"My name is Ruth Manning," answered the girl. "I don't think you've said
too much."
He kept his eyes steadily on her while he shook hands.
"I'm glad I know some one in Lukin," said Connor. "Good night, again."
_CHAPTER FOUR_
When Connor wakened the next morning, after his first impression of
blinding light, he closed his eyes and waited for the sense of unhappy
doom which usually comes to men of tense nerves and active life after
sleep; but, with slow and pleasant wonder, he realized that the old
numbness of brain and fever of pulse was gone. Then he looked up and
lazily watched the shadow of the vine at his window move across the
ceiling, a dim-bordered shadow continually changing as the wind gathered
the leaves in solid masses and shook them out again. He pored upon this
for a time, and next he watched a spider spinning a web in the corner;
she worked in a draft which repeatedly lifted her from her place before
she had fastened her thread, and dropped her a foot or more into space.
Connor sat up to admire the artisan's skill and courage. Compared to men
and insects, the spider really worked over an abyss two hundred feet
deep, suspended by a silken thread. Connor slipped out of bed and stood
beneath the growing web while the main cross threads were being
fastened. He had been there for some time when, turning away to rub the
ache out of the back of his neck, he again met the contrast between the
man of this morning and the man of other days.
This time it was his image in the mirror, meeting him as he turned. That
deep wrinkle in the middle of the forehead was half erased. The lips
were neither compressed nor loose and shaking, and the eye was calm--it
rested him to meet that glance in the mirror.
A mood of idle content always brings one to the window: Connor looked
out on the street. A horseman hopped past like a day shadow, the
hoofbeats muffled by thick sand, and the wind, moving at an exactly
equal pace, carried a mist of dust just behind the horse's tail.
Otherwise there was neither life nor color in the street of
weather-beaten, low buildings, and the eye of Connor went beyond the
roofs and began to climb the mountains. Here was a bald bright cliff,
there a drift of trees, and again a surface of raw clay from which the
upper soil had recently slipped; but these were not stopping
points--they were rather the steps which led the glance to a sky of pale
and transparent blue, and Connor felt a great desire to have that sky
over him in place of a ceiling.
He splashed through a hasty bath, dressed, and ran down the stairs,
humming. Jack Townsend stood on a box in the corner of the room, probing
at a spider web in the corner.
"Too late for breakfast?" asked Connor.
The fat shoulders of the proprietor quivered, but he did not turn.
"Too late," he snapped. "Breakfast over at nine. No favorites up here."
Connor waited for the wave of irritation to rise in him, but to his own
surprise he found himself saying:
"All right; you can't throw a good horse off his feed by cutting out one
meal."
Jack Townsend faced his guest, rubbing his many-folded chin.
"Don't take long for this mountain air to brace up a gent, does it?" he
asked rather pointedly.
"I'll tell you what," said Connor. "It isn't the air so much; it's the
people that do a fellow good."
"Well," admitted the proprietor modestly, "they may be something in
that. Kind of heartier out here, ain't they? More than in the city, I
guess. I'll tell you what," he added. "I'll go out and speak to the
missus about a snack for you. It's late, but we like to be obligin'."
He climbed carefully down from the box and started away.
"That girl again," thought Connor, and snapped his fingers. His spirits
continued to rise, if that were possible, during the breakfast of ham
and eggs, and coffee of a taste so metallic that only a copious use of
cream made it drinkable. Jack Townsend, recovering to the full his
customary good nature, joined his guest in a huge piece of toast with a
layer of ham on it--simply to keep a stranger from eating alone, he
said--and while he ate he talked about the race. Connor had noticed that
the lobby was almost empty.
"They're over lookin' at the hosses," said Townsend, "and gettin' their
bets down."
Connor laid down knife and fork, and resumed them hastily, but
thereafter his interest in his food was entirely perfunctory. From the
corner of his eye a gleam kept steadily upon the face of Townsend, who
continued:
"Speaking personal, Mr. Connor, I'd like to have you look over them
hosses yourself."
Connor, on the verge of speech, checked himself with a quick effort.
"Because," continued Townsend, "if I had your advice I might get down a
little stake on one of 'em. You see?"
Ben Connor paused with a morsel of ham halfway toward his lips.
"Who told you I know anything about horses?" he asked.
"You told me yourself," grinned the proprietor, "and I'd like to figure
how you knew the mare come from the Ballor Valley."
"From which?"
"From the Ballor Valley. You even named the irrigation and sand and all
that. But you'd seen her brand before, I s'pose?"
"Hoofs like hers never came out of these mountains," smiled Ben Connor.
"See the way she throws them and how flat they are."
"Well, that's true," nodded Jack Townsend. "It seems simple, now you say
what it was, but it had me beat up to now. That is the way with most
things. Take a fine hand with a rope. He daubs it on a cow so dead easy
any fool thinks he can do the same. No, Mr. Connor, I'd still like to
have you come out and take a look at them hosses. Besides"--he lowered
his voice--"you might pick up a bit of loose change yourself. They's a
plenty rolling round to-day."
Connor laughed, but there was excitement behind his mirth.
"The fact is, Townsend," he said, "I'm not interested in racing now. I'm
up here for the air."
"Sure--sure," said the hotel man. "I know all that. Well, if you're dead
set it ain't hardly Christian to lure you into betting on a hoss race, I
suppose."
He munched at his sandwich in savage silence, while Connor looked out
the window and began to whistle.
"They race very often up here?" he asked carelessly.
"Once in a while."
"A pleasant sport," sighed Connor.
"Ain't it, now?" argued Townsend. "But these gents around here take it
so serious that it don't last long."
"That so?"
"Yep. They bet every last dollar they can rake up, and about the second
or third race in the year the money's all pooled in two or three
pockets. Then the rest go gunnin' for trouble, and most generally find a
plenty. Any six races that's got up around here is good for three
shooting scrapes, and each shooting's equal to one corpse and half a
dozen put away for repairs." He touched his forehead, marked with a
white line. "I used to be considerable," he said.
"H-m," murmured Connor, grown absentminded again.
"Yes, sir," went on the other. "I've seen the boys come in from the
mines with enough dust to choke a mule, and slap it all down on the
hoss. I've seen twenty thousand cold bucks lost and won on a dinky
little pinto that wasn't worth twenty dollars hardly. That's how crazy
they get."
Connor wiped his forehead.
"Where do they race?" he asked.
"Right down Washington Avenue. That is the main street, y'see. Gives 'em
about half a mile of runnin'."
A cigarette appeared with magic speed between the fingers of Connor, and
he began to smoke, with deep inhalations, expelling his breath so
strongly that the mist shot almost to the ceiling before it flattened
into a leisurely spreading cloud. Townsend, fascinated, seemed to have
forgotten all about the horse race, but there was in Connor a suggestion
of new interest, a certain businesslike coldness.
"Suppose we step over and give the ponies a glance?" he queried.
"That's the talk!" exclaimed Townsend. "And I'll take any tip you have!"
This made Connor look at his host narrowly, but, dismissing a suspicion
from his mind, he shrugged his shoulders, and they went out together.
The conclave of riders and the betting public had gathered at the
farther end of the street, and it included the majority of Lukin. Only
the center of the street was left religiously clear, and in this space
half a dozen men led horses up and down with ostentatious indifference,
stopping often to look after cinches which they had already tested many
times. As Connor came up he saw a group of boys place their wagers with
a stakeholder--knives, watches, nickels and dimes. That was a fair token
of the spirit of the crowd. Wherever Connor looked he saw hands raised,
brandishing greenbacks, and for every raised hand there were half a
dozen clamorous voices.
"Quite a bit of sporting blood in Lukin, eh?" suggested Townsend.
"Sure," sighed Connor. He looked at the brandished money. "A field of
wheat," he murmured, "waiting for the reaper. That's me."
He turned to see his companion pull out a fat wallet.
"Which one?" gasped Townsend. "We ain't got hardly any time."
Connor observed him with a smile that tucked up the corners of his
mouth.
"Wait a while, friend. Plenty of time to get stung where the ponies are
concerned. We'll look them over."
Townsend began to chatter in his ear: "It's between Charlie Haig's roan
and Cliff Jones's Lightning--You see that bay? Man, he can surely get
across the ground. But the roan ain't so bad. Oh, no!"
"Sure they are."
The gambler frowned. "I was about to say that there was only one horse
in the race, but--" He shook his head despairingly as he looked over the
riders. He was hunting automatically for the fleshless face and angular
body of a jockey; among them all Charlie Haig came the closest to this
light ideal. He was a sun-dried fellow, but even Charlie must have
weighed well over a hundred and forty pounds; the others made no
pretensions toward small poundage, and Cliff Jones must have scaled two
hundred.
"Which was the one hoss in your eyes?" asked the hotel man eagerly.
"The gray. But with that weight up the little fellow will be anchored."
He pointed to a gray gelding which nosed confidently at the back hip
pockets of his master.
"Less than fifteen hands," continued Connor, "and a hundred and eighty
pounds to break his back. It isn't a race; it's murder to enter a horse
handicapped like that."
"The gray?" repeated Jack Townsend, and he glanced from the corner of
his eyes at his companion, as though he suspected mockery. "I never seen
the gray before," he went on. "Looks sort of underfed, eh?"
Connor apparently did not hear. He had raised his head and his nostrils
trembled, so that Townsend did not know whether the queer fellow was
about to break into laughter or a trade.
"Yet," muttered Connor, "he might carry it. God, what a horse!"
He still looked at the gelding, and Townsend rubbed his eyes and stared
to make sure that he had not overlooked some possibilities in the
gelding. But he saw again only a lean-ribbed pony with a long neck and a
high croup. The horse wheeled, stepping as clumsily as a gangling
yearling. Townsend's amazement changed to suspicion and then to
indifference.
"Well," he said, smiling covertly, "are you going to bet on that?"
Connor made no answer. He stepped up to the owner of the gray, a swarthy
man of Indian blood. His half sleepy, half sullen expression cleared
when Connor shook hands and introduced himself as a lover of fast
horse-flesh.
He even congratulated the Indian on owning so fine a specimen, at which
apparently subtle mockery Townsend, in the rear, set his teeth to keep
from smiling; and the big Indian also frowned, to see if there were any
hidden insult. But Connor had stepped back and was looking at the
forelegs of the gelding.
"There's bone for you," he said exultantly. "More than eight inches,
eh--that Cannon?"
"Huh," grunted the owner, "I dunno."
But his last shred of suspicion disappeared as Connor, working his
fingers along the shoulder muscles of the animal, smiled with pleasure
and admiration.
"My name's Bert Sims," said the Indian, "and I'm glad to know you. Most
of the boys in Lukin think my hoss ain't got a chance in this race."
"I think they're right," answered Connor without hesitation.
The eyes of the Indian flashed.
"I think you're putting fifty pounds too much weight on him," explained
Connor.
"Yeh?"
"Can't another man ride your horse?"
"Anybody can ride him."
"Then let that fellow yonder--that youngster--have the mount. I'll back
the gray to the bottom of my pocket if you do."
"I wouldn't feel hardly natural seeing another man on him," said the
Indian. "If he's rode I'll do the riding. I've done it for fifteen
years."
"What?"
"Fifteen years."
"Is that horse fifteen years old?" asked Connor, prepared to smile.
"He is eighteen," answered Bert Sims quietly.
The gambler cast a quick glance at Sims and a longer one at the gray. He
parted the lips of the horse, and then cursed softly.
"You're right," said Connor. "He is eighteen."
He was frowning in deadly earnestness now.
"Accident, I suppose?"
The Indian merely stared at him.
"Is the horse a strain of blood or an accident? What's his breed?"
"He's an Eden gray."
"Are there more like him?"
"The valley's full of 'em, they say," answered Bert Sims.
"What valley?" snapped the gambler.
"I ain't been in it. If I was I wouldn't talk."
"Why not?"
In reply Sims rolled the yellow-stained whites of his eyes slowly toward
his interlocutor. He did not turn his head, but a smile gradually began
on his lips and spread to a sinister hint at mirth. It put a grim end to
the conversation, and Connor turned reluctantly to Townsend. The latter
was clamoring.
"They're getting ready for the start. Are you betting on that runt of a
gray?"
_CHAPTER FIVE_
Conner shook his head almost sadly. "A horse that stands not a hair more
than fourteen-three, eighteen years old, with a hundred and eighty
pounds up--No, I'm not a fool."
"Which is it--the roan or the bay?" gasped Townsend. "Which d'you say?
I'll tell you about the valley after the race. Which hoss, Mr. Connor?"
Thus appealed to, the gambler straightened and clasped his hands behind
his back. He looked coldly at the horses.
"How old is that brown yonder--the one the boy is just mounting?"
"Three. But what's he got to do with the race?"
"He's a shade too young, or he'd win it. That's what he has to do with
it. Back Haig's horse, then. The roan is the best bet."
"Have you had a good look at Lightnin'?"
"He won't last in this going with that weight up."
"You're right," panted Townsend. "And I'm going to risk a hundred on
him. Hey, Joe, how d'you bet on Charlie Haig?"
"Two to one."
"Take you for a hundred. Joe, meet Mr. Connor."
"A hundred it is, Jack. Can I do anything for you, Mr. Connor?"
"I'll go a hundred on the roan, sir."
"Have I done it right?" asked Townsend fiercely, a little later. "I
wonder do you know?"
"Ask that after the race is over," smiled Connor. "After all, you have
only one horse to be afraid of."
"Sure; Lightnin'--but he's enough."
"Not Lightning, I tell you. The gray is the only horse to be afraid of
though the brown stallion might do if he has enough seasoning."
For a moment panic brightened the eyes of Townsend, and then he shook
the fear away.
"I've done it now," he said huskily, "and they's no use talking. Let's
get down to the finish."
The crowd was streaming away from the start, and headed toward the
finish half a mile down the street beyond the farther end of Lukin. Most
of this distance Townsend kept his companion close to a run; then he
suddenly appealed for a slower pace.
"It's my heart," he explained. "Nothin' else bothers it, but during a
hoss race it sure stands on end. I get to thinkin' of what my wife will
say if I lose; and that always plumb upsets me."
He was, in fact, spotted white and purple when they joined the mob which
packed both sides of the street at the finish posts; already the choice
positions were taken.
"We won't get a look," groaned Townsend.
But Connor chuckled: "You tie on to me and we'll get to the front in a
squeeze." And he ejected himself into the mob. How it was done Townsend
could never understand. They oozed through the thickest of the crowd,
and when roughly pressed men ahead of them turned around, ready to
fight, Connor was always looking back, apparently forced along by the
pressure from the rear. He seemed, indeed, to be struggling to keep his
footing, but in a few minutes Townsend found himself in the front rank.
He mopped his brow and smiled up into the cool face of Connor, but there
was no time for comments. Eight horses fretted in a ragged line far down
the street, and as they frisked here and there the brims of the
sombreros of the riders flapped up and down; only the Eden gray stood
with downward head, dreaming.
"No heart," said Townsend, "in that gray hoss. Look at him!"
"Plenty of head, though," replied Connor; "here they go!"
His voice was lost in a yell that went up wailing, shook into a roar,
and then died off, as though a gust of wind had cut the sounds away. A
murmur of voices followed, and then an almost womanish yell, for
Lightning, the favorite, was out in front, and his rider leaned in the
saddle with arm suspended and a quirt which never fell. The rest were a
close group where whips worked ceaselessly, except that in the rear of
all the rest the little gray horse ran without urge, smoothly, as if his
rider had given up all hope of winning and merely allowed his horse to
canter through.
"D'you see?" screamed Townsend. "Is that what you know about hosses, Mr.
Connor? Look at Cliff Jones's Lightning! What do you--"
He cut his upbraidings short, for Connor's was a grisly face, white
about the mouth and with gathered brows, as though, with intense effort,
he strove to throw the influence of his will into that mass of
horse-flesh. The hotel-keeper turned in time to see Lightning, already
buckling under the strain, throw up his head.
The heavy burdens, the deep, soft going, and the fact that none of the
horses were really trained to sprint, made the half-mile course a very
real test, and now the big leader perceptibly weakened. Out of the pack
shot a slender brown body, and came to the girth--to the neck of the
bay.
"The stallion!" shouted Townsend. "By God, you do know hosses! Who'd of
thought that skinny fellow had it in him?"
"He'll die," said Connor calmly.
The bay and the brown went back into the pack together, even as Connor
spoke, though the riders were flogging hard, and now the roan drew to
the front. It was plain to see that he had the foot of the rest, for he
came away from the crowd with every leap.
"Look! Look! Look!" moaned Townsend. "Two for one! Look!" He choked with
pleasure and gripped Connor's arm in both his hands in token of
gratitude.
Now the race bore swiftly down the finish, the horses looming bigger;
their eyes could be seen, and their straining nostrils now, and the
desperate face of each rider, trying to lift his horse into a great
burst.
"He's got it," sobbed Townsend, hysterical. "Nothin' can catch him now."
But his companion, in place of answer, stiffened and pointed. His voice
was a tone of horror, almost, as he said: "I knew, by God, I knew all
the time and wouldn't believe my eyes."
For far from the left, rounding the pack, came a streak of gray. It
caught the brown horse and passed him in two leaps; it shot by the
laboring bay; and only the roan of Charlie Haig remained in front. That
rider, confident of victory, had slipped his quirt over his wrist and
was hand-riding his horse when a brief, deep yell of dismay from the
crowd made him jerk a glance over his shoulder. He cut the quirt into
the flank of the roan, but it was too late. Five lengths from the finish
the little gray shoved his nose in front; and from that point, settling
toward the earth, as he stretched into a longer and longer stride, every
jump increased his margin. The nose of the roan was hardly on the rump
of the gelding at the finish.
A bedlam roar came from the crowd. Townsend was cursing and beating time
to his oaths with a fat fist. Townsend found so many companion losers
that his feelings were readily salved, and he turned to Connor, smiling
wryly.
"We can't win every day," he declared, "but I'll tell you this, partner;
of all the men I ever seen, you get the medal for judgin' a hoss. You
can pick my string any day."
"Eighteen years old," Connor was saying in the monotonous tone of one
hypnotized.
"Hey, there," protested Townsend, perceiving that he was on the verge of
being ignored.
"A hundred and eighty pounds," sighed the big man.
Townsend saw for the first time that a stop-watch was in the hand of his
companion, and now, as Connor began to pace off the distance, the hotel
proprietor tagged behind, curious. Twenty steps from the starting point
the larger man stopped abruptly, shook his head, and then went on. When
he came to the start he paused again, and Townsend found him staring
with dull eyes at the face of the watch.
"What'd they make it in?" asked the little man.
The other did not hear.
"They ran from this line?" he queried in a husky voice.
"Sure. Line between them posts."
"Fifty-nine seconds!" he kept repeating. "Fifty-nine seconds!
Fifty-nine!"
"What about the fifty-nine seconds?" asked Townsend, and receiving no
answer he murmured to himself: "The heat has got to his head."
Connor asked quietly: "Know anything about these gray horses and where
they came from?"
"Sure. As much as anybody. Come from yonder in the mountains. A Negro
raises 'em. A deaf mute. Ain't ever been heard to say a word."
"And he raises horses like that?"
"Sure."
"And nobody's been up there to try to buy 'em?"
"Too far to go, you see? Long ride and a hard trail. Besides, they's
plenty of good hoss-flesh right around Lukin, here."
"Of course," nodded Connor genially. "Of course there is."
"Besides, them grays is too small. Personally, I don't hanker after a
runt of a hoss. I look like a fool on one of em."
The voice of Connor was full of hearty agreement.
"So do I. Yes, they're small, if they're all like that one. Too small.
Much too small."
He looked narrowly at Townsend from the corner of his eyes to make sure
that the hotel proprietor suspected nothing.
"This deaf-mute sells some, now and then?"
"Yep. He comes down once in a while and sells a hoss to the first gent
he meets--and then walks back to the garden. Always geldings that he
sells, I understand. Stand up under work pretty well, those little
hosses. Harry Macklin has got one. Harry lives at Fort Andrew. There's a
funny yarn out about how Harry--"
"What price does the mute ask?"
"Thinking of getting one of 'em?"
"Me? Of course not! What do I want with a runt of a horse like that? But
I was wondering what they pay around here for little horses."
"I dunno."
"What's that story you were going to tell me about Harry Macklin?"
"You see, it was this way--"
And he poured forth the stale anecdote while they strolled back to the
hotel. Connor smiled and nodded at appropriate places, but his absent
eyes were seeing, once more, the low-running form of the little gray
gelding coming away from the rest of the pack.
_CHAPTER SIX_
When he arrived at the hotel Ben Connor found the following telegram
awaiting him:
Lady Fay in with ninety-eight Trickster did mile and furlong in
one fifty-four with one hundred twenty Caledonian stale mile in
one thirty-nine Billy Jones looks good track fast.