That message blotted all other thoughts from the mind of Connor. From
his traveling bag he brought out a portfolio full of wrinkled papers and
pamphlets crowded with lists of names and figures; there followed a time
of close work. Page after page of calculations scribbled with a soft
pencil and in a large, sprawling hand, were torn from a pad, fluttered
through the air and lay where they fell. When the hour was ended he
pushed away the pamphlets of "dope" and picked up his notes. After that
he sat in deep thought and drove puff after puff of cigarette-smoke at
the ceiling.
As his brown study progressed, he began crumpling the slips in his moist
fingers until only two remained. These he balanced on his finger-tips as
though their weight might speak to his finely attuned nerves. At length,
one hand closed slowly over the paper it held and crushed it to a ball.
He flicked this away with his thumb and rose. On the remaining paper was
written "Trickster." Connor had made his choice.
That done, his expression softened as men relax after a day of mental
strain and he loitered down the stairs and into the street. Passing
through the lobby he heard the voice of Jack Townsend raised obviously
to attract his attention.
"There he goes now. And nothing but the weight kept him from bettin' on
the gray."
Connor heard sounds, not words, for his mind was already far away in a
club house, waiting for the "ponies" to file past. On the way to the
telegraph office he saw neither street nor building nor face, until he
had written on one of the yellow blanks, "A thousand on Trickster," and
addressed it to Harry Slocum. Not until he shoved the telegram across
the counter did he see Ruth Manning.
She was half-turned from the key, but her head was canted toward the
chattering sounder with a blank, inward look.
"Do you hear?" she cried happily. "Bjornsen is back!"
"Who?" asked Connor.
"Sveynrod Bjornsen. Lost three men out of eight, but he got within a
hundred and fifty miles of the pole. Found new land, too."
"Lucky devil, eh?"
But the girl frowned at him.
"Lucky, nothing! Bjornsen is a fighter; he lost his father and his older
brother up there three years ago and then he went back to make up for
their deaths. Luck?"
Connor, wondering, nodded. "Slipped my mind, that story of Bjornsen. Any
other news?"
She made a little gesture, palms up, as though she gathered something
from the air.
"News? The old wire has been pouring it at me all morning. Henry
Levateur went up thirty-two thousand feet yesterday and the Admiral Barr
was launched."
Connor kept fairly abreast of the times, but now he was at sea.
"That's the new liner, isn't it?"
"Thirty thousand tons of liner at that. She took the water like a duck.
Well, that's the stuff for Uncle Sam to give them; a few more like the
Admiral Barr and we'll have the old colors in every port that calls
itself a town. Europe will have to wake up."
She counted the telegram with a sweep of her pencil and flipped the
change to Connor out of the coin-box. The rattle of the sounder meant
new things to Connor; the edges of the world crowded close, for when the
noise stopped, in the thick silence he watched her features relax and
the light go out of her eyes. It enabled him to glance into her life in
Lukin, with only the chattering wire for a companion. A moment before
she had been radiant--now she was a tired girl with purple shadows
beneath her eyes making them look ghostly large.
"Oh, Bobby," she called. A tall youth came out of an inner room. "Take
the key, please; I'm going out for lunch."
"Come to the hotel with me," suggested Connor.
"Lunch at Townsend's?" She laughed with a touch of excitement. "That's a
treat."
Already she gained color and her eyes brightened. She was like a motor,
Connor decided, nothing in itself, but responding to every electric
current.
"This lunch is on me, by the way," she added.
"Why is that?"
"Because I like to pay on my winning days. I cashed in on the Indian's
horse this morning."
In Connor's own parlance--it brought him up standing.
"_You_ bet on it? You know horse-flesh, then. I like the little fellow,
but the weight stopped me."
He smiled at her with a new friendliness.
"Don't pin any flowers on me," she answered. "Oh, I know enough about
horses to look at their hocks and see how they stand; and I don't
suppose I'd buy in on a pony that points the toe of a fore-foot--but I'm
no judge. I bet on the gray because I know the blood."
She had stopped at the door of the hotel and she did not see the change
in Connor's face as they entered.
"Queer thing about horses," she continued. "They show their strain,
though the finest man that ever stepped might have a son that's a
quitter. Not that way with horses. Why, any scrubby pinto that has a
drop of Eden Gray blood in him will run till his heart breaks. You can
bet on that."
Lunch at Townsend's, Connor saw, must be the fashionable thing in Lukin.
The "masses" of those who came to town for the day ate at the
lunch-counters in the old saloons while the select went to the hotel.
Mrs. Townsend, billowing about the room in a dress of blue with white
polka-dots, when she was not making hurried trips into the kitchen, cast
one glance of approval at Ben Connor and another of surprise at the
girl. Other glances followed, for the room was fairly well filled, and a
whisper went trailing about them, before and behind.
It was easy to see that Ruth Manning was being accused of "scraping"
acquaintance with the stranger, but she bore up beautifully, and Connor
gauging her with an accurate eye, admired and wondered where she had
learned. Yet when they found a table and he drew out a chair for her, he
could tell from the manner in which she lowered herself into it that she
was not used to being seated. That observation gave him a feeling of
power over her.
"You liked the gray, too?" she was saying, as he took his place.
"I lost a hundred betting against him," said the gambler quietly. "I
hope you made a killing."
He saw by the slight widening of her eyes that a hundred dollars was a
good deal of money to her; and she flushed as she answered:
"I got down a bet with Jud Alison; it was only five dollars, but I had
odds of ten to one. Fifty dollars looks pretty big to me," she added,
and he liked her frankness.
"But does everybody know about these grays?"
"Not so many. They only come from one outfit, you see. Dad knew horses,
and he told me an Eden Gray was worth any man's money. Poor Dad!"
Connor watched her eyes turn dark and dull, but he tossed sympathy aside
and stepped forward in the business.
"I've been interested since I saw that little streak of gray shoot over
the finish. Eighteen years old. Did you know that?"
"Really? Well, Dad said an Eden Gray was good to twenty-five."
"What else did he say?"
"He didn't know a great deal about them, after all, but he said that now
and then a deaf and dumb Negro comes. He's a regular giant. Whenever he
meets a man he gets off the horse and puts a paper into the hand of the
other. On the paper it says: Fifty dollars in gold coin! Always that."
It was like a fairy tale to Connor.
"Jude Harper of Collinsville met him once. He had only ten dollars in
gold, but he had three hundred in paper. He offered the whole three
hundred and ten to the deaf-mute but he only shook his head."
"How often does he come out of the valley?"
"Once a year--once in two years--nobody knows how often. Of course it
doesn't take him long to find a man who'll buy a horse like one of the
grays for fifty dollars. The minute the horse is sold he turns around
and starts walking back. Pete Ricks tried to follow him. He turned back
on Pete, jumped on him from behind a rock, and jerked him off his horse.
Then he got him by the hair and bent his head back. Pete says he
expected to have his neck broken--he was like a child in the arms of
that giant. But it seemed that the mute was only telling him in
deaf-and-dumb talk that he mustn't follow. After he'd frightened the
life out of Pete the big mute went away again, and Pete came home as
fast as his horse could carry him."