Chapter 2

“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.

III

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.