing a chance to make a killing--and we all vowed ourselves to secrecy about the matter--went to old Caspar. He was a nag-patcher, as I say, from the foot-hills, and the way he applied himself to the reduction of Caspar's inflammations, and to the tonicking up in general of the old beast, was a caution to grasshoppers. And it came about that early morning's work of Caspar's that had surprised us so was no flash in the pan at all. The old 'possum had somehow or another recovered his speed all of a sudden, in addition to a willingness to run, in spite of his infirmities. At the end of two weeks Caspar, as fine a bit of patched-work as you ever saw, was ready. The trainer went over to Cincinnati and told the father so.

"'Well,' inquired the priest.

"'He's going to run in a five-furlong dash day after to-morrow,' said the trainer. 'And he'll walk. It is a copper-riveted cinch--er-uh--I mean, that is, Caspar will win, you see. It'll be write your own ticket, too. Any price. In fact when the gang sees his name among the entries, they'll think it's a joke.'

"'My son,' said the father, with a certain twinkle lurking in the corner of his eye, 'gaming is a demoralizing passion. Nevertheless, if this animal, that came into my possession by such odd chance, possesses sufficient speed to--er'----

"'Oh, that's all right, father,' said the trainer and he bolted for it.

"As the trainer had said to the priest, there was an all-around chuckle the following afternoon when the entry sheets were distributed and it was seen that Caspar was in the five-furlong dash the next day. For a wonder, not a word had got out about the patching job that had been in progress on the old horse, nor about his remarkable work. The stable lads and railbirds who were on kept their heads closed and saved their nickels for the day of Caspar's victory.

"Well, to curl this up some, the field that we confidently expected Caspar to beat was made up of nine rattling good sprinters--one of them was so good that his price opened and closed at 4 to 5 on. Caspar was the rank outsider at 150 to 1. We all got on at that figure, the bookies giving us the laugh at first, and only a few of them wise enough to rub when they suspected that there was something doing. The trainers', railbirds', and stable-boys' money that went in forced the old skate's price down to 75 to 1 at post time. A number of us took small chunks of 100 to 1 in the poolrooms in Cincinnati--wired our commissions over. The old horse favored his left forefoot a trifle in walking around to the starting pole, and that worried us a bit, for he'd been all right on his pin the night before. We didn't do any hedging, however, but stood by to see what was going to happen. All of us, of course, had enough down on him to finish third to pull us out in case he couldn't get the big end of the money.

"It was a romp for Caspar. If I'd tell you the real name of the horse you'd remember the race well. Caspar, with a perfect incompetent of a jockey on his back, jumped off in the lead, and was never headed, winning, pulled double and to a walk, by three lengths. The bookies made all colors of a howl over it, but their howls didn't go. They had to cough. It was the biggest killing that bunch of Latonia trainers, including myself, had ever made, and there wasn't a stable boy on the grounds that didn't have money to cremate for months afterward.

"After the race the trainer who had patched old Caspar up for the hogslaughtering--he was close on to $15,000 to the good, and he didn't have me skinned any, at that--hustled over to the priest's house.

"'Father, the plug made monkeys of 'em,' is the way he announced Caspar's victory.

"'Truly?' said the priest.

"'Monkeys,' repeated the trainer, and then he pulled out a huge new wallet that he had bought on the way to the priest's residence. He handed the wallet to the father. 'When I was here, a couple o' days ago,' said the trainer, looking interestedly out of the window, 'I had along with me a fifty-dollar bill that, feeling pretty prosperous that morning, I intended to hand to you to be distributed among the poor of the parish--used to be an acolyte and serve mass myself, a good many years ago, when I was a kid. Well, I forgot to pass you the fifty, you see, and so I invested it in--er-uh--a little matter of speculation, to your account, so that it amounts to--er-uh--well, I understood there's a bit of a mortgage on your church, you know."

"The priest opened the wallet and counted out seven one thousands, one five hundred and one fifty-dollar bill. The trainer had put the $50 down on Caspar for the priest--without the father's sanction or countenance, of course--at 150 to 1.

"'Well,' went on the trainer, anxious to talk so as to save any questions as to the nature of his speculation, 'it certainly would have done your heart good if you could have seen that old nag cantering down the stretch'----

"'It did,' said the father, with a smile. 'It is no sin, I conceive, for even a man of my cloth to watch noble beasts battling for the supremacy, there being, I take it, nothing cruel in such contests. I saw the race.'

"Old Caspar was wound up by that race. He went to the paddock as sore as a boil, all of his old infirmities breaking out with renewed strength, and he was turned out to grass and died comfortably two years ago. If he could have known, it might have cheered his declining days to realize that he had paid off the mortgage on a nice little brick and stone edifice of worship on the outskirts of Cincinnati."

A SEEDY SPORT'S STRING OF HORSES.

_How the Incredulity of a Lot of Bookmakers Was Turned Into Gasping Astonishment._

A mixed party of turf followers in Washington for the Bennings meeting, and Washington men about town, had a cafe talk the other night about some things that have happened in former years on running tracks, legitimate and outlaw, in this neighborhood.

"When the outlaw track over at Alexander Island, across the Potomac, was running a few years back," said a New York player, "I came down here from the wind-up meeting in New York one fall to see if there was anything in the game in these parts. Then, as now, I was playing, and not laying. So this Alexander Island happening that I'm going to tell you about didn't bother me any, bad as it knocked a lot of the books.

"I got here before the Alexander meeting began. A couple of days before the game was to be on, while I was in the Pennsylvania avenue refreshment headquarters of the boys who came here from New York and other tracks to write the tickets, a seedy-looking chap, who looked as if the elements had conspired to make him smoke a bum pipe in the game of life for a long time previously, walked in and edged around to the back room where the bookies were figuring on the amount of fresh money they were about to begin taking out of the national capital. The tough-looking man had a horsey look and a horsey smell about him, and as soon as I saw him I knew that he followed 'em in some kind of a hanger-on capacity. He walked over to a table where a number of the bookmakers were seated.

"'Say,' said he, leaning his hands on the table and addressing the party in general, 'you people are sports, ain't you?'

"The looks the bookies gave the shabby-looking man were intended to convey to him the idea that they weren't publicly posing as hot tamales, anyhow. The man got no reply.

"'You're going to make books across the way, ain't you?' the up-against-it-looking chap asked, with an inquiring look all around.

"'Well, what if we are?' asked one of the bookies, just for the good-natured sake of breaking the silence.

"'Well,' said the down-at-the-heel sport, 'I've got a couple o' nags that have been running for the past six weeks over at the Maryland outlaw. They haven't been one, two, six in any race over there, and I've gone broke paying entrance fees for 'em. Maybe they'll be able to do better over across the way at Alexander. I want to chuck 'em in a couple over there, anyhow, for luck. But I owe $30 feed bill to the Maryland outlaw people, and I can't get my plugs away from there until the thirty's paid. Now, you people are sports, and so'm I. What I want to know is, will you people cough up the thirty for me as a loan, so's I can get that pair o' mine down here?'

"The bookies listened to the man with gradually increasing smiles, and when he finished they gave him the laugh in chorus.

"'Stop your kidding,' said one of them. 'I can get all the outlaw racehorses I want for $2 a head.'

"They all chipped in with a crack at the doleful-looking sport, who appeared to be rather a guileless sort of chap for a man with a short stable of racers.

"'They're a good pair, all right, and one of 'em's on edge, too,' he persisted. 'He worked six furlongs in 1:21 flat a couple of days ago.'

"The bookies all looked at the man as if he were demented.

"'One twenty-one flat for a six-furlong route!' exclaimed one of them. 'Why, look here, my friend, you're not smoking hard enough to suppose you can win down here with a skate that does well when he works six furlongs in that time, are you? Don't you know that there's a whole bunch over there now that can go that route in 1:16 or better?'

"'Well, they've got a chance, anyhow,' said the shabby man. 'Do I get the $30 to get 'em out o' hock?'

"The bookies all turned their faces the other way, then, and when the man with the pair of hocked nags saw that it wasn't any use he dug his hands into his pockets disconsolately and shambled out.

"On the day that the meeting opened I saw the shabby man in the betting ring. I was behind him when he handed one of the bookies a $5 bet on one of the horses entered in the second race of the day. The bookmaker had belonged to the party that gave the laugh to the shabby man when he asked for the $30.

"'Playing 'em, eh' said the bookie, smiling at the run-down-looking man. 'Couldn't get your pair away from the Maryland outlaw, I suppose.'

"'Yes, I dug up and got 'em out,' said the man. 'They're here now. The one you just gave me a ticket on at $100 to $5 belongs to me.'

"'Oh, is that so?' asked the bookmaker. 'Well, I hope you win. But you've got a couple of 3 to 5 shots to beat, you know.'

"'I got a chance,' was all the man said, walking away.

"I took a look at his horse, the rank outsider in the race, when he went to the post with the others. He was a six-year-old gelding, and he looked rank and broken down. A boy that the shabby man had brought along from the Maryland outlaw was on the horse. It was a mile race, and the horse was twelfth in a field of twelve. I saw the gloomy-looking, shabby man in the paddock after the race superintending the rubbing down of his nag. He seemed to be a whole lot in the dumps.

"The same horse was entered in the fourth race on the next day's card. It was a field of crack outlaw performers, and his horse was again the extreme outsider at 40 to 1. I saw the shabby man walk around putting down $2 bets here and there on his plug, and I felt sorry for him. The bookies simply smiled commiseratingly at him. The hard-looking man's horse finished ninth in a field of nine.

"'Why don't you cut it out?' asked one of the bookmakers of the man with the tough appearance. 'You're wasting your stake.'

"'I got a chance,' was the reply.

"The man got out his other horse on the following day. He got 50 to 1 on him for the six-furlong race, and his plug, another rank and no-account looker, finished last. This was the horse that could work six furlongs in 1:21. The seedy man's confidence in his pair of skates seemed rather pathetic to me.

"After each of his horses had been in about half a dozen races each, always finishing last, the both of them, and the seedy man putting twos and fives down on them right along until the bookies felt like not taking his money, I thought he'd take a tumble and quit the game. But on the eleventh day of the meeting his 'mile racer,' the six-year-old gelding, was entered again. He went to the post with a field composed of the cracks among the outlaws. I happened to be close to the seedy man when he went around according to his custom, putting down small bets on his horse. He seemed to be rather better fixed than usual that day, for he had quite a bundle of fives with him.

"'What do I get on my horse?' he asked the first bookie he struck.

"The layer grinned, for he knew there were eight or ten good ones in the race, three or four of them quoted around even money.

"'I've got 75 to 1 hung up about him, and all you want of it,' said the bookie. 'You can write your own ticket, in fact.'

"'Hundred to 1?' asked the seedy man.

"'Why, sure,' replied the bookmaker. And he took $5 of the 'owner's' money at 100 to 1. Just out of curiosity I followed the seedy man in his tour of the books and I saw him put down $70 in $5 bets on his horse to win at 100 to 1. It struck me then that there was to be something done on the seedy man's horse. But I wasn't capping the bookies' game, and I've got a fad for minding my own business, anyhow, and so I kept off the race and went into the stand to watch it. I had a hunch to play the seedy man's horse for a good wad, but I reflected that if I got on and the good thing went through the bookies 'ud be suspicious about such a well-known player as I was being in on it, and in the investigation the seedy man might be cut out, and I didn't want to knock him. But I surely was a whole lot interested in the way that race was to come out.

"I took a good look at the seedy man's horse as they filed past the stand to the post. He looked much better and pretty nippy at that for such a rancid outsider. The same boy that had ridden the horse in his first race at Alexander Island and landed him nowhere was up. It was a mile race.

"The favorite, a horse called Walcott--4 to 5 on in the betting--got off on the right foot with a jump and started to tiptoe the field. At the quarter he led by three lengths, with the second choice, a good outlaw named Halcyon, beginning to set sail for him. The rest of the field of thirteen were all strung out, the seedy man's horse 'way in the ruck. But I kept my glasses on that horse all the way, and I could see that at the half he was under the devil's own pull. The boy had half a dozen wraps on him and I felt then, even if the favorite was still a good four lengths in the lead, and going easily, that there was but one horse in the race, and that horse the seedy man's. It was a watermelon just opening, but I suppose I was the only man at the track that happened to have got next to the game. The judges didn't observe, of course, that the seedy owner's horse was under twenty wraps, for they looked upon him as a dead one and paid no attention to his running.

"At the far turn Walcott, the favorite, was still three or four lengths in front, Halcyon, the No. 2 choice, having fallen back, beaten out. They were all in a bunch behind the leader, and all going mighty well at the head of the stretch. All the time I had my glass focused on the horse belonging to the shabby man. Walcott seemed to be just galloping, as I say, at the head of the stretch, when I saw the jockey suddenly sit down on the shabby man's horse and start to ride a-horseback. It was pretty, I tell you, to see that old six-year-old hop out after the galloping favorite and chase him down the stretch. The old horse, without a bit of whipping or spurring--the boy had simply given him his head--pumped up like an express engine, and the favorite was taken out of his gallop and extended, under whip and spur, before they were half way down the stretch. Passing the stand, Walcott and the seedy man's horse were nose and nose, the latter gaining at every jump. Walcott was beaten a head on the wire by the rank outsider in a pretty finish.

"The stewards had the seedy man in the stand immediately and then called the boy up. It was an astonishing reversal of form, and action seemed to be called for. The seedy man's story was straight, however. He had given his horse a half pint of whisky before the race and he supposed that was responsible for the win. Doping horses was all right at Alexander, and so the stewards couldn't kick about that. The stewards touched upon the ringer question, but the seedy man was such a simple kind of duck, and his story was so connected about past owners of his two horses and their life-long careers on the outlaw tracks, that the stewards finally declared the race all hunk and the bets stood.

"I saw the shabby man cash his $70 worth of 100 to 1 tickets. He didn't gloat any over the bookies who had grinned in his teeth before the race--just collected his money quietly, saying: 'Well, I had a chance, didn't I?' The bookies were confident that the seedy man had a mighty valuable pair of ringers on his staff, and that one of them had just won the mile race in the beautiful, finely-drawn nose finish, but they couldn't welch on their bets. With his $7000 the seedy man took his string of two away the next day.

"I ran across him last summer at the St. Louis Fair Grounds' racing. He was no longer a seedy man. He was covered with gig lamps, and he had it in every pocket. Said I to him:

"'D'ye remember that neat 100 to I thing you pulled off in Washington a few years ago? There was some quality in that old outlaw of yours that got the money.'

"He looked at me with a broad grin.

"'Outlaw be damned,' said he. 'That horse was one of the cracks out of the West, on licensed tracks. He was a bit of paint. He had done a mile in 1:39-1/2 twice--round miles--and he was as game as a wild turkey egg. Me and my pardner pulled down $20,000 or so, running him as a ringer all over the country. I was going to open my six-furlonger in Washington that time, but $7000 was enough. My six-furlonger was a crack from Frisco. He was dyed, too. Six furlongs in 1:14 was a common canter for him. The Willie Wises back in the East are not so many at that, are they?'"

THIS TELEGRAM WAS SIGNED JUST "BUB."

_It Referred to Nothing Calculated to Disturb Domesticity, but It Came Near Wrecking a Happy Home._

When the senior partner of a young two-handed firm of patent attorneys reached the firm's office in West Broadway on Monday morning last his eye caught sight of a telegram addressed to his junior partner on the latter's desk. As the junior partner was in Washington and wasn't due back in New York until 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon, the senior partner opened the telegram. It was a night message from St. Louis, and it read as follows:

"Hammer Jim Conway. Punch him your limit. Don't let anything scare you out. He's easy. Bub."

The senior partner scratched his head over this.

"Conway--Jim Conway," he muttered to himself. "Now, who the dickens can Jim Conway be, I'd like to know? We've got no client named Jim Conway, and we're not fighting any infringement case in which a Mr. Conway is the defendant. Darned funny telegram, this is."