Part 9 (1/2)
Some one touched Mike on the arm, saying, ”Come over into the paddock, Gaynor; you're barkin' up the wrong tree.” It was Dixon.
”Bot' t'umbs up! This game's too tough fer me--I'll s.h.i.+p me plugs to Gravesend. Whin a straight man like Porther gets a deal av this kind.”
”Never mind, Mike,” interrupted Dixon; ”let it drop.”
Carson opened his lips to retort, then closed them tight, set his square jaw firmly, turned on his heel, and walked away.
”What d' ye think av it, b'ys?” appealed Mike to the others.
”You're wrong, Gaynor,” declared a thin, tall, hawkfaced man, who was in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves; ”my boy was in that run, and it isn't Carson's fault at all. It's dope, Mike. Lauzanne was fair crazy with it at the post; and McKay was dead to the world on the little mare--the Starter couldn't get him away.”
”That's right, Mike,” added Dixon; ”Carson fined the boy fifty, an' the Stewards set him down.”
”Is that straight goods?” asked Gaynor, losing confidence in the justice of his wordy a.s.sault.
”Yes, you're wrong, Mike,” they all a.s.serted.
In five minutes Gaynor had found Carson, and apologized with the full warmth of a penitent Irishman.
V
For a week John Porter brooded over Lucretia's defeat, and, worse still, over the unjust suspicion of the unthinking public. Touched in its pocket, the public responded in unsavory references to Lucretia's race.
Porter loved a good horse, and liked to see him win. The confidence of the public in his honesty was as great a reward as the stakes. The avowed principle of racing, that it improved the breed of horses, was but a silent sentiment with him. He believed in it, but not being rich, raced as a profession, honestly and squarely. He had a.s.serted more than once that if he were wealthy he would never race a two-year-old. But his income must be derived from his horses, his capital was in them; and just at this time he was sitting in a particularly hard streak of bad luck; financially, he was in a hole; morally, he stood ill with the public.
His reason told him that the ill-fortune could not last; he had one great little mare, good enough to win, an honest trainer--there the inventory stopped short; his stock in trade was incomplete--he had not a trusty jockey. In his dilemma he threshed it out with Dixon.
”How's the mare doing, Andy?” he asked. ”What did the race do to her?”
”She never was better in her life,” the Trainer answered, proudly. Then he added, to ease the troubled look that was in the gray eyes of his master, ”She'll win next time out, sir--I'll gamble my s.h.i.+rt on that.”
”Not with another McKay up.”
”I think she's good enough for the 'Eclipse,' sir, dashed if I don't. I worked her the distance, and she shaded the time they made last year.”
”What's the use,” said Porter, dejectedly; ”where'll we get a boy?”
”Oh, lots of the boys are straight.”
”I know that,” Porter answered, ”but all the straight ones are tied hand and foot to the big stables.”
”I've been thinkin' it over,” hazarded Dixon, tentatively--”Boston Bill's got a good lad--there's none of them can put it over him, an' his boss ain't got nothin' in the 'Eclipse,' I know.”
”That means the same old game, Andy; we nurse the horse, get him into condition, place him where he can win, and then turn him over to a plunger and take the small end of the divide. Boston Bill would back her off the boards.
”The stake'd mount up to seven or eight thousand, an' the win would square the little mare with the public.”
”And I'd do that, if I didn't land a dollar,” said Porter. ”Andy, it hurt me more to see the filly banged about there in the ruck than it did giving up the money.”
The Trainer smiled. With him this was unusual; there was a popular superst.i.tion that he never smiled except when one of his horses won.