Boy Woodburn Part 85

Indeed, as Jackaroo sprawled down the straight, still hanging to the quarters of the mare, he looked like a towel-rail on which wet clothes had been hung, and Rushton had ceased to ride.

The mare, fresh as the old horse was failing, came along in front of the Grand Stand, clipping the gra.s.s with that swift, rhythmical stroke of hers and little fretful s.n.a.t.c.h at the reins, neat and swift and strong as a startled deer.

Chukkers sat still and absorbed as a cat waiting over a mouse's hole.

All eyes were on him. Nothing else was seen. His race was won. Last year's defeat had been avenged. America had made good. A roar as of an avalanche boomed and billowed about him. The thousands on the stands yelled, stamped and cooeyed.

"Hail, Columbia!" bellowed the triumphant Boys.

"Stand down, England!"

"What price the Yankee-doodlers?"

"Who gives the Mustang best?"

In that tumult of sound, individual voices were lost. The yells of the bookies were indistinguishable. Men saw things through a mist, and more than one woman fainted.

Then through the terrific boom came the discordant blare of a megaphone, faint at first but swiftly overbearing the noise of the tempest.

"Watch it, ye ----!" it screamed. "He's catchin' ye!"

It was the voice of Jaggers.

The thousands heard and hushed. They recognised the voice and the note of terror in it.

Chukkers heard, too, turned, and had a glimpse of a green jacket surging up wide on his right.

There was the sound of a soughing wind as the crowd drew its breath.

What was this great owl-like enemy swooping up out of nowhere?

Chukkers, his head on his shoulders, took the situation in.

What he saw he didn't like.

The mare was going strong beneath him, but the brown horse on his quarter was only beginning: so much his expert eye told him at a glance.

Four-Pound-the-Second was coming along like a cataract, easy as an eagle in flight; his great buffeting shoulders were sprayed with foam, his gaping nostrils drinking in oceans of air and spouting them out again with the rhythmical regularity of a steam-pump; and his little jockey sat on his back still as a mouse--a pale face, a gleam of fair hair, and two little brown fists that gave and took with each stride of the galloping horse.

Chukkers was not the only one who seized the situation.

The bookies absorbed it in a flash--the outsider's form, the jockey's colours, the significance of both. It was Old Mat's horse--Old Mat who had sprung surprises on the ring so often in his time. Rumour had always said that the horse was by Berserker. Then they had disbelieved.

Now--well, he looked it.

Suddenly the ring went mad.

"Six to four the favourite!" the bookies roared. "Seven to four on the field!"

The English, too, woke to the fact that they had a champion at last. A thirst for vengeance, after all they had endured at the hands of the contumelious foe, carried them away. They stood up and howled. The Americans, who had seen the cup of victory brought to their lips and s.n.a.t.c.hed away again, roused by the threat to their favourite, responded wrathfully. Roar answered roar; New England thundered against Old.

Chukkers, as always, had steadied the mare after her rush. Now he changed his tactics to meet the new situation. As the horses made for the water, the mare on the rails, and the outsider wide on the right, Chukkers began to nibble at her. The action was faint, yet most significant.

"He ain't _ridin'_," muttered Old Mat, watching closely through his gla.s.ses--"not yet. I won't say that. But he's spinnin' her."

Indeed it was so. The crowd saw it; the Boys, gnawing their thumbs, saw it; the bookies, red-faced from screaming, saw it, too.

The crowd bellowed their comments.

"She's held!"

"The mare's beat!"

"Brown's only cantering!"

"She's all out!"

In all that riot of voices, and storm of tossing figures, two men kept calm.

Old Mat was genial; Silver still, his chest heaving beneath his folded arms.

"Like a hare and a greyhound," muttered the old man, apt as always.

"Got it all to themselves now," said Silver. "And the best horse wins."

"Bar the dirty," suggested the trainer.

The warning was timely.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AINTREE: Plan of Course]

Just before the water Rushton pulled out suddenly right across the brown horse.

It was a deliberate foul, ably executed.

The crowd saw it and howled, and the bookmakers screamed at the offending jockey as he rode off the course into the Paddock.

"Plucky little effort!" shouted Old Mat in Silver's ear. "He deserved to pull it off."

No harm, in fact, had been done.

Four-Pound-the-Second had missed Jackaroo's quarters by half a length; but the big horse never faltered in his stride, charging on like a bull-buffalo, and rising at the water as the mare landed over it.

The old man dropped his gla.s.ses, and settled back on his heels.

"What next?" he said.

"Can't do much now, I guess," answered Silver comfortably.

Old Mat turned in his lips.