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Taking Chances

by Clarence Louis Cullen · English · Gutenberg #37477 · 451,726 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Taking Chances

Author: Clarence Louis Cullen


        
Release date: September 19, 2011 [eBook #37477]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37477

Credits: Produced by Roger Frank, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TAKING CHANCES ***




Produced by Roger Frank, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.

                                   BY
                           CLARENCE L. CULLEN

                               AUTHOR OF
                        "Tales OF THE EX-TANKS."

                        G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
                               PUBLISHERS
                                NEW YORK

                    _Copyright, 1898-1899-1900, By_
              THE SUN PRINTING AND PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION.

                         _Copyright, 1900, By_
                       G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY.

                                  ----




CONTENTS


    INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
    THIS WIRETAPPER WAS COLOR-BLIND.
    "WHOOPING" A RACE-HORSE UNDER THE WIRE.
    JUST LIKE FINDING MONEY.
    THIS SON OF FONSO WAS OF NO ACCOUNT.
    HARD-LUCK WAIL OF AN OLD-TIME TRAINER.
    STORY OF AN "ALMOST" COMBINATION.
    "RED" DONNELLY'S STREAK OF LUCK.
    AND "RED BEAK JIM" TOOK THE TIP.
    THE GAME OF RUNNING "RINGERS."
    EXPERIENCES OF A VERDANT BOOKMAKER.
    THE MAN WHO KNEW ALL ABOUT TOUTS.
    A "COPPER-LINED CINCH" THAT DID GO THROUGH.
    HE "COPPERED" HIS WIFE'S "HUNCHES."
    A RACE HORSE THAT PAID A CHURCH DEBT.
    A SEEDY SPORT'S STRING OF HORSES.
    THIS TELEGRAM WAS SIGNED JUST "BUB."
    STORY OF A FAMOUS PAT HAND.
    GREAT LUCK AT AN INOPPORTUNE TIME.
    CARD-PLAYING ON OCEAN STEAMERS.
    THIS DOG KNEW THE GAME OF POKER.
    WIND-UP OF A TRAIN GAME OF POKER.
    QUEER PACIFIC COAST POKER.
    THE PROPER TIME TO GET "COLD FEET."
    CATO WAS JUST BOUND TO PLAY POKER.
    FINISH OF AN EDUCATED RED MAN.
    THE UNCERTAIN GAME OF STUD POKER.
    THIS MAN WON TOO OFTEN.
    THE NERVE OF GAMBLERS AT CRITICAL MOMENTS.
    THE INSIDIOUS GAME OF SQUEEZE-SPINDLE.

                                  ----




INTRODUCTORY NOTE.


To the man who, at any period of his days, has been bitten by that
ferocious and fever-producing insect colloquially known as the "horse
bug," and likewise to the man whose nervous system has been racked by
the depredations of the "poker microbe," these tales of the turf and of
the green cloth are sympathetically dedicated. The thoroughbred running
horse is a peculiar animal. While he is often beaten, the very wisest
veterans of the turf have a favorite maxim to the effect that "The
ponies can't be beat"--meaning the thoroughbred racers; which sounds
paradoxical enough. Poker, too, is a mystifying affair, in that all men
who play it appear, from their own statements, to lose at it
persistently and perennially. There is surely something weird and
uncanny about a game that numbers only losers among its devotees.
However, poker-players are addicted to persiflage. The genuine,
dyed-in-the-wool, blown-in-the-bottle pokerist rarely acknowledges that
he is ahead of the game--until the day after.

These stories, which were originally printed in the columns of the New
York _Sun_, belong largely to the eminent domain of strict truthfulness.
If they do not serve to show that the "horse bug" and the "poker
microbe" are good things to steer clear of, they will by no means have
failed of their purpose; for the writer had nothing didactic in view in
setting them down as he heard them.

                                                _Clarence Louis Cullen_.

_New York_, _Sept. 1, 1900._




THIS WIRETAPPER WAS COLOR-BLIND.


    _And His Visual Infirmity Cost Him $15,000 and His Reputation._

"I went down to New Orleans a couple of months ago to get a young fellow
who was pretty badly wanted in my town for a two-months' campaign of
highly successful check-kiting last summer," said a Pittsburg detective
who dropped into New York on a hunt last week. "I got him all right, and
he's now doing his three years. I found him to be a pretty decent sort
of a young geezer, although a born crook. I don't remember ever having
had such an entertaining traveling mate as he was on the trip up from
New Orleans. Before we started I asked him if he was going to be good or
if it would be necessary for me to put the bracelets on. He gave me an
on-the-level look and said:

"'No, I don't think it will. But I pass it up to you. I don't want to
throw you. All I ask is, don't give me too much of a chance if you keep
the irons off of me. I wouldn't be jay enough to try a window-jumping
stunt, but don't give me a show to make either one of the car doors. If
you do I may have to give you a run for it.'

"Well, I could see that he would be all right without the cuffs, and so
I didn't put 'em on him. He rode up with me in the sleeper all the way
from New Orleans to Pittsburg--I let him do the sleeping, though, of
course--and he had a drink when I did and played quarter ante when I
did, and none of the rest of the passengers were any the wiser. He was a
clinking good talker and he told me a lot of interesting stories of
queer propositions that he had been up against. For instance, when we
were running through the Blue Grass region of Kentucky, he turned to me
and asked me where the blue grass was. I told him that the term blue
grass was largely ornamental, and that, while the grass down there was
no doubt high-grade and the limit as fodder for thoroughbreds, I thought
it was mostly green, like the grass the world over.

"'Well, I'm blooming glad to hear you say that,' he replied. 'It proves
that I'm not color blind on the whole gamut of colors, anyhow. If you'd
said there really was blue grass in these fields we're running through,
I'd have given myself up as a bad job in the matter of distinguishing
colors. But as long as the grass is green like other grass--well,
there's some hope for me.'

"'Color-blind, eh?' I asked him.

"'Yes, I guess I am, more or less,' he replied. 'I never knew it,
though, until last spring, and it cost me $15,000 to find it out.'

"'Expensive information,' said I. 'How'd it happen?'

"'If you'll undertake to forget about it by the time we get to
Pittsburg, I'll tell you,' he said. 'I was fooling around one of the big
towns--one of the biggest towns on this side of the Mississippi--last
spring, when I met up with a couple of wiretappers that got me
interested. They were the real kind--not fake tappers who rope fellows
into giving up coin just by showing 'em phony instruments in shady
rooms, but professionals, who really knew how to tap the wires and pull
down the money. They had been working together for some time, and when I
happened to meet them they had just pulled off a swell hog-killing up in
Toronto and had two or three thousand each in their clothes. They had
only recently struck the big town, and, as they had never operated there
before, they didn't have to do any sleuth dodging. Neither did I,
although I was doing a bit of business in the check line occasionally,
and was about a thousand to the good when I met them. We hitched up
together, the three of us, for a drosky whirl, and then they told me
that, while they made it a rule not to let outsiders into their game,
they thought I was good enough to be admitted to a good thing that they
were about to pull off.

"'One of the largest and best patronized of the poolrooms of the town
was 'way on the outskirts of the city. The duck that runs it is worth
close on to a million, and the ticket writers have instructions never to
turn any man's money down, no matter how big the sum or how lead-pipey
the cinch he appears to have. Lumps of $20,000 and $30,000 have
frequently been taken out of that poolroom on single tickets, and it's
one of the few poolrooms where track odds are given.

"'My two new pals had sized up the layout, and when I met them they
already had things fixed to pull down a few comfortable wads. They had
rented a vacant frame cottage about 300 yards across a big vacant lot
from the poolroom, and, by a little night work--they were both practical
wiremen, as well as expert telegraphers--had got the wire into a room on
the second floor of the house all right. It was prairie land all around
and slimly frequented territory, and they had no trouble in rigging up
the wire paraphernalia, which they carried alongside a picket fence to
the porch of the cottage, and thence upstairs. They had the thing all
tested, and every dot and dash that reached the poolroom registered also
in the second floor of that cottage.

"'One of the fellows had formerly worked in a poolroom himself and he
had the race code down as pat as butter. They took me out to have a look
at the layout, not because they wanted a dollar out of me, for they were
on velvet, but simply because they both seemed to take a kind o' shine
to me, and it surely looked good. I spent two or three afternoons in the
second floor front room where the layout was fixed, and the chap who was
expert with the racing code broke the report direct from the track a
dozen times and sent it in himself, after having mastered the operator's
style at the track end of the line, and the poolroom operator was never
a bit the wiser. It was good, all right, that layout, and when they were
all ready to begin work I was in on the play.

"'We decided to make the first killing on the day the Belmont Stakes
were to be run for at Morris Park. I was against their starting it off
on such a big stake event, especially as the race looked to be such a
moral for Hamburg, but they said stake events were as good as selling
races in their business, and so we had a little rehearsal and stood by.
My end of the job was to happen in the poolroom. I was to locate there
by a dust-covered window that looked out of the poolroom across the big
vacant lot to the frame cottage where the layout was installed and wait
for the signal. The signal was to be made by means of a handkerchief
waved in the air by one of the fellows from the window. The color of the
handkerchief was to tell the name of the winner. For instance, if
Hamburg won a white handkerchief was to show at the second-story window;
if Bowling Brook captured the stakes a yellow handkerchief was to be the
signal, and so on. When I got the signal I was to put the money down on
the winner, the tapper was to hold the result from the pool operator for
five minutes to give me time to get the money down, and then I was just
to wait for the poolroom operator to announce the race. It was the
easiest thing in life, and it would have gone through with a rush, not
only on that race, but on a whole lot of other ones later on, if I
hadn't been color blind.

"'I was on hand in the poolroom on the afternoon that we were to do
business and I put a few dollars down on the first races at Morris Park,
just for the sake of getting the ticket writers used to my face and to
avert suspicion. I had a pretty fair line on the horses in training then
and I won two or three out of the bets that I played simply on form. The
fourth race on the card was for the Belmont Stakes, and after the third
race had been confirmed and the first line of betting came in on the
stake race I lounged over to the dust-colored window and looked
uninterested. But I had the tail of my eye on the window of that frame
cottage all the time, nevertheless. I had $2,000 of my pals' money in my
clothes and $1,000 of my own. I was a bit nervous, but I knew that I had
a pipe, and I also knew that the poolroom people had mighty little show
to get next. I had all kinds of a front on me then, and a $5,000 or even
larger bet was, as I say, not so unusual in that poolroom as to scare
'em or cause 'em to become suspicious.

"'Well, the second line of betting came in, with Hamburg the natural
favorite at 4 to 5 on in the betting, Bowling Brook 4 to 1 against and
the rest at write-your-own-ticket figures. The poolroom took in
thousands of dollars of Hamburg money, for nobody in the big crowd that
surged about the poolroom could figure any other horse in the race to
have a chance. I myself thought it was a sure thing for Hamburg, but I
wasn't playing thinks, but cinches, and so I just stood at that window
and waited for the signal. I was, I suppose, somewhat excited internally
when I thought of the possibilities of the game, but nobody knew it. The
poolroom operator announced, 'They're at the post at Morris Park,' and
then I knew that 'ud be the last direct communication he'd have with
Morris Park until after the running of the Belmont Stakes. I leaned
there on that window, with one hand resting on my chin comfortably,
waiting for the flutter of the handkerchief away across the vacant lot.
The sun shone brilliantly, and the window of the frame cottage was in
plain view, and I didn't figure it as among the possibilities that I
could make a mistake.

"'Well, when the whole crowd in the poolroom had become sort o' mute
with expectancy and the betting at the desk was almost over, I got the
signal. It was the quickest flash in the world, a white handkerchief, as
I was perfectly positive, nervously waved three times from the
second-story window of the frame cottage. I didn't see my pal waving the
handkerchief--only the flutter of the white handkerchief which announced
that Hamburg had won. So, without any apparent excitement, but in the
laziest kind of a way in the world, I just yawned, stretched my arms,
and remarked to a few fellows standing nearby:

"'"What's the use of doping over the race. It's a pipe for Hamburg. I'm
going up and put a couple of thousand on Hamburg."

"'So I walked up to the desk, passed over six $500 bills and said
"Hamburg." The ticket writer took the money without any visible emotion
and wrote me a ticket. Then I walked out among the crowd to hear the
calling off of the race, which I knew would happen within three or four
minutes.

"'"They're off for the Belmont," the operator shouted in about three
minutes, and then said I to myself, "What an exercise gallop for
Hamburg! What a dead easy way of picking up large pieces of money!"

"'I wasn't worried even a little bit when Bowling Brook was 'way in the
lead in the stretch.

"'Hamburg's just laying in a soft spot right there, third, and when it
comes to a drive, how cheap, he'll make a crab like Bowling Brook look!

"'Then the operator, after the ten seconds' delay following the
announcement of the horses' positions in the stretch, called out:

"'"Bowling Brook wins!"

"'Say, I'm not an excitable kind of a duck, nor dead easy to keel over,
but, on the level, my head went 'round and I had to grip hold of a chair
top when I heard that announcement. I couldn't make it out. It seemed
out of the question. I knew that my two pals hadn't dumped me, because
hadn't I played $2,000 of their money? At first I thought the operator
made a mistake, and I waited with a spark of hope for the confirmation
of the race. The confirmation came in. Bowling Brook had walked in, and
Hamburg had been disgracefully beaten.

"'An hour later I met my two pals downtown. They greeted me with grins,
and held out their hands for the thousands.

"'"Thing didn't go through, did it?" I said to them. "Where was the
mistake, anyhow? What was the white handkerchief--Hamburg's
signal--waved for?"

"'They looked at me savagely. They were positive that I had tricked
them--that I had really played Bowling Brook with the money and was
holding it out on them.

"'"White handkerchief be blowed!" said the man that had given the
signal, pulling a light yellow handkerchief from his pocket. "What color
do you call this?"

"'Well, then I saw how the mistake had been made, and that I had made
it. In the brilliant sunshine I had mistaken the light yellow
handkerchief for a white one, and it was up to me. They didn't give me a
chance to get in a word, though, for they believed, and believe yet, I
suppose, that I had thrown them, and they both hopped me at once. I had
to put up the fight of my life, but I downed them both finally with the
aid of a chair and a spittoon, and got away. That's how I lost
$15,000--counting the winnings we'd have made had I played Bowling Brook
that time--by being color blind.'"




"WHOOPING" A RACE-HORSE UNDER THE WIRE.


    _A Novel Method of Treating Sulky Thoroughbreds That Often Works
                              Profitably._

"I see they hollered an old skate home and got him under the wire first
by three lengths out at the Newport merry-go-round the other day," said
an old-time trainer out at the Gravesend paddock. "Don't catch the
meaning of hollering a horse home? Well, it's scaring a sulker pretty
near out of his hide and hair and making him run by sheer force of
whoops let out altogether. This nag, Kriss Kringle, that was hollered
home at Newport a few days ago, is a sulker from the foot-hills. He was
sold as an N. G. last year for $25, and at the beginning of this season
he prances in and wins nine or ten straight races right off the reel at
the Western tracks, hopping over the best they've got out there. Then he
goes wrong, declines to crawl a yard, and is turned out. They yank him
into training again awhile back, put him up against the best a-running
on the other side of the Alleghanies, and he makes 'em look like
bull-pups one day and the next he can't beat a fat man. He comes near
getting his people ruled off for in-and-out kidding, and then, a couple
of weeks ago, or maybe a bit less, he goes out and chews up the track
record, and gets within a second of the world's record for the mile and
three-eighths, I believe it was.

"Then, Tuesday they have him in at a mile and a sixteenth, with a real
nippy field, as Western horses go. The right people, knowing full well
the old Springbok gelding's propensities, shove their big coin in on him
anyway, and take a chance on him being unable to keep up with a steam
roller after his swell race a while before, and the whole crowd fall
into line and bet on Kringle until the books give them the cold-storage
countenance and say, 'Nix, no more.' Then they get up into the stand and
around the finishing rail and they see the aged Kriss, who's a rank
favorite, begin like a land crab, when he usually goes out from the jump
and spread-eagles his bunch. They begin the hard-luck moan when they see
the sour son of Springbok trailing along third in a field of five, and
they look into each other's mugs and chew about being on a dead one.
Turning into the stretch, the old skate is a poor third, and stopping
every minute, a plain case of sulks, like he's put up so many times
before. The two in front of him have got it right between them, when
Kris comes along into the last sixteenth, still third by a little bit,
and then the gang let out in one whoop and holler that could be heard
four miles. It's 'Wowee! come on here, ye danged old buck-jumper!' and
'Whoop-la! you Kringle!' from nearly every one of the thousand leather
lungs in the stand and up against the rail, and the surly old rogue pins
his ears forward and hears the yelp. Then it's all off. The old $25
cast-off jumps out like a scared rabbit at the sixteenth-pole. The
nearer he gets to the stand the louder the yelping hits him and the
bigger he strides; and he collars the two in front of him as if they
were munching carrots in their stalls, and romps under the string three
lengths to the good. That's what hollering a horse home means. It's a
game that can only be worked on sulkers. The yelling scares the sulker
into running, whereas it's liable to make a good-dispositioned horse
stop as if sand-bagged.

"I've seen the holler-'em-in gag worked often at both the legitimate and
the outlaw tracks, and for big money. One of the biggest
hog-slaughterings that was ever made at the game was when an Iroquois
nag, a six-year-old gelding named McKeever, turned a rank outsider trick
at Alexander Island, Va., in 1895. The boys that knew what was going to
happen that time surely did buy it by the basketful for a long time
afterward. McKeever was worth about $2 in his latter career, and not a
whole lot more at any stage of the game, according to my way of sizing
'em. As a five and six-year-old, he couldn't even make the doped outlaws
think they were in a race, but his people kept him plugging away on the
chance that some day or other he might pick up some of the spirit of his
sire, the royal Iroquois, and pay for his oats and rubbing, anyhow. When
he was brought to Alexander Island in the spring of '95, and tried out
it was seen that he was just the same old truck-mule. One morning, after
he'd been beaten a number of times by several Philadelphia blocks, when
at 100 to 1 or so in the books, his owner had him out for a bit of a
canter around the ring, with a 140-pound stable boy on him. A lot of
stable boys and rail birds were scattered all around the infield,
assembled in groups at intervals of 100 feet or so, chewing grass and
watching the horses at their morning work. This old McKeever starts
around the course as if he's doing a sleep-walking stunt. The boy gives
him the goad and the bat, but it's no good. McKeever sticks to his
caterpillar gait, and his owner leans against the rail with a watch in
his mitt and mumbles unholy things about the skate. There's a laugh
among the stable boys and the rail birds as McKeever goes gallumphing
around. Then a stable lad that's got a bit of Indian in him leans over
the rail just as McKeever's coming down, and lets out a whoop that can
be heard across the Potomac. McKeever gives a jump, and away he goes
like the wind. It looks so funny to the rail birds along the line that
they all take up the yelp, and McKeever jumps out faster at every shout.
He gets to going like a real, sure-enough race horse by the time he has
made the circuit once, and he keeps right on. The owner gets next to it
that it's the shouting that's keeping the old plug on the go, and he
waves his arms and passes the word along for the boys to keep it up.
McKeever does six furlongs in 1:14 with the assistance of the hollering,
and the owner takes him off the track, gives him a look-over and some
extra attention, and smiles to himself.

"Then he pushes McKeever into a six-and-half furlong race on the
following day. He stations about twenty or twenty-five rail birds, all
of 'em stable boys out of a job, in the infield, and hands them out
their yelling instructions. McKeever is up against one of the best
fields of sprinters at the track, and he goes to the post at 30 to 1 and
sticks at that. His owner puts a large number of his pals next to what's
going to happen, and not a man of them plays the good thing at the
track. They have their coin telegraphed in bundles to the poolrooms all
over the country. McKeever gets out in front, and he hasn't made more
than a dozen jumps before one of the kids inside the rail throws a whoop
that makes the people in the stand put their hands to their ears.
McKeever gives a swerve and a side step, and away he goes like the
Empire State express. A hundred feet further, when he's four lengths in
the lead, and the others, including the even money shot, nowhere, a
couple more rail birds shoot out another double-jointed yell, and
McKeever jumps out again like an ice-yacht. He gets the holler at every
100 feet of his journey, the rail birds not taking any chances on his
stopping, although after the first furlong he is six lengths to the
good, and the result is that McKeever simply buck-jumps in, pulled
double, with eight lengths of open daylight between him and the even
money shot. The owner looks sad, like a man who hasn't put a dollar
down, and says real hard things to McKeever when the horse is being led
to his stable. When he gets him inside his stall, though, the hugs and
loaf sugar that fall McKeever's way are a heap. The old-time poolroom
people will tell you yet how they had to turn the box, a good many of
'em, the day that McKeever was hollered home at old Alexander Island.

"And, talking about Alexander Island, there were some funny ones yanked
off over there, sure enough, some of them almost as funny as a few that
happened over in New York at the legit tracks this passing season.
Without hurling out any names, I'll just tell you of how a plunger who
has been a good deal talked about this year, on account of his big
winnings, got the dump-and-the-ditch at the hands of a
poor-but-honest-not owner at Alexander Island in the same year of 1895.
This plunger wasn't such a calcined tamale in those days as he is now,
but he was some few, and he generally had enough up his sleeve in order
to keep him in cigarettes and peanuts; which is to say that he had a
winning way about him, and access to everything that was doing at that
outlaw track. He dealt in jockeys quite a lot, giving them their figure
with a slight scaling down, according to his own idea of what was coming
to them for being kind to him. He was wise and he was haughty, and
toward the wind-up of that Alexander Island season he fell into the
notion, apparently, that things had to be done his way or the kickers
fade out of the game.

"This poor owner that I'm talking about went on to Alexander Island with
an ordinary bunch of sprinters, all except one filly, that was real
good, but a bit high in flesh, and not ripe. It was a filly that could
as a matter of fact beat anything at the track, being right and on edge,
and she had the additional advantage of not being known all about. The
poor owner has his own boy along with him, and he's pretty hard up. He
sticks this filly in a six-furlong event, with the idea of really going
after the purse, which he requires for expenses. He knows that the filly
isn't right, but he dopes it that she can beat the lot pitted against
her, anyhow, and he really means her to win. He tells his boy to take
her right out in front and get as good a lead as he can, so that in case
her flesh stops her the rest'll never be able to get near her. That's
the arrangement right up until post time. The filly--well, suppose we
call her Juliet--is not very well known at Alexander Island, and she has
5 to 1 against her.

"Now, it happens that this plunger knows all about Juliet being, as I
say, a pretty fast proposition, but he doesn't think she can win in her
condition, and, anyhow, he has something doing on another one in the
race; he has so much doing in the race, in fact, that all the rest of
'em, except Juliet, are dead to the one he has picked to play. The
plunger digs up the owner of Juliet and says to him:

"'My son, your baby won't do to-day.'

"'She'll make a stab, though,' said the owner. 'I need the cush, being
several shy of paying my feed bills. The game has been throwing me
lately. She's going to try.'

"'You need the purse, hey?' said the plunger. 'That's not much money.
Only $200, ain't it? How'd $500 do?'

"'Spot coin?' asks the impecunious owner.

"'Spot coin after my weanling gets the money.'

"'You're on,' says the poor-but-honest-not owner. 'I'm not any more
phony than my neighbors, but it's a case of real dig with me just now.
Juliet'll finish in the ruck. Are you cinchy about the one you've got
turning the trick?'

"'It's like getting money in a letter,' says the plunger.

"'All right,' says the poor owner, 'you can walk around to my stall and
push me the five centuries after they're in.'

"The poor owner saw his boy, and Juliet's head was yanked off, with the
boy's toes tickling her ears. She could have won in a walk, short of
work as she was, but the boy had a biceps, and he held her down so that
the plunger's good thing went through all right.

"After the race the plunger, who had made a great big thing out of it,
hunted up the poor owner and beefed about the $500. He said that he
hadn't been able to get as much money on his good one as he had expected
and asked the poor owner to compromise for $300. The plunger's poor
mouth doesn't tickle the poor owner a little bit, but he is a pretty
foxy piece of work himself, and he takes the three hundred without
letting on a particle that he thinks it a cheap gag. The plunger goes
away thinking he has the poor owner on his staff for good, and the poor
owner makes sundry and divers resolutions within himself, to the general
effect that the next time he does business with that plunger he'll know
it.

"Well, the poor owner doesn't race his good filly again for a couple of
weeks, and all the time she's getting good. He gives her her work at
about 3 o'clock every morning, in the dreamy dawn, so that nobody gets
onto it just how good she is getting. He shoots her in about two weeks
after he has been dickered down by the plunger. He knows that she's
going to win, and with his other skates he has picked up nearly a
thousand wherewith to play the Juliet girl to win. On the day before the
race the plunger comes to him again.

"'I see you've got that nice little girl of yours in to-morrow,' he
says. 'How good is she?'

"'She's got a show for the big end of it,' says the poor owner.

"'Um,' says the plunger. 'Well, she'll only be at 5 to 1, whereas I've
got a cinch in that that'll be as good as 15 to 1. Do you think we can
do a little business?'

"'On a strictly pay-in-advance basis, yes,' says the poor owner, chewing
a straw. 'Maybe I'll be able to see my way to delivering the goods for a
thousand down. Otherwise I win.'

"The plunger made a terrific beef, and tried persuasiveness, oiliness,
bull-dozing the whole works, with the poor owner.

"'Why,' he says, 'I can buy all the Juliets from here to Kentucky and
back for a thousand.'

"'Yes,' says the poor owner, 'but you can't shove a 15 to 1 shot through
every day, either. Let's not talk about it any more. You've got my
terms. Thousand down, right now, and Juliet will also ran. No thousand,
Juliet walks, and I'll get the coin anyhow by betting on her.'

"He got the thousand two hours before the race was run. The poor owner
looked Juliet over, and called his boy into a dark corner of the stable.

"'Take her out in front, son,' he said, 'and tow-rope them. Don't let
'em get within a block of you. I'll send your mother a couple o' hundred
after you fetch her home.'

"'She'd win with a dummy on her,' says the kid.

"Then the poor-but-honest-not owner takes the thousand he already has in
his kick, and the thousand the beefing plunger has given him, and
spraddles it all over the United States on Juliet at from 5 to 7 to 1.

"Juliet wins by fourteen lengths, and the plunger, with his mouth
twitching, hunts up the owner of Juliet. All he gets is a line of chile
con carne conversation, and, finally, a puck in the eye.

"'Do others or they'll do you' isn't the way they used to teach it when
I went to Sunday-school," concluded the old-time trainer, "but there are
occasions when the rule just has to be twisted that way."




JUST LIKE FINDING MONEY.


    _A Bottled-up Cinch That Came Off at One of the Chicago Tracks._

"The first bet that I ever put down on a horse race," said a horse owner
and trainer at an uptown cafe the other night, "was on a horse that
stood at 100 to 1 in the betting. It was also the first race I ever saw
run by thoroughbreds. I was clerking in a Long Island City grocery store
for $8 a week at the time, and I didn't know a race-horse from a ton of
coal. I got a couple of my fingers crushed between two salt fish boxes
one morning, and I had to lay off from work. I didn't want to hang
around my room, and didn't know what to do with myself, and so when a
no-account young fellow I knew suggested that I go over with him to
Monmouth Park and have a look at the races, I fell in with the
proposition. Besides the remains of my previous week's pay, about $3, I
had $20 saved up out of my wages, and I kept this in one $20 note in my
inside vest pocket. After paying for round-trip tickets for my friend
and myself, and for two tickets of admission to the race grounds, I was
practically broke with the exception of a few cents, for I didn't count
the $20 as available assets. I intended to hang on to that unbroken.
Well, I found that all my sporty friend wanted of me was to have me pay
his way on the train and into the grounds, for he promptly lost me as
soon as we got by the gate. I felt pretty sore at this treatment, not
that I wanted his help, for I hadn't the least idea of doing any betting
with my savings, but I didn't cotton to the notion of being played for a
good thing and then thrown that way.

"I walked around among the crowd with my hands in my pockets, wondering
a good deal over the dope talk of the ducks that knew all about the
horses and their preferred weights, distances, riders, and so on; it was
all Greek to me then. Finally I was shouldered and jostled into the
betting ring. It wasn't long before I began to rubberneck at the prices
laid against the horses on the bookies' blackboards. Although I didn't
know anything about the nags then, I found out afterward, when I had
made a study of the game and got a little next to it, that this race I
made my first bet on was composed of a cheap mess of fourteen selling
platers. They were at all kinds of prices, from 4 to 5 on to 100 to 1
against. The latter price was laid about three of 'em. I didn't exactly
understand what the 100 to 1 meant, and so I asked a fellow standing
near by to explain it. He looked me over out of the slants of his lamps,
thinking, probably, that I was stringing him. When he saw that I was a
green one he told me that the 100 to 1 meant that if a 100 to 1 shot won
that I had put a dollar on I'd be $100 ahead of the game. This looked
pretty good to me. I didn't know anything about horse form or horse
quality then, and I thought that one of 'em had just as much chance as
another to win. So I picked out the 100 to 1 shot whose name I liked
best and elbowed my way up to a booky's stand to put a dollar down on
it, holding my $20 bill tightly gripped in my hand. I passed the twenty
up to the bookmaker--he went broke, and has been a dead 'un for a good
many years now--and said:

"'Give me a dollar's worth of that fourth horse from the top--that one
with the 100 to 1 chalked before his name.'

"The booky looked down at me contemptuously, without accepting the
twenty I proffered him, and said:

"'I don't want no dollar bets.'

"Well, this made me feel pretty cheap, especially as all of the ducks
back of me, waiting to pass up their fifties and hundreds gave me the
laugh. I didn't like to be shown up in that public way. I was just as
sore at that time about being made to look like thirty cents as I am
to-day. So I did a bit of lightning thinking. 'Twenty's a big bunch to
me,' I thought, 'and I've had to hop out of bed at half past 3 in the
morning to go to meat market a good many times to get it together; but
I'll be hanged if I'm going to let this fellow get away with his idea of
making me look small, even if I haven't got a show on earth.' So I
passed the bill up to him again, saying:

"'All right, there, billionaire. Just gimme $20 worth of that fourth
horse from the top, with 100 to 1 chalked before his name.'

"I was chagrined to find that this strong play didn't help me a little
bit. The booky only grinned as he chanted, 'Two thousand dollars to $20
on the fourth one from the top,' and the chap that wrote me the ticket
grinned back at him, and the crowd behind me again gave me the hoarse
hoot, loud and long continued. I'll bet I was blushing on the bottom of
my feet when I snatched the ticket and hurried away from that booky's
stall, with the chuckles of the hot-looking members ringing in my ears.
Well, my horse walked in.

"When I went to cash my ticket for $2,020 the booky sized me up, with
all kinds of wrath in his eyes.

"'A good make-up you've got for a Rube,' he said to me. 'You're good.
That's the most scientific commissioner act I've seen pulled off up to
date, and I've been at this game ever since Hickory Jim was a
two-year-old.'

"I didn't know what he was talking about. The word commissioner was
particularly mysterious to me, but I wasn't going to let him put it on
me again, and I like to have drove him crazy with the slow grin I gave
him. He chucked the bundle of $2,020 at me, and I just walked backward
with it in my hands and grinning at him. He was the maddest-looking man
I ever saw, before or since. I didn't go back to my grocery job, nor did
I hop in and slough off my $2,000 on a game I didn't know anything
about. I didn't play another horse that year, but went in and made a
study of the game, going to the tracks every day to see 'em run and to
think the whole institution over. It has taken me all of the years that
have passed since to find out that the study of horse racing don't
amount to a row of spuds, that study doesn't beat the game. I simply had
a series of lucky plays after I figured it that I knew all there was to
be learned about horse racing, and those plays put me on the velvet I've
had to a greater or less extent ever since. I don't often play them
now--I've got a fairly nifty string, and I run 'em and let the other
fellows do the guessing.

"What set me to thinking about this first play of mine was a letter I
received the other day from an owner, who's racing his string down at
New Orleans, about the win of that plug Covington, Ky., the other day.
The price laid against Covington, Ky., was at first 150 to 1, and the
rail birds in the know battered it down to 60 to 1 at post time,
throwing all kinds of misery into the layers when the plater romped in,
after being practically left at the post. My friend says in his letter
that a big bookmaker declined to take a dollar bet from one of the wise
rail birds on Covington, Ky., at 150 to 1, and that the young fellow got
chesty, dug into the pocket where he kept his silver, found $2 in
quarters and halves, and handed the $3 to the bookie on Covington, Ky.,
to win. The layer took the money and it cost him $450. The bookie, my
friend writes me, has been poked in the ribs over the thing by his
fellow-layers ever since.

"I don't often pay any attention to good things," continued the turfman,
"and it's rarer still that I am compelled to regret my indifference to
the bottled-up cinches, but, in common with about 3,000 other people, I
overlooked a proposition at Lakeside last fall that caused me several
minutes' hard thinking. I didn't lose any money over it, but it's hard
to think of the inside chance I neglected on that occasion to make an
old-fashioned hog killing. I had four or five of my three-year-olds out
at Lakeside and was pulling a purse down with 'em once in a while, and
depending on the purses to keep me even with the game and strong for hay
money. I wasn't doing any betting; I took my confirmed indifference to
good things along with me to Chicago, and I think now, looking back at
the season, that I made a bit of a mistake in doing so, for if there's
any place in the country outside of the outlaw tracks where good things
do have a habit of going through right often, then that place is
Chicago. I didn't profit by any of 'em that were made to stick last
fall, however, although I saw many a sure thing soaked down from 20 to 1
to 4 to 1 at post time, and then come in romping with all the money. A
lot of men I knew out at Lakeside--fellows with small strings, none of
which ever won or got in the money--were on all kinds of velvet by
giving ear to the inside good things, but they didn't make me jealous a
little bit. I'm in the game for keeps, and that's more than can be said
for the good-thing players.

"Anyhow, for all that, I'm still regretting that I overlooked this
chance I'm speaking of. I was in a Dearborn street hang-out for racing
men one night, along toward the wind-up of the racing season, when a boy
came inside and told me a man out at the front door wanted to see me. I
went out and found a drunken stable hand waiting for me. He was employed
as a general stable roustabout by the owner of a California string, and
I had befriended the man in the paddock a few days before when he was
engaged in a rum fight with another stable hand. He was getting the
worst of the scrap when I stepped in and pulled his antagonist off of
him. It didn't amount to anything, this, but the tank stable hand that
was waiting for me outside of the Dearborn street place in the rain
seemed to feel grateful to me for it.

"'Hello, Bill,' said I to him, 'what's up?'

"'Got fired this afternoon,' he replied.

"'Broke?' I asked him.

"'I didn't hunt you up to touch you, boss,' he said. 'I got a good thing
I want to give to you. You've been square to me. The good thing's to
come off to-morrow, and nobody's on. I'm preaching on it because I've
been dropped from the track just for getting a skate on, and because I
want to put you next, that's been on the level with me.'

"'You can pass me up,' I told the man. 'I don't play the sure ones, you
know.'

"'But this is ripe, and it's going to happen,' persisted the man. 'It's
a baby. It's a looloo. It's a cachuca. It's that filly Mazie V. in the
two-year-old race to-morrow. You know who's stable she belongs in. I
heard the chaw about it this afternoon before I got fired, and they
didn't get on to it that I was listening. Mazie V.'s going to walk in
to-morrow. No dope, but she's fit. She worked three-quarters in .15 flat
early yesterday morning when nobody was looking, and she's on edge.
They're going to burn up the books with it. I know that nobody can tout
you, and I'm not trying to tout you. But here's a chance, and I came
down to let you know.'

"Well, of course I had to thank the man, but I couldn't help but grin at
him at that.

"'How long have you been rubbing 'em down?' I asked him.

"'I've been around the horses since I was ten years old,' he replied.

"'And still so easy?' I couldn't help but say. 'Well, I won't say
anything of what you've told me so as to queer the price, if there's any
play on Mazie V., but, of course, as for myself, I pass it up; thanks
all the same to you. Need any money?'

"No, he didn't want any money, he said. He had simply hunted me up to
put me on to one of the best things of the meeting, and he shambled off.

"When the books opened for that two-year-old race the next day, Mazie
V., a clean-limbed filly that had never shown a particle of class,
opened up the rank outsider in a big field, which included some very
fairish two-year-olds. I looked the books over, not because I was
betting, but just out of habit, and I saw that every nag in the race was
being played but Mazie V., the 150 to 1 shot.

"'If they're going to burn the bookies out on Mazie V., I thought,
amusedly, 'it's a wonder the stable connections don't take some of this
good 150 to 1.'

"As I was thinking this over, the ex-stableman who had hunted me up with
the Mazie V. good thing the night before plucked me by the sleeve. He
was several times as drunk as an owl, and I didn't care to talk with
him.

"'Are you down?' he asked me, lurching. 'Because 'f you ain't, you're
campin' out, an' that's all there is to it.'

"'Go and take a sleep,' I told him, and passed on. But he didn't want
any sleep. Instead, he drunkenly mounted a box that he found in the
betting ring, and started to make an address to the hustling bettors.

"'Hey!' he shouted, 'if you mugs want to git aboard for the barbecue,
play Mazie V. She's going to be cut loose. She's a 1 to 10 chance. She's
going through. It's a cinch.'

"The crowd guyed him.

"'It's so good,' shouted the poor devil, 'that I just put the last $8 I
got on earth on her to win--not to show, but to win. Hey! I'm not
touting. I'm trying to give you all a win-out chance. You needn't think
because I ain't togged out that I'm a dead one on this. Even if I have
got a load along, why'----

"Just then somebody, probably an interested party, kicked the box from
under the man and he went sprawling. That closed him up. The crowd
roared, but not a man in the gang, of course, put down a dollar on Mazie
V. If any of the pikers had even a dream of doing such a thing the
stable hand's drunken recommendation of the filly switched them off.
Just before the horses went to the post the $5 bills of people that
weren't pikers, but stable connections, went into the ring in such
quantities on Mazie V. that she closed at 100 to 1 in a few of the
books, and at much smaller figures in most of the others.

"Well, the way that little filly Mazie V. put it all over her field was
something ridiculous. The race was something easy for her. There was
nothing to it but Mazie V. She got away from the post almost dead last,
and then picked up her horses at leisure, revelling in the heavy going,
and, loping up in the last sixteenth, walked in with daylight between
her and the favorite. It was one of the killings of the Chicago racing
season, and the books were soaked to over $20,000 on $5 bets.

"'That certainly is hard money to lose, to say the least,' I heard poor
Mike Dwyer mumble on the day that he took 1 to 15 on Hanover, putting
down $45,000 to win $3,000, and Hanover got himself disgracefully beaten
by Laggard. And that's what I think about that Mazie V. good thing--hard
money not to have won."




THIS SON OF FONSO WAS OF NO ACCOUNT.


 _But When He Did Take It Into His Head to Run One Day, the Bookmakers
                             Were Damaged._

An old-time trainer, who is trying out a bunch of yearlings and keeping
up a lot of old campaigners out at the old Ivy City track near
Washington, was chewing wisps of hay the other afternoon and thinking
aloud.

"One of the things that I can't exactly figure out," said he, "is
whether I'm a ringer-worker or on the level. That proposition has been
bothering me a heap in the middle of nights right along since the fall
of '87. I got into the center of a game then that has kept me
apologizing to myself ever since. And, then, again, that plug wasn't a
sure-enough proper ringer. And I didn't put him over the plate, either.
My end of it was only to cop out a few, and all I had to do was to----

"Well, anyhow, I went down to a yearling sale in Kentucky for the man I
was training for in 1885. There were some Fonso bull-pups to be
auctioned off, and the boss wanted a Fonso or two. You remember Fonso,
don't you? He's the old nag, a great one in his times, who got the blue
ribbon only the other day at the age of twenty-three for being still the
finest specimen of a thoroughbred in Kentucky. The boss wanted a couple
of Fonsos and I went after them. I got him two and myself one. The one I
got was the worst-looking he-scrag that ever wore hoofs. He was out of a
good mare, but he upset all the calculations of breeding. He was the
worst seed in looks that ever I clapped my eyes on; and I've been
fooling with yearlings for a quarter of a century. He was an angular
swayback, leggy, low-spirited, thick-headed, and as fast as a
caterpillar. Yet I bought him. I didn't expect ever to make anything out
of him, but I was pretty flush then, and I didn't want to see a Fonso
pulling a dray if there was a chance in a thousand of making anything
out of him. That colt was a joke. The whole crowd gave him the hoot when
he was led into the auction ring, and I couldn't hold down a grin myself
when I sized up the poor mutt of a camel, the worst libel on a great
sire that ever crawled into an auction ring for a bid. The whole gang
jeered me when I offered $100 for the skate. I didn't blame 'em. But I
led the colt out, put him in a stall, and then went back to the sale. I
got two high-grade Fonsos for my boss, and they won themselves out for
him twenty times over in the next three years. But they don't figure in
this story.

"I went at my freak Fonso right away to see if anything could be done
with him. I devoted more time to that one than I did to any of my
two-year-olds or three-year-olds in training, hoping that he might have
something up his sleeve and that it could be dug out of him with careful
handling. It was no go. I couldn't get him to do a quarter in better
than 35 seconds. Bat or steel had no effect on him. He had a hide like a
rhinoceros, and he made the exercise boys weary. Here was a colt born a
Fonso, out of a mare that had been of stake class when in training, that
was no better than a truck-horse, and at the end of two weeks I gave him
up. A circus came along to Lexington, where I had my string, and with
the circus, in charge of the performing horses, was an old trainer
friend of mine from the St. Louis track who had been chased into the
show business by a long run of hard luck. I took him out to look over my
bunch, and when he came to the Fonso colt he laughed.

"'Where did you get that world-beater?' he asked me.

"'Oh, that's a Fonso colt that I picked up down the line at a sale a
while back,' I told him.

"He didn't exactly call me a liar, but he looked as if he wanted to.
Then I told him all about the colt. Like most trainers, he had the blood
and breeding bug pretty bad under his bonnet, and he tried to throw it
into me that I wasn't giving the colt a fair shake. Told me a lot of
stuff that I already knew about some great racehorses that couldn't get
out of their own way as yearlings, and tried to convince me that this
Fonso thing of mine was liable to fool me up a whole lot as a
two-year-old.

"'Well, he doesn't get oats at my expense until he's ready to race,'
said I. 'If you think his chances at next year's stakes are so devilish
big, he's yours for a quarter of a hundred.'

"'I've got you,' said my friend with the show. 'I'll take him along,
anyhow. It's worth that much to a man to be able to say to himself as he
smokes his pipe after his work's done that he's got a Fonso colt of his
own. And I'll bet you an even $100 that I get one race out of that
swayback, anyhow, before he's two years older.'

"I didn't take him. I was disgusted with my hundred dollars' worth of
Fonso, and I was glad to get the $25 that my friend in the show business
gave me for him. He took the mutt away with the show, and I forgot all
about that sentimental purchase of mine for a couple of years.

"I hadn't any killing luck during those two years. In fact, the game
went against me pretty strong. Most of the string that I had in training
went wrong or showed themselves platers, and when the boss decided to
quit racing I was up against it completely. I had two or three platers
of my own that made their oats money and a little more, and these I
raced on the St. Louis track, pulling down a purse once in a while, and
getting second money often enough to keep me in coffee and sinkers. When
the St. Louis game closed down at the end of September, a number of us
that had small strings struck out for the bush-meetings in nearby
States. I shipped my three to a metropolis on the banks of the Missouri
River where a State fair was about to be held and where $200 purses were
offered for running races. I figured my three lobsters to be as good as
any for the bush-meetings, and I calculated on getting one or two of the
purses at this State Fair.

"I got into the town--they call it a city out there--with my horses
three days before the State Fair was to begin. On the day that I got
there a circus that had been exhibiting in the town for two days wound
up its season and started East for its winter quarters. I saw the
boarded-up wagons passing through the streets on their way to the
freight depot. I was watching the dead procession when my circus friend,
the man on whom I had worked off my no-account Fonso colt, picked me out
of the crowd and came up to me. The circus moving out was the one he had
been attached to when last I saw him and sold him the colt.

"'Hello,' said I, 'how many stakes have you pulled down with that one up
to date?'

"He dug his hands into his pockets and grinned but made no reply.

"'Have you still got that colt?' I asked him.

"'Yep,' said he.

"'Going to take him along with you to the show's winter headquarters?' I
inquired.

"'Sh-sh-sh!' said he. 'I'm not going along with the show. I quit 'em
here. Season's over. I've got some business here next week, anyhow. I'm
going to race that Fonso on the Uncle Tom circuit, beginning with the
State Fair here.'

"Of course, I couldn't do anything else but prod him, and I did.

"'Fact,' said he, seriously. 'Got him entered in the first race on the
card--mile.'

"'I've got one in that myself,' I told him. 'Shall we fix it up between
us?' I added, just for fun.

"'You might do worse, at that,' said he, sizing me up out of the tail of
his eye. 'I'm going to win in a walk.'

"Then I hooted him a good deal more, of course. He let me get through,
and he then took me off into a corner and told me some things.

"'That plug like to have broken my heart ever since I got him,' he said.
'I've had him in four or five times already at the bush meetings, but he
was never one, two, three, until the last time, when he took it into his
head to run when they got into the stretch and was only beaten a nose by
a pretty fair bush plug. This was two months ago. The trouble with this
Fonso colt you sawed off on me is that he's a sulker. He's got the speed
in his crazy-shaped bones, but he won't let it out. Well, between you
and me--and I put you next because I know you want a dollar or so as bad
as I do--I'm confident that with a douse out of a pail and a bit of a
punch with a needle just before post time, he can beat anything out this
way. He's out at the Fair grounds now, and I worked him a mile in .48
this morning. He roars like a blast furnace, but his wind is all right,
nevertheless. He's still as ugly as ever, if not uglier. I put you next,
because it might be a good thing for you to scratch your nag out of that
first race and cotton to your cast-off. There'll be a big price on
account of his wheezing and his ragged looks.'

"'How did you enter him?' I asked. 'As a Fonso?'

"'Not on your natural,' said he. 'Any old thing's eligible, and I simply
told 'em I didn't know the mutt's breeding, that I had him along with me
in the show, and just had an idea he might run a little.'

"Well, son, the winter was beginning to loom up, and I wasn't ulstered
and swaddled out for it. I went out to the Fair grounds with my friend
and looked over the Fonso freak. My friend called him Star Boarder,
because he'd been eating circus oats and hay for two years without ever
doing a lick of work to pay for his fodder. The colt had, of course,
filled out and lengthened, but he was still as homely a beast ever I
clapped an eye on. We had him led out on the six-furlong track, and an
exercise boy who weighed about 145 pounds took him over the course at
top speed. The nag did it in 1.21, and the performance tickled me. The
colt had a crazy, jerky, uneven stride, and seemed to go sideways, but
he certainly got over the ground lively with that weight up. I saw the
chance, and I needed the coin.

"'Can he keep that gait up for the mile?' I asked his owner.

"'He wants four miles,' he replied. 'His roaring is a bluff.'

"'Count me in, then,' said I. 'He'll walk in that race. I'll scratch
mine out.'

"We went along the line and looked over the other horses, especially the
twelve that were entered for that first race, and, although there were
some good-lookers in the bunch, they had been campaigned heavily for
months, and were a jaded lot. I scratched my pretty fair horse out of
that first race. Then I sold the poorest nag of my three platers to a
banker in town for a stylish saddle horse. Got $400 for him. I wanted
the money for betting purposes.

"There was a big crowd out at the Fair grounds on the day the racing
began. Four books were on, all of them run by representatives of big
gambling houses in town. My friend had the Fonso colt taken out of his
stall and slowly trotted around the track about three-quarters of an
hour before the first race, that in which the horse was entered. The
gathering crowd in the stand laughed over the horse's awkward, climbing
gait and clumsy appearance. That's what we wanted 'em to do. We wanted
the price, or the horse would have been kept in his stall.

"Only seven of the field originally entered for the race went to the
post. Now, I didn't have anything to do with conditioning Star Boarder,
and I never belonged to the syringe gang, anyhow; I kept strictly away
from the paddock and the barns before the race, because I didn't want to
see anything. But the way that Fonso colt, with all his clumsiness, held
his head up and pranced around as he was going to the post, with a
pretty fair boy that I brought along with me from St. Louis on his back,
by the way, was certainly great. Dope makes a horse about as perky as
three drinks of whisky makes a man who's been off the booze for a long
while. The trouble is that the dope doesn't last so long in a horse as
it does in a man, and I was pretty anxious for a prompt start, so that
the dope in this homely cast-off of mine wouldn't die out.

"The betting on Star Boarder opened at 15, 6, and 3. There was an
even-money favorite, a horse that had pulled down a number of mile
purses at St. Louis, a 2 to 1 shot, and the others slid up to the nag my
friend and I wanted to have win; Star Boarder being the rank outsider at
15 to 1. I put my $400 down on him with the four booked all three ways,
$200 to win, $100 for the place, and $100 to show. In the morning my
friend handed me $200 of his savings from the circus business to bet. I
played his coin $100 to win and $100 a place. I had hardly got the money
down before I heard a big whoop of laughter from the stand, and I rushed
out to see what was the matter. Star Boarder was running away. There had
been a false break, and the fool plug had kept right on going. He had a
mouth like forged steel, and the boy couldn't do anything with him. I
stood and damned Fonso and all his tribe to the last generation, and I
could see my friend in the paddock shaking his fist and grinding his
teeth.

"'Oh, well,' said I to myself, 'it's all off, and it serves you bully
good and right for not racing your own plugs and letting these con and
dope grafts go to the devil.'

"The horse went the full length of the course before he was pulled up,
and then he was roaring and wheezing like a sea-lion. The crowd laughed,
and the books gave the post-time bettors all the 60 to 1 against Star
Boarder that they wanted--which, of course, was none.

"I went back to the paddock then, while the horses were gyrating at the
post, and found the brute's owner. I laid him open.

"'To blazes with casting up!' he said. 'Isn't the last of my cush on the
skate, too?'

"I felt like ten cents' worth of dog's meat when I slunk back to the
stand to see 'em get off. After fifteen minutes' delay at the post--the
starter was a farmer--and Star Boarder blowing like a sand-blast and the
foam standing all over him from that little six-furlong sprint, away
they went in a line, Star Boarder in the lead! Star Boarder at the
quarter by a length! Star Boarder at the half by a length! Star Boarder
at the three-quarters by two lengths! Star Boarder in the stretch by
three lengths! And if that dog-goned, knock-kneed, bone-spavined,
no-account maiden Fonso colt didn't just buck-jump under the wire by six
clear lengths of open daylight, you can feed me hay and carrots until
the next spring meeting and I'll only say thank you kindly, sir!

"I can't, as I say, make out whether that was a case of ringing or not.
Anyhow, it was up to the State fair people to make the holler if any was
coming, wasn't it? They didn't. The Rube bookmakers did, but they
weren't sustained, and they had to dive into their satchels. Star
Boarder is over in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, to-day, pulling an old
lady around in a phaeton, and still holding down the distinction of
being the homeliest son of one of the handsomest sires in the history of
the American stud."




HARD-LUCK WAIL OF AN OLD-TIME TRAINER.


  _He Salts a 100 to 1 Shot Away for a Good Thing and Is Steered Off._

"Washington, as I remember it, was a pretty nice old jogger of a town,"
said an old-time trainer who got in at Bennings, the race-track near
Washington, a few days ago with a well-known string of horses in
preparation for the spring meeting there. "I'd like to have a look at it
again by daylight. Got in this time after dark and came right out here
before sunrise. First time I'd hit Washington for five years--since the
fall meeting at St. Asaph in 1894. I surely would like to have another
look around Washington. But I guess I'll have to pass it up. I'm not
hunting for bother nowadays."

The paddock in which he stood is only a few minutes' run by train from
Washington. It seemed odd, therefore, that he did not step on a train
and run over to Washington, since, as he said, he hankered for another
sight of it. He was asked about this:

"Well," he replied, "I'm waiting for five fellows that I used to know
over in Washington to die. When they've all cashed in, maybe I'll have a
chance to look around Washington again. But I understand that they're
all alive and on edge now, and I don't exactly feel like running into
them. I know that I'd never be able to square myself for a thing that
happened down at St. Asaph during that fall meeting in 1894, so what's
the use of stacking up against the bunch and wasting wind?

"I had a small string of dead ones at that St. Asaph meeting. I didn't
get oats money out of them. That year was the frost of my life, anyhow.
I started in around the New York tracks in the spring with a bundle of
three thousand or so that I had hauled down by backing 'em out on the
coast during the winter meeting, and I began to melt before the leaves
commenced to show up on the trees. There was nothing doing for me. I
couldn't get down right. Nearly a dozen good things that pals of mine
with strings had got into the pink of it to send over the plate at long
prices wound up among the also rans and the crimp those things took in
my wad was something ridiculous. I only handled a few horses during the
summer meetings that year on the metropolitan tracks. They were all
crabs and did no good. So I had to plug along by shying a ten or twenty
into the ring when I heard of something that looked nice. I couldn't
even make this clubbing game go through. The books got two out of three
of my slips of the green, and I got to wondering how it would feel to
drive a truck. They certainly had me down that year.

"When the fall meeting at Morris Park wound up I had $200 and a
headache. I was figuring on how I could take this down to the winter
meetings in the South and run it up to something worth while, when the
owner of the bunch of dead ones I spoke of came along and asked me to
take 'em down to St. Asaph and try to get a race or two out of them. I
knew they were lobsters, all of these horses, and I was ugly enough to
tell the owner that when I wanted a job handling cattle I'd go down to
West street and get one, with a sea voyage to Glasgow or London thrown
in. There wasn't a horse in the lot that could beat my old aunt in
Ireland over the plate for money or marbles; but I decided to take them
down to St. Asaph anyhow, just for the sake of keeping on the inside of
the game and finding out if there was anything going on that would
enable me to run that small shoestring of mine into a tannery. So I took
them down to that Virginia clay course across the Potomac and fixed them
up the best I knew how. They wouldn't do. St. Asaph was getting some
good horses straight from the Eastern tracks then and my platers were
never in the hunt--never one, two, six, in fact. Worse than that, the
books began taking my little $2 and $5 bets away from me right from the
getaway, and I could see a winter ahead in New York with all the
trimmings cut out. I met a dozen or so of pretty square chaps in
Washington, business men that liked to see 'em run and that used to ask
me occasionally what I thought. I landed most of them right on several
dead good things without ever getting a dollar on myself from want of
nerve, my pile was so low, and they made good, all right, when these
things went through. But I was bunking up with such a hoodoo that I
sloughed off even this rake-off, and when the thing happened that I am
going to tell you about I only had $70 left out of the cozy cush I had
started in the season with.

"Now, I've been at this game, on both sides of the fence, for more than
twenty years, and, if any man is, I'm dead next to the fact that the
horse game is hard and craggy. I never yet was guilty of looking upon
the running game as something easy. Yet I'm bound to admit that I often
get what you can call, if you want to, a hunch on a horse. Something
that a plug does in his running, even if he doesn't get near the money,
takes my eye, and from thinking about it I get a hunch on him. I don't
get a hunch like this every day, or every week or month, for that
matter, but I've noticed that these hunches of mine have gone through
nine times out of ten during the past twenty years or so. Well, there
was a horse called Jodan that had run in two or three six-furlong
sprints at Morris Park that fall, and I had liked his work. He was out
of the money in both of those races, but I liked the way he went at his
work. That horse Jodan looked to me like he had it in him. These two
Morris Park races had been captured, one, two, three by good ones, and I
could see when I had a chance to look Jodan over in his stall that he
was short of work. The string to which the horse belonged had a poor
trainer, and I knew that a good trainer could get some six furlong races
out of Jodan. I had a hunch on Jodan, and I fixed it in my head that if
ever the horse got into the hands of a good trainer and was brought
around right for the six-furlong distance, he'd get a piece of my money,
no matter what company he was up against.

"Well, along toward the close of the St. Asaph meeting Jodan turned up
at the track with another trainer handling him--a man who had as good a
knack of conditioning horses as ever I met up with, and an old chum of
mine. I rubbed up with him before he had been on the track fifteen
minutes, and asked him what he was going to do with Jodan.

"'I am going to try him out in the first three-quarter event I can
squeeze him into,' he told me, 'and I wouldn't be surprised to see him
get a piece of it. His right fore-leg is a bit bum, but if it holds
together I don't see why the fellows I know shouldn't get a bite off a
real good thing in Jodan. He's got a turn of speed, and I've got him
dead right. The only thing that worries me is that swollen knee, and I'm
doing my best at patching that up.'

"I told him of the hunch I'd had at Morris Park on Jodan, and he told me
to stay with it, and he'd attend to his end of it to help me out.

"'There'll be all kinds of a price on him when I send him to the pump,'
he said, 'and I'll let you know in time just how he is.'

"Well, that hunch just grew and grew on me. The Washington chaps that I
had met and pushed along with the good things that I didn't have the sap
to play myself heard from me on the Jodan question. I told them that I
had him up my sleeve and to stand by. They had never heard of the horse
and they almost side-stepped when I told 'em he was as good as any of
them over a three-quarter route--that he had never been got right. There
were a lot of six-furlongers down at St. Asaph then that could negotiate
the distance in .15 flat, and they couldn't see where a horse that they
had never heard of had a look-in with that kind. I held my ground,
however, and they said that when it was to come off they'd throw a
little bit of a bet at the bird, just because I said so.

"A couple of days later Jodan's name showed up among the entries for a
six-furlong sprint, and I had another chaw with his trainer.

"'He's good,' he told me. 'Stay with your hunch. He ought to do.'

"The race was to be run on a Saturday. I looked up my Washington friends
and told them confidently what Jodan was going to do with a bunch of the
best three-quarter runners in training. Four or five of them couldn't
help but give me the hoot on the proposition, and they said they weren't
going over to the track, anyhow--too busy closing up the week's
business, and so on. They couldn't see where Jodan figured with the lot
he was to meet. I went around to the rest of these Washington fellows on
the Friday evening before the race and told them again about Jodan.
They, too, were all going to be too busy with the Saturday wind-up of
business to take in the races that day, but five of them gave me $10
each to put on Jodan for them. None of them had any confidence in the
thing, though.

"The Jodan race was the first on the card. There were fourteen entries,
and not a horse was scratched. The track was deep in dust, and I knew
then Jodan liked that sort of going. It looked like a cinch. I knew that
the bookies would be dead to Jodan, but I didn't think they'd take the
liberties they did with him. The favorite opened up at 2 to 1, and he
was played down to 6 to 5 in no time. Then there were four or five shots
in it ranging from 3 to 1 to 15 to 1, when the rank outsiders were
written in all the way up to 150 to 1. Jodan, my mutt, stowed away for a
good thing, opened up at 100 to 1 and stuck there. I went out to the
stable where Jodan was quartered to find his trainer, but I couldn't dig
him up. He was mixed up with the bunch in the paddock or in the stand.
So I decided that it wasn't necessary for me to see him, anyhow, before
putting my money on Jodan. I had seen him the night before, when he
whispered to me that Jodan was gorgeous, and that he was going to play
him to win, no matter if the books laid 1000 to 1 against the horse.

"So I traipsed around to the ring to put down my money and that of my
friends on Jodan. As I say, Jodan's price all over the ring was 100 to
1, and no takers. I had the five tens the Washington chaps had given me
and the last fifty spot I had on earth in my mitt, ready to shoot around
and plant it in $10 gobs on Jodan before the price could be rubbed, thus
standing to win $5000 for myself and $5000 for the Washington fellows,
with my share out of their winnings for putting them next. I was the
very next man in line to plant my first ten with one of the books, when
I felt a hard pinch on my right arm, and I wheeled around suddenly to
swat the duck that had given it to me. It was my friend, the trainer of
Jodan. He nodded me over to the little vacant space.

"'You were just going to take some Jodan, weren't you?' he asked me.

"'That's what,' said I. 'He'll turn the trick, won't he?'

"'No,' he replied shortly. 'I've been trying to find you for the last
hour to tell you. The mutt's got another twist during the night somehow
or another, and now it's about twice its right size. Stay off. He can't
do it. He's not limping much, but I can't see how he'll go a quarter
with such a leg. It'll be a miracle if that hard-luck skate finishes at
all.'

"This was a hard fall for me, I'm telling you that. I had been building
on it for one of my cinch hunch things, and to hear that it had gone
rank took the nerve out of me. Of course, in a dismal kind of way, I was
glad my friend the trainer had put me next to the state of things in
time to keep me off the dead one for my whole fifty and the fifty of my
friends in Washington, but that wasn't much salve for the hurt I got
when he told me that Jodan couldn't possibly do it. With Jodan out of it
I felt certain that the 6 to 5 favorite would come in all alone, and so
I put the whole bundle down that way $120 to $100. It made me glum to
think of the difference between that and $10,000 to $100.

"Then I went up to the stand to see the lot file past on their way to
the post. My horse, the favorite, was just a-prancing and looked to me
like a 1 to 10 thing with Jodan out. But my trainer chum had put me on
right. Jodan's knee was as big as your hat, and he had his limp along
with him. One of the stewards noticed this and made a bit of talk about
not allowing Jodan to race, but when he was told that Jodan always went
to the post with a bum knee, even after his warming up, he closed up and
Jodan went around to the pump with his field.

"They got off the first break. The people in the stand were down on the
favorite almost to a man, and the yelp they let out when he shot to the
lead from the first jump was a heap noisy. My poor old Jodan plug was
almost left at the post, but his boy got him going all right, and I was
rather surprised to see him quickly join the rear bunch. By this time,
at the half, the favorite was just buck-jumping five lengths out in
front of the first division. Then the hind ones began to move up, and I
stood by to see Jodan get shuffled out of it. But he didn't shuffle. He
passed right by the rear gang and nearing the three-quarters he was at
the saddle-girths of the front division and going like a cup defender in
half a gale.

"'You'll chuck that in a minute, my boy,' I thought, with my mind on
Jodan. 'Three-legged races look all right on paper, but they don't go
through.'

"I lost the colors when they turned into the stretch, but I saw that the
favorite was still a good two lengths in front. The track was so deep in
dust that I couldn't make out the others until they were well into the
stretch for the lope to the wire. Then when they were all settled down
to their barrels in the flying yellow dust, I saw one of the front
divisionites behind the leader shoot out around on the outside and bend
down to it. Say, I closed my lamps down tight. That horse coming on the
outside like a black devil, with his bit almost crunched into flinders,
was Jodan. I opened up my eyes when they were about sixty yards from the
wire. In the middle of the whirlwind of dust I saw the favorite
faltering, with Jodan a neck away and going like as if his distance was
only a quarter of a mile and he a-covering it there in the stretch. Then
I pulled my glasses away from my head, sat down, shut my eyes again and
shook hands with death for a few seconds while the Indians all around me
were howling 'Jodan!' 'Jodan!'

"'Jodan wins!' they yelled when the horses got under the wire, and I
opened up my eyes just in time to see Jodan with open daylight between
him and the favorite. That was a three-legged miracle, all right. I was
in a daze, but I had a picture in my head of five fellows in Washington
that had treated me right waiting for the race train to get in so that I
could hand them each a thousand. I couldn't stand for that, and I had
too many different kinds of heartbreak warping me out under my vest to
feel like trying to explain the thing to them. So I walked over to
Alexandria and caught the afternoon train for Richmond, after leaving my
bum string in the hands of another trainer. From Richmond I went on down
to New Orleans, where I had some luck--never enough luck, though, to
square the game up with me for that win of Jodan's, which made me feel
old and tired for a long time afterward.

"If I outlive those five Washington fellows, or they take it into their
lids to go to the Klondike together, maybe I'll have another look around
under the shadow of that big dome yonder. But I don't want to meet them.
Explaining's too hard work, and the circumstances of that St. Asaph
happening, which occurred as I've spieled it, were 'agin' me!"




STORY OF AN "ALMOST" COMBINATION.


  _It Paid $2,000 to $2, and Looked Like a Winner Until the Last Jump,
                                But----_

There was a period of prolonged, nerve-racking excitement one afternoon
last week in a demure and retiring Harlem poolroom that doesn't draw any
color line. A colored sport was threatening to tear the place loose from
its foundations and to fire a volley over the ruins--in a purely
figurative sense, that is to say. Literally he didn't commit any breach
of the peace at all. But he had a combination ticket in his clothes for
a couple of hours that practically made all the rest of the people in
the place forget what they were there for. He was as black as that
overworked one-spot of spades. He was known to his envied intimates only
as Mose, and the very large checked suit of plaid that he wore had a
certain cake-walk suggestiveness, as did his huge red necktie, his
patent leathers with blue polka-dotted uppers, and his three large
yellow diamonds, two of them on his fingers and the other screwed in the
middle of his shirt bosom with crimson horizontal bars. He was a "spote"
all right.

He entered the poolroom alone, looked up at the board, and then dug a
bit of paper, obviously a telegram, out of his Oxford cloth Newmarket
overcoat. A man who was rude enough to look over his shoulders saw that
the telegram was a night message and that it bore the New Orleans date.
It contained the names of five horses, with the initials of the sender.

"He's a po'tuh on uh Pullman," vouchsafed the sport to the privileged
character who had looked over his shoulder at the despatch. "An' he's uh
babe, yo' heah me! He knows 'em lak he knows uh blackin' brush. Ah's uh
gwine tuh mek uh combinashun on de hull five. De ticket 'll win in uh
walk."

After sizing up the house betting on the New Orleans races for a few
minutes, he walked up to the counter where the combination tickets
exuded from the lightning calculator. Just at that moment there was
nothing doing at the combination counter. The sport produced his
telegram, cleared his throat, and began.

"Ah's got de hull five babies," he said with a grin to the ticket
writer. "An' ah's uh gwine tuh tek 'em all tuh win. Doan' want none o'
'em fo' place or show. Dey's all got tuh come in all alone."

"Shoot 'em out," said the ticket writer.

The sport named the five horses that he knew were going to win the New
Orleans races. They were, in the order of the races, Mint Sauce, Russell
R., Deyo, Benneville and Donna Rita.

The ticket writer executed his bit of lightning head work, with frequent
glances at the board to get the prices on the runners, and then he
looked up at the sport with a grin.

"Huntin' for a hog killin', ain't you?" he asked. "Goin' to put us out
o' business? It figures a thousand to one. How much do you want on it?"

"Two dolluhs," replied the sport and he passed up the money. The ticket
writer pencilled the names of the horses down on the ticket, placed the
figures "$2,000 to $2" at the bottom of it, and handed the bit of
pasteboard to the sport with the remark:

"You're a good thing. Come again."

"Yo' all kin do yo' hollern' w'en de hosses run," was the sport's
good-natured reply, and then he went to the extreme outer row of seats
in the pool room and sat down to wait for $2,000 to accrue to him on an
investment of $2.

Along toward 3 o'clock the betting came in on the first race at New
Orleans. The horse Mint Sauce that the sport had in his combination
ticket was the odds-on favorite, although he had been at a good price in
the house betting. The queer crowd of players surged up to the counters
to put their money down on things they liked, that figured all right in
the dope books; but the sport kept his seat. His speculation for the day
was over. He was simply waiting for his $2 to grow to $2,002.

Then they were off at New Orleans, as the telegrapher announced with a
bored air, electrifying the crowd into silence. It was a six-furlong
race, and there was nothing to it but Mint Sauce all the way. At the
three-quarters, when the telegrapher announced that Mint Sauce was third
and just galloping, the sport leaned back in his seat with an
it's-all-over expression, snapped his fingers a couple of times for
luck, and said:

"It's uh cake-walk fo' dat baby. Ah'm on right so far."

"Mint Sauce wins by two lengths," announced the operator, and the
announcement was received with silence. Poolroom crowds don't play
favorites as a rule.

"Mah nex' is this heah Russell R.," said the sport, gazing at his ticket
again, "an' Russell R. he's dun got tuh win. Ah feels uh leetle
squeenchy uhbout he all, but Russell R. he'll buck-jump in."

The betting came in on the race a few moments later, and Russell R. was
at a long price. Several horses in the race were at much shorter prices.
The sport didn't look worried a little bit over this.

"Russell R. he's dun got tuh win," he said, and that was all there was
about it.

"Off at New Orleans," announced the weary looking operator again, and
then he began to call off the way the race was being run. It looked bad
for the sport's ticket until the telegrapher had carried the nags along
to the three-quarter post and then Russell R., who hadn't been anywhere,
got his first call, joining the bunch as third at that stage of the
journey.

"Sadie Burnham in the stretch by a length!" announced the telegrapher.
"Lomond second by a length, Russell R. third," and then the sport began
to root for his horse. He swayed back and forth in his wicker rocking
chair, moaning, "Come, yo' Russell hoss! Yo' heah me uh-talkin',
hoss--come, yo' Russell--or yo' doan' git no oats--ketch him, yo' baby,
an' yo' pa'll treat yo' right"----

"Russell R. wins, by a head!" announced the telegrapher.

"Oh, yo' wahm thing, yo' Russell!" suppressedly exclaimed the sport, his
finger-snapping suddenly stopping and an upturned crescent grin
spreading over the whole area of his chocolate countenance.

It seemed that some of the less important sports must have been "riding"
Russell R. too, for their exultant "Uh-huhs!" rang around the room. The
colored sport dearly loves a long shot.

"De nex' on mah piece o' pas'e-boa'd," said the sport, ransacking
through his pockets again for his ticket, "is dain'jus. Ah doan' lak dis
heah hoss Deyo, but Ah ain't uh-playin' whut Ah laks, but whut's dun
sent tuh me. So Deyo she's dun got tuh win, too."

It was after 4 o'clock by this time, and the poolroom was filling up
with young fellows turned loose from the down-town offices. Many of
these late arrivals had straight tips in the form of telegrams on the
third race at New Orleans and they almost overwhelmed the ticket
writers. When the betting came in on that race Deyo was at a long price,
much longer than the house betting had quoted the nag, and the sport
looked a bit anxious over this. His worried look disappeared, however,
when the second line of betting came in, showing that Deyo was being
backed down some on the New Orleans track.

"Dey's sumthin' uh-doin' on that mule," he said, and the telegrapher
began to call off the race. It was something easy for Deyo, who beat the
favorite by three lengths. The sport didn't have to snap his fingers or
sway in his chair at all. Deyo was in front all the way. Three-fifths of
the $2,000 to $2 ticket was won.

By this time the sport was the cynosure of a good many pairs of eyes.
The possibilities of the ticket he had in his pocket were whispered
about, and a number of the real things in the sport line edged over and
asked to have a look at the ticket.

"It's a alimpey-boolera," they said, and they rubbed the back of it for
luck. Then a lot of them went up to the combination desk and got
combination tickets for the remaining two horses that appeared on the
colored sport's ticket. By the time the betting came in on the fourth
race it was known all over the room that the sport had a $2,000 to $2
ticket with three of the horses already over the plate. The sport
enjoyed it all with becoming modesty.

"Dis heah hoss, Benneville, will now step out an' run seben fuhlongs fo'
me," he said, referring to his ticket again. "Ah doan' know mahse'f jes'
how good dis heah Benneville is jes' now, but dis is his day tuh win by
uh block."

Benneville came in an odds-on favorite, and won by three open lengths.
The sport again was relieved of the necessity of rooting.

"Ah'n dun rode dat one mahse'f," he said grinning, and he found himself
in the middle of a crowd of sports of his own color.

"Look uh-heah, nigguh, doan' yo' all remembuh me?" a lot of them
inquired of him as they crowded around him.

"Remembuh nothin'," said he impartially. "Ah doan' mek it mah bizness
tuh remembuh nobody."

"Hey, what does your ticket call for in the next?" was a question that
fifty men threw at him as he sat in state in his wicker rocker.

"De nex' skate on de list," he replied, spelling out the letters on his
ticket, which was being rubbed a good deal for luck by all hands within
rubbing distance, "is de maiuh Donna Rita. Ah wouldn't give $2 fo' Donna
Rita mahse'f, de way she's bin un-runnin', but Donna Rita's dun got tuh
walk in all by huhse'f dis time," whereupon he returned the ticket to
his pocket as if it already represented $2,002.

The sport had got down Donna Rita into his combination at a long price
in the house betting. When the first line of betting came in from New
Orleans, however, Donna Rita was seen to be the favorite for the race,
with a big field to beat.

"Donna Rita's lak gettin' money in uh lettuh," said the sport, and every
man in the room that heard these words of wisdom from the lips of the
man with the magical combination ticket in his pocket, played Donna Rita
to win. So here was the sport, enthroned like any monarch of Dahomey,
with the crowd surging around him. One of the white sports, waving a
roll as big as his fist, elbowed his way through the crowd surrounding
the colored sport and flatly offered him $500 for his ticket, after
looking at it and seeing that Donna Rita, much the best horse in the
next race, had her name inscribed there. It was a temptation, but the
sport was game, and stood pat.

"Dis heah ticket ain't fo' sale," he said. "De two thousan's good enough
fo' this coon."

Another man offered him $800 for his $2 ticket. The offer was declined.
There wasn't a man in the crowd that wasn't rooting for the sport's
ticket to wind up all right, and to make their rooting more effective
they played Donna Rita to win the last race almost to a man. The less
important sports were keeping close to their brother in hue. They wanted
to be in at the finish--perhaps to help the sport to celebrate. At post
time there was hardly a man at the betting counters. They were all
hovering near the sport for luck.

"Off at New Orleans!" shouted the telegrapher, who knew about the
sport's ticket by this time, and there was a note of unusual excitement
in his voice as he called off the race. "Donna Rita in the lead!"

"Oh, yo' babe, Donna!" shouted all the "spotes" in unison, and "stay
right theah, yo' nigguh!" shouted the one particular sport.

"Donna Rita at the quarter by five lengths!" called out the telegrapher,
and the poolroom might have been taken for an Emancipation Day festival.
"Donna Rita at the half by five lengths!"

"Ef yo' lubs yo' man, come uhlong!" moaned the sport in ecstasy.

"Donna Rita at the three-quarters by three lengths, Kisme second, Virgie
O. third," droaned the operator. "Donna Rita in the stretch by a head!"

The sport rocked to and fro and groaned.

"Virgie O. wins by a nose!" announced the telegrapher.

That settled the combination. The sport's followers fell away from him
like autumn leaves from wind-tortured trees.

"They ain't nothin' in this horse-racin' game, is they?" the frequenters
of the poolroom said to one another as they slouched out, and the
grating tones of the cashiers counting bills soon echoed through the
deserted room.




"RED" DONNELLY'S STREAK OF LUCK.


_He "Runs a Shoestring into a Tannery," and Then Gets the Cold Shoulder
                        from the Lady Fortune._

A party of turfmen in Washington for the Benning meeting were talking
the other evening of the remarkable streak of luck which has enabled
Billy Barrick to run a borrowed shoestring of $200 up to an amount which
is now said to approximate $100,000 in the last six weeks.

"Barrick's double-ended luck, both at faro bank and horses," said one of
the bookmakers in the party, "is a whole lot out of the common. Luck is
a full-bred sort of an affair, and it does not often run along hybrid
lines. What I mean to say is that the man who has a huge run of luck at
one game almost invariably falls into the doldrums and goes all to
pieces when he switches to another game. The luckiest men I ever knew on
the turf, for example, were the unluckiest card players, and most of
them stubbornly spent a good many thousands of their pony winnings
before they found this out. Barrick seems to be an exception. He has got
into the current, and he could probably get away with the money at
fan-tan or Cingalese pool while he's in his present shape. I'm a bit
afraid of him just now myself, and when I see his commissioners bearing
down on my book I'm sorely tempted to rub the whole slate until I get a
chance to rubberneck and find out what they're after. If I were dealing
faro bank, so weird has his luck at tiger-bucking been lately, too, that
I believe I'd make it a thirty-cent limit when I saw him coming. But
he's an exception, as I say. It's the man who sticks to the one game
that drives the swaggerest dog-cart and wears the whitest gig-lamps in
the long run.

"I remember a chap out in St. Louis who ran a shoestring of five cents
up to pretty close to six figures in the summer of 1895. He bucked more
games in doing it, too, than Barrick has thus far, but he couldn't go a
route, and they ate him up when the whisky got into his head in such
quantities that he saw treble without having a focus on anything. His
name was Red Donnelly, and he had charge of the bookmakers'
paraphernalia in the betting ring of the St. Louis fair grounds when the
Lady Fortune beamed upon that nickel of his and invited him to bask for
a time in her domain. He was a loose-jointed spraddle-shaped sort of a
young chap of 25 or so who had been hanging around the St. Louis tracks
from his early boyhood. He learned so much about the horses that he
could never win anything on them when he played in the ten-cent books
made by the railbirds. He handicapped them down to the sixteenth of a
pound, and the horse that he put his dime on consequently got beaten, as
a rule, by a tongue. He had been holding down the job of a dog-robber
for the bookmakers for two seasons before he struck his lead on that
nickel. He came out to the track one day, early in June, 1895, with the
solitary nickel reposing in the depths of his trousers' pockets, salted
there to pay his fare back to the city. He got to pulling the five-cent
piece out of his clothes and looking at it longingly by the time the
first race was due. He wanted to get down on a race, but there were no
five-cent books. The bottom sum accepted by the railbird books was a
dime. Red strolled out to the barns and got to pitching nickels with a
pack of idle stable boys. The luck was with him from the jump, and when
he accumulated a dollar in nickels he exhibited symptoms of a man
suffering from chilblains. His reason for getting cold feet was that he
had a good thing in the fourth race, and by the time he had acquired the
dollar the betting had begun on the fourth race.

"Red hurtled himself into the ring with his dollar and saw that the
price offered against his good thing, the old nag Hush, was 60 to 1.
Donnelly needed a bundle of cigarettes and a few drinks pretty badly,
but he was game when it came to sticking to his good things, and he
slapped his twenty nickels down on Hush with a bookmaker he knew. He
took good-naturedly the mocking hoot which the booky gave him for
handing in twenty pieces of that kind of metal, and catapulted himself
out to the rail just as the horses went away from the post. The race was
really something silly for Hush, in the unwieldy field of nineteen
horses. Hush led all the way, and pranced under the wire first in a big
gallop, pulled double. The boy had Hush up in his lap all the way.

"Red had some difficulty in collecting his $61. The bookmaker knew him
well, knew of his taste for rum, and knew also that few of Red's rare
dollars ever found their way to the humble shack of the man's infirm old
Irish mother.

"'I believe I'll just pinch this out on you, Red,' said the booky to
him, 'and pass it along to the old lady when I go in to-night. It won't
do you any good.'

"'Come to taw,' replied Red. 'I want to put thirty or forty cents down
on the next race. I got another good thing in it.'

"The bookmaker reluctantly passed Donnelly the $61. Red carefully folded
the dollar bill and tucked it into his waistcoat pocket. Then he
invested the $60, in $10 clips, with six books, on Dorah Wood, in the
next race, at 15 to 1. It was a canter for Dorah Wood, and Red knocked
the bookmakers silly--they all knew him well from his working around the
place--by socking it to six of them for $150 each. A committee of safety
was immediately formed around Donnelly, but he couldn't be held down. He
tossed a quart of wine under his waist-line, purchased a package of
cigarettes made in Turkey for forty cents, and looked over his dope-book
carefully. Then he strolled into the ring and bet $900 on Minnie Cee in
the last race. Minnie Cee was at 3 to 1, and it was something ridiculous
for her. She won on the bit, and Red was $3,660 to the good on that
nickel that he had salted away in his homespuns for the return trip to
town.

"When Red turned up to collect, Barney Schreiber--he's a big-hearted
Barney--had him, as it were, by the scruff of the neck. Barney announced
to all of us that he was going to collect for Donnelly, and what Barney
said went with us, for we all knew Red's propensities. Donnelly put up a
weak growl, but he knew 'way down deep in him that Schreiber could and
would take care of the cash better than he could or would. Barney
pinched $3,500 of the wad, inserted it in a separate compartment of his
wallet, and handed Red $150.

"'I'll just let you have a little change, Red, said he, 'and if you
think you can run that up into a tan-yard, go ahead. But I'm a-going to
handle this for you the right way. You're not tied enough in your ways
to have such a vast sum on your person all at one and the same time.'

"Donnelly didn't demur much. The $150 was a huge sum itself for him, and
he, of course, knew that Schreiber would do the right thing with the
main bunch. As a matter of fact, Barney deposited the $3500 the next day
to the credit of Donnelly's old mother, and Schreiber and the old woman
were the only people who knew anything about that end of it for a long
time afterward.

"We all gibed and roasted Red about the delirium-tremens finish we
foresaw for him, and when he didn't turn up at the track at all on the
following day, necessitating the turning of his dog-robbing work over to
another man, there was a lot of talk about the tremendous barrel-house
toot Red must have gone on down the levee way. That's where we were
camping out. When we picked up the papers on turning out the following
morning we found a scare-head story in one of them relating in great
detail and elaborate diction how one Mr. John S. Donnelly, a gentleman
well known on the Western turf, had swatted Ed McGuckin's faro bank,
over in East St. Louis, to the tune of $16,000, playing steadily without
meals from 7 o'clock on the evening of Monday until 11 o'clock on
Wednesday night, when Ed turned the box on him and announced that it was
all off for the present. We all shouted 'fake!' when we saw that, but a
couple of us hopped into a cab and crossed over to McGuckin's place to
see if there was anything in the yarn. Well, there was everything in it.
We found Ed holding his fevered brow and mumbling deep, dark things
about damned vagabonds slipping into his layout and running shoe tongues
up into leather factories. We expressed our sympathies with Ed, for
which we came perilously near being kicked, and then we went back to St.
Louis to hunt up Red. We went over the barrel-house route with a
fine-tooth comb, but no Donnelly. Then we decided to drive out to his
mother's little old shack. Our route from the levee out there took us
through the down-town district, and we both saw Red on the street at
once. We drew up alongside the curb, and called him. He was cold sober,
and he had $16,210 in bills in his inside waistcoat pocket. We asked him
where he was going, and he nodded in the direction of the swellest
tailoring establishment in St. Louis. We went along with him, and it was
one lovely sight to observe the fabrics Red picked out wherewith to
ornament his long, lithe person. He ordered a dozen suits, and then we
went with him to the haberdasher's. He was all for green and yellow
neckties, pink-striped shirts, and that sort, and we let him have his
way. Then he became sleepy. We threw it into him pretty hard about that
big bundle of money he had on him, and he finally consented to come
along to a bank with us and deposit $14,000 of it in his name. We tried
to hold out for having it put in his mother's name, but he wouldn't
stand for that. After leaving the bank Red's eagle eye caught sight of
the shiny things in a jeweler's window, and he decided then and there
that he couldn't go to sleep without having the third finger of his left
hand made conspicuous by a three-karat blue-white stone, for which he
coughed $500. That left him with about $1500 in his clothes, and we
dragged him then into the cab and drove out to his mother's little old
shanty. The old lady had her little talk with Barney Schreiber about the
$3500 by that time, and the to-do she made over her 'bye Johnnie' was
worth the ride to see. When we told her about the other bunch that Red
had copped and that we had plunked it into the bank for him, the
quantities of corned beef and cabbage which she threw into the pot for
the dinner which she wanted us to remain to share with her and her
phenomenal son were amazing.

"Well, Donnelly astonished us all for a couple of weeks by his
extraordinary conduct. He would ride out to the track in a hack, with a
gilt-stamped cigarette in his face, attend to his job as usual around
the betting-ring--that is, he'd supervise, for he quickly accumulated a
staff of worshiping touts and hangers-on--and then he'd go up into the
grand-stand to exhibit his cake-walk clothes and look at the races. He
didn't put a bet down on a horse for two weeks. He remained pretty sober
all the time, too. We joshed him about the frigid pedals he had suddenly
got, but he only passed along with the remark: 'I'm letting 'em run for
O'Flaherty. Nothin' doin'.'

"We waited for the crash, but it didn't seem to come on schedule time.
One afternoon he called me aside and showed me his bank-book. It showed
an additional deposit of $5000, making the total $19,000.

"'When did you pick up that new roll?' I asked him.

"'Went up against the wheel at Terhune's last night, and yanked it out
in three hours,' he said.

"'When did you learn to play roulette?' I asked him.

"'Last night,' he replied.

"Along toward the end of June Donnelly turned up at the track one
afternoon with a light in his eye. He went out into the paddock and
spent three-quarters of an hour looking at a horse and by that time the
third race was due. Red came into the ring and spread $1000 around on
Madeira at 10 to 1. It was a maiden two-year-old race, but Madeira
romped in two lengths to the good. That night Red, still moderately
sober and level-headed, had $29,000 to his credit in the bank. We began
to figure with a new brand of dope on Donnelly's game and to consider
the possibility of his becoming a real fixture. A lot of owners with bum
skates tried to work them off on Donnelly at big prices, but he only
passed them the cold-storage smirk. This gave us an additional line of
thinks with regard to what we thought was his increasing shrewdness.
Besides, you see, Red began to be right good to us. He told us all very
soberly one afternoon that he had a good thing, but that he didn't want
to hurt his own ring, so he'd send his money to the out-of-town
poolrooms. The good thing was David, who won the last race in a walk at
15 to 1, and Red cleaned up $15,000 on that.

"Right at this point, Schreiber and some other people got at Donnelly
and tried to induce him to either invest a part of his money--he had
almost $50,000 then--in a string of useful horses, to be put into the
hands of a competent trainer--or to have the whole bundle properly
invested in some sort of annuity, tie-up scheme whereby, when Red's
streak of luck fizzled out, he wouldn't have to go back to buying
cigarettes by the cent's worth. The man was too bull-headed, though, to
listen to anything like this. He did, however, buy his old mother a fine
house and install her in it, and the old lady had stiff black silk
dresses and poppy-ornamented bonnets galore in which to go to mass.

"Meanwhile Red was going up against all kinds of games around town every
night, and it honestly appeared as if he couldn't lose. Craps, stud
poker, draw, wheel, red and black, mustang, bank--all seemed to be right
in Donnelly's mitt. A lot of us used to turn up where he was bucking
things every night, and, following his play, we always got the good end
of it. He didn't know much about any of the games, and the idiotic
things we had often to do in order to consistently follow his play made
us gag, but nine times out of ten them came out right. One man in our
party, a bookmaker, who determined to copper all of Red's play at the
different games, on the theory that Donnelly's luck had to turn some
time or another, almost went broke before he came into the fold and quit
coppering.

"All of this time Donnelly had simply been nibbling at the red stuff. By
the time his great luck was a month old, however, the booze had nailed
him, and he got to throwing in the hooters early in the morning. A man
can't drink in the morning and hang on either to luck or judgment. Red
came into the ring palpably drunk one afternoon and spread around
$20,000 on Strathmeath at even money. None of us wanted to take the
money, for if ever there was a rank in-and-outer, that horse was
Strathmeath. But Red was insistent and a bit ugly, and we accommodated
him. Strathmeath ran third, beaten out by two dogs. That night Donnelly
dropped $20,000 more at faro. Then he didn't go to bed for five nights,
and at the end of that time he had about $6000 left. I never saw luck
drop away from a man like it did from Red Donnelly. For instance, he was
whacking at a bank one night, stupefied with hooters of half rye and
half absinthe, and he shut one eye so he wouldn't see double and fixed
it on the nine spot. He played the nine open for $100 a clip, and lost
it twelve straight times. The frowns of the Lady Fortune got his nerve,
and he began to play favorites at the track. The favorites went down to
inglorious defeat, one after another, for days.

"Some of the right kind of people, including Schreiber, got hold of Red
when he had only the $6000 left, landed him in a fix-up ward, and
sobered him up. When he came out Donnelly was set up with an interest in
an express business. I don't believe he ever saw the inside of the
express office more than half dozen times, except to draw what was
coming to him. He was at the track all the time the races lasted, and
when the season closed he put in his time down on the levee. He never
had a day's luck after his big streak up to the last hour of his death,
somewhat less than a year after they came his way with a whoop and a
rush.

"When the goddess smiles upon you, you want to stroke her hair, chuck
her under the chin and be good to her, for she rarely acts amiable twice
to a man who treats her favors wantonly."




AND "RED BEAK JIM" TOOK THE TIP.


_Plunge Made by a Hackman on the Suburban Handicap Won by Kinley Mack._

"We'll get Red Beak Jim to hike us down in his caloosh," said the main
guy of the four. The four were job holders in one of the New York city
departments, and they were talking about ways and means of reaching the
Sheepshead track for the Suburban.

"Good thing," said the three others. "Go on and ask Jimmy for a figure,
down and back, for the bunch. Hey, and don't let him dicker you out o'
your gilt teeth. Jimmy's a robber."

So the main guy of the four sprinted after Red Beak Jim. He found him
with the major portion of his countenance immersed in the collarette of
an open-faced malt magnum.

"Hey, Jim," said the main guy, "hitch 'em up and bring 'em around about
noon. Down to the Bay and back. There's four of us. What d'ye say to the
note for $10 for the job?"

Red Beak Jim removed the mammoth piece of glassware from his face long
enough to remark:

"Nothin' doin'."

"Ain't, hey?" said the main guy. "The old caloosh's fallen apart at
last, hey?"

Red Beak Jim sat the beer-glass down and wiped off his mouth with the
back of his coat-sleeve.

"It'll be jugglin' around when you're yelling for ice at any old price a
hunnered," said he. "Nope, I'm 'ngaged f'r th' Bay."

"Say, you've got your fingers crossed or your suspenders," said the main
guy. "Give you fifteen for the job."

"Goin' t' take three down," said Red Beak Jim. "Ten a head. Sorry I
didn't ask 'em fifteen. Trucks is chargin' ten a head."

"Ten a head," said the main guy, sarcastically. "What in, zinc money?
Hey, pull around, Jim, or you'll lose a wheel. Ten a head? Get away with
that hasheesh. Give us a figure."

"You've got it," replied Red Beak Jim. "Ten per, round trip. I'm a good
thing at that. But I'm 'ngaged."

"So's me little sister," said the main guy. "All right, work your edge.
What's ten a head to us, at that? Hey, we got the baby to-day, Jim, and
you want to put some braces under that old caloosh. We'll have two ton
o' money coming back. Bring 'er around, then, at noon. Say, you ought to
get a pair o' knucks and a sandbag. You're too good on the clutch to
push a caloosh around. Have 'er there prompt at noon, now, Jim."

"Sure," said Red Beak Jim, and he was there at noon, all right, with the
hack all varnished up and dusted off, and the pair looking fit to reel
off a mile in five minutes, on the bit. The four were inside, stirring
their pieces of ice around with the spoons, when Red Beak Jim pulled up.
He jumped off the seat and stuck his head in the door.

"At the pump, gents," said he.

They yanked him in to have one before the start, and they all got him
over into the dark corner. Then the main guy addressed him.

"Jim," said the main guy, "we're handing this to you because you're all
right--from the heels down. On the level, though, Jim, we pass this
along to you because it's right. It's prepared. It's a nightingale in
the woods, and it'll be singing when all the rest of 'em are still
trying to find out where the wire is. Horse of the century? Nix. Not for
these little Willies. The black, let 'er sleep wonder? Not. We stay out
there. The Whitney thing with the Frenchy name? Hoot, mon. Pass this
squad by. Nope. We got it right, Jimmy. And we're handing you the forty
bucks now so's you can plant it right. Here's the forty--and say, you
want to remember that you're paid, see? Well, you get over the fence
somehow--let a kid take care o' your two goats and the caloosh--and you
put the whole forty on Kinley Mack. See? Got that chalked? You put the
forty on Kinley Mack, and part o' the two ton o' gilt we'll have on the
come-back 'll belong to you. Kinley Mack's going to stand 'em all on
their heads and twist 'em round. Don't say we didn't put you next.
Uneeda win. Well, you win. Nothing to it. Kinley Mack. Ain't that right,
you ducks?"

"That's right, all right," said the other three, all together.

Red Beak Jim emptied the flagon thoughtfully.

"I got mine at that game," said he finally. "They made a bum o' me
before you people was through playin' jacks. They can run f'r Hogan.
These"--salting away the two twenties the main guy had handed him--"will
do f'r me. I don't want t' git rich fast, nohow. I'd booze meself
foolish. Much 'bliged, gents, but I can't see no Kinley Macks or Billy
Bryans, f'r that matter, wit' a spy-glass."

"All right," said the main guy, disgustedly. "But when the ring's around
Kinley Mack, and they're paying off the wise people on him, you want to
muffle the bleats you'll have coming, see? Don't say we never dished you
up a hot one. You're a sport, Jimmy, and so's a tadpole. You'll never
butt in among the first six. All right. Come on, you people."

They clinked the pieces of ice against the sides of their glasses once
more, and then they climbed into the hack and were away in a row, to a
good start.

At each of the seven places at which they stopped for ice, with
trimmings, on the way down to the Bay, they announced to friends that
they met that it was only going to be a one horse race.

"Run on a fast track, hey?" said the main guy to everybody he knew at
the stops. "Say, that's his graft. That's his main plant. A race-horse
can run on any old kind of a track. Say, you get tied up with this horse
of the century business and you smoke stogies for a few months.
Ethelbert, the horse of the century, hey? Say, d'je ever happen to hear
of Salvator and Tenny and Hanover and Lamplighter and Henry of Navarre
and Sir Walter and Raceland and Hamburg and a few old two-dollar mutts
like that? Did, hey? Well, say, do they butt in? Say, Hamburg could've
run backward as fast as this horse of the century that you people have
all got the bug about. Kinley Mack! Kinley Mack! Hey, fellers?"

"Thash ri'," said the other three, and then they climbed into the hack
again.

When they got down to the track entrance and alighted the main guy of
the four, still mindful of his duty toward struggling fellow men, made a
final appeal to Red Beak Jim.

"Jim," said he, "how about taking our steer, hey? This is the good thing
o' the year. It's going to be a long summer. Going to put that forty on
Kinley Mack?"

"I'm goin' t' take a nap after I have a smoke," replied Red Beak Jim,
filling his pipe.

The four walked away with an air of disgust, while Red Beak Jim grinned
after them.

Each of the four had a one-hundred-dollar note wherewith to back Kinley
Mack off the boards. The temptations of the first three races, however,
collared them, and when the slate went up for the Suburban they each had
a fifty-dollar note wherewith to play Kinley Mack, the good thing. When
the horses were at the post for the third race, the main guy, who
happened to be standing close to the fence that separates the
grand-stand crowd from the people in the cheap field, saw Red Beak Jim,
with his hands in his pockets and his pipe in his mouth, leaning against
the rail. He called the hackman, and Red Beak Jim approached the fence
with a grin.

"Thought you'd get on, anyhow, hey?" said the main guy.

"Naw, I jes' crep in t' see 'em run an' hear th' hard losers tell how it
was they lost," said Red Beak Jim. "Nothin' doin' wit' me."

"Ain't going to put those forty on Kinley Mack, hey?" asked the main
guy.

"Not if I'm awake," said Red Beak Jim, and the main guy walked away from
the fence with an expression of commiseration on his face.

The horses were still at the post for the third race when the main guy
was approached by a horseman he knew. The horseman was chewing a straw.
He looked very wise.

"Cashed yet on Imp?" the horseman asked the main guy.

"Hey?" asked the latter, bending his ear.

"Only a canter for that one," said the horseman, in a low tone,
temporarily removing the straw from his face. "Just a little exercise
gallop for the black filly."

"Say, is that right?" inquired the main guy. "Is she so good as all that
to-day?"

"Surest thing you know," said the horseman. "She'll give 'em all a
fifty-pound beating or I don't know a hoof from a currycomb. I'm only
spinning this along to the people I've got some use for. That's the
reason I dip it up for you."

"But say," whispered the main guy of the four, "I got it straight as a
ramrod on Kinley Mack."

The horseman smiled benignly.

"On this track?" said he. "That one wouldn't beat a fat man on this
track. He wants slop and slush. I'm only telling you, that's all. You
splurge on Imp, and it'll be all yours."

"I always was stuck on that darned old mare, anyhow," mused the main guy
of the four, as he walked off in search of the other three. "She sure
can rip the air when she's ripe. Got a thunder of a notion to switch to
her at that. That fellow ought to know. He's been handling 'em long
enough. Kinley Mack only a mudder, hey? Had kind of a hunch that way
myself, but I didn't want to own up. Last week, before I got this Kinley
Mack thing, I was sure going to play Imp, and I'd feel like a nickel's
worth of lard if she'd go out and spread-eagle 'em now that I've got
this Kinley Mack thing."

He stood still for a moment with his hands in his pockets, oblivious of
the jostling crowd, and then he slapped his thigh.

"I've got the hunch--it's Imp!" he muttered. "Lemme find the fellers and
put 'em next."

He found the other three. They were putty when the main guy told them
what the horseman had said. They'd always liked Imp, anyhow.

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
passed 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 glasses 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 friendship 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 passed from the reflective to the
confidential mood. Perhaps the rings which he made on the cherry table
with the bottom of his glass 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 Washington, 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 snowball when I got my string out of that
State and over at the Alexander Island track, near Washington. 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 carcass 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 outclassed 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.

"'Hello, 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:

"'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 nobody 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 Washington 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 class.' 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 passed 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 institution, 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
snatched 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 glasses 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 assistance? 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 reassurance. 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 glasses 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 ingratitude.

"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.


_And the Evaporation of His Resolution to Have Nothing to Do With Them._

"Touts," said Busyday, oracularly, to his companion on a train bound for
the Bay on Suburban day, "are the derned nuisances of the racing game.
You want to watch out for them. If by chance you should get separated
from me in the crowd, don't you let any of the sharp-eyed, soft-voiced
ducks talk you into playing this or that one. Just you stick to those
selections I wrote out for you on that piece of paper. They're the
logical winners. A friend of mine, whose brother is a bookmaker,
handicapped 'em for me, and I'm going to play every one of 'em myself.
That's the only way to win; stick to your selections, and don't let
yourself be touted. The man who listens to touts smokes a pipe.
Understand?"

"Uh, huh," replied Busyday's friend, who was from Busyday's native town
out West. He had never seen a horse race in his life, whereas Busyday
was an old-timer and learned at the game, having seen three Handicaps
and two Suburbans ran.

"They make kind of a lukewarm effort to keep the touts off the tracks,"
went on Busyday, disparagingly; "but the touts are too smooth for 'em,
and they're always around, looking for good things like you, old man.
All you've got to do is just to flout 'em from the jump, as soon as they
edge up to you, and they'll shoo-fly instantly, rather than take chances
on being spotted by the Pinkerton people. Tell 'em to go to the devil,
that's all."

"Uh, huh," answered Busyday's friend and guest, once more.

It came to pass that Busyday and his visiting townsman were separated
before they had got off the train. The car was jammed, and in the
confusion of getting off they made their exits by different doors.
Busyday frantically yelled out his friend's name as soon as he found
himself alone on the platform, but, of course, he got no reply. His
friend was engulfed in the crowd.

"I s'pose I ought to have held hold of his hand, like a fellow does when
he takes his sister's kids out for a walk," he reflected. "This is
blasted mean luck from the go-off. The touts'll get hold of him now,
sure as shootin', and they'll strip him. Good thing he's got his ticket
back to the little old slab of a town where we used to play shinny
together."

Busyday roamed around the grand-stand and the betting ring for ten
minutes before the slates went up for the first race, trying to catch
sight of his friend, but it was no use. His townsman wasn't visible
anywhere. Then a sudden swirling and eddying in the betting ring told
him that the prices were up for the first race.

"I'll have to pass the old boy up until I get this bet down," said
Busyday to himself, pulling out of his pocket the slip of paper that the
handicapper had given him the evening before. "Let's see, what one of
'em have I got to win this? Oh, yes; Peaceful--good name, but it doesn't
sound as if a horse with a name like that could run much. I'd rather
have a horse called Lightning Express, or Cyclone, or Helen Blazes, or
something like that, run for my money. S'pose, though, this handicapping
chap knows what he is doing, and so I'll just put my first ten on
Peaceful to win. Hey? How's that?"

There was a soft, persuasive buzz right in Busyday's ear.

"D'ye notice all the suckers breakin' their necks t' land on that
Peaceful dead one?" were the words that formed the buzz.

Busyday jerked his head around suddenly, and he found within four inches
of his ear the countenance of a young-old man with red hair, a freckled
skin, and a pale-blue, shifty eye.

"Dead one?" echoed Busyday, the red-haired, young-old man smiling
amiably in his face.

"Libster," said he of the pale-blue, shifty eye, looking entirely
disinterested. "Out-and-out libster. Crab. Run about a dozen sprints,
and still a merry maiden. And look at the chancts th' mutt's had to win!
Leads th' percession into th' stretch every whirl, and then chucks it. A
proper dog, Cap. That's on the dead. Worst quitter on th' grounds."

"Um," said Busyday, stroking his chin and wondering why his handicapper
had picked Peaceful.

"I got th' baby," buzzed the freckle-faced, young-old man, after a
silence.

"Hey?" asked Busyday.

"For a pipe," said the shifty-eyed one. "Say, I don't git out o' me
Waldorf bunk at 3 o'clock every mornin' for me health."

"Is that so?" inquired Busyday, just for the sake of saying something.

"Not on yer dinner pail," said the aged youth with the shifty eye. "I
light out fer th' tracks t' watch 'em at their early mornin' works. I'm
a railbird, all right, but I know where th' dough is. I seen this baby
that I'm tellin' you about do the five-eighths in a minute flat th'
other mornin', an' if he ain't a moral fer this, here's my lid an' you
can eat it," whereupon the shifty-eyed one removed his 50-cent straw hat
and offered it to Busyday.

"What's the name of this wonder?" inquired Busyday, trying to work up a
superior smile.

The aged youth bent over, placed his mouth within a quarter of an inch
of Busyday's ear, and whispered:

"Stuart. He'll walk."

"Oh, well, then, I'll waste a ten-spot on Stuart," said Busyday, trying
to say it languidly, as if he didn't take much stock in himself or
anybody else. Then he plunged into the vortex around one of the
bookmakers' elevated chairs, got his feet trod upon, his hat jammed down
over his eyes, and his ribs treated to an all-hands elbow massage, and
finally succeeded in passing up his ten-dollar bill on Stuart to win.

"Stuart, thirty-five to ten," droned the bookmaker to the sheet-writer,
and then Busyday found himself beaten to the outskirts of the crowd.

"You on?" he heard in his ear, and, turning, he saw the freckle-faced
one smiling up at him.

"Yep--dropped ten on it," replied Busyday. "Kind o' liked Stuart myself
when I saw him entered."

Then Busyday steered for the lawn to see the finish of the race. He was
trying to get some sense out of the list of owners' colors on his
program, so as to be able to distinguish his horse as they raced under
the wire, when a calm man next to him, with a pair of field-glasses to
his eyes, mumbled:

"They're off!"

There was a big shout all around.

"Lady Uncas out in front," said the calm man coolly. "She'll curl up.
She seems to be staying, though, at that. Nope, she's collared. Stuart's
nailed her. He walks," and the calm man put down his glasses as the
horses galloped past the sixteenth pole.

Stuart came in all alone, and Peaceful was back in the ruck.

"I had my suspicions about that Stuart horse right along," said Busyday
to himself. He had never seen the horse's name until the evening before.
"Don't know why, but I kind o' liked him. Probably because the Stuart
were a pretty swift bunch," and he chuckled to himself over his humor as
he made his way to the bookmaker's line to cash.

"Somethin' easy--like findin' it, hey?" he heard buzzed into his ear as
soon as he put his foot into the betting ring, and there was the
old-faced young man, grinning complaisantly up at him.

Busyday handed to the shifty-eyed one, who stuck to him right up to the
paying-off line, buzzing learnedly all the time about the race just ran,
a $10 bill out of his $35 winning.

"Th' next," said the red-haired wiseacre of the rail when Busyday had
fought himself away from the cashing crowd, "is what you might call a
one-hoss race. A one-hoss race, right."

"Lambent, of course?" said Busyday, looking at his piece of paper with
the selections on it. Lambent was his handicapper's selection.

The freckle-faced screwed the whole left side of his face up into one
prodigious wink.

"Not this cage," said he. "Try the next. Lambent?" and he put one large,
white, freckled hand over his face, as if to hide his confusion, and
grinned through his fingers.

"Well, Lambent figures to win, doesn't she?" asked Busyday weakly.

"Who, Lambent?" and the shifty-eyed smiled some more. "I'm goin' t'
match her in a sweepstakes against me old aunt, and back me aunt off th'
boards fer a hog-killin'. There's on'y one in this. Skinch. You can tap
on it."

"Which one?" asked Busyday in a wabbly tone.

Again the aged youth bent over until his mouth was within a quarter of
an inch of Busyday's ear.

"Swiftmas," he replied. "Been saved up for a good thing, right. If he
don't buck-jump in, here's me lid," and once more he extended his
half-dollar straw hat for Busyday's mastication.

"Well," said Busyday to himself between his teeth as he made his way
through the jostling crowd to one of the bookmakers' stands, "I guess
I'm a weak and erring brother, all right, but danged if I don't play
that redhead once more, anyhow," and he got $40 for his $20 on Swiftmas
to win. Swiftmas won by a head.

"They were too foxy t' win too far off," Busyday was informed by means
of a buzz in his ear, by this time well known, as he was elbowing his
way again to the cashing line. "Boy drew it fine so's not t' spoil th'
price next time out."

The freckle-faced old youth got $15 out of Busyday's $40 winning, and
then he looked Busyday over carefully and inquired:

"How about me?"

"You'll do," replied Busyday, candidly. "Name the next."

"His Nibs, the Prince of Melbourne," whispered the freckle-faced, and
Busyday glanced at his handicapper's selections. It was the Prince of
Melbourne there, too.

"He can't lose," said the shifty-eyed. "Just a pleasant airing fer him.
Nothin' to it. W'en you put yer coin down, you might as well stay right
here so's t' be foist in line. Put a bunch on."

"I've got some of their money," mused Busyday, "and I won't pass it all
back to 'em in a lump."

He got $75 to $30 on Prince of Melbourne to win, bought three cigars for
a dollar and a pint of wine, and then suddenly wondered where his
townsman was.

"No use trying to look him up, though," he reflected, "in this jam of
Indians. Poor old chap, I s'pose he's smashed flatter'n a pancake by
this time, without the price of a bottle of pop," and he reproached
himself a good deal for not having hung on to his guest when they left
the train. He was aroused from his reflections by the yowl, "They're
off!" and by the time he got out to the lawn the horses were coming down
the stretch.

"His Princelets, with his mouth wide open," he heard the crowd yell, and
then his chest expanded, and he muttered to himself: "I always did have
a soft spot for that derned old plug!" For the moment he forgot that the
Prince of Melbourne happened to be a two-year-old.

"Oh, w'en I pick up a good one as I go along I like t' put me fren's
on," buzzed the freckle-faced in his ear, as he made for the paying-off
line. Notwithstanding the fact that the Prince of Melbourne's name
appeared on his handicapper's list of selections, Busyday very
cheerfully gave up one-third, or $25 of his winnings, on the
two-year-old to the red-haired youth. The latter soaked the bills away
in his white-and-brown-striped trousers, and then he remarked, in an
offhand sort of way:

"Well, this is where you pass me up, ain'd it, so?"

"Well," said Busyday, "I came down to play Banastar, and I think I'll
have to stay with that hunch, if you're agreeable."

"Cert'nly," said the shifty-eyed, with an expression more of sorrow than
of anger on his lined face. "Go ahead. Help yourself. Have all th' fun
that's comin' t' you."

"Why, what's the matter?" inquired Busyday. "Ain't Banastar the play?"

"And he looks like a duck with a purty good top-knot on him, at that,"
said the freckle-faced, dreamily, paying no attention to Busyday's
question, and apparently addressing empty air.

"What's the matter with Banastar?" repeated Busyday.

"I'm not queerin' yer fun, Cap," went on the shifty-eyed. "You come down
wit' th' Banastar bug in yer nut, like all the rest, and I'm not
a-switchin' you."

"Look a-here," said Busyday, "what the dickens are you giving us,
anyhow? Don't you think Banastar'll win the Suburban?"

"Cap," said the aged youth, spitting dryly and for the first time
looking Busyday squarely in the eye, "there's a mare in this bunch
that'll run things around all the Banastars from here to Hoboken an'
back. She kin fall down, an' win. She kin take naps between poles an'
walk. She's a piperino, if ever one was pushed up fer geezers to nibble
at. But I'm not a-switchin' you, un'stand?"

"Mare, hey?" said Busyday, looking over his program. "You mean that
Imp?"

"Ain't it?" said the freckle-faced. "Well, I guess yah. She win th' last
time out with' 126 up, eatin' peanuts down th' stretch, from a bunch
purty near as good as this. Banastar? Cap, I ain't no hog, an' you've
passed along what coin was a-comin' to me. I'll lay you 2 t' 1 Banastar
won't git one, two, t'ree."

"Dog-goned if I know what to do," mused Busyday. "Here I've been
shouting Banastar ever since the Handicap, and I promised my wife
faithfully that I'd play Banastar. Say," addressing the freckle-faced,
who stood by sorrowfully regarding him, "is this Imp fast enough, that's
what I want to know? Won't Banastar beat her on speed?"

The aged youth held up one thumb vertically and indicated with the
forefinger of his other hand.

"De Empire State Express," said he.

Then he held up his other thumb.

"Steam roller," said he. "Take yer pick."

Busyday made a sudden dive for a bookmaker's line.

"Which I may remark, in strict confidence," he said to himself as he
tugged at his wad and counted out five twenty-dollar bills, "that there
may be softer marks between here and High Bridge than myself; but,
confound that freckle-faced tout's red head, I'm just a-going to slide
along with him and play Imp at that, Banastar or no Banastar!" and ten
seconds later the bookmaker was taking Busyday's five twenties and
droning out, "Six hundred to $100 on Imp to win."

Busyday was lighting the last of his three-for-fifty cigars over in a
corner of the betting ring when the well-known buzz reached his ears
again.

"On?" inquired the buzz. "Good and hard?"

"Yep," said Busyday. "Hundred."

Imp's win is turf history. As Busyday handed the tout two crisp $100
bills the freckle-faced remarked:

"An' you ain't th' on'y collect I make on this, Cap. I got a hayseed on
th' mare fer $300, an' I had him on all th' rest o' them good things, at
that."

"Well, so long, Red," said Busyday. "I'm getting back to town to dinner.
Next time I come down I'll give you my trade if I see you around."

Then Busyday went up into the stand to take a final look around for his
townsman. He didn't see him, and he started for the gate. Just as he got
outside the gate he saw his fellow townsman and guest stepping into a
hack. His fellow townsman and guest looked pretty jaunty, but Busyday
didn't notice it.

"Hey, there, old man," he called after his friend, and the latter looked
around.

"Oh, here you are," said Busyday's friend, with an expensive cigar stuck
at an angle of forty-five degrees in one corner of his mouth. "Trimmed?"

"Nope," said Busyday. "I landed on a few little good things that
occurred to me after I got to looking at the program, and I win 'bout a
thousand. Poor old jay, I suppose they put you out o' business, eh?"

"Not by a long sight!" said his friend. "I ran into a freckle-faced,
red-headed duck as soon as I got in the grounds. I lost that piece o'
paper you gave me with the whadyoucallem--selections--on it, and so I
played what this red-headed chap told me to. Copped out 'bout $2800,
altogether. Had $300 on Imp to win the big race."

Then Busyday knew to whom the freckle-faced had referred when he spoke
of a hayseed.




A "COPPER-LINED CINCH" THAT DID GO THROUGH.


_Narrative of the Red-Haired, Freckle-Faced Tout Who Had a Good Thing up
                              His Sleeve._

When the first line of betting on the fifth race at Gravesend was
chalked up shortly after 4 o'clock in the Harlem street poolroom on
Wednesday afternoon last, the red-haired, freckle-faced tout gave one
swift glance at the figures, clutched his armful of "dope" books and
sped over to a corner of the room where two flashy, well-fed looking
chaps sat tilted back in chairs, smoking and unconcernedly waiting for
the running of a race at Latonia in which they had a good thing.

"Here's the soft spot o' your life," said the red-haired, freckle-faced
tout, pulling a chair up alongside the two unconcerned-looking chaps.
"This'll be like pullin' th' milk teeth out o' a fox terrier's face.
This is a real dill pickle. Are you two comin' out into th' garden,
Maud, or are you goin' t' let this one get away from you."

"Back t' your dray," said one of the unconcerned-looking chaps. "Another
stiff, hey? T' your dray!"

The red-haired, freckle-faced tout pulled his chair closer to them.

"But this is th' hand-made, copper-coiled mash," said he, earnestly.
"It's on'y onct in a while that you get them people that lays th'
figures out o' line like they are on this one. This is th' mellow goods.
Just send a few aces along on it, that's all. It's 100 to 1."

"Now you stawp, Red!" said the other unconcerned-looking man. "You
stawp, you rude thing!"

"He'll come home on th' bit," said "Red." "Lemme show you where he's
been landin', an' you can see if he's any 100 t' 1 toss. Lemme pass you
th' line, an' if you don't take none o' it, then I'm on a cattle boat by
way o' Glasgow," and the red-haired, freckle-faced tout opened up one of
his dope books and started to show the pair of flashy looking chaps
where Rolling Boer had finished in his previous races.

"Go take a sail with yourself, Red," put in one of the easy-looking
chaps. "Nothin' doin'. Rolling Boer, hey? Not with Fenian bonds, good
when Ireland's free. Rolling Boer, you say, Red? When did they get that
one out o' the cavalry? Rolling Boer, 'll still be jogging down the
stretch when you're in bed, Reddy. Say, it's a wonder you don't dig up a
live one 'casionally. Stop trekkin. Winter'll be coming on soon, and
you'll be nix the price of a doss. Rolling Boer! To the woods!"

The red-haired tout mopped his face with a frayed blue polka-dotted
handkerchief.

"Sey, what's half a ten spot to you people?" he said in a tone of
entreaty. "The one you're waitin' f'r'll be 'bout 1 to 4 on, an' this is
sunshine money, at 100 to 1. You people know how they stan' them 1 to 4
things on their heads out in Latonia. Say, take me spiel on this, won't
you, f'r a fi'muth? Look where he got off th' last time out, an' where
he finished! If you can't see him t' win, take th' 20 to 1 third. It'll
be a shame t' spen' t' money--but take it won't you?"

The two complaisant-looking chaps turned away from the red-haired tout
and began a conversation between themselves. The tout looked very warm,
and an expression of despair crossed his weazened features. He mopped
his face again with his blue polka-dotted handkerchief and slunk away.
He sided up to one of the board-markers and said, out of the corner of
his mouth:

"Say, get an ace down on Rolling Boer f'r me, will you? It's a skinch."

The board-marker grinned.

"I'm all out, Red," he replied. "Pushed me last ace up on the last
whizz, an' didn't get a whistle f'r it."

"This super's good f'r a deuce in any hock shop--I've had it in f'r
three," went on the red-haired tout, appealingly, pulling out an old
silver time-piece and trying to pass it to the board-marker. "Lemme have
a buck on it, an' I'll pass you back five f'r it after th' ring's around
Rolling Boer. How's that?"

"I'm all t' th' gruel, didn't I tell you?" replied the man with the
chalk, with some asperity. "I got a ticker o' me own. You're puffin'
secon's, Red. Rolling Boer couldn't beat me little sister skippin'
rope."

The red-haired tout walked away with an expression of deep misery on his
face.

"They think they are wise t' th' ponies, hey?" he muttered. "It's bean
bag they ought t' be playin'!"

He dug a quarter, two dimes and a nickel out of his change pocket and
looked at the coins dismally.

"It's me feed coin," he mumbled, "but maybe I can get some piker t' go
along with f'r another four bits."

He walked over to a shabby-looking chap who was slouching around with
his hands in his pockets.

"Say, you got a bundle on you?" the red-haired tout inquired of the
shabby-looking man.

The shabby-looking man dug a fifty-cent piece out of his left-hand
waistcoat pocket.

"That's all I was huntin' f'r," said the tout, displaying his coins.
"Let's put th' two pieces t'gether an' nail 'em f'r $50 each."

"On what?" inquired the shabby-looking man without any apparent interest
whatsoever.

"On a pipe," said the red-haired tout. "Rolling Boer. He'll make 'em
dizzy and stroll in with his head a-swingin' an' his tail a-swishin'. Do
you come in with me f'r the half?"

The shabby-looking man put his fifty-cent piece back in his left-hand
waistcoat pocket.

"You'll be fallin' out o' bed in a minute, Red," said the shabby-looking
man. "Not for me. I need the beers--ten of 'em."

"Yes, you're a sport right, I think nix," said the red-haired tout,
walking gloomily away. "You're a dead game, with the copper on."

His eagle eye caught sight of a fat man with some three parts of a jag
sitting at the "dope" table, alternately puffing at a ravelled cigar and
nodding sleepily. This jagged man had on one side of his head a straw
hat that looked as if it had been rained on and then sat on. The
red-haired tout went over to him.

"Say, your lid's on the pork all right, ain't it?" he said amiably to
the jagged man. "Been scrappin' with a cable-car?"

"Fade away--fade away," said the jagged man, sleepily. "Do a
disappearing stunt."

"I'll tell you what I'll do with you," said the red-haired tout, edging
over confidentially to the jagged man. "I'll pass you this cage o'
mine--on'y bought it three days ago, and coughed a two-spot f'r it--f'r
that one o' yours an' half a buck t' boot," and the red-haired tout
removed the pretty fair-looking straw hat he was wearing and pushed it
over to the jagged man. The jagged man took his ravelled cigar from his
mouth and grinned broadly.

"Say," he said to the red-haired tout, "you gimme th'
tizzy-wizzy--hones' yo do. Me wear a No. 2 lid? Say, do your fadin'
stunt--fade away."

The tout picked up his hat, put it on, and walked away.

"Now they've hammered Rolling Boer down to 80 to 1, hey?" he said,
looking up at the second line of betting. "B'jee, I'd climb a porch t'
yank out a couple t' put on that one."

He was disconsolately biting his nails and looking around to see if
there was any way out for him before the bunch of two-year-olds at
Gravesend went to the post.

"They're at the pump at Gravesend!" announced the board-marker.

Just as the announcement was made, a little man with a straw-colored
mustache and a red, white and blue band around his straw hat mounted the
stairs, passed the spotter sitting at the door with a nod, lit a fresh
cigarette, and walked up behind the red-haired tout.

"Thay, Red," he said, "what'th good in thith?"

The red-haired tout wheeled like a man who's been touched on the
shoulder by a deputy sheriff.

"You haven't got a minute!" he said, rapidly, to the little man with the
straw-colored mustache. "It's th' baby o' th' year! Gimme three
aces--two f'r you, an' one f'r me, an' in four minutes from date you'll
be lookin' over th' sides of a balloon, chucking off ballast made out o'
money."

The lisping little man with the straw-colored mustache smiled
indulgently and pulled out a roll, from which he stripped a five-dollar
note.

"That'th the thmalletht I've got, Red," he said, handing over the note
to the tout. "Thay"----

He chopped off the question, however, for the tout made two bounds for
the money-taker's window.

"Three on Rolling Boer, T. L. M.!" he shouted, giving the initials of
the little man with the straw-colored mustache. "Th' other two on th'
same, just plain R-e-d, Red, and both bets straight."

The man behind the desk grinned.

"High-ball mazuma for the house, Red," he said, twisting his mustache.
"That one ain't got a look-in."

The tout was back at the side of the little man with the straw-colored
mustache who believed in him just as the operator sung out: "Off at
Gravesend!"

"Thay, Red," said the tout's little man, "which one of 'em did you put
thothe five"----

"Rolling Boer at the quarter by a head!" sang out the operator.

"On that one!" said the red-haired tout, giving his thigh a whack with
his bundle of "dope" books. "It's a pleasant outing for that one!
He'll"----

"Rolling Boer in the stretch by a nose!" called out the operator.

"Thay, he'll curl up, won't he, Red?" said the little man at the tout's
side, nervously. "Did you play him straight or one, two, three"----

"Rolling Boer wins by a nose!" shouted the operator.

It was a bit too much for the red-haired tout. He didn't have any words
handy. So he slammed his "dope" books down on a chair, pitched forward,
turned a cart wheel, and then walked around the room on his hands with
his coat hanging over his head, and a grin of indescribable happiness
all over his freckled features. The little man with the straw-colored
mustache who had believed in Red followed the tout about the room.

"Thay, what do we win, Red?" he asked. "What prithe wath that horth?"

"You yank out $240, an' mine's $160," said the red-haired tout, getting
on his feet again.

"Thay, Red, you're all right," said the red-haired tout's benefactor,
pumping him by both hands.

The two flashy-looking chaps who had first been tackled by the tout on
the Rolling Boer proposition now walked up behind him with long faces.

"Say, Red, why didn't you pitch that at us a little stronger, hey?"

"Get t'ell away from me, you pikers!" was the red-haired tout's reply.




HE "COPPERED" HIS WIFE'S "HUNCHES."


     _Wherein It Is Shown That the Feminine Intuition Is Liable to
                       Occasionally Slip a Cog._

"Yes, siree," said the man with the ravelled cigar and the granulated
eyelids who swung precariously from a strap in a car of a returning
Sheepshead Bay train the other evening, "it certainly is funny about
these here hunches that women have, ain't it?"

"No," said the two seated men he was addressing.

"Certainly is queer what freaky ideas they get into their heads," went
on the man with the ravelled cigar, ignoring the lack of encouragement
extended to him. "And when it comes to picking out good things on a
race-track, picking 'em out just on hunch, ain't they wonders, hey?"

"Nope," said the two men at whom he was directing his conversation.

"It sure beats the Painted Post Silver Cornet Band how they can stick a
pin in a program with their eyes shut and light on a 100 to 1 shot that
wins a-blinking," continued the man with the granulated eyelids, tearing
two or three superfluous wrappers off his ravelled cigar. "Their system
beats the dope and the handicapping all to shucks, don't it?"

"Nix," replied the two men in the seat.

"Never had such chance to size up the feminine hunch as I did out at
Morris Park 'bout six or seven years ago," went on the man with the
eccentric cigar. "Told my wife one night during the fall meeting at the
park that I was going to the races the next day, that a shoe clerk I
knew had told me about a good thing that was going to happen--he'd got
it from a trainer to whom he'd sold a pair of shoes--and I was going
after some of it.

"'Theophilus Nextdoor,' says she to me, 'how dare you deliberately tell
me that you are going to gamble your money away, when I haven't a rag to
my back and the coal not yet put in!'

"'Can't help it, Clarissa,' says I, 'I've just naturally got to invest
$50 on this good thing. I know it ain't right, but I've got to do it,
anyhow.'

"Then she let out on me, and we both got mad. I tried to square it up
with her the next morning, and at the breakfast table I read her the
names of the horses that were going to run in the race in which I had
the good thing the shoe clerk had given me. When I came to the name of a
horse called Jodan, she dropped her coffee cup with a clatter and stared
at me.

"'Jodan,' said she. Isn't that short for Joseph Daniel?'

"'Yes'm, I guess so,' I said, not knowing whether it was or not, but
anxious to stroke her the right way.

"'Is that the horse you are going to invest your money on?' she asked
me, breathlessly.

"'No, it's another one,' said I.

"'Well, you might just as well stay home, then,' said she, positively.
'You'll lose your money. Jodan will win. I dreamt all night last night
of my Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy, who was lost at sea when I was a
little bit of a thing, and if Jodan is short for Joseph Daniel, as it
must be, then Jodan will win.'

"'But that's plain superstition, and races ain't won that way,' I said
to her.

"'I don't care one bit, so I don't,' she said to me. 'You will simply be
throwing your money away, and I need so many things, if you invest it on
any other horse than Jodan.'

"I tried to argue with her, but it was no go. She told me that her lost
Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy had once won a full-rigged ship race from
Shanghai to Boston, and was a pretty speedy old cuss in more ways than
one, and that any horse named after her Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy
couldn't lose. I told her that, while I didn't know anything about this
Jodan horse, I didn't think he could beat the good thing my shoe-clerk
friend had given me, but she wouldn't listen to me. The last thing she
said to me before I left the house was:

"'If you are determined to be a horrid, vulgar, disgraceful gambler, you
play Jodan. You'll be sorry if you don't.'

"Stubborn, when they get an idea into their heads, women, ain't they?"

"No," said the two men in the seat near the strap-clutching man with the
ravelled cigar.

"Well, by jing, I got to thinking about my wife's queer hunch on that
Jodan horse on my way out to the track, and the more I thought about it
the weaker I became on that good thing my shoe-clerk friend had given
me.

"'Women have got something away ahead of sense or reason,' says I to
myself on the train on the way out, 'and I sure would feel almighty
cheap and no-account if my wife happened to be right about her Uncle
Joseph Daniel McGeachy and this Jodan horse. I sure would. I've got a
good mind to put a little money on that Jodan horse anyhow, derned if I
haven't.'

"I was still undecided about it when I got out to the track. That's the
edge the bookmakers have got, ain't it--the people that have real good
things and then wabble when it comes to sticking to them?"

"Nope," said the two men in the seat.

"Well, sir, when the prices were marked up for that race in which I had
the good thing, blamed if Jodan wasn't chalked up at 100 to 1. My good
thing horse was the second choice at 5 to 1. I stood there looking at
the prices, getting pulled around and butted into, and I had the
dingedest time making up my mind what I was going to do that you ever
heard of in your life.

"'If my wife's hunch is right,' I thought, 'and that Jodan horse wins at
100 to 1 without my playing him, I'll never hear the last of it as
long's I'm on top of the ground. She'll be telling me morning, noon and
night, that she gave me a chance to win $5000, and that I didn't have
enough gumption to take it. And if the good thing my shoe-clerk friend
gave me wins at 5 to 1, I'll be sore on myself for throwing away a
chance to pick up $250 if I don't play it.'

"I walked out onto the lawn so's I could have more room to make up my
mind. Then I wheeled around suddenly and dived into the betting ring.

"'By cracky!' says I to myself, 'I'm doing this little gamble myself,
and, feminine hunch or no hunch, I'm going to play that good thing my
shoe-clerk friend gave me, and nothing else.'

"So I went to the first bookmaker I saw and got a $250 to $50 ticket on
my good thing."

Here the man with the granulated lids sighed heavily and looked
genuinely distressed.

"Say, it's the dickens, ain't it," he said, after a pause, "how these
things happen?"

The two men in the seat to whom he had been addressing his conversation
exhibited a certain suppressed interest as to the outcome.

"Of course Jodan just walked in that day, at 100 to 1?" said one of them
finally, with a grin that clearly indicated his belief that he had the
result discounted.

The man with a ravelled cigar struck a match and lit the same for the
eighteenth time.

"Not on your zinc wedding did Jodan walk in!" he said, puffing away
without removing his eyes from the match. "My good thing spread-eagled
'em from the jump, and won, pulled up, by eight lengths. Jodan was last.
It sure is odd about these feminine hunches, ain't it?"

"Blamed if it ain't," said one of the men in the seat.

"I carried a twelve-pound lobster home to my wife that night and told
her it was a fair replica of her Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy horse, and
she told me that she just wouldn't believe that Jodan hadn't won until
she saw the paper the next morning, so there now! She caved, though,
when I uncovered the $250 and told her that she couldn't get that
cerise-silk-lined tailor-made dress quick enough to suit me, and she
said that she might have known that no horse named after her Uncle
Joseph Daniel McGeachy, who didn't have any more luck than to go and get
himself lost at sea, could win anything.

"Well, a month or so after that I went down to Washington on a little
matter of business, and took my wife along with me. There was horse
racing going on near Washington then, at a track called St. Asaph,
across the Potomac in Virginia.

"'Clarissa,' said I to my wife one morning, after I'd got all through
with my business in Washington and was ready to come back to New York,
'I think we'd better stay over to-day and go to the races at St. Asaph.
A man that I met in the shooting gallery down the street gave me a good
thing last night, and I think I ought to see to it. It's going to come
off to-day.'

"Of course she told me again that I was going to rack and ruin, and
never would make anything of myself, but I told her that I just
naturally had to go over to St. Asaph that day and play Jodan.

"'Jodan!' she almost screamed at me. 'Theophilus Nextdoor, how can you
have the hardihood to stand there and tell me that you are going to
waste your money on that horrid beast, when both of us are absolutely in
need of new fall outfits?'

"I told her that I'd see to the fall outfits, but that I sure couldn't
get away from that Jodan good thing.

"'Why,' I said, don't you remember how wild you were about this same
Jodan horse only a little more than a month ago?'

"'I just don't care one bit if I was,' she replied. 'I know and you know
that any horse named after my Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy, who didn't
have any more luck than to go and get himself lost at sea, cannot win,
and I should think you would be ashamed of yourself to stand there and
tell me to my face,' etc., etc.

"Well, she wouldn't go along with me to the track over at St. Asaph
across the Potomac, and so I went alone. The man I had met in the
shooting gallery had told me so earnestly about this Jodan horse that I
couldn't fail to be impressed by his words, and when I found that my
wife was so opposed to Jodan's chances was more than ever determined to
play him, for I'd learned something about the nature of the feminine
hunch, don't you see?

"It like to've carried me off my feet when I saw the price on the
blackboards against Jodan. Jodan was quoted at 150 to 1. The favorite
was at 3 to 5 on, and all of 'em, the whole fourteen in the race, were
at shorter prices than Jodan. I clutched the $50 that I had intended
playing on Jodan, thinking that he'd be about 10 to 1 or something like
that, and I just thought and thought and thought over the thing.

"'By jimminy!' said I finally, after standing over in a corner alone for
a while, thinking, 'my wife may be right about Jodan, and all that, but
I came over here to play Jodan, and I'm going to play him or just bust,
win or lose!'

"Then I went over to a bookmaker, got a $1500 to $10 ticket on Jodan to
win. 'Take that hay out of your hair, pal,' the bookmaker said to me
when I passed my money over--and went up to the stand to see the race,
thinking all the time what a serious matter it is to take a chance on
playing against the feminine hunch.

"Jodan, after being practically left at the post, came out of the clouds
in the stretch, and won the derned old race on the wire by a nose from
the favorite, and when I hired a rig and packed those $1500 over to my
wife the way she warmed up to her one and only Theophilus was sure a
caution.

"The feminine hunch," concluded the man with the ravelled cigar and the
granulated eyelids, "is all right when you copper it, but it won't do to
play it open. Am I right?"

"No," said the two men in the seat, and then the rush to get off the
train began.




A RACE HORSE THAT PAID A CHURCH DEBT.


_He Was Thought to Be a No-Account Cripple, but He Proved Himself to Be
                     "All Horse" When Called Upon._

"A friend of mine who came here from Chicago for the Bennings meeting
was telling me about that Jim McCleevy mule," said an old-time owner of
thoroughbreds who is wintering a string of jumpers and breaking a bunch
of yearlings out at the Bennings track. "That makes a queer story, and
there are some strange things connected with the thoroughbred game, at
that. This McCleevy horse wasn't worth a bag of moist peanuts at the
beginning of the present racing season. He couldn't beat a fat man. He
had never been in the money. He was a legitimate thousand-to-one shot in
any company. He was the candidate for the shafts of a brick cart, when
by some odd chance he passed into the possession of a nice young woman
who was going to school somewhere in the State of Iowa. The girl's uncle
was mixed up some way or another with the turf, and he bought the
McCleevy plug for a joke, paying a few dollars for him. In a spirit of
fun he wrote to his niece that he had bought Jim McCleevy in her name,
and that the horse belonged to her and would be run in her interest. The
young woman didn't know the difference between a race-horse and a
chatelaine bag. She was an orphan, and struggling to get an education
for herself. Her ambition was to take a course at a woman's college,
but, up to the time of this incident, which lasted throughout the spring
and summer, her hope of putting this ambition over the plate was pretty
shadowy, and it looked like it was up to her to get a job teaching a
country school in order to support herself. But she wrote to her uncle
that she accepted the gift of the no-account racer with gratitude, and
inquired if the horse could not trot right fast, for, if so, she might
be able to dispose of him to some well-to-do farmer in her neighborhood.

"Jim McCleevy was attached to the string of a good trainer, who saw at
once that the horse had been underestimated, that he had been badly
handled, and that it would be worth the effort to try to make something
of him. He spent two or three weeks monkeying with the skate and fixing
him up, and then he sent him out one morning with a lummux of a stable
boy on his back and put the watch on him. Jim McCleevy breezed a mile in
1:44, fighting for his head at the finish, and two days later he was
slapped into a selling race at a mile and a sixteenth, with light
weight, a bum apprentice lad up, and all kinds of a price, for there
were some good ones in the race, which was at the Harlem track, in
Chicago. The girl's uncle scattered a few dollars around the ring on the
mutt, all three ways, and McCleevy came home on the bit. That was the
beginning of McCleevy. He was put into a couple of races a week at a
mile and more, at the Harlem and Hawthorne tracks, during the entire
racing season at Chicago, and he won race after race, no matter how they
piled the weight penalties up on him. When he didn't win he broke into
the money, and as there was always a good price on him, seeing that
almost every time he raced he was pitted against horses that seemed to
outclass him, the uncle of the girl who owned him got some of the money
every time. He parleyed the money that he won for his niece on Jim
McCleevy's first race, and he got it back and a bunch besides every
time. The fame of Jim McCleevy spread around Chicago, and a Chicago
newspaper man went down to Iowa to interview the young woman who owned
the horse. She told him, artlessly, that while she abhorred
gambling--well, she certainly did enjoy the prospect of being enabled to
complete her education. Her uncle deposited between $8000 and $9000 in
her name, the amount he had won for her in purses and bets on Jim
McCleevy, at the wind-up of the racing season, and the horse, which
developed quite a bit of real class, still belongs to her.

"Odd, isn't it, that an underestimated race-horse should hop out and not
only give a nice girl that had never so much as has stroked his sleek
neck a chance to fulfil her ambition for an education, but win her a
start in life that'll probably make her one of the eligible girls in the
State of Iowa? But I recall a queerer one than that--how a cast-off crab
suddenly developed into a race-horse and paid off a mortgage on a
church.

"That happened out at Latonia four years ago. I was racing a few of my
own out there at the time, and saw the affair from the beginning to the
wind-up. I'll have to duck giving the names, for the good man who
profited by the sudden development of the nag he accidentally became
possessed of is still the pastor of a flock that congregates in a pretty
little debt-free, brick and stone Roman Catholic church on the outskirts
of Cincinnati.

"There was an old trainer hanging around the Latonia barns at that time
who was in hard luck from a whole lot of different points of view. I'd
known him on the metropolitan tracks years before, and he had been, in
his day of prosperity, a good fellow and a horse-wise man, if ever one
chewed a straw. When his health went back on him, however, six or seven
years ago, and he couldn't personally attend to his work--he ran an open
training stable--it was all off with him. The strings that he had been
handling were taken away from him by the owners and put in other hands,
and he went up against the day of adversity with a rattle. He had a few
horses of his own, but these proved worthless, and most of them were
finally taken away from him to pay feed bills. On top of it all he
developed locomotor ataxia, and when I got out to the Latonia barns,
four years ago, he could barely move around. How he contrived to exist I
don't know, but I guess the boys chipped in a dollar or so every once in
a while for the old man. The only horse that he had left when I reached
Latonia with my little bunch was an old six-year-old gelding that was a
joke. Well, call him Caspar. The mention of Caspar's name made even the
stable-boy grin. Caspar looked a good deal like Diggs, that camel horse
that's pulling down the purses now in New Orleans. He was all out of
shape, with a pair of knees on him each as big as your hat; of all the
bunged up, soured, chalky old skates that ever I looked over, this
Caspar gelding was the limit. Yet he had been a pretty good two-year-old
and a more than fair three-year-old. He had won four races as a
two-year-old, and six as a three-year-old, but he was campaigned and
drummed a heap, and when the old man shot him as a four-year-old Caspar
could just walk, and that's all. He was a cripple from every point of
the compass. He was chronically sour and sore, and he was as vicious and
ugly as the devil, into the bargain. He never got anywhere near the
money as a four and five-year-old, and he hadn't been raced at all as a
six-year-old, when I first clapped an eye on his rheumatic old shape.
But the old man was a sentimentalist in his way, and he couldn't stand
the idea of selling a horse that he had taken care of as a baby to some
truck driver to be overworked and abused. So he hung on to Caspar, fed
him, nursed him and took care of him generally, just as if the old plug
was making good for all of this attention. Caspar was a standing gag
around the Latonia stables.

"'Wait'll I joggle Caspar under the string by four lengths in the
Kentucky Derby!' a monkey-faced apprentice jockey would say solemnly to
the other kids, and then they'd all holler.

"Well, about a month after I struck Latonia--it was then getting on
toward midsummer--the old trainer in hard luck who owned Caspar took to
his bunk, not to get up any more. He only lasted two weeks. Two days
before he died he sent for an old Irish priest that he had known for a
number of years. The priest was the pastor of that little brick and
stone church on the outskirts of Cincinnati that I spoke about. The old
trainer had been a good Catholic all his life, and he received the last
offices of his faith. Then he said to the priest:

"'Father, there's a crabbed, battered-up old dog of mine over at Latonia
that I'll make you a present of. He's worth about one dollar and eighty
cents, but he was a good racing tool when he was young, and I've never
felt like turning him loose to hustle for himself. He's crippled up
some, but you might get him broken to harness, so that he could haul
your buggy around. I wish you'd take him and see that he doesn't get the
worst of it. Caspar was pretty good to me a few times when I was up
against it.'

"When the old man turns up his toes and dies the kindly priest came over
to the barns to see if he could get any assistance in the way of putting
our old hard-luck pal under the ground. He got it, of course, and enough
for a tombstone besides. While he was at the stables the father thought
he might as well have a look at the piece of horse-flesh that had been
presented to him by the old man. So one of the trainers escorted him to
Caspar's stall.

"'Could he ever be made any good for driving purposes?' the priest asked
the trainer, who smiled.

"'He'd kick a piano-mover's truck into matchwood the first clatter out
of the box,' replied the trainer.

"'I'll just let him stay over here for awhile until I decide what to do
with him,' said the priest, and he went back to Cincinnati and buried
the old trainer.

"Well, a couple of mornings later a fresh stable-boy who had just got a
job in one of the barns put a bridle and saddle on old Caspar and took
him for a breeze around the course just for fun. It was just at dawn,
and a lot of us trainers were watching the early morning work of the
horses. It struck me when Caspar passed by the rail where I was standing
that the old devil looked mighty skittish, and was doing a lot of
prancing for a hammered-to-death skate, with bum knees and all sorts of
other complaints. About a minute later there was a yawp all along the
rail.

"'Get next to that old Caspar!' a lot of the trainers shouted. I looked
over toward the back-stretch, and there was the old skate with his head
down, eating up the ground like a race-horse. We all jerked out our
watches just as he flashed by the five-furlong pole and put them on him.
It was amazing to see the old mutt make the turn and come a-tearing down
the stretch. If he didn't do that five furlongs in 1:02, darn me. All of
our watches told the same story, and there was no mistake about it. When
he passed the judges' stand Caspar wanted to go right ahead and work
himself out, but we all hollered at the boy to pull him up. The kid
stopped the old gelding with difficulty. Caspar wanted to run, and he
had a mouth on him as hard as nails.

"We got together and talked about Caspar. We were dumbfounded, and
didn't know what to make of that exhibition of speed. Then a trainer who
was, and still is, noted throughout the country as the most skilful
horse-patcher that ever got into the game spoke up.

"'The old devil's just come back to himself, that's all there is about
it,' he said. 'There are a lot of sprints in his old carcass yet. All he
needs is some patching. If he'll run like this work he's just done in
five-furlong dashes, there's a chance for a slaughter with him. I'm
going to ask the father to let me handle him and see if he can't be
oiled up.'

"The trainer went over to Cincinnati that same morning and saw the
priest.

"'Father,' said he, 'I don't want to get a man of your cloth mixed up
with the racing game, but I think I can do something with that old
racing tool, the old man bequeathed to you.' Then he told the priest
about Caspar's phenomenal work that morning.

"'Bless me!' said the good man, 'I fear it would not be seemly for me
to'----

"'Oh, that end of it'll be all right, father,' said the trainer. 'If I
find I can do anything with the old rogue I'll shoot him into a dash
under my own colors, and you won't be entangled with the thing a little
bit. It won't cost you anything to let me try him out, and if I find
that he'll do I'll get my end of it by putting down--er--uh--well. I
won't lose anything anyhow.'

"Well, when he left the kindly man of the cloth he had the permission to
see what could be done with old Caspar. "'Let me know how you progress,'
the priest had asked him.

"The trainer seeing a chance to make a killing--and we all vowed
ourselves to secrecy about the matter--went to old Caspar. He was a
nag-patcher, as I say, from the foot-hills, and the way he applied
himself to the reduction of Caspar's inflammations, and to the tonicking
up in general of the old beast, was a caution to grasshoppers. And it
came about that early morning's work of Caspar's that had surprised us
so was no flash in the pan at all. The old 'possum had somehow or
another recovered his speed all of a sudden, in addition to a
willingness to run, in spite of his infirmities. At the end of two weeks
Caspar, as fine a bit of patched-work as you ever saw, was ready. The
trainer went over to Cincinnati and told the father so.

"'Well,' inquired the priest.

"'He's going to run in a five-furlong dash day after to-morrow,' said
the trainer. 'And he'll walk. It is a copper-riveted cinch--er-uh--I
mean, that is, Caspar will win, you see. It'll be write your own ticket,
too. Any price. In fact when the gang sees his name among the entries,
they'll think it's a joke.'

"'My son,' said the father, with a certain twinkle lurking in the corner
of his eye, 'gaming is a demoralizing passion. Nevertheless, if this
animal, that came into my possession by such odd chance, possesses
sufficient speed to--er'----

"'Oh, that's all right, father,' said the trainer and he bolted for it.

"As the trainer had said to the priest, there was an all-around chuckle
the following afternoon when the entry sheets were distributed and it
was seen that Caspar was in the five-furlong dash the next day. For a
wonder, not a word had got out about the patching job that had been in
progress on the old horse, nor about his remarkable work. The stable
lads and railbirds who were on kept their heads closed and saved their
nickels for the day of Caspar's victory.

"Well, to curl this up some, the field that we confidently expected
Caspar to beat was made up of nine rattling good sprinters--one of them
was so good that his price opened and closed at 4 to 5 on. Caspar was
the rank outsider at 150 to 1. We all got on at that figure, the bookies
giving us the laugh at first, and only a few of them wise enough to rub
when they suspected that there was something doing. The trainers',
railbirds', and stable-boys' money that went in forced the old skate's
price down to 75 to 1 at post time. A number of us took small chunks of
100 to 1 in the poolrooms in Cincinnati--wired our commissions over. The
old horse favored his left forefoot a trifle in walking around to the
starting pole, and that worried us a bit, for he'd been all right on his
pin the night before. We didn't do any hedging, however, but stood by to
see what was going to happen. All of us, of course, had enough down on
him to finish third to pull us out in case he couldn't get the big end
of the money.

"It was a romp for Caspar. If I'd tell you the real name of the horse
you'd remember the race well. Caspar, with a perfect incompetent of a
jockey on his back, jumped off in the lead, and was never headed,
winning, pulled double and to a walk, by three lengths. The bookies made
all colors of a howl over it, but their howls didn't go. They had to
cough. It was the biggest killing that bunch of Latonia trainers,
including myself, had ever made, and there wasn't a stable boy on the
grounds that didn't have money to cremate for months afterward.

"After the race the trainer who had patched old Caspar up for the
hogslaughtering--he was close on to $15,000 to the good, and he didn't
have me skinned any, at that--hustled over to the priest's house.

"'Father, the plug made monkeys of 'em,' is the way he announced
Caspar's victory.

"'Truly?' said the priest.

"'Monkeys,' repeated the trainer, and then he pulled out a huge new
wallet that he had bought on the way to the priest's residence. He
handed the wallet to the father. 'When I was here, a couple o' days
ago,' said the trainer, looking interestedly out of the window, 'I had
along with me a fifty-dollar bill that, feeling pretty prosperous that
morning, I intended to hand to you to be distributed among the poor of
the parish--used to be an acolyte and serve mass myself, a good many
years ago, when I was a kid. Well, I forgot to pass you the fifty, you
see, and so I invested it in--er-uh--a little matter of speculation, to
your account, so that it amounts to--er-uh--well, I understood there's a
bit of a mortgage on your church, you know."

"The priest opened the wallet and counted out seven one thousands, one
five hundred and one fifty-dollar bill. The trainer had put the $50 down
on Caspar for the priest--without the father's sanction or countenance,
of course--at 150 to 1.

"'Well,' 

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