_SON OF RUNNYMEAD AND HYMIR_
_who has demonstrated to the world that handicaps of birth and breeding
are not insurmountable--that the offspring of a sprinter can carry
weight over a distance if he has the heart, that neither straight
stifles, weight cloths nor distance counts against gameness and
courage--this little volume is dedicated._
_THE AUTHOR._
“HARDSHELL” GAINES
“Hardshell” Gaines was the only name we knew him by, although had
anyone been sufficiently interested to look through the list of
registered owners of race-horses, he would have learned that Hardshell
had been christened James Buchanan Gaines. The name might also have
furnished a clue as to his age.
Tradition was that he came from somewhere in Pennsylvania, as he spoke
sometimes of the horses “up the valley”; but beyond the fact that
he had a farm in Tennessee, where he bred and trained the horses he
raced, nothing was set down in the “Who’s Who” of the turf. He was
called Hardshell because he had once explained the difference between
the Hardshell Baptists, to which denomination he belonged, and the
Washfoots.
He was an old man, thin and poorly dressed in baggy garments which
carried the odor of horses and were covered with horse hairs. He loved
horses, lived with them and for them and by them. In those days he
emerged from his hibernation on the Tennessee farm when racing started
at New Orleans and moved northward to Memphis, Louisville, Cincinnati,
St. Louis, and Chicago, and in the fall he retraced the route and
disappeared. He usually could be found working with some horse and
humming an old hymn, and occasionally, when forgetful, he sang hymns
aloud while brushing the horses.
He was honest, which fact set him apart from the majority of the
persons who follow horse-racing. According to the unwritten law of the
turf, it was all right for a millionaire to race horses for sport and
the purses, but a poor man was expected to do the best he could, dodge
the feed man’s bill when possible, get a shade the best of the odds,
keep under cover the fact that one of his horses was fit for a race
until the odds were right, and, if possible, sell one or two colts to
the wealthy owners at a fancy price to even the losses on the season.
Hardshell Gaines violated all these rules. He was poor. He bred and
raced horses because he loved them and loved the sport. He wagered two
dollars on each horse he entered in a race, never more or less. He
depended upon winning purses to meet expenses, and he refused to sell
his best colts at any price. Each year he emerged from Tennessee with
three or four fair selling-platers, a string of two-year-olds from
which he hoped to develop a champion, and Sword of Gideon, better known
as Swored at Gideon, his alleged stake horse and the pride of the Big
Bend stables.
Some of the race followers believed Hardshell to be rich. The
suspicious ones (and suspicion has its breeding place on race-tracks)
thought the old man laid big bets through secret agents whenever he was
ready to win a race. When, at not too frequent intervals, one of his
horses won, the wise ones nodded and whispered that old Hardshell had
made another killing. Others of us who knew how many of the purses
offered in selling races must be won to feed, care for, and transport
eighteen or twenty horses, estimated his financial rating more closely.
I knew there were times when second or third money in cheap races was
welcome to help pay feed bills and jockey fees, and that in several
lean times colts had disappeared from the Big Bend stables, having been
sold secretly at low prices.
No one ever heard Hardshell complain. His health was always “tol’able,”
his horses were always “tol’able fast,” his luck was “tol’able,” and
after replying thus to inquiries he hummed a hymn and went away. He
never was with the crowd of owners and bookmakers around hotels or
restaurants, but lived in the stables; and when little Pete, the
diminutive negro jockey, rode out of the paddock, Hardshell, a timothy
straw in his mouth and trousers laced into the tops of disreputable
boots, sauntered into the betting ring, went to the stand of a
bookmaker who had been his friend for years, wagered two dollars that
his horse would win, and, without looking to see what the odds were,
went down to the rail to root for his horse.
Few knew that Hardshell cherished either an ambition or an enmity--but
he did. His ambition was to breed and train a champion colt, and the
object of his hatred was Big Jim Long, gambler, bookmaker, sure thing
man, and the head of the Long Investment Company--and the ambition and
the hatred were associated.
Long was the Long Investment Company so far as advertising and general
knowledge went, but the real head sat at a desk in a suite of offices
in the lower Broadway district in New York, and, so far as anyone
knew, never had been near a race-track. Not even his name was to be
found in connection with the Long Investment Company. All letters,
remittances, and transfers from branch offices were addressed to James
Long, but the man who opened them was Thomas J. Kirtin, whose business,
according to the modest lettering on the door of the back room, which
opened upon an entirely different corridor from that upon which the
Long Investment Company fronted, was “Investments.”
Kirtin’s brain had evolved the idea of applying the all Tontine game
to betting upon horse-races, and he had organized the Long Investment
Company. In addition to the promise of certain dividends, the company
added the appeal to the gambling instinct in human beings. It claimed
that the reason persons who bet upon horse-races fail to beat the
bookmakers is that the bookmakers have the preponderance of capital.
The small bettor could not withstand a run of losses and the gamblers
could. It proposed to turn the tables: all bettors were to pool their
capital with the Long Investment Company, which, with its elaborate
system of doping horse-races, its exclusive sources of information
from owners and jockeys who were “interested,” and its perfect system
of laying bets which would assure investors of the best odds on each
race, would beat the game. Further, it was not as if a bettor wagered
all on one race; the company would bet on three, four, possibly six,
races a day on different tracks, betting only on inside information,
and the winnings would be pooled and divided. One hundred per cent was
guaranteed, and more if the winnings were larger.
The public had shied at the proposition at first. Then those who had
been lured by golden promises commenced to draw ten, fifteen, even
twenty-five, per cent a month on their investments. On one occasion a
“dividend” of seventy per cent was declared. The first investors had
their money back and still were credited with the original investment.
The news was received with incredulity, but as more and greater
dividends were declared hundreds and then thousands had flocked to
invest. Branch offices of the company, lavishly furnished and equipped
with telegraph and telephone communications with all tracks, were
established in a score of cities. Money poured into the Long Investment
Company by tens of thousands, then almost by millions. Each month
the “investors” received astonishing dividends. Some perhaps knew or
suspected that the dividends were being paid out of the fresh capital,
but, being gamblers, they threw their money into the gamble, betting
that they would draw out their principal and more before the bubble
burst.
In New York, Kirtin waited, watching the expansion of the bubble and
timing almost to the hour when the crash must come. In his safe nearly
fifty per cent of the money received, changed into bills of large
denominations, was packed in cases, and in his desk were reservations
of staterooms on every vessel departing for Europe in the next
fortnight. The bubble had endured longer than he expected. There was
more than a million dollars packed in the cases, and more than that
amount already had been transferred and deposited in various European
banks. He hesitated, undecided as to whether to risk another week of
delay--and decided that the time had come to reap the last harvest and
permit the gleanings to remain.
On the race-tracks Big Jim Long swaggered and continued his rôle
as head of the company spending thousands and talking millions. He
was a huge man, with a huge laugh, a round, ruddy face pink from
much massage. He wore clothing of striking cut and colors, and his
diamonds dazzled the eyes of jockeys and touts. He maintained an air
of condescending familiarity with some and patronizing good fellowship
with others, and he treated money as dross. Judges, stewards, and club
officials watched Long closely and with some disappointment. Rumors
that he had bribed jockeys, had influenced owners, that he had fixed
races and engineered great killings, were whispered around the tracks,
yet the officials could not discover any evidences of his guilt. Big
Jim made no denials of the whispered accusations, but blatantly defied
the officials to “get anything on him.” Moreover, the bookmakers, who
watched his movements even more closely than the racing officials did,
knew that he never had bet any large sums at the track, and Big Jim
had sarcastically inquired if they thought him a fool to make bets for
the company at the tracks, where the odds were made, when the company
system was to scatter the bets over a score of cities and get better
odds. Such bets as he made at the tracks were for his own account, and
generally he lost, so that the small bettors who spied upon him, hoping
to learn which horses the company were backing, suspected that he bet
to blind them to the real identity of the horses the “killings” were
made on. They believed that the Long Investment Company was winning
vast sums. As a matter of fact, the Long Investment Company did not bet
at all. Kirtin did not believe in gambling. Yet, oddly enough, Big Jim
Long believed firmly and unshakably that, if he had complete control of
the finances of the company, he could beat the races. He was convinced
that with the capital of the Long Investment Company he could corrupt
enough jockeys and owners to pay dividends legitimately and make a
fortune for himself. Long would have been an easy victim of the game
which he was helping perpetrate upon the public. Kirtin had no such
illusions. Long had once argued the point with Kirtin in the privacy
of the back room in New York, and Kirtin had called him a fool, with
variations, prefix and addenda. And, as Kirtin sent him five thousand
dollars a week with which to keep up the front of the Long Investment
Company, Long had not pressed the point. Neither had he been convinced.
It was against Big Jim Long that Hardshell Gaines cherished the one
hatred of his life. It had started when Long sought to amuse himself
and his friends by ridiculing Gaines and his stable. He had joked at
the old man’s clothes, at his stable, his colors, and his jockey--and
then had made the fatal blunder of ridiculing Sword of Gideon, calling
him a “hound.”
Perhaps nothing else would have aroused vengeful hate in the bosom
of Hardshell, but to speak scornfully of Sword of Gideon was the
unbearable insult. The Sword was Hardshell’s weakness, the consummation
of his life’s ambition gone wrong. It was as if he had reared a
strong, handsome son and seen him crippled and then laughed at.
Hardshell had bred and reared the colt and named him, as he did all his
other colts, from the Bible. As a two-year-old, racing against the best
of the baby thoroughbreds of the West, the Sword had shown stamina,
gameness, a racing instinct, and a dazzling burst of speed. He was
royally sired, and even the millionaire owners agreed that Hardshell
had at last produced a great colt. In mid-season he was rated as one of
the two best two-year-olds of the year, and offers of large sums were
made for him. He was eligible to race in all the big three-year-old
stake races the next season, and Hardshell had refused to listen to any
offer or set any price. He had set out to develop a champion racer down
there on the little farm in the Big Bend of the Tennessee, a champion
which would outrun and outgame the best of the country and win the
American derby--then the greatest of all turf prizes.
Late in August the thing happened. The colt was at the starting post in
a six-furlong dash on the Hawthorne track when the barrier, a band of
elastic, was broken by the lunging of another colt. The elastic band
struck Sword of Gideon in the eye and maddened him with fright and
pain. The accident seemed trivial, but the effect was the destruction
of Hardshell’s life dream. Never thereafter would Sword of Gideon
face the barrier without a fight. The memory of the stinging agony of
that flying elastic was not to be effaced. A dozen times exasperated
starters ordered him out of races and sent him back for further
schooling at the barrier. Schooling was useless. He refused to face the
thing which had hurt him. The only way in which he could be handled at
the start of a race was for the jockey to turn his head away from the
barrier, wait until the other horses started, then throw him around
and send him after the flying field. Occasionally when the jockey
swung him at the right second he had a chance to win. The majority of
times he was handicapped five or six lengths on every start, and not
infrequently when he heard the swish of the barrier he bolted the wrong
way of the track. Look in the guide and after his name in many races
you will find the brief record of a tragedy in the words, “Left at
post.”
The champion was ruined. But in the heart of Hardshell Gaines Sword
of Gideon still was the champion. He worked over him as tenderly as a
mother over a crippled child, and for him he sang his favorite hymns,
as if striving to comfort the horse when he had behaved badly at the
post. The newspapers, on account of his bad acting at the start, wrote
of him as “Swored at Gideon.”
Big Jim Long had called the Sword a “hound,” and thereafter Hardshell
never spoke to him but passed him unseeing. At the bar one day Big
Jim had noisily invited everyone to drink with him, and Hardshell had
thrown away his beer and spat before walking away--and the open insult
stung even Big Jim Long.
All this was three years prior to the day when the affairs of the Long
Investment Company reached their climax. In his New York offices,
Kirtin realized that the finish was at hand. The bags filled with
money had been removed from the safe in the luxurious offices of the
Long Investment Company, carried through the door connecting them with
the little office of Thos. J. Kirtin, Investments, and the door locked
on both sides. Then Kirtin did the one decent thing of his career. He
sent a code telegram to Long and to every agent of the company over the
ganglia of leased wires, warning them that the jig was up and it was
time to disappear.
Probably it was not until he read that message that Big Jim Long
understood the full significance of the situation. He never had stopped
to ask himself why Kirtin had bestowed rank and titles upon him, why
he had elected him president, and why all the ornate stationery and
the many messages bore his name, or even why he had been paid five
thousand dollars a week. Perhaps he thought he earned it by virtue
of his influence among racing people. He understood now that he, Jim
Long, would be held accountable to the law, that he would be fugitive
or prisoner while Kirtin, with the millions of dollars looted from the
public, could not be connected with the swindle and would be safe in
Europe.
He cursed Kirtin, and, strangely, not because Kirtin was a thief and
worse. He cursed him because he considered Kirtin a fool. Had Kirtin
followed his plan and advice, the scheme would have worked. With that
almost unlimited capital behind him he could have fixed enough races
and won enough money to pay the dividends.
Long knew that within a day or two, three at the longest, the
authorities would descend upon the company offices. With a sudden
determination, Long sent a code order to every agent of the company to
ignore Kirtin’s message and prepare for a killing.
Let Kirtin go his cowardly way. He, Big Jim Long, would face the
situation, pay the dividends, and handle the big money himself. He
knew that at least a half million dollars remained in the hands of
the agents of the company in different cities--the gleanings which
Kirtin had not considered worth the risk to remain and collect. Long
telegraphed, ordering the agents to hold all funds subject to his order
instead of forwarding them to New York.
Kirtin, busy clearing the desk in his office and destroying the last
papers that would reveal any connection between Kirtin, Investments,
and the Long Investment Company, heard the news and shrugged his
shoulders. He had tried to save the fools, and if they refused to be
saved it was none of his affair. An hour later he and his suitcases
were in the stateroom of a liner.
At the Fair Grounds track in St. Louis, Big Jim Long set to work
hastily to stave off disaster and revive the investment company. He
had considered telegraphing the authorities to hold Kirtin, but had
rejected the plan as unbecoming one in his profession. Long’s plan
of procedure was simple and direct. He would fix a race, pay the
horse owners well, and win enough money to declare another dividend,
restoring the faith of the investors, who already had begun to show
signs of uneasiness as rumors spread. It was not a problem of morals
but of mathematics.
The chief obstacle to his plan was lack of time, and he knew he must
act rapidly. Already the rumors that the Long Investment Company was
in trouble had spread through the uneasy ranks of the gamblers, and
Long knew the first one who informed a district attorney of the affairs
of the company would bring the avalanche. By rapid work he completed
his preliminary plans during the races that afternoon. An overnight
handicap was carded for the next day’s races, and Long selected eight
owners whose morals he knew were below the par even of racing and each
agreed to enter a horse in the race. The chief problem was to prevent
other owners from naming their horses to start, and to avoid this one
owner agreed to enter Attorney Jackson, a high-class racer, to frighten
owners of slower horses out.
That evening a caucus was held. Besides Long, eight owners were
present. It was agreed that with Attorney Jackson the favorite, the
odds against Mildred Rogers would be at least fifteen to one, therefore
by simple arithmetic Mildred Rogers should win, because fifteen times
one is fifteen, whereas two times one is two. Long intended to bet the
remnants of the capital of the investment company, and, figuring the
price would recede from fifteen or twenty to one to ten to one before
the money was placed, he estimated that he would win close to five
million dollars. Not a cent was to be wagered at the track.
The caucus, after nominating Mildred Rogers to win, decided that
Attorney Jackson was to make the early running, cutting out a terrific
pace to the head of the stretch, while Betty M. and Pretty Dehon were
to come up fast, crowd the leader far outside on the turn, allowing
Mildred Rogers to come through along the rail, after which the entire
field was to bunch behind her and shoo her home a winner, while
Attorney Jackson pulled up as if lame.
The rehearsal was progressing satisfactorily and each owner was
receiving instructions as to the way his horse should run. The caucus
was pleased. Long had agreed that he would bet at least four hundred
thousand dollars, and that he would give twenty-five per cent of the
total winnings to the owners. The eight who were playing deuces wild in
the sport of kings were calculating that they would divide at least a
million dollars among themselves when the disquieting news arrived.
“What the hell do you think of that?” Sorgan, owner of Patsy Frewen,
demanded. “Old Hardshell Gaines has entered old Swored at Gideon.”
There were a chorus of curses.
“That hound of his ain’t got a chanst,” declared Kinsley. “It’s ten to
one he runs the wrong way of the track.”
“He’s the worst actor at the post on the circuit,” said Stanley.
“He’s liable to bust up the start.”
“Better pick one of our horses to bump him and put him over a fence,”
snarled McGuire. “He ain’t got any business in this. He knows Attorney
Jackson can beat him.”
It was a testimonial to his reputation for honesty that not one
of the assembled crooks even suggested asking Gaines to enter the
conspiracy. They cursed him for an interfering old fool, they cursed
his stubbornness, they cursed his idiocy in still insisting that Sword
of Gideon was a stake horse, they cursed his supposed parsimony and
believed he had entered his aged racer in the hope of winning a few
dollars by getting the place or show money. Not one suspected that
anything excepting blind chance had caused him to enter his horse in
the race.
They were wrong. Hardshell Gaines, with an unsullied record of fifty
years on the turf, had heard something. He had seen Long in conference
with some owners, and when the same owners rushed to enter their horses
in the overnight handicap Gaines’ suspicion had become certainty. He
had entered Sword of Gideon in the handicap, and for an hour afterward
had rubbed and stroked the old campaigner, and as he rolled bandages
around the bad leg of the old horse and applied liniment to his throat,
he had hummed a hymn.
Occasionally his voice rose in song and he sang of the time when “the
wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.” It was after
dark when he entered the Laclede downtown and sought out the assistant
starter.
“Joe,” he said solemnly, “I have been in this game, man an’ boy, clost
to fifty year and tried to run straight and do right as a hossman and a
Baptist. No man can say James Buchanan Gaines owes him a cent or ever
done a dishonest thing. I’ve done had a wrastle with my conscience, and
consarn me if I believe it’s wrong to skin a skunk!”
Joe nodded approval.
“There’s something doing, Joe,” said Hardshell. “Eight of them owners
and that slick crook Jim Long is holdin’ a caucus. Nary a word to old
Hardshell, and the Sword is entered.”
Joe nodded understandingly.
“Lissen, Joe,” said Hardshell, lowering his voice. “Long is planning a
big killing, and it’s up to me and the Sword and you to stop him. The
Sword is good for once, if that nigh left leg don’t overheat. He can
beat any hoss in that race, ’ceptin’ Attorney Jackson, and I reckon
they ain’t plannin’ to have no favorite win.”
Joe nodded again and reserved speech, waiting for the proposition.
“I ain’t asking no man to do anything dishonest, Joe,” the old man went
on--“it’s agin my religion and my conscience too--but something’s _got_
to be done.”
Hardshell waited expectantly and hummed “When temptation sore assails
me,” hoping that Joe would indicate his attitude or show receptivity,
but the assistant starter nodded and smoked in silence.
“’Tain’t as if I was trying to bribe anyone,” Hardshell explained
painfully. “I don’t want no one to do anything that is agin his
conscience.”
“What do you want me to do?” Joe asked, breaking his silence.
“All I ask is that you help the Sword get off straight, and me and you
and the Sword’ll spile the crookedest plan ever hatched.”
“Ain’t any law against my helping a bad actor get off right,” said Joe.
Hardshell said no more. He gripped Joe’s hand hard, and, after buying
him a cigar, strolled away, humming “Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Love,
with all thy quickening powers.”
There was an air of uneasiness hanging over the betting ring at the
Fair Grounds track as the horses hand-galloped to the starting post in
the fourth race. The air was surcharged with expectancy. Judges, always
alert and watching for signs of dishonesty, stared at the horses and
received frequent bulletins from the betting ring. Bookmakers, fearful
of a sudden attack by betting commissioners backing a certain horse,
held their chalk and erasers ready for rapid use. Bettors, hearing
vague whispers of “something doing,” asked each other excitedly what
was being played. Yet everything in the betting ring, paddock, and
stand seemed tranquil. The betting was light. Attorney Jackson was
favorite at seven to five, Patsy Frewen the second choice, at two to
one, the others at odds of from four to twenty, with Mildred Rogers
ranging from fifteen to twenty to one and only a few scattered bets
registered on her. Yet from a score of cities all over America came
frantic telegrams to gamblers, bookies, and owners, asking for track
odds and inquiring the meaning of the terrific plunging on Mildred
Rogers. Big Jim Long, using the efficient organization of the company,
was betting the remaining funds of the concern. More than fifty
thousand was bet in Chicago, thirty thousand in Louisville, twenty
thousand in Cincinnati, then twelve thousand or more in other cities in
which the Long Investment Company had offices.
There was a last minute plunge on Mildred Rogers at St. Louis by
gamblers who had heard the news from outside, and the odds dropped
quickly from fifteen to four to one.
As he tightened the girth for the last time, Hardshell Gaines
whispered to Pete, his jockey:
“Take a toe holt and a tooth holt, Pete. Joe’ll git you off a-runnin’,
and I got a pill in him that’d blow up a bank. It’s timed to go off
about the half-mile if you ain’t too long at the post. All you got to
do is sit still and hold on.”
Humming, he went to the book of his friend and wagered two dollars that
Sword of Gideon would win. He was still humming when he went down to
the rail to watch the horses start, and the hymn he hummed was, “Oh,
for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise.”
Out by the barrier a perspiring starter was beseeching, swearing,
threatening, and scolding, while a row of horses milled and maneuvered
for position. In the midst of the mêlée of milling horses, Joe, the
assistant starter, a buggy whip in one hand, sweated and swore as he
appeared to be striving to make Sword of Gideon line up with the other
horses. Out of the corner of his eye Joe watched the starter for the
telltale movement which revealed the second that the starter would
spring the barrier.
When that movement came Joe held the bridle bit of Sword of Gideon, and
before the barrier flashed he threw the horse’s head around, leaped
aside, and slashed him sharply across the quarters with the whip.
Sword of Gideon, stung into forgetfulness of fear, leaped forward. The
barrier flashed past his nose and he leaped into full stride, two full
lengths in the lead of the field before the others were under way.
Big Jim Long, his florid face mottled, hurled his chewed cigar against
the ground and swore viciously. Sword of Gideon, running like a wild
horse, opened up a gap of eight lengths between himself and the nearest
pursuer in the first eighth of a mile. In vain Attorney Jackson’s
jockey, remembering his instructions, spurred and urged his mount,
striving to catch the flying leader and set the pace. At the half
Attorney Jackson dropped back, beaten and out of it. Mildred Rogers’
rider, seeing the conspiracy going wrong, made a desperate effort to
overtake the flying Sword. The nitroglycerine pellet had acted and the
aged horse was running as he had run when he seemed destined to be
champion. Length by length he increased his lead over the staggering,
wabbling field, and tore down the stretch fifteen lengths ahead of
Patsy Frewen.
Big Jim Long, his heavy jaws sagging, his face mottled red and white,
his big, soft hands clenched, watched until the horses were within
a few yards of the finish. Then he turned and walked rapidly across
through the edge of the betting ring toward the exit. At the back of
the betting ring he met Hardshell Gaines moving toward the paddock to
greet the victorious Sword of Gideon. Big Jim’s pent up wrath exploded.
“You--and your blank blanked spavined hound!” he raged. “You blanked
old fool, if it hadn’t been for you--”
Hardshell Gaines looked straight ahead, unseeing, unhearing, and as he
walked past the furious gambler he hummed contentedly; and even Big Jim
recognized the long metre doxology.
“JAUNDICE’S” LAST RACE
“JAUNDICE’S” LAST RACE
There remains some of the Christ-spirit in the worst of us, perhaps,
but the most optimistic of missionaries would hardly have assayed
the soul of “Jaundice” O’Keefe with the hope of discovering even a
trace of that quality. Jaundice was a product, or by-product, of the
race-track. He had run away from his home in St. Louis at the age of
eleven, to escape the beatings administered by a drinking father and a
sodden mother, and had found refuge in a freight car loaded with horses
which were being shipped to a race-meeting in New Orleans. Two hostlers
were drinking from a bottle when not sleeping on a pile of hay. They
welcomed the boy, gave him a drink, fed him, and allowed him to burrow
into the hay for warmth. Perhaps it was kindness, perhaps they saw in
him a means of escaping the work of feeding and watering horses during
the long journey.
Jaundice was happy. He loved horses. Perhaps that was the remaining
trace of good after the rest had been bred or beaten out of him. He
had loved the horses which drew the coal wagon his father drove when
sober, and the sight of the trim thoroughbreds filled him with awed
admiration. Arrived in New Orleans, he followed the horses to the
race-track, found refuge in the stables, and was adopted into the army
of those who follow the races. A year later he had acquired a master’s
degree in profanity and obscenity and developed a ratlike viciousness
in fighting when cornered. He was undersized and undernourished, with
the remnants of a fighting spirit from generations of Irish sustaining
him. Stable-boys learned to fear the savageness of his methods and left
him alone. Occasionally a trainer or stable boss beat him with a whip
and cursed him.
Instinctively horses loved him. In one year he was an exercise boy. At
fourteen, with all the wickedness and viciousness of the race-track and
stable concentrated in him, he could ride and was awarded a jockey’s
license and a suit of gay-colored silks.
He rode winners. Winning, with Jaundice, was unselfish. He rode not for
personal glory or for money, but for the honor of the horse on which he
was mounted. When he was beaten he gulped dry sobs and went away with
his mount to console it.
For four years he rode races on the flat, at tracks all over America.
During these four years he made as much money as the average man makes
in a lifetime, and at the end of it had nothing. To him money meant
only expensive meals, clothes remarkable for colors and patterns,
wine, women of a sort, and large yellow diamonds. At eighteen he was
an old man. His face was yellow and drawn; he had ceased to be “Kid”
O’Keefe and become “Jaundice.” He was gaining weight and beginning to
pay the penalty of the carouses which followed each temporary period
of prosperity. For a year he fought to hold his standing. His mounts
became fewer and fewer. When the owners ceased to employ him to ride on
the flat, he became a steeplechase jockey.
Riding steeplechasers in races means in the majority of cases moral and
physical suicide. Jaundice had no fear of physical consequence, nor
any conception of morality. With two drinks of whisky poured into his
outraged body, he would have tried to make his mount jump the Grand
Cañon, had the course led in that direction. Falls and broken bones
failed to break his nerve, but his subconscious honesty was shattered.
On the flat he never had ridden a crooked race. He was restrained by
no consciousness of right or wrong. He tried always to win because
he loved the horses he rode. Over the jumps he had no such scruples.
The steeplechase horses were “has-beens” like himself and entitled to
no consideration. He commenced to ride queer-looking races. He was
nineteen when he fell off the favorite in a steeplechase race to permit
an outsider to win and the stewards ruled him off the tracks for one
year.
What Jaundice did in that year of banishment he alone knew in detail.
Barred from the only home and the only associates he had ever known,
the great loneliness came upon him. He was broke. He stole and was sent
to prison. When the suspension was lifted he went back to the tracks.
He had grown heavier and his eyes and his mind were blurred by drink.
He lived with the horses, attaching himself to the stable for which he
had been a star jockey, and lived in the stalls and the cars. His love
of the animals themselves had waned. Drudgery and vicious living had
warped even that instinct. When he dared he became a tout, whispering
information to petty gamblers at the edge of the betting ring. When
he left the tracks at night it was to betray stable information to
bartenders in return for drinks.
When he was twenty-two there remained two loves by which it was proved
that all good can not be smelted out of a human being. One was for Doc
Grausman, the gallant bay stake horse of the stable, whose dam he had
ridden to victory many times. The other was for Lord James.
On race-tracks there is something in a name. Jaundice received his
because his complexion had become a dirty yellow. Lord James was
so called because the one spark of decency remaining in him caused
him to conceal his family name. It was reputed that he was the son
of an English nobleman and that he could have a title and estate if
he returned to England. Rags of an old pride and remnants of decent
breeding restrained Lord James from mentioning the family name as his
own or from returning home to disgrace them. He had come to America,
a younger son, with a stable of race-horses and high hopes. Robbed,
fleeced, he had “quit.” Jaundice can not be spoken of as having
degenerated. His original height permitted but a slight fall. But Lord
James had sunk to even lower levels. He was a cadger, a tout, and a
sneak-thief at such times when no risk was involved.
No one around the tracks hated either Lord James or Jaundice. They
pitied Jaundice, but the touts themselves despised Lord James. He had
lost all his courage, if he ever possessed any, and drink had sapped
his health and his brain. Of the trio, only Doc Grausman bore his name
honestly. His names were those of his sire and his granddam, and he was
of royal blood and three years old.
When Lord James and Jaundice had become friends no one knew. Probably
it was during Jaundice’s career as a winning jockey, while he scattered
money recklessly after every winning race. Upon such boys Lord James
had preyed for years. These two had nothing in common. Race, religion,
birth, breeding, and education made them different, but they met in the
thick scum of vice and became inseparable. For Lord James, Jaundice
stole and betrayed stable secrets, pulled race-horses, bought drinks,
and furnished food and lodging. It is not recorded that Lord James ever
did anything for Jaundice.
These two sank lower and lower together. When the majority of the
race-tracks of the country were closed, they disappeared from the
world of sport, starved, and served prison terms together. When racing
reopened, they reappeared. Jaundice had developed a cough. His wasted
body revealed the ravages of tuberculosis. Lord James was wearing, with
a pitiful effort to maintain an air of decency, a suit purchased with
his last remittance money two years before.
The horses were racing at Jamaica and the weather was raw and rainy.
They experienced difficulty in gaining an entry to the track and were
compelled to remain outside, shivering and wet, until the day’s sport
ended. Then a negro stable-boy allowed them to sleep with him in a
stall, and Jaundice procured food from the camp-fires, where no one
ever is refused.
Lord James did not get up the next morning. He had crawled into the hay
with wet clothing and in the morning he had a fever. Jaundice brought
him food, but he did not eat. All day he remained huddled in the hay,
covered with horse blankets, his face turned to the board wall. He was
thinking and his mind was Gethsemane.
During the night Lord James touched Jaundice with his hand and waked
him. Very quietly and with a return of long-forgotten dignity, he
entrusted to Jaundice an envelope upon which was written an address in
England, charging him to mail it and allow no one to see it. He asked
Jaundice to see the boys and ask them to bury him decently. Then he
gripped Jaundice’s hand and died gamely, sustained by the traditions of
his race and class. Jaundice alone wept. It was the first time in many
years he had wept, and he was ashamed of his tears.
Around the race-track no man connected with the game dies and lacks a
decent funeral, but there was scant sympathy for Lord James. The hat
was passed, bookmakers, jockeys, trainers, owners, grafters, even the
pickpockets, contributing, but their contributions were small. The
whole amounted to eighty dollars. Jaundice was not satisfied. Had he
been satisfied, there would have been no story to tell.
On the day following the horses moved to Belmont Park to open the
racing season on that track, and Doc Grausman was entered to start in
a high-weight handicap. Doc Grausman belonged to a wealthy man whose
colors Jaundice had often carried to victory. This owner had not
entered the horse in the handicap with any expectation of winning. The
colt needed work, and he wanted to see how well the three-year-old
could carry weight racing against all aged horses.
Jaundice had not slept. His clothing still was damp and he was
coughing. For the time his abiding love for Doc Grausman was put in the
background while he went from man to man begging money to give Lord
James what he considered a proper and fitting funeral. The undertaker
wanted one hundred and fifty dollars. Jaundice was determined to raise
the sum before the afternoon’s sport ended.
Shortly before the bugle sounded, calling the horses from the paddock
for the first race, a fractious colt lashed out with his feet and
kicked the jockey who had been employed to ride Doc Grausman in the
fourth. Jaundice heard of the accident within a few minutes. It was he
who hurried to the club-house and informed the owner.
“Thanks, Jaundice,” the owner said carelessly. “I wanted the colt to
have the workout. Now, I suppose I’ll have to scratch him. I don’t want
to put a strange boy up.”
“Mister Phil,” said Jaundice, inspired with a sudden idea, “let me ride
Doc Grausman. I’m down to weight, Mister Phil. I only weigh a hundred
and twenty-eight now. Let me ride him, Mister Phil, and I’ll win.”
His voice was pleading, his eyes and manner appealing, and he coughed
harder. The owner was surprised and laughed slightly. “I’m afraid it
can not be fixed, Jaundice,” he said lightly. “How do you stand with
the stewards?”
“I’m clean with them now, Mister Phil. They ain’t got nothin’ on me.
They never could prove I pulled Lady Rose. I’m down to weight, Mister
Phil, and that Doc Grausman horse likes me.”
His eagerness and the truth of the final statement decided the matter.
“I’ll see the stewards and explain,” said the owner. “He’s only in
for the workout, and perhaps they’ll stand for it. Sure you’re strong
enough to handle the colt?”
The owner had observed the cough, and Jaundice checked it with an
effort.
“Yes, Mister Phil, I’m all right. Just caught a cold. Get this mount
for me, Mister Phil. I’ve got to plant Lord James decent.”
“That old bum dead at last?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve got to get a hundred and fifty to plant him, and the
boys ain’t kicking in fast. Let me ride this Doc Grausman hoss and I’ll
plant Lord James swell, like his family would want him.”
The owner passed over a twenty-dollar banknote. What he told the track
officials no one knows, but when the fourth race was called, Jaundice,
carefully hiding his cough, rode forth for the first time in four years
wearing the colors of his old stable.
The bookmakers were laying thirty to one against Doc Grausman, and a
wit in the ring said it was ten to one the colt, twenty to one the boy.
What was not known was that Jaundice had taken the money that had been
contributed to bury Lord James and wagered it three ways, straight,
place, and show, on Doc Grausman. A new generation of jockeys faced
the start, a generation that knew nothing of the skill of the boy who
had ridden champions. The new boys, with the contempt that youth holds
for the “has-been,” jeered at Jaundice, and hurled insulting epithets
at him as they wheeled and maneuvered for the advantage of the break.
Jaundice did not retort with oaths and vilifications as he would have
done in other days. He was afraid he would start to cough.
The barrier flashed. Jaundice had been holding Doc Grausman steady
during the milling of the others. Out of the corner of the eye he had
caught the betraying arm movement of the starter an instant before the
barrier flashed upward, had shot Doc Grausman at the starting line
just the instant it flickered past his nose, had beaten the start a
length and a half while the others were taking the first jump and sent
him roaring down the long straight-away for four and a half furlongs.
Riding him out desperately at the end, he held the lead by half a
length over the favorite.
As the horses paraded back past the stands, he held his lips tightly
pressed together. He staggered a little as he weighed out, and in the
paddock his lips were reddened. The strain of the ride had opened the
old wounds in his lungs.
An hour later he ordered the undertaker to give Lord James the best
funeral he could for one thousand two hundred dollars and paid over the
money. There remained for his share of the victory just twenty-seven
dollars.
The news spread around the track that evening that Jaundice was to
give Lord James a “swell funeral.” Curiosity was aroused. Touts,
stable-boys, bookmakers’ helpers, a few jockeys, attended. It
happened that Jaundice came to me to consult as to the minister, and
I had secured the services of a wonderful little rector who is much
interested in all human beings.
The funeral was the strangest one I ever attended. The little minister
was doing his best to comfort the mourners, but plainly was at a
disadvantage because Jaundice was the only mourner. Jaundice, through
some instinctive sense of respect for the dead, was standing very
awkwardly and tears were rolling down his cheeks. He was weeping for
the second time in his life. Finally the little rector read from the
service: “He is not dead, but sleeping.”
Jaundice started, then stared, reached instinctively for his pocket,
and sobbed in a whisper: “Ten dollars will win you twenty-seven if you
think old Lord James is only sleeping.”
His reversion to instinct raised a laugh. For the first time the
assemblage was getting its money’s worth. The little rector was
very much shocked. He could not understand that Jaundice meant no
disrespect. He argued that no man could live in the United States and
be so completely ignorant of religion. I said that Jaundice thought
Jesus Christ was a cuss word and that his only knowledge that he
possessed an immortal soul was from hearing it God damned by trainers
and others.
A week later I heard that Jaundice was in a Brooklyn hospital and in
bad shape. I went to see him to get for a newspaper the story of a
jockey who, while sick to death, rode in a race to win money enough
to bury a friend. He was propped up in bed, coughing. The doctor had
told me he had but a little time to live. He was glad to see me and
inquired how I liked Lord James’ funeral.
“Great class to that, Jaundice; best I ever attended.”
“No one can’t say that I piked,” he responded, beaming at the praise.
“I planted Lord James swell, and his folks can’t ever say I didn’t.”
“You’re looking better,” I lied. “Be back on the track pretty soon?”
“Lord James won’t beat me more than a neck,” he said without emotion.
“Something busted inside me during that race. Have you heard how Doc
Grausman is comin’ along? He sure ought to win that stake this week.”
Presently he spoke of the little rector. “What do you think of that
guy?” he asked, rather contemptuous of the ignorance of the minister.
“He thought Lord James was only sleeping, but he wouldn’t back his
opinion with coin.”