Boy Woodburn Part 20

"Just back," he said.

"So I hears," answered the other. "Been teachin' 'em tricks in Horsetralia, ain't he? Went there by way of G.o.d's Country, same as per usual, huntin' fer black diamonds. What's he brought back this journey?--a pink-eyed broncho from the Prairees bought for ten cents from a Texas cow-puncher, and guaranteed to show the English plugs the way to move."

Joses wagged a s.h.a.ggy head. If to retain a sense of humour is still to possess something of a soul, then the fat man was not entirely lost.

"You love Chukkers, don't you?" he said.

"Don't I love all dagos?" asked Monkey. "Sich a pretty little way with 'em they got. Same as a baa-lamb in the meadow 'mong the b.u.t.tercups."

"Then now I'll tell you something for yourself," said Joses. "He loves all the English--owners, jockeys, and crowd. But he loves _you_ best."

"Never!" cried Monkey, greatly moved. "Then I'm the man what won the Greaser's Heart. It's too much."

A few further inquiries, made by Mat, put the thing beyond question.

Joses was watcher for Jaggers, who trained for Ikey Aaronsohnn, for whom Chukkers rode.

In England, Australia, and the Americas, the three were always spoken of together as the Three J's--Jaggers, the Jockey, and the Jew. Wherever horses raced their fame was great, and amongst the English at least it was evil and ominous.

"Rogues and rasqueals!" Old Mat would say with one of his deep sighs.

"But whatebber should we do without 'em?"

For Putnam's the Three J's had always possessed a particular interest.

Their stable was at Dewhurst, just behind Arunvah, at the other end of the South Downs. And Dewhurst had been for twenty years the centre of that campaign to lower the colours of the English thoroughbred, which Ikey Aaronsohnn had embarked upon in his unforgotten youth.

The little Levantine hailed from New York, Hamburg, and London--especially the first two. A cosmopolitan banker, and genial rascal, he had, even in England, a host of friends, and deserved them. A man of ideals, and extremely tenacious, _objets d'art_ and steeplechase horses had been his twin pa.s.sions from his childhood. He collected both with a judgment amounting to genius. And there were few experts in either kind who were not prepared to acknowledge him their master.

The day when Ikey, then young, sure of himself, and enthusiastic, had been called a "b.l.o.o.d.y little German Jew" in the Paddock at Liverpool by a n.o.ble English sportsman, as he led his first winner home, had been forgotten by others but not by him. And when a year later the little man stood for White's Club, on the strength of winning the International, and was black-balled, the die was cast.

There was no doubt that Ikey had his qualities. Whether he was your friend or your enemy, he never forgot you; and he gave you cause to remember him. His memory was long; his temper not to be ruffled; his humour, in victory and defeat, invincible; his purse unfathomable. He was never known to be angry, impetuous, or bitter. And he never deviated from his aim. That aim, as he once told the New York Yacht Club, in words that were trumpeted across the world, was "to lick the English thoroughbred on his own ground, at his own game, all the time, and every way."

What P. Forilland had done for a previous generation of Americans, when Iroquois s.n.a.t.c.hed the Blue Riband of the Turf from the English and bore it across the Atlantic, Ikey meant to do some day at Liverpool.

"We've wopped 'em once on the flat, and we'll wop 'em yet across country," he once said at Meadow Brook.

It was with this end in view that Chukkers, then a kid-jockey from the West, had crossed the ocean in Ikey's train, and first carried to victory the star-spangled jacket which for the past twenty years had caused such heart-burnings among the English owners, trainers, and jockeys, and such mingled enthusiasm and indignation in the uncertain-tempered English crowd.

In that twenty years Ikey, if he had never yet achieved his end and won the Grand National with an other-than-English horse, had given the Englishmen such a shaking as they had never experienced before.

All over the world, wherever horses were bred, from the Punjab to the Pampas, and from the Tenterfield Ranges to Old Virginia, he had his scouts and his stud-farms. It was said that if a wall-eyed pack mule, carrying quartz in the Nevadas, showed a disposition to gallop and jump he would be in Ikey's stable in a fortnight, and, if he made good, at Dewhurst within six months.

It was, of course, with the Walers that the little Levantine came nearest his desire. He imported them into the old country on a scale never before dreamed of. Some of them proved themselves great horses, the equals of the best the English could bring against them: all were good. And it was only by an act of G.o.d, as the enemy English declared, that Boomerang, the king of them, had failed to win the National and consummate his owner's long-delayed end.

But Ikey, that merry little rogue, the cup of victory dashed from his lips, never for a moment lost heart.

As he truly said,

"If I haven't yet found the horse, I've found the jockey that can beat their best."

And in time he would find the horse, too.

He believed that. So did America.

CHAPTER XVI

The Fat Man

It was notorious that the Three J's (or, to be more exact, Ikey) not only had their scouts out all over the world, seeking what Monkey Brand called "black diamonds," but that they had their eyes everywhere in the Old Country, watching enemy stables. And Joses was the Eye that watched all the stables on the South Downs from Beachy Head to the Rother--and Putnam's most of all.

When tackled further on the subject by Monkey Brand, the tout admitted the fact without demur and even with pride.

"Yes," he swaggered. "I'm a commission agent. A very honourable profession, too."

"Not ha hartist at all?" queried Monkey, chewing his quid.

Joses laughed and spread himself, throwing back his gingery curls.

"I was at Oxford," he said, "and I've all the tastes of a gentleman. Art and poetry are my specialties--when my professional duties allow me time."

The little dark jockey turned in his lips, eyeing the other with bland interest.

"'Ark to him!" he said. "Don't he talk. Learned the patter at Oxford College, I expect." He turned on his lame leg. "Anyway, we know now where we are, Mr. Moses Joses."

After the incident in the Post Office Joses dropped his easel and went about with field-gla.s.ses unashamed. To give him his due, there were few better watchers in the trade. A man of education and great natural ability, he was quite unscrupulous as to how he achieved his end.

As Chukkers said of him:

"He gets there. Never mind how."

Joses indeed was out early and late, and he was horribly alert. n.o.body knew when and where his fat body and brown face might not be turning up.

"Crawls around like a great red slug," said Old Mat; and it was seldom a horse did a big gallop but the fat man was there to see.

The morning Boy went for her first dip he was at the lighthouse on the cliff above the Gap. Whether he had slept there, or risen with the dawn, it was hard to say. The lighthouse marked the highest point in the neighbourhood, and was therefore useful for the watcher's purpose. From there with his gla.s.ses he could sweep The Mare's Back and The Giant's Shoulder and neighbouring ridges on which the horses of the stables in the district galloped.

The Paris Meeting was the next big event; and Ikey Aaronsohnn's horse Jackaroo--the waler Chukkers had just brought back with him from the other side--was to make his first appearance at it. There was only one English horse of which the Dewhurst stable had not the measure, and that was the Putnam mare Make-Way-There. Jaggers, in that curt, sub-acid way of his, had instructed Joses to report on her form, and "to make no mistake about it."

The tout had touched his hat and answered:

"Very good, sir."

Now it was well known that a man had to be up very early in every sense if he wanted to keep an eye on a Putnam horse. Mat Woodburn might be old, but he was by no means sleepy; and Joses could not afford to blunder.