Chapter 9

His mind worked somewhat faster than his fingers; several new problems had been given it to labor over within the compass of a single moon. That horse racing should ever become a disturbing interest in his life had seemed very improbable; now it was like a gale about his soul, it swayed him. He was storm-tossed in the disturbing element; he could come to no satisfying conclusion. On the one hand the thoroughbred horses were to be admired; they were brave and true, creatures of love. Also Porter was an honest man, the one thing he admired above all else.

And Miss Allis! Somehow or other his eyes wandered to a picture that rested on a mantelpiece in the room. He took it down, looking furtively over his shoulder as he did so, and taking it close under the lamp that was on the table sat and gazed steadfastly into the girlish face.

Even in the photograph the big, wondrous eyes seemed to say, “What of wrong, if we are not wrong?” That was the atmosphere so thoroughly straightforward and honest that wrong failed of contamination.

Still it was unconvincing to Mortimer. The horses might be good, the man honest, and the girl pure and sweet, but the life itself was distasteful. Reason as one might, it was allied to gambling. Mortimer rose with a sigh, the whole thing wearied him. Why should he distress his mind over the matter? As he put the photograph back on the mantel he held it for an instant, then suddenly; with a nervous, awkward gesture, brought it to his lips and kissed the eyes that seemed to command tribute.

The movement twisted his broken-ribbed side and an agony of pain came to him in quick retribution. It was as though the involuntary kiss had lurched him forward into a futurity of misery. The spasm loosed beads of perspiration which stood cold on his forehead. Swift taken from the stimulant of his thoughts, his nerves overtaxed by the evening, jangled discordantly, and he crept into bed, feeling an unutterable depression as though the room, was filled with evil, threatening spirits.

XIII

In coincidence the two men, Mortimer and Crane, had similar thoughts the day after Mr. Dolman's discussion; and, rather remarkably, their deductions were alike, having the same subject of mental retrospect--Allis Porter.

It was evident that outside of her family little interested her but horses; certainly not a very lofty aspiration. When the conversation had dealt with broad principles, men and their shortcomings, the previous evening, she had centralized it in Lauzanne, picturing him as symbolical of good acts and evil repute. Patently it was difficult to become interested in such a young woman; actually she monopolized their thoughts. Inconsistently the fair offender felt no recoil of this somewhat distressing situation; her mind busied itself chiefly over the reclamation of Lauzanne.

By inheritance all the qualities of a good horse had come to him except a submissive temper. Allis worked on the theory that his disposition had been set awry by injudicious handling; that unlimited patience would cause him to forget all that. He could gallop, else he had not won the race in which he beat The Dutchman. That he had needed a stimulant that day was because he had been soured and would not try with his wits about him. From the time of coming back to Ringwood Allis had ridden him in all his exercise gallops, and had asked Mike personally to supervise his stable education. It had taken all her great patience, all her youthful enthusiasm and faith, for the Chestnut had notions beyond all belief. At first, missing the abuse, he almost seemed to thirst for it; tried the gentle girl in every way--sulked, and loafed, and took little streaks of trying to cut the course, and made false breaks as though he were going to run with a full vigor; even laid hold of the horses with his teeth when opportunity offered. These antics did not break the girl's faith; she rode him with the gentle hand a woman knows and a horse soon learns to appreciate, and gave him to understand that he was to have fair treatment.

Porter viewed this continuous performance with silent skepticism. He did not abuse horses himself, neither did he put up with too much nonsense from them. To him they were like children, needing a lot of tolerant kindness, but, also, at times, to be greatly improved by a sound whipping. Once when he suggested something of this sort to Allis, saying that Lauzanne was a spoiled child, she admitted he was, but that thoughtless cruelty and not indulgence had done the harm, therefore kindness was the cure. The first sign of regeneration was the implicit faith that Lauzanne began to place in his young mistress. At first when she put up a hand to pet him he would jerk his head away in affright; now he snuggled her shoulder, or nibbled at her glove in full spirit of comradarie. Then one day in a gallop came a stronger manifestation, a brief minute of exhilaration, with after-hours of thankfulness, and beyond that, alas for the uncertainty of a spoiled temper, an added period of wallowing in the Slough of Despond!

It was on a crisp, sparkling morning, and with Shandy--it was before his downfall--on Lucretia, another stable lad, Ned Carter, on Game Boy, and Allis on Lauzanne, the three swung off for a working gallop of a mile or more. Lauzanne was in an inquisitive mood, as the other two raced on in front. What was his light-weighted rider up to anyway? Why did she always leave it to him to do just as he liked? Was she really deceiving him? Did she wish him to lie back there behind the others always? He fell to wondering what she would do if he were to take hold of the bit and spread his big muscles in one rushing gallop, and go on past the others and get home to the feed box first. He rattled the snaffle in his mouth with nervous indecision--he had a notion to try it.

“Steady, my boy!” said Allis, as she slipped the reins back through her fingers till they stretched tight. A dozen times she had sought in vain to make him think she did not wish him to gallop, but something in the crisp air this morning threw him off his guard. Why should he be forced to lag behind? He stretched the arch of his neck straight till the bit held hard in his mouth; the ears pitched forward in eager point; the great frame under the girl quivered and sank closer to earth; the roar of his beating hoofs came up to her ears, muffled by the drive of the wind that was now a gale as the Chestnut raced into it with the speed of an express. How her heart sang! Here was speed, and with such stride--strong, and straight, and true! Low she crouched, and her call to Lauzanne was but a joyous whisper. Her small hands were framed in steel, strength to steady the big Chestnut as he swung round the course glued to the rail. On Lauzanne sped, and to the rhythm of his big heaving quarters the girl's soul sang a song of delight. At last, at last was coming her reward.

And then, just when everything had been achieved, when the great gallop had brought them half up the stretch, something came to Lauzanne--perhaps the memory of the whipping finishes; at any rate, he curled up like a dog, threw his ears back--Allis could feel the sudden stiff prop of the forelegs as he set himself against the rush of speed--and in a dozen strides he was Lauzanne again, Lauzanne the Despised.

And so it had gone on for weeks, Allis working out her theory up to the time of the trouble over Diablo. There was something in the girl's quiet determination that was masterful; perhaps that was why she had always had her own way at home. Now this mastery was spreading out wonderfully; Lauzanne, and Mike, and her father, and Crane, and Mortimer, all in different degrees of subjection, but, as Fate knew, all subject.

Mrs. Porter's continual lament on the subject of racing had given Crane a keynote for his line of action. It was the day following her scoring of the tolerant husband that Crane revisited Ringwood full of his new idea.

He had an impulse to buy back Lauzanne. For almost the first time in his life he experienced twinges of remorse; this was because of Allis. Porter's affairs were in a bad way, and he would probably accept eagerly an offer from Crane to lighten his load. Individually he cared little for Porter's financial troubles, but it was a good opportunity to prepare the way for a stronger pressing of his suit with the girl. With his usual fine discrimination he spoke to Mrs. Porter first, intimating never so slightly that her words had won his entire sympathy; that if her husband would sell any of the horses he would buy them.

There was a convincing sincerity about Crane at all times; what he did he did with the full vigor of a man believing in its truth. One might almost have suspected that he deceived himself, that he had no conception of the unrighteousness of his acts. At any rate, he imposed most successfully upon the mother of Allis. Quite egotistically she attributed to herself the trend of his friendship. In racing phrase, Crane was out for a killing and playing his cards with consummate skill.

With the master of Ringwood he went very straight to the point. This was possible, as Porter could not hesitate to discuss his financial condition with his banker. Crane offered to buy Lucretia; this with him was purely a speculation, but Porter would not part with his little mare. Then the banker spoke of Lauzanne, saying that he felt somewhat guilty since learning the previous evening that the horse had been doped. Porter failed to see where Crane had anything to do with it. But the latter insisted that he had unwittingly helped Langdon by speaking of Lauzanne as a good horse. He had known nothing of the matter, beyond that his trainer had assured him the horse would win; in fact, he had backed him.

Porter laughed at the idea that responsibility could attach to Crane. As to the Chestnut, he was not worth a tenth of the three thousand he had cost--that was well known; and if Crane or any other man sought to buy him at that price it would savor too much of charity. At any rate, Lauzanne belonged to Allis, and Crane would have to bargain with her.

Then there was Diablo, Crane said; his presence was a menace to Miss Porter.

“I've nursed him for a good while,” Porter replied, “and he's a bad betting proposition--he's too uncertain. You don't want such a horse as that--nobody does. I'll keep him a bit longer, and put him in a handicap or two where the purse will be worth running for, and I won't have to back him; he'll get in with a featherweight, and some day may take it into his head to gallop, though he's a rank bad one.”

Crane did not press the point; he understood Porter's motives throughout. He knew the master of Ringwood was an unchanging man, very set in his ways, adhering closely to his plans and opinions. So Crane went back to Brookfield without purchasing a horse, saying as he left, “I claim first privilege when you wish to sell.”

He had talked to Porter in the stable, and Mike, busy near by, heard that part of their conversation referring to the horses.

“They haven't got money enough in the bank to take the little mare from us yet, have they, Mike?” Porter said to Gaynor, full of his pride in Lucretia.

“That they haven't, sor,” replied Mike, proudly. “But, faith, I wish th' gint hadn't come a-tryin' to buy her; it's bad luck to turn down a big offer fer any horse.”

Porter smiled indulgently. This stable superstition did not appeal to him.

“It would a-broke the bad luck, sor, to have let him took the Black.”

“It would have broken his bank, you mean, Mike.”

“Well, he'll break somewan's back here yet, an' I'm tellin' you that sthraight. They say a black cat's full av th! divil, but Diablo's ould Nick hisself, though I'm sayin'it was th' b'y Shandy's fault sp'ilin' him. An' if it wasn't fer Miss Allis it's a pity you couldn't a-sold him the Chestnut. He's a sawhorse--he's as heavy in th' head as a bag of salt; he'll never do no good to nobody. Them's the kind as kapes a man poor, eatin' their heads off, an' wan horse, or maybe two, in the stable earnin' th' oats fer them. It's chaper to cut th' t'roats av such cattle.”

“I believe you're right, Mike,” Porter answered, quietly, as he left the stable.

Crane, driving back to Brookfield, turned over in his mind the matter of his mission. He was satisfied. He had succeeded in the main objective point. It would have been a good move to have acquired Lucretia, to have tempted her owner to part with her for ready money in sight. The money would soon have disappeared; then Porter, with a lot of bad horses on his hand, would almost certainly have come more firmly into the grasp of Crane. The offer to buy Lauzanne had been a bit of saving grace, a faint, generous impulse, begot of Allis's regenerating influence; but Crane had discovered that Porter did not at all suspect him of interest in the fraud--that was a great something. He had also established himself firmly in Mrs. Porter's good graces, he could see. It would be indeed strange if in the end he did not succeed completely.

XIV

Shandy's escapade with Diablo had brought a new trouble to Mike Gaynor.

The boy had been discharged with a severe reprimand from Mr. Porter, and a punctuation mark of disapproval from the Trainer's horn-like hand. He had departed from Ringwood inwardly swearing revenge upon everybody connected with that place; against Diablo he was particularly virulent.

Mike tried to secure a boy in the Brookfield neighborhood to ride Diablo in his work, but Shandy's evil tongue wagged so blatantly about the horse's bad temper that no lad could be found to take on in the stables. Ned Carter might have ridden Diablo at work, but the big Black was indeed a horse of many ideas. He had taken a notion to gallop kindly while accompanied by Lucretia and Lauzanne; worked alone he sulked and was as awkward as a broncho of the plains. Also he disliked Carter--seemed to associate his personality with that of Shandy's.

Mike's discontent over the hitch spread to John Porter. It was too bad; the horses had been doing so well. For three days Diablo had no gallop. On the fourth Porter determined to ride the horse himself; he would not be beaten out by an ungrateful whelp like Shandy. In his day he had been a famous gentleman jock, and still light enough to ride work.

“I don't like the idea, sor; it's not good enough,” remonstrated Mike.

But his master was obdurate. If Allis rode Lauzanne, why shouldn't he ride Diablo?

Gaynor would have ridden the horse himself rather than have his master do so, but he had a bad leg. Once upon a time it had been crushed against the rail. Somebody must ride Diablo; the horse, naturally highstrung, was becoming wild with nervousness through being knocked out of his work.

For three days after his discharge Shandy sat brooding with the low cunning of a forest animal over his fancied ill-treatment. More than once he had received money from Langdon for touting off to him Porter's stable matters; now in his unreasoning bitterness he contrasted Langdon and Porter.

“Dick's white, he is, an' I'll go git a job from him. I gits half eat by that crazy skate, an' fired without a cent fer it. God drat 'em!” he muttered; “I'll get even, or know why. They'll put Ned up on Diablo, will they? The sneak! He split on me fer beltin' the Black, I know, damn him! They ain't got another boy an' they won't git one. I'll fix that stiff, Carter, too; then they won't have no boy.”

He drank beer, and as it irritated his ferret mind a devilish plot came into his being and took possession of him--a plot easy of execution because of his familiarity with the Ringwood stables.

That night he slipped through the dark, like a hyena pup, to Ringwood. That the stable was locked mattered not. More than once, out of laziness, Shandy had shirked going to Mike's quarters for the keys and had found ingress by a small window, a foot square, through which the soiled straw bedding was thrown into the yard. Standing on the dung heap, Shandy worked open the board slide that closed this window, and wormed his weasel-form through the small opening. He passed down the passage between the stalls and entered a saddle room at the farther end.

“The bloomin' thing used to be on the fourth peg,” he muttered, drawing his small figure up on tiptoe and feeling along the wall for something. “Blow me!” and he chuckled fiendishly as his fingers encountered the cold steel of a bit, “I'd know that snaffle in hell, if I got a feel of it.”

There was a patent device of a twist and a loose ring in the center of the bit he clutched, which Porter had devised for Diablo's hard mouth.

Shandy gave the bridle a swing, and it clattered to the floor from its peg. Diablo snorted and pawed the planks of his stall nervously.

“All right, my buck,” hissed Shandy, “you wait till to-morror; you'll git the run of yer life, I'm thinkin', damn their eyes!” and he went off into a perfect torrent of imprecation against everybody at Ringwood, hushing his voice to a snarling whisper. Then he shut the door of the saddle room, sat down on the floor and pulled from his pocket a knife and stub of candle. He lighted the latter and held it flame down till a few drops of wax formed a tiny lake; into this he stuck the candle upright, shielding its flame with his coat. He opened the knife and laying it down, inspected minutely the bridle which lay across his leg.

“It's Diablo's right enough,” he said; “I couldn't be mistook on the bit, nor them strong lines.”

He picked up the knife, and holding the leather rein across the palm of his left hand started to saw it gently with the blade. Almost instantly he left off. “Of all the bloomin' ijits! God drat me fer a goat! He'd feel that cut the first slip through his fingers the leather took.”

He gathered in the rein until he had it six inches from the bit. There he cut, stopping many times, and doubling the leather close to the light to see how deep he had penetrated.

“There, Mr. Bloody Ned!” he exclaimed at last, as inspection showed that only the outer hard shell of the leather remained intact. “That'll just hold till the Black takes one of his cranky spells, an' you give him a stiff pull. God help you then!” Even this was a blasphemous cry of exultation; not a plea for divine assistance for the man he plotted against.

His next move proved that his cunning was of an exceptional order. From his coat pocket he brought forth a pill box. In this receptacle Shandy dipped a forefinger, and rubbed into the fresh cut of the leather a trifle of blackened axle grease which he had taken from a wagon wheel before starting out. Then he wiped the rein with his coat tail and looked at it admiringly.

“The bloke won't see that, blast him!”

He hung the bridle up in its place, put out the candle, dropped it in his pocket and made his way from the stable.

As he passed Diablo's stall the big Black snorted again, and plunged in affright.

“You'll get enough of that to-morror,” sneered the boy. “I hope you and Ned both break your damn necks. Fer two cents I'd drop somethin' in your feed-box that'd settle you right now; but it's the skunk as split on me I want to get even with.”

Shandy trudged back to where he nested in Brookfield and soon slept with calm restfulness, as though no evil had ever homed in his heart. In the first gray of the early morning he rose and went out to the race course.

XV

The course near Ringwood had formerly been a trotting track, and was still used at irregular intervals for the harness horses. In its primitive days a small, square, box-like structure had done duty as a Judges' Stand. With other improvements a larger structure had been erected a hundred yards higher up the stretch.

It was to the little old stand that Shandy took his way. Inside he waited for the coming of Gaynor's string of gallopers as supremely happy in his unrighteous work as any evil-minded boy might be at the prospect of unlimited mischief.

“Ned'll ride Diablo, sure; there's nothin' else to it,” he muttered. “I hope he breaks his blasted neck. I'll pay 'em out fer turnin' me off like a dog,” he continued, savagely, the small ferret eyes blazing with fury. “I'll learn the damn--Hello!” His sharp ears had caught the muffled sound of hoofs thudding the turf in a slow, measured walk. He peeped between the boards.

“Yes, it's Mike. And the girl, too--blast her! She blamed me fer near bein' eat alive by that black devil of a dope horse. Hell!”

This ambiguous exclamation was occasioned by the sight of his former master springing into the saddle on Diablo's back.

“That's the game, eh? God strike me dead! I hope you git enough of him. My arms ache yet from bein' near pulled out of the sockets by that leather-mouthed brute. Gee, if the boss hasn't got spurs on! If he ever tickles the Black wit' 'em--say, boys, there'll be a merry hell to pay, and no pitch hot.”

The young Arab spoke to the boards as though they were partners in his iniquity. Then he chuckled diabolically, as in fancy he saw Porter being trampled by the horse.

“The girl's on Lauzanne,” he muttered; “she's the best in the lot, if she did run me down. A ridin' that sorrel mut, too, when she ought to be in the house washin' dishes. A woman ain't got no more business hangin' 'round the stable than a man's got in the kitchen. Petticoats is the devil; I never could abide 'em.” Shandy sometimes harked back to his early English Whitechapel, for he had come from the old country, and had brought with him all the depravity he could acquire in the first five years of his existence there.

“Ned's got the soft snap in that blasted bunch,” as his eye discovered Carter on Lucretia. “He's slipped me this go, but I've nobbled the boss, so I don't care. I'm next 'em this trip.”

As the three horses and their riders came on to the course he pulled out a cheap stop-watch Langdon had equipped him with for his touting, and started and stopped it several times.

“You'll pay fer their feed, you damn ole skinflint,” he was apostrophizing Porter, “an' I'll be next the best they can do, an' stan' in on the rake-off. Gee! I thought they was out fer a trial,” he muttered, looking disconsolately at the three as they cantered the first part of the journey. “I'll ketch 'em at the half, on the off chance,” he added.

But though the timepiece in his hand clicked impatiently, after he pressed the stem with his thumb, as Diablo's black nozzle showed past the half-mile post, the three horses still cantered. Lauzanne was loping leisurely with the action of a wooden rocking-horse. Lucretia, her long, in-tipped ears cocked eagerly forward, was throwing her head impatiently into the air as though pleading for just one strong gallop. Diablo's neck was arched like the half of a cupid's bow; his head, almost against his chest, hung heavy in the reins tight-drawn in Porter's strong hands. His eyes, showing full of a suspicious whiteness, stood out from his lean, bony head; they were possessed of a fretful, impatient look. Froth flecked back from the nervous, quivering lips, and spattered against his black satin-skinned chest, where it hung like seafoam on holding sand.

“Whoa! Steady, old boy!” Porter was coaxing soothingly. “Steady, boy!”

“The ease up has put the very deuce into this fellow,” he flung over his shoulder to Allis, who was at Diablo's quarter. “He's a hard-mouthed brute if ever there was one.”

“He'll be all right, dad,” she called forward, raising her voice, for the wind cut her breath; “Shandy rode him with a heavy hand, that's why.”