Thoroughbreds Part 13

"Running second is always bad business, except in a selling race,"

retorted his master.

"I've got to think of myself," growled Langdon. "If he'd been beat off, there'd been trouble; the Stewards have got the other race in their crop a bit yet."

"I'm not blaming you, Langdon, only I was just a trifle afraid that you were going to beat Porter's mare. He's a friend of mine, and needed a win badly. I'm not exactly his father confessor, but I'm his banker, which amounts to pretty much the same thing."

"What about the horse, sir," asked the Trainer.

"We'll see later on. Let him go easy for the present."

"I wonder what he meant by that," Langdon mused to himself, as Crane moved away. "He don't make n.o.body a present of a race for love."

Suddenly he stumbled upon a solution of the enigma. "Well, I'm d.a.m.ned if that wasn't slick; he give me the straight tip to leave Porter to him--to let him do the plannin'; I see."

VII

Porter was an easy man with his horses. Though he could not afford, because of his needs, to work out his theory that two-year-olds should not be raced, yet he utilized it as far as possible by running them at longer intervals than was general.

"I'll start the little mare about once more this season," he told Dixon.

"The babes can't cut teeth, and grow, and fight it out in punishing races on dusty hay and hard-sh.e.l.led oats, when they ought to be picking gra.s.s in an open field. She's too good a beast to do up in her young days. The a.s.sa.s.sins made good three-year-olds, and the little mare's dam, Maid of Rome, wasn't much her first year out--only won once--but as a three-year-old she won three out of four starts, and the fourth year never lost a race. Lucretia ought to be a great mare next year if I lay her by early this season. She's in a couple of stakes at Gravesend and Sheepshead, and we'll just fit her into the softest spot."

"What about Lauzanne?" asked the Trainer, "I'm afraid he's a bad horse."

"How is he doing?"

"He's stale. He's a bad doer--doesn't clean up his oats, an' mopes."

"I guess that killing finish with The Dutchman took the life out of him.

That sort of thing often settles a soft-hearted horse for all time."

"I don't think it was the race, sir," Dixon replied; "they just pumped the cocaine into him till he was fair blind drunk; he must a' swallowed the bottle. I give him a ball, a bran mash, and Lord knows what all, an'

the poison's workin' out of him. He's all breakin' out in lumps; you'd think he'd been stung by bees."

"I never heard of such a thing," commented Porter. "A man that would dope a two-year-old ought to be ruled off, sure."

"I think you oughter make a kick, sir," said Dixon, hesitatingly.

"I don't. When I squeal, Andy, it'll be when there's nothing but the voice left. I bought a horse from a man once just as he stood.

I happened to know the horse, and said I didn't want any inspection--didn't want to see him, but bought him, as I say, just as he stood. When I went to the stable to get him he wasn't worth much, Andy--he was dead. Perhaps I might have made a kick about his not standing up, but I didn't."

"Well, sir, I'm thinkin' Lauzanne's a deuced sight worse'n a dead horse; he'll cost more tryin' to win with him."

"I dare say you're right, but he can gallop a bit."

"When he's primed."

"No dope for me, Andy. I never ran a dope horse and never will--I'm too fond of them to poison them."

"I'll freshen him up a bit, sir, and we'll give him a try in a day or two. Would you mind puttin' him in a sellin' race?--he cost a bit."

"He couldn't win anything else, and if anybody wants to claim him they can."

"I thought of starting Diablo in that mile handicap; he's in pretty light. He's about all we've got ready."

"All right, Dixon," Porter replied. "It may be that we've broke our bad luck with the little mare."

They were standing in the paddock during this conversation. It was in the forenoon; Dixon had come over to the Secretary's office to see about some entries before twelve o'clock. When the Trainer had finished his business, the two men walked across the course and infield to Stable 12, where Dixon had his horses. As they pa.s.sed over the "Withers Course," as the circular track was called, Dixon pointed to the dip near the lower far turn.

"It's a deuced funny thing," he said, speaking reminiscently, "but that little hollow there settles more horses than the last fifty yards of the finish; it seems to make the soft ones remember that they're runnin'

when they get that change, an' they stop. I bet Diablo'll quit right there, he's done it three or four times."

"He was the making of a great horse as a two-year-old, wasn't he, Andy?"

"They paid a long price for him, if that's any line; but I think he never was no good. It don't matter how fast a horse is if he won't try."

"I've an idea Diablo'll be a good horse yet," mused Porter. "You can't make a slow horse gallop, but there's a chance of curing a horse's temper by kind treatment. I've noticed that a squealing pig generally runs like the devil when he takes it into his head."

"Diablo's a squealing pig if there ever was one," growled Dixon.

They reached the track stable, and, as if by a mutual instinct, the two men walked on till they stood in front of Lauzanne's stall.

"He's a good enough looker, ain't he?" commented Dixon, as he dipped under the door bar, went into the stall, and turned the horse about.

"He's the picture of his old sire, Lazzarone," he continued, looking the horse over critically; "an' a d.a.m.ned sight bigger rogue, though the old one was bad enough. Lazzarone won the Suburban with blinkers on his head, bandages on his legs, an' G.o.d knows what in his stomach. He was second in the Brooklyn that same year. I've always heard he was a mule, an' I guess this one got it all, an' none of the gallopin'."

"How does he work with the others?" queried Porter.

"Runs a bit, an' then cuts it--won't try a yard. Of course he's sick from the dope, an' the others are a bit fast for him. If we put him in a sellin' race, cheap, he'd have a light weight, an' might do better."

Porter walked on to Lucretia's stall, and the trainer continued in a monologue to Lauzanne: "You big slob! you're a counterfeit, if there ever was one. But I'll stand you a drink just to get rid of you; I'll put a bottle of whisky inside of your vest day after to-morrow, an' if you win p'raps somebody'll buy you."

Lauzanne did not answer-it's a way horses have. It is doubtful if his mind quite grasped the situation, even. That neither Dixon, nor Langdon, nor the jockey boys understood him he knew--not clearly, but approximately enough to increase his stubbornness, to rouse his resentment. They had not even studied out the pathology of his descent sufficiently well to give him a fair show, to train him intelligently.

They remembered that his sire, Lazzarone, had a bad temper; but they forgot that he was a stayer, not 'given to sprinting. Even Lauzanne's dam, Bric-a-brac, was fond of a long route, was better at a mile-and-a-half than five furlongs.

Lauzanne knew what had come to him of genealogy, not in his mind so much as in his muscles. They were strong but sluggish, not active but non-tiring. Langdon had raced Lauzanne with sprinting colts, and when they ran away from him at the start he had been unequal to the task of overhauling them in the short two-year-old run of half-a-mile. Then the wise man had said that Lauzanne's courage was at fault; the jockeys had called it laziness, and applied the whip. And out of all this uselessness, this unthinking philosophy, the colt had come with a soured temper, a broken belief in his masters--"Lauzanne the Despised."

Porter's trust that his ill luck had been changed by a win was a faith of short life, for Diablo was most emphatically beaten in his race.

And then came the day of forlorn hope, the day of Lauzanne's disgrace, inasmuch as it de-graduated him into the selling-platter cla.s.s.

Bad horse as Langdon knew Lauzanne to be, it occurred to him that Porter had planned a clever coup. He had an interview with Crane over the subject, but his master did not at all share the Trainer's belief.

"What price would Lucretia, or The Dutchman, be in with the same lot?"

Langdon asked, argumentatively.

"About one to ten," Crane replied. "But the Chestnut's beating them had no bearing on this race. From what I see of Mr. Dixon, I don't at all cla.s.s him with you as a trainer--he hasn't the same resource."