_It Paid $2,000 to $2, and Looked Like a Winner Until the Last Jump,
But----_
There was a period of prolonged, nerve-racking excitement one afternoon
last week in a demure and retiring Harlem poolroom that doesn't draw any
color line. A colored sport was threatening to tear the place loose from
its foundations and to fire a volley over the ruins--in a purely
figurative sense, that is to say. Literally he didn't commit any breach
of the peace at all. But he had a combination ticket in his clothes for
a couple of hours that practically made all the rest of the people in
the place forget what they were there for. He was as black as that
overworked one-spot of spades. He was known to his envied intimates only
as Mose, and the very large checked suit of plaid that he wore had a
certain cake-walk suggestiveness, as did his huge red necktie, his
patent leathers with blue polka-dotted uppers, and his three large
yellow diamonds, two of them on his fingers and the other screwed in the
middle of his shirt bosom with crimson horizontal bars. He was a "spote"
all right.
He entered the poolroom alone, looked up at the board, and then dug a
bit of paper, obviously a telegram, out of his Oxford cloth Newmarket
overcoat. A man who was rude enough to look over his shoulders saw that
the telegram was a night message and that it bore the New Orleans date.
It contained the names of five horses, with the initials of the sender.
"He's a po'tuh on uh Pullman," vouchsafed the sport to the privileged
character who had looked over his shoulder at the despatch. "An' he's uh
babe, yo' heah me! He knows 'em lak he knows uh blackin' brush. Ah's uh
gwine tuh mek uh combinashun on de hull five. De ticket 'll win in uh
walk."
After sizing up the house betting on the New Orleans races for a few
minutes, he walked up to the counter where the combination tickets
exuded from the lightning calculator. Just at that moment there was
nothing doing at the combination counter. The sport produced his
telegram, cleared his throat, and began.
"Ah's got de hull five babies," he said with a grin to the ticket
writer. "An' ah's uh gwine tuh tek 'em all tuh win. Doan' want none o'
'em fo' place or show. Dey's all got tuh come in all alone."
"Shoot 'em out," said the ticket writer.
The sport named the five horses that he knew were going to win the New
Orleans races. They were, in the order of the races, Mint Sauce, Russell
R., Deyo, Benneville and Donna Rita.
The ticket writer executed his bit of lightning head work, with frequent
glances at the board to get the prices on the runners, and then he
looked up at the sport with a grin.
"Huntin' for a hog killin', ain't you?" he asked. "Goin' to put us out
o' business? It figures a thousand to one. How much do you want on it?"
"Two dolluhs," replied the sport and he passed up the money. The ticket
writer pencilled the names of the horses down on the ticket, placed the
figures "$2,000 to $2" at the bottom of it, and handed the bit of
pasteboard to the sport with the remark:
"You're a good thing. Come again."
"Yo' all kin do yo' hollern' w'en de hosses run," was the sport's
good-natured reply, and then he went to the extreme outer row of seats
in the pool room and sat down to wait for $2,000 to accrue to him on an
investment of $2.
Along toward 3 o'clock the betting came in on the first race at New
Orleans. The horse Mint Sauce that the sport had in his combination
ticket was the odds-on favorite, although he had been at a good price in
the house betting. The queer crowd of players surged up to the counters
to put their money down on things they liked, that figured all right in
the dope books; but the sport kept his seat. His speculation for the day
was over. He was simply waiting for his $2 to grow to $2,002.
Then they were off at New Orleans, as the telegrapher announced with a
bored air, electrifying the crowd into silence. It was a six-furlong
race, and there was nothing to it but Mint Sauce all the way. At the
three-quarters, when the telegrapher announced that Mint Sauce was third
and just galloping, the sport leaned back in his seat with an
it's-all-over expression, snapped his fingers a couple of times for
luck, and said:
"It's uh cake-walk fo' dat baby. Ah'm on right so far."
"Mint Sauce wins by two lengths," announced the operator, and the
announcement was received with silence. Poolroom crowds don't play
favorites as a rule.
"Mah nex' is this heah Russell R.," said the sport, gazing at his ticket
again, "an' Russell R. he's dun got tuh win. Ah feels uh leetle
squeenchy uhbout he all, but Russell R. he'll buck-jump in."
The betting came in on the race a few moments later, and Russell R. was
at a long price. Several horses in the race were at much shorter prices.
The sport didn't look worried a little bit over this.
"Russell R. he's dun got tuh win," he said, and that was all there was
about it.
"Off at New Orleans," announced the weary looking operator again, and
then he began to call off the way the race was being run. It looked bad
for the sport's ticket until the telegrapher had carried the nags along
to the three-quarter post and then Russell R., who hadn't been anywhere,
got his first call, joining the bunch as third at that stage of the
journey.
"Sadie Burnham in the stretch by a length!" announced the telegrapher.
"Lomond second by a length, Russell R. third," and then the sport began
to root for his horse. He swayed back and forth in his wicker rocking
chair, moaning, "Come, yo' Russell hoss! Yo' heah me uh-talkin',
hoss--come, yo' Russell--or yo' doan' git no oats--ketch him, yo' baby,
an' yo' pa'll treat yo' right"----
"Russell R. wins, by a head!" announced the telegrapher.
"Oh, yo' wahm thing, yo' Russell!" suppressedly exclaimed the sport, his
finger-snapping suddenly stopping and an upturned crescent grin
spreading over the whole area of his chocolate countenance.
It seemed that some of the less important sports must have been "riding"
Russell R. too, for their exultant "Uh-huhs!" rang around the room. The
colored sport dearly loves a long shot.
"De nex' on mah piece o' pas'e-boa'd," said the sport, ransacking
through his pockets again for his ticket, "is dain'jus. Ah doan' lak dis
heah hoss Deyo, but Ah ain't uh-playin' whut Ah laks, but whut's dun
sent tuh me. So Deyo she's dun got tuh win, too."
It was after 4 o'clock by this time, and the poolroom was filling up
with young fellows turned loose from the down-town offices. Many of
these late arrivals had straight tips in the form of telegrams on the
third race at New Orleans and they almost overwhelmed the ticket
writers. When the betting came in on that race Deyo was at a long price,
much longer than the house betting had quoted the nag, and the sport
looked a bit anxious over this. His worried look disappeared, however,
when the second line of betting came in, showing that Deyo was being
backed down some on the New Orleans track.
"Dey's sumthin' uh-doin' on that mule," he said, and the telegrapher
began to call off the race. It was something easy for Deyo, who beat the
favorite by three lengths. The sport didn't have to snap his fingers or
sway in his chair at all. Deyo was in front all the way. Three-fifths of
the $2,000 to $2 ticket was won.
By this time the sport was the cynosure of a good many pairs of eyes.
The possibilities of the ticket he had in his pocket were whispered
about, and a number of the real things in the sport line edged over and
asked to have a look at the ticket.
"It's a alimpey-boolera," they said, and they rubbed the back of it for
luck. Then a lot of them went up to the combination desk and got
combination tickets for the remaining two horses that appeared on the
colored sport's ticket. By the time the betting came in on the fourth
race it was known all over the room that the sport had a $2,000 to $2
ticket with three of the horses already over the plate. The sport
enjoyed it all with becoming modesty.
"Dis heah hoss, Benneville, will now step out an' run seben fuhlongs fo'
me," he said, referring to his ticket again. "Ah doan' know mahse'f jes'
how good dis heah Benneville is jes' now, but dis is his day tuh win by
uh block."
Benneville came in an odds-on favorite, and won by three open lengths.
The sport again was relieved of the necessity of rooting.
"Ah'n dun rode dat one mahse'f," he said grinning, and he found himself
in the middle of a crowd of sports of his own color.
"Look uh-heah, nigguh, doan' yo' all remembuh me?" a lot of them
inquired of him as they crowded around him.
"Remembuh nothin'," said he impartially. "Ah doan' mek it mah bizness
tuh remembuh nobody."
"Hey, what does your ticket call for in the next?" was a question that
fifty men threw at him as he sat in state in his wicker rocker.
"De nex' skate on de list," he replied, spelling out the letters on his
ticket, which was being rubbed a good deal for luck by all hands within
rubbing distance, "is de maiuh Donna Rita. Ah wouldn't give $2 fo' Donna
Rita mahse'f, de way she's bin un-runnin', but Donna Rita's dun got tuh
walk in all by huhse'f dis time," whereupon he returned the ticket to
his pocket as if it already represented $2,002.
The sport had got down Donna Rita into his combination at a long price
in the house betting. When the first line of betting came in from New
Orleans, however, Donna Rita was seen to be the favorite for the race,
with a big field to beat.
"Donna Rita's lak gettin' money in uh lettuh," said the sport, and every
man in the room that heard these words of wisdom from the lips of the
man with the magical combination ticket in his pocket, played Donna Rita
to win. So here was the sport, enthroned like any monarch of Dahomey,
with the crowd surging around him. One of the white sports, waving a
roll as big as his fist, elbowed his way through the crowd surrounding
the colored sport and flatly offered him $500 for his ticket, after
looking at it and seeing that Donna Rita, much the best horse in the
next race, had her name inscribed there. It was a temptation, but the
sport was game, and stood pat.
"Dis heah ticket ain't fo' sale," he said. "De two thousan's good enough
fo' this coon."
Another man offered him $800 for his $2 ticket. The offer was declined.
There wasn't a man in the crowd that wasn't rooting for the sport's
ticket to wind up all right, and to make their rooting more effective
they played Donna Rita to win the last race almost to a man. The less
important sports were keeping close to their brother in hue. They wanted
to be in at the finish--perhaps to help the sport to celebrate. At post
time there was hardly a man at the betting counters. They were all
hovering near the sport for luck.
"Off at New Orleans!" shouted the telegrapher, who knew about the
sport's ticket by this time, and there was a note of unusual excitement
in his voice as he called off the race. "Donna Rita in the lead!"
"Oh, yo' babe, Donna!" shouted all the "spotes" in unison, and "stay
right theah, yo' nigguh!" shouted the one particular sport.
"Donna Rita at the quarter by five lengths!" called out the telegrapher,
and the poolroom might have been taken for an Emancipation Day festival.
"Donna Rita at the half by five lengths!"
"Ef yo' lubs yo' man, come uhlong!" moaned the sport in ecstasy.
"Donna Rita at the three-quarters by three lengths, Kisme second, Virgie
O. third," droaned the operator. "Donna Rita in the stretch by a head!"
The sport rocked to and fro and groaned.
"Virgie O. wins by a nose!" announced the telegrapher.
That settled the combination. The sport's followers fell away from him
like autumn leaves from wind-tortured trees.
"They ain't nothin' in this horse-racin' game, is they?" the frequenters
of the poolroom said to one another as they slouched out, and the
grating tones of the cashiers counting bills soon echoed through the
deserted room.
"RED" DONNELLY'S STREAK OF LUCK.
_He "Runs a Shoestring into a Tannery," and Then Gets the Cold Shoulder
from the Lady Fortune._
A party of turfmen in Washington for the Benning meeting were talking
the other evening of the remarkable streak of luck which has enabled
Billy Barrick to run a borrowed shoestring of $200 up to an amount which
is now said to approximate $100,000 in the last six weeks.
"Barrick's double-ended luck, both at faro bank and horses," said one of
the bookmakers in the party, "is a whole lot out of the common. Luck is
a full-bred sort of an affair, and it does not often run along hybrid
lines. What I mean to say is that the man who has a huge run of luck at
one game almost invariably falls into the doldrums and goes all to
pieces when he switches to another game. The luckiest men I ever knew on
the turf, for example, were the unluckiest card players, and most of
them stubbornly spent a good many thousands of their pony winnings
before they found this out. Barrick seems to be an exception. He has got
into the current, and he could probably get away with the money at
fan-tan or Cingalese pool while he's in his present shape. I'm a bit
afraid of him just now myself, and when I see his commissioners bearing
down on my book I'm sorely tempted to rub the whole slate until I get a
chance to rubberneck and find out what they're after. If I were dealing
faro bank, so weird has his luck at tiger-bucking been lately, too, that
I believe I'd make it a thirty-cent limit when I saw him coming. But
he's an exception, as I say. It's the man who sticks to the one game
that drives the swaggerest dog-cart and wears the whitest gig-lamps in
the long run.
"I remember a chap out in St. Louis who ran a shoestring of five cents
up to pretty close to six figures in the summer of 1895. He bucked more
games in doing it, too, than Barrick has thus far, but he couldn't go a
route, and they ate him up when the whisky got into his head in such
quantities that he saw treble without having a focus on anything. His
name was Red Donnelly, and he had charge of the bookmakers'
paraphernalia in the betting ring of the St. Louis fair grounds when the
Lady Fortune beamed upon that nickel of his and invited him to bask for
a time in her domain. He was a loose-jointed spraddle-shaped sort of a
young chap of 25 or so who had been hanging around the St. Louis tracks
from his early boyhood. He learned so much about the horses that he
could never win anything on them when he played in the ten-cent books
made by the railbirds. He handicapped them down to the sixteenth of a
pound, and the horse that he put his dime on consequently got beaten, as
a rule, by a tongue. He had been holding down the job of a dog-robber
for the bookmakers for two seasons before he struck his lead on that
nickel. He came out to the track one day, early in June, 1895, with the
solitary nickel reposing in the depths of his trousers' pockets, salted
there to pay his fare back to the city. He got to pulling the five-cent
piece out of his clothes and looking at it longingly by the time the
first race was due. He wanted to get down on a race, but there were no
five-cent books. The bottom sum accepted by the railbird books was a
dime. Red strolled out to the barns and got to pitching nickels with a
pack of idle stable boys. The luck was with him from the jump, and when
he accumulated a dollar in nickels he exhibited symptoms of a man
suffering from chilblains. His reason for getting cold feet was that he
had a good thing in the fourth race, and by the time he had acquired the
dollar the betting had begun on the fourth race.
"Red hurtled himself into the ring with his dollar and saw that the
price offered against his good thing, the old nag Hush, was 60 to 1.
Donnelly needed a bundle of cigarettes and a few drinks pretty badly,
but he was game when it came to sticking to his good things, and he
slapped his twenty nickels down on Hush with a bookmaker he knew. He
took good-naturedly the mocking hoot which the booky gave him for
handing in twenty pieces of that kind of metal, and catapulted himself
out to the rail just as the horses went away from the post. The race was
really something silly for Hush, in the unwieldy field of nineteen
horses. Hush led all the way, and pranced under the wire first in a big
gallop, pulled double. The boy had Hush up in his lap all the way.
"Red had some difficulty in collecting his $61. The bookmaker knew him
well, knew of his taste for rum, and knew also that few of Red's rare
dollars ever found their way to the humble shack of the man's infirm old
Irish mother.
"'I believe I'll just pinch this out on you, Red,' said the booky to
him, 'and pass it along to the old lady when I go in to-night. It won't
do you any good.'
"'Come to taw,' replied Red. 'I want to put thirty or forty cents down
on the next race. I got another good thing in it.'
"The bookmaker reluctantly passed Donnelly the $61. Red carefully folded
the dollar bill and tucked it into his waistcoat pocket. Then he
invested the $60, in $10 clips, with six books, on Dorah Wood, in the
next race, at 15 to 1. It was a canter for Dorah Wood, and Red knocked
the bookmakers silly--they all knew him well from his working around the
place--by socking it to six of them for $150 each. A committee of safety
was immediately formed around Donnelly, but he couldn't be held down. He
tossed a quart of wine under his waist-line, purchased a package of
cigarettes made in Turkey for forty cents, and looked over his dope-book
carefully. Then he strolled into the ring and bet $900 on Minnie Cee in
the last race. Minnie Cee was at 3 to 1, and it was something ridiculous
for her. She won on the bit, and Red was $3,660 to the good on that
nickel that he had salted away in his homespuns for the return trip to
town.
"When Red turned up to collect, Barney Schreiber--he's a big-hearted
Barney--had him, as it were, by the scruff of the neck. Barney announced
to all of us that he was going to collect for Donnelly, and what Barney
said went with us, for we all knew Red's propensities. Donnelly put up a
weak growl, but he knew 'way down deep in him that Schreiber could and
would take care of the cash better than he could or would. Barney
pinched $3,500 of the wad, inserted it in a separate compartment of his
wallet, and handed Red $150.
"'I'll just let you have a little change, Red, said he, 'and if you
think you can run that up into a tan-yard, go ahead. But I'm a-going to
handle this for you the right way. You're not tied enough in your ways
to have such a vast sum on your person all at one and the same time.'
"Donnelly didn't demur much. The $150 was a huge sum itself for him, and
he, of course, knew that Schreiber would do the right thing with the
main bunch. As a matter of fact, Barney deposited the $3500 the next day
to the credit of Donnelly's old mother, and Schreiber and the old woman
were the only people who knew anything about that end of it for a long
time afterward.
"We all gibed and roasted Red about the delirium-tremens finish we
foresaw for him, and when he didn't turn up at the track at all on the
following day, necessitating the turning of his dog-robbing work over to
another man, there was a lot of talk about the tremendous barrel-house
toot Red must have gone on down the levee way. That's where we were
camping out. When we picked up the papers on turning out the following
morning we found a scare-head story in one of them relating in great
detail and elaborate diction how one Mr. John S. Donnelly, a gentleman
well known on the Western turf, had swatted Ed McGuckin's faro bank,
over in East St. Louis, to the tune of $16,000, playing steadily without
meals from 7 o'clock on the evening of Monday until 11 o'clock on
Wednesday night, when Ed turned the box on him and announced that it was
all off for the present. We all shouted 'fake!' when we saw that, but a
couple of us hopped into a cab and crossed over to McGuckin's place to
see if there was anything in the yarn. Well, there was everything in it.
We found Ed holding his fevered brow and mumbling deep, dark things
about damned vagabonds slipping into his layout and running shoe tongues
up into leather factories. We expressed our sympathies with Ed, for
which we came perilously near being kicked, and then we went back to St.
Louis to hunt up Red. We went over the barrel-house route with a
fine-tooth comb, but no Donnelly. Then we decided to drive out to his
mother's little old shack. Our route from the levee out there took us
through the down-town district, and we both saw Red on the street at
once. We drew up alongside the curb, and called him. He was cold sober,
and he had $16,210 in bills in his inside waistcoat pocket. We asked him
where he was going, and he nodded in the direction of the swellest
tailoring establishment in St. Louis. We went along with him, and it was
one lovely sight to observe the fabrics Red picked out wherewith to
ornament his long, lithe person. He ordered a dozen suits, and then we
went with him to the haberdasher's. He was all for green and yellow
neckties, pink-striped shirts, and that sort, and we let him have his
way. Then he became sleepy. We threw it into him pretty hard about that
big bundle of money he had on him, and he finally consented to come
along to a bank with us and deposit $14,000 of it in his name. We tried
to hold out for having it put in his mother's name, but he wouldn't
stand for that. After leaving the bank Red's eagle eye caught sight of
the shiny things in a jeweler's window, and he decided then and there
that he couldn't go to sleep without having the third finger of his left
hand made conspicuous by a three-karat blue-white stone, for which he
coughed $500. That left him with about $1500 in his clothes, and we
dragged him then into the cab and drove out to his mother's little old
shanty. The old lady had her little talk with Barney Schreiber about the
$3500 by that time, and the to-do she made over her 'bye Johnnie' was
worth the ride to see. When we told her about the other bunch that Red
had copped and that we had plunked it into the bank for him, the
quantities of corned beef and cabbage which she threw into the pot for
the dinner which she wanted us to remain to share with her and her
phenomenal son were amazing.
"Well, Donnelly astonished us all for a couple of weeks by his
extraordinary conduct. He would ride out to the track in a hack, with a
gilt-stamped cigarette in his face, attend to his job as usual around
the betting-ring--that is, he'd supervise, for he quickly accumulated a
staff of worshiping touts and hangers-on--and then he'd go up into the
grand-stand to exhibit his cake-walk clothes and look at the races. He
didn't put a bet down on a horse for two weeks. He remained pretty sober
all the time, too. We joshed him about the frigid pedals he had suddenly
got, but he only passed along with the remark: 'I'm letting 'em run for
O'Flaherty. Nothin' doin'.'
"We waited for the crash, but it didn't seem to come on schedule time.
One afternoon he called me aside and showed me his bank-book. It showed
an additional deposit of $5000, making the total $19,000.
"'When did you pick up that new roll?' I asked him.
"'Went up against the wheel at Terhune's last night, and yanked it out
in three hours,' he said.
"'When did you learn to play roulette?' I asked him.
"'Last night,' he replied.
"Along toward the end of June Donnelly turned up at the track one
afternoon with a light in his eye. He went out into the paddock and
spent three-quarters of an hour looking at a horse and by that time the
third race was due. Red came into the ring and spread $1000 around on
Madeira at 10 to 1. It was a maiden two-year-old race, but Madeira
romped in two lengths to the good. That night Red, still moderately
sober and level-headed, had $29,000 to his credit in the bank. We began
to figure with a new brand of dope on Donnelly's game and to consider
the possibility of his becoming a real fixture. A lot of owners with bum
skates tried to work them off on Donnelly at big prices, but he only
passed them the cold-storage smirk. This gave us an additional line of
thinks with regard to what we thought was his increasing shrewdness.
Besides, you see, Red began to be right good to us. He told us all very
soberly one afternoon that he had a good thing, but that he didn't want
to hurt his own ring, so he'd send his money to the out-of-town
poolrooms. The good thing was David, who won the last race in a walk at
15 to 1, and Red cleaned up $15,000 on that.
"Right at this point, Schreiber and some other people got at Donnelly
and tried to induce him to either invest a part of his money--he had
almost $50,000 then--in a string of useful horses, to be put into the
hands of a competent trainer--or to have the whole bundle properly
invested in some sort of annuity, tie-up scheme whereby, when Red's
streak of luck fizzled out, he wouldn't have to go back to buying
cigarettes by the cent's worth. The man was too bull-headed, though, to
listen to anything like this. He did, however, buy his old mother a fine
house and install her in it, and the old lady had stiff black silk
dresses and poppy-ornamented bonnets galore in which to go to mass.
"Meanwhile Red was going up against all kinds of games around town every
night, and it honestly appeared as if he couldn't lose. Craps, stud
poker, draw, wheel, red and black, mustang, bank--all seemed to be right
in Donnelly's mitt. A lot of us used to turn up where he was bucking
things every night, and, following his play, we always got the good end
of it. He didn't know much about any of the games, and the idiotic
things we had often to do in order to consistently follow his play made
us gag, but nine times out of ten them came out right. One man in our
party, a bookmaker, who determined to copper all of Red's play at the
different games, on the theory that Donnelly's luck had to turn some
time or another, almost went broke before he came into the fold and quit
coppering.
"All of this time Donnelly had simply been nibbling at the red stuff. By
the time his great luck was a month old, however, the booze had nailed
him, and he got to throwing in the hooters early in the morning. A man
can't drink in the morning and hang on either to luck or judgment. Red
came into the ring palpably drunk one afternoon and spread around
$20,000 on Strathmeath at even money. None of us wanted to take the
money, for if ever there was a rank in-and-outer, that horse was
Strathmeath. But Red was insistent and a bit ugly, and we accommodated
him. Strathmeath ran third, beaten out by two dogs. That night Donnelly
dropped $20,000 more at faro. Then he didn't go to bed for five nights,
and at the end of that time he had about $6000 left. I never saw luck
drop away from a man like it did from Red Donnelly. For instance, he was
whacking at a bank one night, stupefied with hooters of half rye and
half absinthe, and he shut one eye so he wouldn't see double and fixed
it on the nine spot. He played the nine open for $100 a clip, and lost
it twelve straight times. The frowns of the Lady Fortune got his nerve,
and he began to play favorites at the track. The favorites went down to
inglorious defeat, one after another, for days.
"Some of the right kind of people, including Schreiber, got hold of Red
when he had only the $6000 left, landed him in a fix-up ward, and
sobered him up. When he came out Donnelly was set up with an interest in
an express business. I don't believe he ever saw the inside of the
express office more than half dozen times, except to draw what was
coming to him. He was at the track all the time the races lasted, and
when the season closed he put in his time down on the levee. He never
had a day's luck after his big streak up to the last hour of his death,
somewhat less than a year after they came his way with a whoop and a
rush.
"When the goddess smiles upon you, you want to stroke her hair, chuck
her under the chin and be good to her, for she rarely acts amiable twice
to a man who treats her favors wantonly."