THE TRIAL
HUEY GOSPER talked bravely to himself, but he was well aware that,
however closely he might have gauged the capabilities of The Vengeance,
he had as yet never seen the mare Bertha in proper form, and ridden with
the order, “Go for it.”
This uncertainty might upset all his plans. The truth of the matter he
must know, and know he would.
Then his imagination began to evolve scheme after scheme to accomplish
his object. He knew where the horse was quartered, over at Wigway’s,
near the Pitt Town Common—an old acquaintance of Alec, and well-known to
himself too, for had he not as a boy often gone over there in the season
to pick oranges and play cricket with the young Wigways?
Clearly he could not go himself, or at any rate in his present
personality, poking about the place. They would know him in a minute,
and be on their guard with the mare. Alec would hear of his visit at
once, and smell a rat. But who could he trust? He knew no one fit, and
to be confided in, and then he remembered one of Soft Sam’s sayings—
“A man who takes pals in a job takes witnesses against him. What you
can’t do on your own hook don’t do at all.”
And the possibility of disguising himself occurred to him. Truly, he
knew nothing of that kind of thing, but there were people that did, and
it should not take much skill to deceive the “cockatoos” out at Nelson.
This was the motive that sent Huey to a theatrical costumier, well-known
in the profession, who readily undertook to make such an entire change in
his customer that he would not even recognize himself.
And Huey, as he surveyed the result of this promise in the mirror, was
more than satisfied.
* * * * *
Near an old slab cottage adjacent to the Pitt Town Common, Farmer Wigway
was drawing rails. His movements were deliberate—deliberate as though he
had an assurance that eternity was before him, and he had to put in time.
He was well seconded in this endeavour by his team of bullocks, who
stopped to ruminate on the vanities of life or some cognate reflection at
every step.
Farmer Wigway swore at the oxen in a fatherly way to wake them up
occasionally to mundane affairs, and the procession moved on.
The noise of wheels made by a light trap could be heard coming along the
ridge, and at once Farmer Wigway stopped to listen. Not that he was a
very curious man, but buggies were rare in that part of the Common. None
of the neighbours owned one, and the stopping to speculate as to who it
might be “put in more time,” and so the end of life was served.
The sound of a trotting horse and light running wheels came nearer and
nearer, along the ridge, through the ironbarks, then turned off down the
spur into the box-tree flat that led to Farmer Wigway’s. On it came, and
before Mr. Wigway had had half the necessary time to study the new
development in all its bearings and possibilities, a buggy, driven by a
middle-aged man with bushy whiskers, who had a lad seated by his side,
pulled up before him.
“Is this the track to Catti Creek?”
“That depends,” answered Wigway, after giving the matter due
consideration, “what part of the Creek you want.”
“I’m trying to hunt up some forfeited selections out that way. They tell
me at the Lands Office there are several of them.”
“So there are, and much good may they do you! The country is very rough.
I should leave that trap behind if I was you, and if you like, one of my
boys shall go and show you the way.”
The stranger seemed to fall in with this proposal readily, for, leaving
the lad and trap at the house, he soon set off under the guidance of
young Mick Wigway. But, strange to say, though they had a map of the
parish, and Mick knew every nook and corner of it, it was sundown before
they got back, and the gentleman with the bushy whiskers had not seen
half what he wanted to see.
He found no difficulty in arranging to stop the night, and that evening
was given up to ’possum shooting, in which the stranger professed an
almost childish delight.
“It appears to me,” said Farmer Wigway, as they trudged under the moonlit
gum trees, “that I have seen you before, Mr. —?”
“Amos Clark;” interrupted the stranger.
“Well, Mr. Clark, somehow your face and voice are kind of familiar, yet I
swear I never heard that name before. Yet, come to think of it, it takes
heaps of people to make a world, and there’s lots of them must be like
lots of others. Now, there’s that old cow of mine; old Jack Higgins, of
Box Hill, has got the very spit of her, and if it wasn’t for the brand
I’d swear the two beasts were the same animal!”
Mr. Amos Clark was up early the next morning, and seemed in no pressing
hurry to start off on his land quest. Besides, Mick was not ready. He
had to exercise a mare carefully locked up in a loose-box near the stable
before he could start.
The old man and the bigger boys had gone off to work, so Mr. Clark and
his young companion were alone in the yard with Mick while he saddled up.
Nothing was more natural than that Mr. Clark should fall to criticizing
the animal, and approach to pat it. But he was quickly warned by Mick to
stand clear.
“She’s got the brute of a temper with strangers,” he said; “kicks all
round. Father and I are the only ones in the place that dare come near
her.”
“What’s the good of her, then? What do you keep her for—a vicious brute
like that?”
“Oh, she’s not ours. A sporting cove down in Sydney owns her—Alec Booth,
perhaps you’ve heard of him? He thinks a lot of her, and she can travel,
my word!”
“Travel!” said Mr. Clark, with apparent contempt. “Travel! Why, my
buggy horse would give her a length and a beating any day.”
“What will you bet?” cried young Mick, thoughtlessly.
“I’ll bet you a crown!” said Mr. Clark, who had carefully considered that
that amount would be about the limit of the lad’s purse.
“Done!” cried Mick, forgetting, in the eagerness of sport and possible
gain, the injunction of his father to secrecy, and, above all, as to
over-riding the mare.
Quietly, and with dispatch, a fresh saddle was brought out, strapped on
the black horse, and the lad who accompanied Mr. Clark put in the saddle.
The two lads were so nearly of a weight that only a lucky chance or
careful foresight could have paired them so equally.
The slip-rails were lowered, and at an easy pace the two riders, with Mr.
Clark at their side, took their way to an open stretch of common ground.
Arrived there, Mick was for a race of once round the imaginary course.
He feared now, even with that, he should sweat the mare and get into
trouble. But the stranger insisted with scornful banter on three times
round, which a critical observer might have noted would be as near as
possible the distance of the Sydney Cup course.
But Mick knew nothing of this. He was easily over-persuaded. The chance
of making a crown did not come every day, and he was sure of the race, so
the horses stood in line. Mr. Clark was to be starter and judge, and an
old dead stringy-bark the winning-post.
At the word Go, they went off to a level start, the black horse making
the running. Clearly this was to be no cantering match, with a sprint at
the finish. To the surprise of Mick, he had to send the mare along at a
fast gallop to keep within a length of the black horse.
Once round, both horses sweating, the riders sitting quietly at their
work, the black horse led by half a length; but Mr. Clark saw that the
mare was only stopped from rushing to the front by the tight rein of
young Mick, who evidently knew something of his business, and was not
going to burst his mount thus early.
Twice round, the same order.
The third round was entered on; the pace, fast enough already, warmed up
half-way home, and the lad on the black horse, as though following
instructions, began to draw the whip, and his mount shot to the front
like a bullet from a gun, leaving for a moment the mare by herself, but
it was only for a moment. Mick gave her her head, and she came away like
a bird. No whip for her! Mick knew full well that the only rider that
had ever tried her with it had had his collar-bone broken.
The mare closed up rapidly. At the distance they were side by side
again, the whip on the black horse going like a flail.
It was a touch-and-go, both horses were all out, there did not seem to be
a pin to choose between them; and if the mare won by half a length, it
might have been noted by a critical looker-on that the rider of the black
horse had ceased work just as the post was neared.
Mick was proud of his victory, but overwhelmed with apprehension at the
distressed and sweaty condition of the mare.
“I shall catch it if the old man sees her again to-day!” he exclaimed, as
he pocketed his two half-crowns.
“You had best groom her down, and walk her about quietly,” said Amos
Clark. “She’ll be as right as rain in an hour or two.”
Mr. Clark suddenly remembered that he had an engagement in Sydney that
evening that must be kept, so that really he should not have time that
day to go land-hunting and catch the down train. So retiring to the
house he hastily took his leave of Mrs. Wigway and Mick, and jumping in
the sulky, was quickly lost to sight on the track through the box flat.
* * * * *
Mr. Clark, as he drove quietly towards Richmond and the stable of his own
horse, had much matter for reflection, so that he hardly said a word to
his young companion all the way.
Clearly they were a match-pair for speed as nearly as one could choose.
The mare was not in full training, it was true; neither was the black
horse, and it was a fair inference that what would improve one would
improve the other. His lad said he might have won by a head, and he
believed he might, but what was that to stake fortune and the only girl
in the world on? He might win, of course, always provided they had the
same weight; and then, again, a mare was likely to get a better show with
the handicapper. Still, he might win.
But then again he might lose; there was no kind of certainty. And he
quite agreed with Soft Sam, that it was only mugs that trusted to chance
at racing.
No, a chance it should not be. He swore to himself that by hook or by
crook, when the great event arrived, the danger of The Vengeance being
beaten should not come from the mare Bertha. But how to prevent it?
A dark thought crossed his mind, and not only crossed, but stopped and
dwelt there till it had assumed a definite form and shape, and with an
inward putting away of all the remonstrance of his better feeling, he
resolved—
“I will do it; all’s fair with a scoundrel like him.”