Taking Chances Part 7

Their four fifty-dollar notes went on Imp straight, when the slates went up. They all stood together and rooted for the black mare when the horses got off. When Kinley Mack romped in, an easy winner, they didn't say anything at all. They didn't even look at one another. They avoided one another's gaze, thrust their hands deep into their pockets and studied the jockeys as they dismounted. When the first numbness had pa.s.sed the main guy of the four led them to the bar and they drank the longest one of the day in silence. They looked up into their gla.s.ses as they twiddled their spoons, but they didn't look at one another.

There was $17 still left among the four-not enough for any sort of celebration or doings when they got back to town. So the main guy gathered up the $17 in silence and put it all on a horse at 10 to 1 in the fifth race, with the idea of running the shoestring into a tannery.

The 10 to 1 shot was never in the hunt at any stage of it, and they were all out. Silently they wended their way out of the gate.

Red Beak Jim was sitting on the seat of the hack, with his legs crossed, smoking a pipe. He looked interested when the four came along.

"Youse people must have all kinds," said he.

They climbed into the hack without a word.

"D'je play that one?" inquired Red Beak Jim, picking up the lines.

"Ask me aunt," growled the main guy.

Red Beak Jim clucked at the horses, and they moved off in good style.

The hackman pulled the horses up alongside the step in front of the first roadhouse.

"Hey, don't get too glad all of a sudden," growled the main guy to Red Beak Jim. "Who told you to do that?"

Red Beak Jim disposed of the lines and stepped down without making any reply, while the four watched him gloomily. Then he grinned, hoisted up the right-hand front flap of his livery coat, dug into his right-hand trousers pocket and pulled out a wad about the size of a healthy cantaloupe.

"I'll ask youse gents to split a couple o' quarts on me," said Red Beak Jim. "I got 8 to 1 f'r me forty."

They gazed at him and his wad with their jaws dropping.

"Did you play Kinley Mack?" they gurgled in unison.

"That's the one youse people said, ain't it?" inquired Red Beak Jim. "I t'ought I'd take a little flyer on him, jes' f'r luck."

THE GAME OF RUNNING "RINGERS."

_And How He Got a Horseman Without Much of a Conscience into Hot Water._

"No Man alive can afford to lose the friends.h.i.+p even of a yaller dog.

Not even an ornery yaller dog can you afford to have agin' you at any stage of the game. The dog'll get back at you one time or another, sooner or later, and take a mouthful or two out of you, if you haven't had sense enough to keep him on your staff of friends."

The man who used to make a business of putting ringers over the plates at the outlaw race-tracks had pa.s.sed from the reflective to the confidential mood. Perhaps the rings which he made on the cherry table with the bottom of his gla.s.s suggested circular race-tracks to him.

Perhaps the prancing of the fox-terrier pup in the back room made him think of horses kicking up at the post. But, whatever the cause of it, his burst of confidence was unusual, and the other men at the table listened to him attentively.

"My yellow dog was a yellow man-that is, the one I'm thinking about just now," he went on. "He took a hunk out of me down at Alexander Island, Va., near Was.h.i.+ngton, about five years ago. He had me out. All he had to do was to count ten on me and take the pot, and he knew it. He worked the edge. I didn't blame him a bit then, and I don't now. But it was hard money to lose. When I get hold of the right end of a bulge on a man that I've got it in for, I don't hesitate to work it myself-but I always feel a bit sorry for a man that I get up into a corner, all the same.

This yellow man felt sorry for me. He showed it. He was about as sympathetic a yellow man as ever I saw on the occasion I'm going to tell you about. But he wouldn't let go, for all that. He needed the money, of course, but then he wanted to get back at me, too.

"'I'se dun got de aige on yo' all, boss,' he told me, 'an I'm sure a-gwine t' wuk it laik uh mean nigguh. But yo' dun me dutty, Cap.'

"You see, I had employed this yellow man as a stable hand when I first got my string of ringers together and took them out. He was all right for the first few months of the winter campaign, but then he began to get jagged on me with a heap of regularity. He got mixed up with that gin that they keep on hand in Maryland for the Afro-American trade, and it spoiled him for me. He was no use whatever after the gin took hold of him. I warned him a lot, but it did no good. I was a little bit afraid of the job, for he knew a good deal about my string, but I finally decided that I'd have to take a chance and fire him. I turned up at the track stable one morning-this wasn't more'n a million miles from Baltimore-and I found my yellow man Lem sulky and ugly drunk, and the string chewing on their stalls. I gave him a boot and a hist out of the stable and told him not to come back.

"'This yellow man'll probably queer me,' I thought at the time, 'but I can't go along playing 1000 to 1 shots like him for favorites. If he peaches-well, there are other States besides Maryland.'

"I was rather surprised that he didn't come back when he got sober. But, nope, he didn't come back at all. I got another stableman and during the following week, the last of the meeting, I pulled off three good painted things with as good as 15 to 1 around two of 'em, without yellow Lem turning up to pester me at all. I thought of him a good deal. Every time I got one of my plugs at the post I stood by to see the yellow man walk into the judges' stand and give me away. I'll bet I lost ten pounds worrying about that darkey and what he might do during that last week in Maryland. I felt as light as a s...o...b..ll when I got my string out of that State and over at the Alexander Island track, near Was.h.i.+ngton. When I got 'em all safe over there, says I to myself, 'This yellow ex-man o'

mine is probably back in Thompson street, with his carca.s.s full of gin by this time. So I'll just cut out the worry about him.'

"Well, I started in at the preliminary work of pulling off a real swell thing at Alexander Island. It was about as easy to enter a horse down there as it is to go broke up here, and I put the best one of my lot in the overnight races for a week. I entered him as a half-breed from a Warrenton farm-a maiden six-year-old. It went through easy, the overnight entering did, and I began to lay my horse up for a price. The horse had done a mile in 1.40-1/2 and he had the whole bunch down at Alexander Island outcla.s.sed by 212 pounds. The plug had belonged to the best of the Western selling-plater division as a three- and four-year-old and he had been in a few stakes at that. I got him as a five-year-old and he surely was a meal-ticket for me. He wasn't painted a bit-you didn't have to dye 'em at Alexander Island. If Hanover had been an outlaw you could have stuck him into any old race down there and they'd never have got next.

"I had a boy along with the string who'd been chased off the Western licensed tracks for funny work, and what that boy didn't know about riding like as if his life depended on his winning, and forty wraps on his mount all the time, wasn't worth knowing. Say, he had six separate and distinct bridle welts on both of his forearms that he got in pulling horses. He was invaluable, that boy. When we were out to win he never made anything but a nose finish of it even if our horse was up against the worst set of outlaw dray-plugs in training. Oh, that boy knew his gait all right! I did the best I could to keep him from going to Joliet for pocketpicking in Chicago a couple o' years ago, but it was no use.

He's still doing his bit.

"Well, I had him sail this good nag of mine over the course in seven races the first ten days of the meeting. The horse was a bit too likely looking, and there was only 5 to 1 against him in the first race. He finished fourth. The boys in the ring quoted 8 to 1 around him in No. 2 race, and he finished sixth in a field of seven. And so on. He was in the ruck in most of the races, and he finished the last two of the seven a rank last. By that time you could have written your own ticket if you wanted to play him, which is what I was waiting for. My boy complained that during the last three races he had all colors of trouble in holding the horse in.

"'You'd better open the watermelon quick,' said he to me after the seventh race, 'or I'm liable to lose him and win the next time out.'

"And so I had the pie counter all spread out for his next time out. It was a six-furlong race, which was my horse's distance. Two of the cracks of the outlaw brigade were in the race, and they both opened up at even money. Then one of 'em was played down to 1 to 2 on. It was a twelve-horse race, and my nag opened up the rank outsider with any amount of 100 to 1 quoted around him. I didn't want to be too chesty and spoil my dough, and so I only took $50 worth of it, scattering it around in $10 gobs. I reckoned that $5000 would be a good-enough pulldown on the race, and I didn't want to take any chances on being shut out of the game down at Alexander Island. I put a few of the boys I knew next to what was going to happen, told 'em not to go it too strong or they'd queer me, and they mixed up $5 all over the ring on my 100 to 1 horse, that should have gone to the post at 1 to 100. They broke the price down to 30 to 1, but that didn't make any difference to me, for I had picked up all I wanted of the 100 to 1.

"When they went to the post I picked out a spot on the rail some distance away from the grand stand to watch the race. I felt pretty good. I knew it was going through. My horse had worked the six furlongs in 1:16 flat the afternoon before, and I knew that he was easy money.

The only thing I was afraid of was that he would get away from the boy and beat the bunch by eight blocks, thus bringing me into the judges'

stand on suspicion. I was thinking of all these things when I heard a voice behind me.

"'Aftuhnoon, Cap,' said the voice. 'How's yo' all tuh-day?'

"I looked around. The voice belonged to Lem, my fired yellow stable man.

Lem was sober, and got up as if for a cake-walk. He had business in his eye, too.

"'h.e.l.lo, there,' says I, kind of coddingly. 'How're you cutting it?'

"'Oh, tol'able, boss-tol'able,' he replied.

"'Where are you working?' I asked him.

"He smiled blandly in my teeth.

"'I'se a-wukkin' yo' all dis aftuhnoon, boss,' said he. 'But I ain't no hog. Jes' half o' de rake-down'll do me. Mus' hev dat much, fo' sure.

Jes' nachully need dat much.'

"'What the devil are you talking about?' I asked him, but I knew he had me where he wanted me.

"'Well, yo' see, boss, it's jes' dis-a-way,' he replied. 'I'se a-gwine tuh quit rubbin' dem down an' take tuh speculashunin' m'sef. I'se a-gwine tuh staht fo' San Francisco tuh see whut all I kin do with de bookies out da-a-way, an' jes' nachully needs de coin tuh go on out an'

begin wuk on 'em. Dis yeah's uh good one yo' all's pullin' down tuh-day, an' I was trailin' yo' w'en yo' all put yo' bets down. Yo' stan's tuh win $5,000 on de ole hoss, an' yo'll win it. I'll take ha'f o' dat, boss, an' go on out tuh de coast tracks with it.'

"I think I must have been looking pretty hard at that yellow man when he slung me this spiel. Oh, he had me all right. It was my looking at him so hard that made him get off the rest of the speech:

"'I'se dun got de aidge on yo' all, boss, an' I'm sure a-gwine tuh wuk it laik uh mean nigguh. But yo' dun me dutty, Cap.'

"As I say, I knew he had me, but just out of curiosity I shot this one at him: