Garrison's Finish Part 1

Garrison's Finish.

by W. B. M. Ferguson.

CHAPTER I.

A SHATTERED IDOL.

As he made his way out of the paddock Garrison carefully tilted his bag of Durham into the curved rice-paper held between nicotine-stained finger and thumb, then deftly rolled his "smoke" with the thumb and forefinger, while tying the bag with practised right hand and even white teeth. Once his reputation had been as spotless as those teeth.

He smiled cynically as he shouldered his way through the slowly moving crowd--that kaleidoscope of the humanities which congregate but do not blend; which coagulate wherever the trial of science, speed, and stamina serves as an excuse for putting fortune to the test.

It was a cynical crowd, a quiet crowd, a sullen crowd. Those who had won, through sheer luck, bottled their joy until they could give it vent in a safer atmosphere--one not so resentful. For it had been a hard day for the field. The favorite beaten in the stretch, choked off, outside the money----

Garrison gasped as the rus.h.i.+ng simulacra of the Carter Handicap surged to his beating brain; that brain at bursting pressure. It had recorded so many things--recorded faithfully so many, many things he would give anything to forget.

He was choking, smothering--smothering with shame, hopelessness, despair. He must get away; get away to breathe, to think; get away out of it all; get away anywhere--oblivion.

To the jibes, the sneers flung at him, the innuendos, the open insults, and worst of all, the sad looks of those few friends who gave their friends.h.i.+p without conditions, he was not indifferent, though he seemed so. G.o.d knows how he felt it at all. And all the more so because he had once been so high. Now his fall was so low, so pitifully low; so contemptible, so complete.

He knew what the action of the Jockey Club would be. The stewards would do only one thing. His license would be revoked. To-day had seen his finish. This, the ten-thousand dollar Carter Handicap, had seen his final slump to the bottom of the scale. Worse. It had seen him a pauper, ostracized; an unclean thing in the mouth of friend and foe alike. The sporting world was through with him at last. And when the sporting world is through--

Again Garrison laughed harshly, puffing at his cigarette, dragging its fumes into his lungs in a fierce desire to finish his physical cataclysm with his moral. Yes, it had been his last chance. He, the popular idol, had been going lower and lower in the scale, but the sporting world had been loyal, as it always is to "cla.s.s." He had been "cla.s.s," and they had stuck to him.

Then when he began to go back--No; worse. Not that. They said he had gone crooked. That was it. Crooked as Doyers Street, they said; throwing every race; standing in with his owner to trim the bookies, and they couldn't stand for that. Sport was sport. But they had been loyal. They had warned, implored, begged. What was the use soaking a pile by dirty work? Why not ride straight--ride as he could, as he did, as it had been bred in him to? Any money, any honor was his. Instead--

Garrison, stung to madness by retrospect, humped his way through the crowd at the gates of the Aqueduct. There was not a friendly eye in that crowd. He stuffed his ears with indifference. He would not bear their remarks as they recognized him. He summoned all his nerve to look them in the face unflinchingly--that nerve that had been frayed to ribbons.

And then he heard quick footsteps behind him; a hand was laid heavily on his shoulder, and he was twisted about like a chip. It was his stable owner, his face flushed with pa.s.sion and drink. Waterbury was stingy of cash, but not of words.

"I've looked for you," he whipped out venomously, his large hands ravenous for something to rend. "Now I've caught you. Who was in with you on that dirty deal? Answer, you cur! Spit it out before the crowd.

Was it me? Was it me?" he reiterated in a frenzy, taking a step forward for each word, his bad grammar coming equally to the fore.

The crowd surged back. Owner and jockey were face to face. "When thieves fall out!" they thought; and they waited for the fun. Something was due them. It came in a flash. Waterbury shot out his big fist, and little Garrison thumped on the turf with a bang, a thin streamer of blood threading its way down his gray-white face.

"You miserable little whelp!" howled his owner. "You've dishonored me.

You threw that race, d.a.m.n you! That's what I get for giving you a chance when you couldn't get a mount anywhere." His long pent-up venom was unleashed. "You threw it. You've tried to make me party to your dirty work--me, me, me!"--he thumped his heaving chest. "But you can't heap your filth on me. I'm done with you. You're a thief, a cur--"

"Hold on," cut in Garrison. He had risen slowly, and was dabbing furtively at his nose with a silk red-and-blue handkerchief--the Waterbury colors.

"Just a minute," he added, striving to keep his voice from sliding the scale. He was horribly calm, but his gray eyes were quivering as was his lip. "I didn't throw it. I--I didn't throw it. I was sick. I--I've been sick. I--I----" Then, for he was only a boy with a man's burdens, his lip began to quiver pitifully; his voice shrilled out and his words came tumbling forth like lava; striving to make up by pa.s.sion and reiteration what they lacked in logic and coherency. "I'm not a thief. I'm not. I'm honest. I don't know how it happened. Everything became a blur in the stretch. You--you've called me a liar, Mr. Waterbury. You've called me a thief. You struck me. I know you can lick me," he shrilled. "I'm dishonored--down and out. I know you can lick me, but, by the Lord, you'll do it here and now! You'll fight me. I don't like you. I never liked you. I don't like your face. I don't like your hat, and here's your d.a.m.n colors in your face." He fiercely crumpled the silk handkerchief and pushed it swiftly into Waterbury's glowering eye.

Instantly there was a mix-up. The crowd was blood-hungry. They had paid for sport of some kind. There would be no crooked work in this deal.

l.u.s.tfully they watched. Then the inequality of the boy and the man was at length borne in on them, and it roused their stagnant sense of fair play.

Garrison, a small h.e.l.l let loose, had risen from the turf for the third time! His face was a smear of blood, venom, and all the bandit pa.s.sions.

Waterbury, the gentleman in him soaked by the taint of a foisted dishonor and his fighting blood roused, waited with clenched fists. As Garrison hopped in for the fourth time, the older man feinted quickly, and then swung right and left savagely.

The blows were caught on the thick arm of a tan box-coat. A big hand was placed over Waterbury's face and he was given a shove backward. He staggered for a ridiculously long time, and then, after an unnecessary waste of minutes, sat down. The tan overcoat stood over him. It was Jimmy Drake, and the chameleonlike crowd applauded.

Jimmy was a popular book-maker with educated fists. The crowd surged closer. It looked as if the fight might change from bantam-heavy to heavy-heavy. And the odds were on Drake.

"If yeh want to fight kids," said the book-maker, in his slow, drawling voice, "wait till they're grown up. Mebbe then yeh'll change your mind."

Waterbury was on his feet now. He let loose some vitriolic verbiage, using Drake as the objective-point. He told him to mind his own business, or that he would make it hot for him. He told him that Garrison was a thief and cur; and that he would have no book-maker and tout--

"Hold on," said Drake. "You're gettin' too flossy right there. When you call me a tout you're exceedin' the speed limit." He had an uncomfortable steady blue eye and a face like a snow-shovel. "I stepped in here not to argue morals, but to see fair play. If Billy Garrison's done dirt--and I admit it looks close like it--I'll bet that your stable, either trainer or owner, shared the mud-pie, all right--"

"I've stood enough of those slurs," cried Waterbury, in a frenzy. "You lie."

Instantly Drake's large face stiffened like cement, and his overcoat was on the ground.

"That's a fighting word where I come from," he said grimly.

But before Drake could square the insult a crowd of Waterbury's friends swirled up in an auto, and half a dozen peacemakers, mutual acquaintances, together with two somnambulistic policemen, managed to preserve the remains of the badly shattered peace. Drake sullenly resumed his coat, and Waterbury was driven off, leaving a back draft of impolite adjectives and vague threats against everybody. The crowd drifted away. It was a fitting finish for the scotched Carter Handicap.

Meanwhile, Garrison, taking advantage of the switching of the lime-light from himself to Drake, had dodged to oblivion in the crowd.

"I guess I don't forget Jimmy Drake," he mused grimly to himself. "He's straight cotton. The only one who didn't give me the double-cross out and out. Bud, Bud!" he declared to himself, "this is sure the wind-up.

You've struck bed-rock and the tide's coming in--hard. You're all to the weeds. Buck up, buck up," he growled savagely, in fierce contempt.

"What're you dripping about?" He had caught a tear burning its way to his eyes--eyes that had never blinked under Waterbury's savage blows.

"What if you are ruled off! What if you are called a liar and crook; thrown the game to soak a pile? What if you couldn't get a clotheshorse to run in a potato-race? Buck up, buck up, and plug your cotton pipe.

They say you're a crook. Well, be one. Show 'em you don't care a d.a.m.n.

You're down and out, anyway. What's honesty, anyway, but whether you got the goods or ain't? Shake the bunch. Get out before you're kicked out.

Open a pool-room like all the has-beens and trim the suckers right, left, and down the middle. Money's the whole thing. Get it. Don't mind how you do, but just get it. You'll be honest enough for ten men then.

Anyway, there's no one cares a curse how you pan out--"

He stopped, and his face slowly relaxed. The hard, vindictive look slowly faded from his narrowed eyes.

"Sis," he said softly. "Sis--I was going without saying good-by. Forgive me."

He swung on his heel, and with hunched shoulders made his way back to Aqueduct. Waterbury's training-quarters were adjacent, and, after lurking furtively about like some hunted animal, Garrison summoned all his nerve and walked boldly in.

The only stable-boy about was one with a twisted mouth and flaming red hair, which he was always curling; a remarkably thin youth he was, addicted to green sweaters and sentimental songs. He was singing one now in a key entirely original with himself. "Red's" characteristic was that when happy he wore a face like a tomb-stone. When sad, the sentimental songs were always in evidence.

"h.e.l.lo, Red!" said Garrison gruffly. He had been Red's idol once. He was quite prepared now, however, to see the other side of the curtain. He was no longer an idol to any one.

"h.e.l.lo!" returned Red non-committally.

"Where's Crimmins?"

"In there." Red nodded to the left where were situated the stalls.

"Gettin' Sis ready for the Belmont opening."

"Riding for him now?"

"Yeh. Promised a mount in th' next run-off. 'Bout time, I guess."