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Read Ebook: Thoroughbreds by Fraser William Alexander
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Ebook has 2657 lines and 109405 words, and 54 pages
John Porter, walking up the steps of the Grand Stand, heard some one call him by name. Turning his head, he saw it was James Danby, an owner, sitting in his private box. Porter turned into the box, and taking the chair the other pushed toward him, sat down.
"What about Lucretia?" asked Danby, with the air of an established friendship which permitted the asking of such questions.
"She's ready to the minute," replied Porter.
"Can she get the five furlongs?" queried Danby. "She's by Assassin, and some of them were quitters."
"She'll quit if she falls dead," replied the other man, quietly. "I've worked her good enough to win, and I'm backing her."
"That'll do for me," declared Danby. "To tell you the truth, John, I like the little mare myself; but I hear that Langdon, who trained Lauzanne, expects to win."
"The mare'll be there, or thereabouts," asserted her owner; "I never knew a Lazzarone yet much good as a two-year-old. They're sulky brutes, like the old horse; and if Lucretia's beat, it won't be Lauzanne that'll turn the trick."
The bell clanged imperiously at the Judges' Stand. Porter pulled out his watch and looked at it.
"That's saddling," he remarked, laconically; "I must go and have a bit on the mare, and then take a look at her before she goes out."
As Porter went down the steps his companion leaned over the rail and crooked his fingers at a thin-faced man with a blond mustache who had been keeping a corner of his eye on the box.
"What are they making favorite, Lewis?" queried Danby, as the thin-faced man stood beside him.
"Lucretia."
"What's her price?"
"Two to one."
"What's second favorite?"
"Lauzanne--five to two."
"Porter tells me Lucretia is good business," said Danby, in a tentative tone.
"Langdon thinks it's all over bar the shouting; he says Lauzanne outclasses his field," retorted Lewis.
"Langdon's a betting man; Porter's an owner, and a good judge," objected Danby; "and he's got a good boy up, too, McKay," he added, slowly focusing his field glasses on the jockey board opposite the Stand.
"Crooked as a dog's hind legs," snarled Lewis, biting viciously at his cigar.
"Bob, it's damned hard to find a straight-legged dog," laughed Danby. "And when John Porter starts a horse, there's never anything doing. Here's six hundred; put' it on the mare--straight."
As Lewis pushed his way into the shoving, seething, elbowing crowd in the betting ring, he was suddenly struck in the chest by something which apparently had the momentum of an eight-inch shell; but it was only John Porter, who, in breaking through the outer crust of the living mass, had been ejected with more speed than was of his own volition.
Bob smothered the expletive that had risen to his lip when he saw who the unwitting offender was, and asked, "What are they doin' to the mare in the ring?"
"Not much," answered his assailant, catching his breath; "there's a strong play on Langdon's horse, and if I didn't know my boy pretty well, and Lucretia better, I'd have weakened a bit. But she can't lose, she can't lose!" he repeated in the tone of a man who is reassuring himself.
Lewis battled his way along till he stood in front of a bookmaker with a face cast very much on the lines of a Rubens' cherub; but the cherub-type ended abruptly with the plump frontispiece of "Jakey" Faust, the bookmaker. Lewis knew that. "If there's anythin' doin', I'm up against it here," he muttered to himself. "What's Lauzanne's price?" he asked, in an indifferent voice, for the bookmaker's assistant was busy changing the figures on his list.
Faust pretended not to hear him.
"Sure thing!" whispered Lewis to himself. Then aloud he repeated the question, touching the bookmaker on the elbow.
The Cherub smiled blandly. "Not takin' any," he answered, nodding his head in the pleasant manner of a man who knows when he's got a good thing.
"What's Lucretia?" persisted Lewis.
"Oh! that's it, is it? I'll lay you two to one."
The questioner edged away, shaking his head solemnly.
"Here! five to two--how much--" but Lewis was gone.
He burrowed like a mole most industriously, regardless of people's toes, their ribs, their dark looks, and even angry expressions of strong disapproval, and when he gained the green sward of the lawn, hurried to his friend's box.
"Did you get it on?" queried the latter.
"No; I don't like the look of it. Faust is holding out Lauzanne, and stretched me half a point about the mare. He and Langdon are in the same boat."
"But that won't win the race," remonstrated Danby. "Lauzanne is a maiden, and Porter doesn't often make a mistake about any of his own stock."
"I thought I'd come back and tell you," said Bob Lewis, apologetically.
"And you did right; but if the mare wins, and I'm not on, after getting it straight from Porter, I'd want to go out and kick myself good and hard. But put it on straight and place; then if Lauzanne's the goods we'll save."
Lewis was gone about four minutes.
"You're on," he said, when he returned; "I've two hundred on the Chestnut for myself."
"Lauzanne?"
"It's booked that way; but I'm backin' the Trainer, Langdon. I went on my uppers two years ago backing horses; I'm following men now."
"Bad business," objected his stout friend; "it's bad business to back anything that talks."
When John Porter reached the saddling paddock, his brown mare, Lucretia, was being led around in a circle in the lower corner. As he walked down toward her his trainer, Andy Dixon, came forward a few paces to meet him.
"Are they hammerin' Crane's horse in the ring, sir?" he asked, smoothing down the grass with the toe of one foot, watching this physical process with extreme interest.
"Just what you'd notice," replied Porter. "Why?"
"Well, I don't like the look of it a little bit. Here's this Lauzanne runs like a dog the last time out--last by the length of a street--and now I've got it pretty straight they're out for the stuff."
"They'd a stable-boy up on him that time."
"That's just it," cried Dixon. "Grant comes to me that day--you know Grant, he works the commission for Dick Langdon--and tells me to leave the horse alone; and to-day he comes and--" he hesitated.
"And what?"
"Tells me to go light on our mare."
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