Taking Chances Part 8

"'S'pose, you yellow devil, that I don't cough up a red of it? What then?'

"He grinned and rolled his eyes over toward the judges' stand.

"'I'd jes' nachully be obleeged tuh do de bes' I could fo' de proteckshun o' de spoht o' racin,' he replied.

"The horses were still making false breaks at the post and it was too late for me to hop into the ring and lay enough down to win $2,500 for the yellow man and still have $5,000 to the good myself. It was a sore game, that, but I had to stand for it.

"'All right,' I said to the darkey, 'you've turned this trick and you'll get the $2,500. But you want to go West with it, as you say you are, or I'll get a night doctor or two on your trail. Chop away from here and I'll see you after the race.'

"'I knows yo' will, boss,' said the yellow man, giving me that triumphant grin of his, and he turned and went down the rail to take in the race. Race, did I say? Oh, it wasn't a race. My horse got away from the post three lengths to the bad, and he trailed after the bunch dismally all the way around to the stretch turn, but I never had a quake. I could see, if n.o.body else could, that my boy was ripsawing the horse's mouth, and I knew it was all right. At the stretch turn the boy let out a couple of links and the nag joined the front bunch. The boy drew it fine, as I had instructed him, and won by a short head, and it was funny to see the wise guys from Was.h.i.+ngton who had scattered all kinds of Government-earned money all over the ring turning mental flipflaps of despair. I watched to see if there'd be any holler about anything when the boy weighed in, but there wasn't, and the race was confirmed all right. I went around and did my own collecting, and several of the poor devils of bookies had to go out of business after the rest of the boys that I had put on to the thing came along and cashed their tickets. I found my yellow man waiting for me on the outside of the ring, and when I got him into the shadow I gave up the $2,500. I saw that he got a ticket and started for San Francisco the next day. I felt so sad when I heard a few months later that in an attempt to learn how to smoke hop out there, to add to his jag repertoire, he had died in a Chinese joint after hitting up thirty-six pills. I felt so sad."

The ex-ringer operator was plunged in meditation for a while, the others remaining sympathetically silent, and then he resumed in another strain.

"Next to the worst jolt I ever got-and the worst was the time down in Maryland when one of my plugs with two whitewashed barrel spots and a whitewashed forehead star got rained on at the post, practically out of a clear sky, and the spots got washed out, and I had to get out of the State of Maryland over fences-next to that jolt, the way one of my boys threw it into me at a county fair meeting in West Virginia was pretty bad. I had tongue-hammered that kid pretty hard two or three times at that meeting for winning when his mounts weren't due to win and I didn't want 'em to win, and he got sulky. I tried to coddle him up a bit, for I had a real good one to pull off on the last day of the fair, and I thought I had him all right on my staff again. The real good thing was a horse of mine that I had entered in the final race, which the jays down there called a mile race for the 1:55 running cla.s.s.' 1:55! I had a skate with me down there that could just common canter a mile in 1:45, and he could have done it in three seconds better if pinched at any time. I had had the plug lose three or four races during the fair meeting, and he wasn't as good as Chinese money in the estimation of the West Virginians by the time the race that he was going to win came around. My boy was to have the mount, and our mutual confidence seemed to be restored by the time the good thing was booked to happen. But he had an ice-pick up his sleeve for me all the time."

"'Didn't try with the horse, and lost, eh?' asked one of the ex-ringer worker's listeners.

"'Oh, no, it wasn't that,' was the reply. The horse won by a tongue, and the boy gave him a beautiful tight ride to keep him from winning further off. But he put every grafter that he knew, and he knew 'em all at the fair meeting next to what was going to happen, and made split terms with all of them. That is, he put 'em on, on condition that he was to get half of each man's winnings on the race. Now, I had figured on picking up $8,000 or $10,000 easy on that good thing, and I had lain awake nights making plans to meet possible hitches. It certainly wasn't treating me right, the way that boy did. I thought I'd get as good as 25 to 1, anyhow, at the first betting. I intended to take a mess o' that and then wait for the betting to go up, for I confidently expected, and had a right to expect, that the nag's price, in view of what the farmers down there thought of him, would go up to 50 or 100.

"When the betting on the race opened I was on hand with my wad. Say, I couldn't get within twenty feet of a one of the twelve bookies doing business. I never saw such a scramble, even in the 50-cent field at Sheepshead. Of course, I thought they were all getting aboard of the favorite, and so I drew back, knowing that if they were playing the favorite my plug would be going up in price all the time. Then I noticed a lot of the educated money, the coin of the grafters that I knew around the grounds, going in, and I wondered if they were Rubes enough to play a favorite in the last race on get-away day. So I drew close to the bookies' stands-as close as I could get-and then I found that they were all writing my horse's name. Nothing but my horse. Not a horse in the race but my horse. It was a staggerer, that was. Of course, I thought of my miffed jockey right away, and I knew he had done it. When I finally was able to get up to the bookies, I found that my plug's price had been played down from 20 to 1 to 9 to 10 on, and I was so disgusted that I stayed off altogether, although I knew my horse was going to win. He did win. The boy couldn't peach because his rake-down had been too big, but he showed me $3,500 in bills an hour after the race, got off twenty feet and told me all about it, and then bolted. I haven't seen him since."

EXPERIENCES OF A VERDANT BOOKMAKER.

_Wherein It Is Shown That, When There Is "Something Doing," a Bank-roll Is Liable to Be Wrecked._

"I heard somewhere the other day," said one of a party of turfmen who were dining together after the McGovern-Erne fight, "that Billy Thompson, the ex-Duke of Gloucester, is trying to cook up some scheme whereby the legal authorities of New Jersey 'll relent and permit him to start the old Gloucester merry-go-round again. I don't think he'll make it stick, if the story is true, but if Gloucester ever is started again I know a man who'd be very liable to burn the barns down some dark night. I don't think he'd let the Gloucester mud-lark and snow bird race-track operate while he lives.

"In 1880 this man I'm talking about-he had pa.s.sed up a good grocery business to play the races a year before-had nursed together a wad of about six thousand dollars, and this gave him a bad case of the Sandow vest. He was so chesty over having all that money that he concluded he'd try a whirl on the block. There was only winter racing going on when he got that smoky notion into his hat, and that was at Gloucester. As you fellows know, they used to run 'em there in snow up to the saddle pommels, and the plug that could make out the best without going over the fence, or that didn't become crazy from snow blindness, always yanked down the money at Gloucester-that is, if he was meant to win.

"This ex-sugar-and-tea guy was a dead verdant one at the bookmaking game when he went on the block at Gloucester, but he kept his ears open and his mouth shut, and he had quite a streak of luck, besides, from the go-off, so that at the end of his first week at laying odds he found that he'd averaged a clean-up of about $200 a day. You couldn't see him then without sending up your card, he was so vast and heap-much. He was thinking of going down Dixieway to make a bid on the Belle Meade farm, and, by the end of his third week on the block, when he had run his $6000 into a bit more than $10,000, he was probably the haughtiest gazabo on this side of the Rocky Mountains.

"One day-it was at the beginning of his fourth week at bookmaking-a duck who had a string of good ones-of their kind-chasing the Gloucester will-o'-the-wisp for the poolroom purses, invited himself to take dinner with the ex-grocer with the streak of luck. After they had stored the feed away at the high-riding bookmaker's Philadelphia hotel, the man with the string leaned back in his chair and sprung what he had in mind.

He mentioned the star sprinter of his string.

"'You know, of course,' said he confidentially, to the ex-grocer, 'that that nag can eat up any horse down here at three-quarters of a mile.

He'd never be beaten at that distance if we let him out every time he went to the post to race. But, of course, if I'd let him win every time out, there would never be any price on him. He'd be a 1 to 20 shot every time he got a lead-pad on, and I'm not going down the line on that kind of prices. Neither am I running my string over at Gloucester for hygienic reasons. Perceive?'

"The new bookie perceived.

"'Well,' this oily geezer went on, 'that horse is entered in a six-furlong sprint to-morrow, as you know. He'll probably be an even-money favorite. He'll lose.'

"'He will, hey?' said the new man on the block, suspicious like. 'That's darned good of you to tell me. But you're not telling me that for your health, either. He's going to lose, eh?'

"'Yep, he'll lose,' repeated the smooth owner. 'Now, you're a pretty nice young fellow, ain't you? I like you. Understand?'

"'Um,' said the ex-grocer. 'What's your graft, anyhow?'

"'Well, as I say, that skate of mine is going to lose,' said the confidential owner once more. 'Now, you see this thousand-dollar William, don't you? Well, I want you to take a thousand-dollars' worth of my horse to win for my account, see, when you make your book on that race. He may be as good as 2 to 1, but he's going to lose anyhow. You see, I just want to pick up an honest dollar or so. You take this $1,000 of the suckers' money for me on your book, and your reward 'll be in knowing what's going to happen. You can hunch up the price, see? Is it a go?'

"Now, this looked like a pretty good thing to the groceryman. It looked like taking candy from a child. If that owner's horse wasn't going to lose, it looked like a cinch that he wasn't going to risk any thousand-dollar bills on the game. So the new bookie told the owner that he was on, took his $1,000, and figured on the pounding he was going to give the talent the next day. He chuckled to himself when the other books only laid even money against the sprinter when the betting on the race began the next afternoon.

"'They wouldn't do a thing but fall over themselves to lay a long price if they knew, like I do, that the favorite is going to kerflop,' mused the ex-groceryman-he wailed me the whole spiel afterward-and he laid 2 to 1 against the sprinter's chances on his slate. The other bookies over his way looked as if they thought he was wheely, but he only exulted whole lots inside of him.

"'You are wise people,' he thought, 'but this is where I get the big end of it.'

"Within three minutes after he had started his slate he had taken in the horse owner's $1,000 worth of his horse at 2 to 1. The handicappers just battled to get at his book at their figures. Said he to himself, 'I'll just tap myself on this watermelon,' and by the time the horses went to the post he had taken in $5,000 of the public money at 2 to 1 on that horse that was going to lose, and he knew that he'd be just $5,000 to the good.

"Of course you chaps are next. When the horses got away the skate that the ex-grocer had laid his whole $1,000 against walked in on the bit, fifteen lengths to the good in a buck-jump. He was under twenty wraps all the way from the flag-fall.

"The new bookie paid out his $10,000, bought a clay pipe and an eight-cent package of punk tobacco, and went out of business, and he's been out of business ever since. It took him about a week to get contiguous to the fact that the men who collected his $10,000 were the smooth owner's commissioners, but when he went gunning the owner had removed his string from Gloucester, and was taking a little winter cruise in a felucca in the aegean Sea. But if Gloucester ever starts up again, and there's a conflagration, I'll know how it started."

"There's another chap that I know of who's been smoking unfragrant tobacco in a pipe for a good many years on account of an outlaw track deal," said one of the other turfmen at the table, "but he wasn't a new man at the game. He was an old-timer-so much of an old-timer that it was up to him to know that, once having made a tool of a man or a boy in the racing business, it is never the part of wisdom to throw him overboard on the presumption that he's a dead one. Turf followers, as you fellows all know, have a habit of resurrecting themselves at inopportune moments when it seems that they are so deeply buried that they'll never struggle to the top of the ground again, and when they do run a shoe-tongue into a tan-yard they are more than liable to get hunk with former pals who have cast them aside in the hour of adversity. Now, it is a particularly dangerous thing for any man connected with racing to do business with a jockey. I never heard of a bit of jockey-tampering that didn't get out sooner or later, to the disadvantage of the man that did the corrupting.

I guess we all know of cases in which jockeys, after being ruled off for crooked work, have become exacting pensioners on the hands of the men responsible for their downfall for long stretches of years. The story I have in mind is of a jockey who, while he wasn't set down through following the directions of the bookmaker he did business with, was treated with characteristic meanness by the latter when he was up against it owing to an accident; and the way this jock got even with his former tamperer was unique.

"You all remember the boy Kelley? He wasn't exactly a boy at the time this thing happened-he was a man of twenty-two or so, which probably accounted for the fact that when he was riding at Guttenberg he had most of the other jockeys faded; give me a rider with a man's hand on his shoulders every time for my horse. Now, the morale of Guttenberg wasn't like unto that pervading a theological inst.i.tution, but Kelley the jock wasn't any worse than his neighbors. He was like all the rest of the people mixed up with the weird game at the Gut. It was a poor jock at the Gut who didn't have a bookmaker on his staff, and Kelley wasn't a poor jock by fifty good pounds under the saddle. It used to be an off day with Kelley when he didn't put up a ride in accordance with this bookmaker's orders. All of the jocks at the Gut did similar things, and they were stood for. The hectic flush of humiliation didn't mantle the alabaster countenances of the Gut stewards to any huge extent when the 1 to 5 shot was beaten a furlong. Kelley was enabled to throw big money into his bookie's satchel, because, being such a top-notch rider of outlaws, most of his mounts went to the post favorites; so that when he s.n.a.t.c.hed a horse it meant the good of the books, and of his bookmaker in particular, for the latter would of course lay the longest price in their judgment against one that he knew was going to run like a mackerel along a dusty road. Kelley profited fairly well at the hands of this bookmaker, and on his side he was absolutely loyal in his crookedness.

He invariably delivered the goods. He had the knack of making it appear to the people with the field gla.s.ses that he was riding like a fiend, when in reality he had his horse pulled double, and when he was following orders he could permit the favorite under him to be beaten out by a tongue on the wire in a way that would raise the hair of the folks in the stand.

"Well, one day Kelley was dumped from a horse he was riding when the track was slippery and broke his leg. He had been improvident and extravagant, like most of the jocks of that day, so that when the accident put him on the flat of his back he found himself broke. What was more natural than that he should send to the bookmaker whose orders he had been following for a long time for a.s.sistance? He wrote to the bookie and asked for the loan of $100. The bookmaker ignored the request. Then the laid-up jockey sent a friend to the bookmaker. The latter made some remark about not coughing up for the oats and keep of dead ones-figuring, you see, that Kelley's injuries were such that he wouldn't be able to get back to the riding game until the close of the meeting. So the jockey had to stave off doctors' and other bills as best he could, and I guess that he set his teeth down pretty hard and did some robust thinking while his leg was healing.

"A couple of months after this accident Kelley, somewhat pale, turned up in the paddock at the Gut one morning and announced that he was fit to ride again. His services were immediately in demand, and Mike Daly got him to ride his horse Gloster in the first race on the card. Gloster was the best horse in the race and was certain to be favorite. The bookie, who had used Kelley before his accident and afterward turned him down, got to Kelley by the underground process, through an agent, with the inquiry as to whether a little business couldn't be done on Gloster.

Kelley, with all the good nature in life, sent word that there could, certainly; that he could get Gloster beaten by an eyelash.

"The betting opened and Gloster was the favorite all over the ring at odds of 1 to 2 on. Then Kelley's bookmaker began to shoot the price up-first to 3 to 5 on, then to 4 to 5 on, then to even money, and then right up to 6 to 5 and even 7 to 5 against. The way that bookie hauled in the money on Gloster was a caution. It seemed that every plunger and casual bettor in the inclosure wanted a piece of Gloster at Kelley's bookmaker's odds-all the rest of the pencillers still held Gloster at 1 to 2 on-and the bookmaker took in thousands of dollars on the horse.

When they were still whacking him with Gloster bets he became somewhat nervous and sent his agent to Kelley again for rea.s.surance. Kelley told the agent again that Gloster wasn't going to win.

"'He's taking in billions on Gloster,' said the agent to Kelley.

"'Let him handle the whole mint on the nag,' replied Kelley. 'Gloster will just about get the place-maybe.'

"In the meantime the judges, who occasionally made a bluff at getting haughty and virtuous, got next to the big odds that one bookmaker-Kelley's bookmaker-was offering against Gloster, and, naturally enough, they became suspicious. Five minutes before the horses were due to go to the post, therefore, they called Kelley into the stand and asked him squarely if there was anything doing by which Gloster was going to get beat.

"'If Gloster doesn't win this race,' replied Kelley, 'you can rule me off for life.'

"Kelley had put every man, woman, child and dog that he knew at the track on to the fact that he was going to win by a Philadelphia block on Gloster, and the bookmaker who had turned him down when he was on the flat of his back with a broken stilt in the middle of winter got the play of all of them. Dollar bets and $1,000 bets all looked alike to the bookmaker. He took all the money that came along without rubbing. He thought he had a corked-up good thing.

"When the bugle sounded and the horses emerged from the paddock, the bookmaker, with his gla.s.ses in his hand, was leaning against the rail, and he looked up with a grin to catch Kelley's eye as the jockey rode by on Gloster. He caught Kelley's eye, but there was no responsive grin.

There was, instead, a dirty sneer on Kelley's drawn, pale mug, and, as he caught sight of the leering bookie he drew Gloster up for just an instant and spat viciously in the direction of the man who had treated him with such ingrat.i.tude.

"The bookmaker saw in that instant that he was ditched. His face went white, and he clutched the rail, and he was still digging his fingernails into the rail when, a few minutes later, the victorious Gloster, who had won by about half a furlong, was led into the paddock, with Kelley walking alongside of him. When that bookie got through paying off the Gloster bets he had taken in he was out of business, and when the story of how it all came about leaked out, there wasn't a man in the game that didn't say that the bookie got all that was coming to him."

THE MAN WHO KNEW ALL ABOUT TOUTS.