in a gorgeous floral horseshoe, his woolly head bobbing among the
roses and his teeth putting the white carnations to shame. Shanghai
danced all the way from the judges' stand to the stables, not an easy
feat when one considers that he was leading the winner of the
Thornton Stakes, also garlanded and bedecked within an inch of his
life, but, in spite of all his floral decorations, extremely
dignified.
Old Man Curry fought his way through a mob of reporters and
fair-weather acquaintances to find himself face to face with the only
real surprise of the day. A sharp-faced youth, immaculately dressed,
leaped upon him, endeavouring to embrace him, shake his hand and
congratulate him, all in a breath. "Frank!" cried the old man. "Bless
your heart, boy, where did you come from?"
"From Butte," answered the Bald-faced Kid. "Wanted to get some ideas
on the spring trade; saw you had a horse in the Thornton Stakes;
thought I might find you; got here just as the race finished.
Old-timer, how are you? You don't know how good it is to see you
again!"
"I know how good it is to see you, my son!" The old man laid his arm
across the youth's shoulders. "How's the wife, Frank?"
"Just bully! She would have been here with me, but she couldn't leave
the kid: couldn't leave Curry----"
The patriarch of the Jungle Circuit reached hastily for his fine-cut.
"It--it was a boy, then?" he asked.
The Bald-faced Kid grinned.
"Better than that; it was a girl! We had the name picked out in
advance. The wife wouldn't have it any other way."
Old Man Curry shook his head solemnly. "Frank," said he, "you know
that ain't treat-in' a little girl right! Curry! It sounds like the
stuff you eat with rice! When she gits old enough to know she'll hate
it, and me, too."
"Any kid of mine is going to _love_ the name of Curry, and call you
grandpa! What do you think of that? You don't need to worry, and I
won't even argue the point with you. My wife says----"
"Anything your wife says is right," interrupted the old man, blowing
his nose lustily. "Why, it kind of seems as if I had some folks----"
"If you don't think you've got a ready-made family," said the Kid,
"come over to Butte any time and I'll win a bet from you. But I can
tell you about that later. What I want to know is this: I met a
couple of hustlers here to-day--boys I used to team with--and they
told me Pharaoh didn't have a chance because he went right from the
box car to the paddock. He gets off the train, where he's been for
five days and nights, and comes so close to the American record that
there ain't any fun in it. Now, you know that can't be done.
Old-timer, you pulled many a miracle on me before I quit the turf;
give me an inside on this one!"
Old Man Curry smiled benignantly.
"Well, son, mebbe I kind of took advantage of 'em there."
"It wouldn't be the first time, dad. Let's have it."
"All right. To start with, I bought this hoss for little or nothing.
Mostly nothing. I knew he was a freak. He couldn't begin to untrack
himself till he had gone a mile, but after that it seemed like every
mile he went he got better. I held a watch on him an' he ran four
miles close enough to the record to show me that he had a chance in
the Thornton Stakes. Five weeks ago I shipped him out to Port Costa
an' took him off the train there----"
"Holy Moses!" breathed the Kid. "I begin to get it, but go on!"
"I knew a man there an' he let me train Pharaoh at his place, Little
Mose givin' him a gallop every day. That Benicia road is as good as
any race track. Then I did some close figgerin' on freight schedules,
an' telegraphed Shanghai when to leave with the rest of the stable.
They got into Port Costa this mornin'. It wa'n't no trick at all to
slip Pharaoh into that through car--not when you know the right
people--an' when we unloaded here this noon the word sort of got
scattered round that the Curry hosses had been five days on the road.
Now, no man with the sense that God gives a goose could figger a
critter to walk out of a box car, where he'd been bumped an' jolted
an' shook up for five days, an' run four miles with any kind of
hosses. It just ain't in the book, son.
"They got the notion I was crazy, an' I reckon they knew everything
about us but the one thing that counted most, which was that Pharaoh
hadn't been in that car an hour all told. You know, when you go down
into Egypt after corn, you got to do as the Egyptians do: have an ace
in the hole all the time. Solomon says that a fool uttereth all his
mind, but a wise man keepeth it till afterward. That's why I'm
gassin' so much now, I reckon."
"Old-timer," chuckled the Kid, "you're a wonder, and I'm proud to
have a kid named for you! Just one question more, and I'm through.
You won the stake, and that amounts to quite a mess of money, but did
you bet enough to pay the freight on the string?"
"Well, now, son," said the old man; "I been so glad to see you that I
kind of forgot that part of it." He fumbled in the tail pockets of
his rusty black frock coat and brought forth great handfuls of
tickets. "I didn't take less'n 15 to 1," said he, "an' I bet 'em till
my feet ached, just walkin' from one book to another. I haven't tried
to figger it up, but I reckon I took more corn away from these
Egyptians than the law allows a single man to have. If it's all the
same to you, Frank, an' the baby ain't got no objections, I'd like to
use some of this to start a savings account for my namesake. Curry
ain't no name for a baby girl, an' you ought to let me square it with
her somehow. Mebbe when she gits of age, an' wants to marry some
harum-scarum boy, she won't think so bad of her gran'daddy."
THE MODERN JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON
It was an unpleasantly warm morning, and the thick, black shade of an
umbrella tree made queer neighbours--as queer neighbours as the
Jungle Circuit could produce. Old Man Curry found the shade first and
felt that he was entitled to it by right of discovery, consequently
he did not move when Henry M. Pitkin signified an intention of
sharing the coolness with him. Old Man Curry had less than a bowing
acquaintance with Pitkin, wished to know him no better, and had
disliked him from the moment he had first seen him.
"Hot, ain't it?" asked the newcomer by way of making a little talk.
"What you reading, Curry?"
Old Man Curry looked up from the thirteenth chapter of Proverbs,
ceased chewing his straw, and regarded Pitkin with a grave and
appraising interest which held something of disapproval, something of
insult. Pitkin's eyes shifted.
"It says here," remarked the aged horseman, "'A righteous man hateth
lying: but a wicked man is loathsome, and cometh to shame.'"
"Fair enough," said Pitkin, "and serves him right. He ought to come
to shame. Pretty hot for this time of year."
"It'll be hotter for some folks by and by."
Pitkin laughed noisily.
"Where do you get that stuff?" he demanded.
"I hope I ain't agoin' to git it," said Old Man Curry. "I aim to live
so's to miss it." He lapsed into silence, and the straw began to
twitch to the slow grinding motion of his lower jaw. A very stupid
man might have seen at a glance that Curry did not wish to be
disturbed, but for some reason or other Pitkin felt the need of
conversation.
"I've been thinking," said he, "that my racing colours are too
plain--yellow jacket, white sleeves, white cap. There's so many
yellows and whites that people get 'em mixed up. How would it do if I
put a design on the back of the jacket--something that would tell
people at a glance that the horse was from the Pitkin stable?"
Old Man Curry closed his book.
"You want 'em to know which is your hosses?" he asked. "Is that the
idee?"
"Sure," answered Pitkin. "I was trying to think up a design of some
kind. Lucky Baldwin, used to have a Maltese cross. How would it do if
I had a rooster or a rising sun or a crescent sewed on to the back of
the jacket?"
Old Man Curry pretended to give serious thought to the problem.
"Roosters an' risin' suns don't mean anything," said he judicially.
"An emblem ought to _mean_ something to the public--it ought to stand
for something."
"Yes," said Pitkin, "but what can I get that will sort of identify me
and my horses?"
"Well," said the old man, "mebbe I can suggest a dee-sign that'll
fill the bill." He picked up a bit of shingle and drew a pencil from
his pocket. "How would this do? Two straight marks this way, Pitkin,
an' two straight marks _that_ way--and nobody'd ever mistake your
hosses--nobody that's been watchin' the way they run."
Pitkin craned his neck and snorted with wrath. Old Man Curry had
drawn two crosses side by side, and the inference was plain.
"That's your notion, is it?" said he, rising. "Well, one thing is a
mortal cinch, Curry; you'll never catch me psalm singing round a race
track, and any time I want to preach, I'll hire a church! Put that in
your pipe and smoke it!"
"I ain't smokin', thankee, I'm chewin' mostly," remarked the old
gentleman to Pitkin's vanishing coat tails. "Well, now, looks like I
made him sort of angry. What is it that Solomon wrote 'bout the anger
of a fool?"
They used to say that the meanest man in the world was the Mean Man
from Maine, but this is a slander on the good old Pine Tree State,
for Henry M. Pitkin never was east of the Mississippi River in his
life. He claimed Iowa as his native soil, and all that Iowa could do
about it was to issue a warrant for his arrest on a charge connected
with the misappropriation of funds. Young Mr. Pitkin escaped over the
State line westward, beating the said warrant a nose in a whipping
finish, and after a devious career covering many years and many
States he turned up on the Jungle Circuit, bringing with him a string
of horses, a gentle, soft-spoken old negro trainer, an Irish jockey
named Mulligan, and two stable hands, each as black as the ace of
spades.
The Jungle Circuit has always been peculiarly rich in
catch-as-catch-can burglars and daylight highwaymen, but after they
had studied Mr. Pitkin's system closely these gentlemen refused to
enter into a protective alliance with him, for, as Grouchy O'Connor
remarked, "the sucker hadn't never heard that there ought to be
honour among thieves." Pitkin would shear a black sheep as close to
the shivering hide as he would shear a white one, and the horses of
the Pitkin stable performed according to price, according to
investment, according to orders--according to everything in the world
but agreement, racing form, and honest endeavour. In ways that are
dark and tricks that are vain the heathen Chinee at the top of his
heathenish bent would have been no match for Mr. Henry M. Pitkin,
who could have taken the shirt away from a Chinese river pirate.
The double-cross would have been an excellent racing trade-mark for
the Pitkin stable, because Pitkin had double-crossed every one who
ever trusted him, every one with whom he had come in contact. He had
even double-crossed old Gabe Johnson, his negro trainer, and the
history of that cross will furnish an accurate index on the smallness
of Pitkin's soul.
How such a decent old darky as Uncle Gabe ever came to be associated
with white trash of the Pitkin variety is another and longer story.
It is enough to say that Pitkin hired the old man when he was hungry
and thereafter frequently reminded him of that fact. They had been
together for three years when they came to the Jungle Circuit--Pitkin
rat-eyed, furtive, mysterious as a crow, and scheming always for his
own pocket; Uncle Gabe quiet, efficient, inclined to be religious,
knowing his place and keeping it and attending strictly to business,
namely, the conditioning of the Pitkin horses for the track.
Uncle Gabe treated all white men with scrupulous respect, even
touching his hat brim every time Pitkin spoke to him. He was a real
trainer of a school fast passing away, and at rare intervals he spoke
of the "quality folks down yondeh" for whom he had handled
thoroughbreds, glimpses of his history which made his present
occupation seem all the stranger by contrast.
Some of the horsemen of the Jungle Circuit pretended to believe that
Pitkin kept a negro trainer because he was too mean to get along with
a white man, but this was only partly true. He kept Gabe because he
had a keen appreciation of the old man's knowledge of horseflesh, and
in addition to this Gabe was cheap at the price--fifty dollars a
month and his board, and only part of that fifty paid, for it hurt
Pitkin to part with money under any circumstances.
It was by skipping pay days that he came to owe Uncle Gabe the not
unimportant sum of five hundred dollars, and it was by trying to
collect this amount that the aged trainer became also the owner of a
race horse.
Pitkin, in the course of business dealings with a small breeding
farm, had picked up two bay colts. They were as like as two peas with
every honest right to the resemblance, for they were half-brothers by
the same sire, and there was barely a week's difference in their
ages. Uncle Gabe looked the baby racers over very carefully before
giving it as his opinion that no twins were ever more alike in
appearance.
"They own mammies would have a li'l trouble tellin' them colts
apaht," said the negro.
"Can you tell them apart?" asked Pitkin.
Gabe grinned. "Yes, suh," he answered. "They _is_ a difference."
Pitkin looked at Gabe sharply. He knew that the old negro felt one
colt to be better than the other.
"All right then," he said after a moment. "Tell you what I'll do.
You've been deviling me for that five hundred dollars till I'm sick
of listening to you. Take your pick of the two colts and call it
square. How does that strike you?"
Uncle Gabe deliberated for some time. The five hundred dollars meant
a great deal to him, but the cash value of a debt is regulated
somewhat by the sort of man who owes it and Gabe realized that this
point was worthy of consideration. On the other hand, should the colt
turn out well, he would be worth several times five hundred dollars.
"Don't wait till you get 'em in training," said Pitkin. "A blind man
could pick the best one then. Take the colt that looks good to you
_now_ and let it go at that."
That evening Uncle Gabe made his selection and immediately announced
that he intended to name his colt General Duval.
"Good enough," said Pitkin, "and just to carry out the soldier idea,
I'll call the other one Sergeant Smith. Put the General in that end
stall, away from the others."
The next morning Gabe sent one of the stable hands to get his colt,
and when the animal appeared the old trainer's lower lip began to
droop, but he said nothing until after he had made a thorough
examination. "Boy, you done brought me the wrong colt," said he.
"This ain't Gen'al Duval."
"I got him outen yo' stall," said the stable hand.
"Don't care where yo' got him," persisted Gabe. "This ain't the colt
I picked out. He ain't wide enough between the eyes."
"What's the argument about?" asked Pitkin, coming from the
tackle-room.
"Gabe say thisyer ain't his colt," answered the stable hand.
"Where did you get him?" demanded Pitkin.
"Outen that stall yondeh," said the stable hand, pointing.
"That was where you put your colt, wasn't it?" asked Pitkin, turning
to Uncle Gabe.
"Yes, suh, I put him there all right, but this ain't him."
"Oh, come now," laughed Pitkin, "you've been thinking it over and
you're afraid you've picked the wrong one. Be a sport, Gabe; stick
with your bargain."
"Been some monkey business done round yere," muttered the aged negro.
"Been a li'l night walkin', mebbe. Boy, bring out that Sergeant Smith
colt an' lemme cas' my eye oveh him once!"
"See here, nigger!" said Pitkin, "I let you have first pick, didn't
I? Gave you all the best of it, and you picked this colt here. If
you've changed your mind overnight, I can't help that, can I?"
"My mind ain't changed none," replied old Gabe, "but this colt, he's
changed, suh."
"Who would change him on you, eh? Do you think _I'd_ do it? Is that
what you're getting at?"
"Why--why, no suh, no, but----"
"Then shut up! You're always beefing about something or other, always
kicking! I don't want to hear any more out of you, understand? Shut
up!"
"Yes, suh," answered old Gabe, touching his hat, "all the same I got
a right to my opinion, boss."
Whatever his opinion, Gabe proceeded to train the two colts in the
usual manner, and before long it was plain to everyone connected with
the Pitkin establishment that the striking likeness did not extend to
track promise and performance. Sergeant Smith developed into a
high-class piece of racing property; General Duval was not worth his
oats. Sergeant Smith won some baby races in impressive fashion and
was immediately tabbed as a comer and a useful betting tool, but
every time General Duval carried the racing colours of Gabriel
Johnson--cherry jacket, green sleeves, red, white and blue cap--he
brought them home powdered with the dust of defeat.
Old Gabe made several ineffectual attempts to persuade Pitkin to take
the colt back again on any terms, and was laughed at for his pains.
"You had your choice, didn't you?" Pitkin would say. "Well, then, you
can't blame anybody but yourself. Whose fault is it that I got the
good colt and you got the crab? No, Gabe, a bargain's a bargain with
me, always. The General's a rotten bad race horse, but he's yours and
not mine. It's what you get for being a poor picker."
The bay colts were nearing the end of their three-year-old form when
the Pitkin string arrived on the Jungle Circuit and took up quarters
next door to Old Man Curry and his "Bible horses." Sergeant Smith was
the star of the stable and the principal money winner, when it suited
Pitkin to let him run for the money, while General Duval, as like his
half brother as a reflection in a flawless mirror, had a string of
defeats to his discredit and his feed bill was breaking old Gabe's
heart. The trainer often looked at General Duval and shook his head.
"You an' that otheh colt could tell me somethin' if yo' could
_talk_," he frequently remarked.
After his conversation with Old Man Curry, Pitkin returned to his
tackle-room in a savage state of mind, and, needing a target for his
abuse, selected Mulligan, the Irish jockey.
Now, Mulligan was small, but he had the heart of a giant and the
courage of one conviction and two acquittals on charges of assault
and battery. In spite of his size--he could ride at ninety-eight
pounds--Mulligan was a man in years, a man who felt that his
employer had treated him like a child in money matters, and when
Pitkin called him a bow-legged little thief and an Irish ape, he was
putting a match to a powder magazine.
One retort led to another, and when Mulligan ran out of retorts he
responded with a piece of 2 by 4 scantling which he had been saving
for just such an emergency, and Pitkin lost interest in the
conversation.
Mulligan left him lying on the floor of the tackle-room, and though
he was in somewhat of a hurry to be gone he found time to say a few
words to old Gabe, who was sunning himself at the end of the barn.
"And I don't know what you can do about it," concluded the jockey,
"but anyway I've put you wise. If they ask you, just say that you
don't know which way I went."
That night Old Man Curry had a visitor who entered his tackle-room,
hat in hand and bowing low.
"Set down, Gabe," said the old horseman. "How's Pitkin by this time?"
"He got a headache," answered Gabe soberly.
"Humph!" snorted Curry. "Should think he would have. That boy fetched
him a pretty solid lick. Glad he didn't hurt him any worse--for the
boy's sake, I mean."
"Yes, suh," said Gabe. "Mist' Curry, you been mighty good to me, one
way'n anotheh, an' I'd like to ast yo' fo' some advice."
"Well," said the old man, "advice is like medicine, Gabe--easy to
give but hard to take. What's troublin' you now?"
"Mist' Curry, yo' 'membeh me tellin' yo' 'bout that Gen'al Duval colt
of mine--how he neveh did look the same to me since I got him?"
"Yes," answered Curry, "an' I've a'ready told you that you can't
prove anything on Pitkin. You may suspect that somebody switched them
colts on you, but unless----"
"'Scuse me, suh," interrupted Gabe, "but I got beyon' suspectin' it
now. I _knows_ it was done."
"You don't say!"
"Yes, suh, I got the proof. Mulligan, he say to me jus' befo' he
lights out, 'Gabe,' he say, 'that Smith colt, he belong to you by
rights. Pitkin, he pulls a switch afteh yo' went to bed that first
night.' He say he seen him do it."
"Mebbe the boy was just tryin' to stir up a little more trouble,"
suggested Old Man Curry.
"Ain't I tol' you he neveh did _look_ the same? Them colts so much
alike they had me guessin'. I done picked the one whut was widest
between the eyes--an' that's the one whut been awinnin' all them
races. That ain't Sergeant Smith at all--that's my Gen'al Duval.
Pitkin, he gives me my pick an' then he switches on me. Question is,
how kin I git him back?"
Old Man Curry combed his whiskers for some time in silence.
"Solomon had a job like this once," said he, "but it was a question
of babies. I reckon his decision wouldn't work out with hosses. Gabe,
you're gittin' to be quite an old man, ain't you?"
"Tollable ole," replied the negro; "yes, suh."
"An' if you got this hoss away from Pitkin, what would you do with
him?"
"Sell him," was the prompt reply.
"Oho! Then it ain't the hoss you want so much as the money, eh?"
"Mist' Curry, that colt'd fetch enough to sen' me home _right_. I got
two sons in Baltimo', an' they been wantin' me to quit the racin'
business, but I couldn't quit it broke. No, suh, I couldn't, so I
jus' been hangin' on tooth an' toenail like the sayin' is, hopin' I'd
git a stake somehow."
"And you don't much care _how_ you quit, so long's you quit; is that
it?"
"Well, suh, I don't want no trouble if I kin he'p it, but if I has to
fight my way loose from Pitkin I'll do it."
There was another long silence while Gabe waited.
"I reckon Solomon would have his hands full straightenin' out this
tangle," said Old Man Curry at last. "You can't break into the stall
an' take that hoss away from Pitkin, because he'd have you arrested.
And then, of course, he's got him registered in his name an' runnin'
in his colours--that's another thing we've got to take into
consideration. I reckon we better set quiet a few days an' study.
You'll know whenever this Sergeant hoss is entered in a race, won't
you?"
"Yes, suh; I'm boun' to know ahead o' time, suh."
"All right. Go on back to work an' don't quarrel with Pitkin. Don't
let him know that you've found out anything, an' keep me posted on
Sergeant Smith. Might be a good thing if we knew when Pitkin is goin'
to bet on him. He's been cheatin' with that hoss lately."
"He's always cheatin', suh. Yo'--yo' think they's a way to--to----"
"There's always a way, Gabe," answered Old Man Curry. "The main thing
is to find it."
"That's my hoss by right," said the negro, with a trace of
stubbornness in his tone.
"An' the world is your oyster," responded Curry, "but you can't go
bustin' into it with dynamite. You got to open an oyster, careful.
Now go on back to your barn and do as I tell you. Understand?"
"Yes, suh, an' thank yo' kin'ly, suh."
Pitkin's bandaged head brought him little sympathy--in fact, the
general opinion seemed to be that Mulligan had not hit him quite hard
enough to do the community any good. Certainly the scantling did not
improve his temper, and Pitkin made life a burden to old Gabe and the
two black stable hands. Gabe swallowed the abuse with a patient
smile, but the two roustabouts muttered to themselves and eyed their
employer with malevolence. They had also been missing pay days.
One evening Pitkin stuck his head out of the door of the tackle-room
and called for his trainer.
"Gabe! Oh, Gabe! Now where is that good-for-nothing old nigger?"
"Comin', suh, comin'," answered Gabe, shuffling along the line of
stalls. "Yo' want to see me, boss?"
"Shut the door behind you," growled Pitkin. "I was thinking it was
about time we cut this Sergeant Smith colt loose."
"Yes, suh," answered Gabe. "He's ready to go, boss."
"How good is he?" demanded Pitkin.
"Well, suh," replied Gabe, "he's a heap better'n whut he's been
showin' lately, that's a fact."
"Can he beat horses like Calloway and Hartshorn?"
"He kin if he gits a chance."
"How do you mean, a chance?"
"Well, suh, if he gits a good, hones' ride, fo' one thing. He been
messed all oveh the race track las' few times out."
"But with a good ride you think he can win?"
"Humph!" sniffed Gabe. "He leave 'em like they standin' still!"