Thoroughbreds Part 39

In the horse's mind this sort of thing was a.s.sociated with unlimited punishment. It had always been that way in his two-year-old days; first, the general hustle--small legs and arms working with concentric swing; then the impatient admonishment of fierce-jabbing spurs; and finally the welt-raising cut of a vicious, unreasoning whip. It was not a pleasurable prospect; and at the first shake-up, Lauzanne pictured it coming. All thoughts of overtaking the horses in front fled from his mind; it was the dreaded punishment that interested him most; figuratively, he humped his back against the antic.i.p.ated onslaught.

Redpath felt the unmistakable sign of his horse sulking; and he promptly had recourse to the jockey's usual argument.

Sitting in the stand Allis saw, with a cry of dismay, Redpath's whip-hand go up. That Lauzanne had been trailing six lengths behind the others had not bothered her in the slightest--it was his true method; his work would be done in the stretch when the others were tiring, if at all.

"If the boy will only sit still--only have patience," she had been saying to herself, just before she saw the flash of a whip in the sunlight; and then she just moaned. "It's all over; we are beaten again.

Everything is against us--everybody is against us," she cried, bitterly; "will good fortune never come father's way?"

By the time the horses had swung into the stretch, and Lauzanne had not in the slightest improved his position, it dawned upon Redpath that his efforts were productive of no good, so he desisted. But his move had cost the Porters whatever chance they might have had. Left to himself, Lauzanne undertook an investigating gallop on his own account. Too much ground had been lost to be made up at that late stage, but he came up the straight in gallant style, wearing down the leaders until he finished close up among the unplaced horses.

Allis allowed no word of reproach to escape her when Redpath spoke of Lauzanne's sulky temper. It would do no good--it would be like crying over spilt milk. The boy was to ride Lucretia in the Derby; he was on good terms with the mare; and to chide him for the ride on Lauzanne would but destroy his confidence in himself for the other race.

"I'm afraid the Chestnut's a bad actor," Dixon said to Allis, after the race. "We'll never do no good with him. If he couldn't beat that lot he's not worth his feed bill."

"He would have won had I been on his back," declared the girl, loyally.

"That's no good, Miss; you can't ride him, you see. We've just got one peg to hang our hat on--that's Lucretia."

Lauzanne's showing in this race was a great disappointment to Allis; she had hoped that his confidence in humanity had been restored. Physically he had undoubtedly improved; his legs had hardened and smoothed down. In fact, his whole condition was perfect.

She still felt that if Redpath had followed her advice and allowed Lauzanne to run his own race he would have won. The race did not shake her confidence in the horse so much as in the possibility of getting any jockey to ride him in a quiescent manner. When it was impossible of Redpath, who was eager to please her, whom else could they look to? They might experiment, but while they were experimenting Lauzanne would be driven back into his old bad habits.

The next morning brought them fresh disaster; all that had gone before was as nothing compared with this new development in their run of thwarted endeavor.

Ned Carter had given Lucretia a vigorous exercise gallop over the Derby course. As Dixon led the mare through the paddock to a stall he suddenly bent down his head and took a sharp look at her nostrils; another stride and they were in the stall. The Trainer felt Lucretia's throat and ears; he put his hand over her heart, a look of anxious dismay on his usually stolid face.

"She coughed a little, sir, when I pulled her up," volunteered Carter, seeing Dixon's investigation.

"I'm afraid she's took cold," muttered Dixon. "Have you had her near any horses that's got the influenza?" he asked, looking inquiringly at Carter.

"She ain't been near nothing; I kept her away from everything, for fear she'd get a kick, or get run into."

"I hope to G.o.d it's nothin'," said the Trainer; and his voice was quite different from his usual rough tone. Then a sudden suspicion took possession of him. Faust's readiness to lay long odds against the mare had haunted him like a foolish nightmare. Had there been foul play? The mare couldn't have taken a cold--they had been so careful of her; there had been no rain for ten days; she hadn't got wet. No, it couldn't be cold. But she undoubtedly had fever. A sickening conviction came that it was the dreaded influenza.

That morning was the first time she had coughed, so Faust could not have known of her approaching illness, unless he had been the cause of it.

The Trainer pursued his investigation among the stable lads. When he asked Finn if he had noticed anything unusual about the mare, the boy declared most emphatically that he had not. Then, suddenly remembering an incident he had taken at the time to be of little import, he said: "Two mornin's ago when I opened her stall and she poked her head out, I noticed a little sc.u.m in her nose; but I thought it was dust. I wiped it out, and there was nuthin' more come that I could see."

"What's the row?" asked Mike Gaynor, as he joined Dixon.

When the details were explained to him Mike declared, emphatically, that some one had got at the mare. Taking Dixon to one side, he said: "It's that divil on wheels, Shandy; ye can bet yer sweet loife on that. I've been layin' for that crook; he cut Diablo's bridle an' t'rew th' ould man; an' he done this job, too."

"But how could he get at her?" queried the Trainer. "The stable's been locked; an' Finn and Carter was sleepin' in the saddle room."

"That divil could go where a sparrer could. How did he git in to cut th'

bridle rein--t'rough a manure window no bigger'n your hat. He done that, as I know."

"Well, if the mare's got it we're in the soup. Have you seen Miss Porter about, Mike?"

"I did a minute ago; I'll pa.s.s the word ye want to see her--here she comes now. I'll skip. d.a.m.n if I want to see them gray eyes when ye tell about the little mare. It'll just break her heart; that's what it'll do.

An' maybe I wouldn't break the back av the devil as put up this dirty job. It isn't Shandy that's as much to blame as the blackguard that worked him."

Dixon ran over in his mind many contorted ways of breaking the news to Allis, and finished up by blurting out: "The mare's coughin' this mornin', Miss; I hope it ain't nothin', but I'm afraid she's in for a sick spell."

Coming to the course, the girl had allowed rosy hope to tint the gray gloom of the many defeats until she had worked herself into a happy mood. Lucretia's win would put everything right; even her father, relieved of financial worry, would improve. The bright morning seemed to whisper of victory; Lucretia would surely win. It was not within the laws of fate that they should go on forever and ever having bad luck.

She had come to have a rea.s.suring look at the grand little mare that was to turn the tide of all their evil fortune. The Trainer's words, "The mare's coughin'," struck a chill to her heart. She could not speak--the misery was too great--but stood dejectedly listening while Dixon spoke of his suspicions of foul play.

What villains there were in the world, the girl thought; for a man to lay them odds against their horse, knowing that she had been poisoned, was a hundred times worse than stealing the money from their Dockets.

"I don't suppose we'll ever be able to prove it," declared Dixon, regretfully; "but that doesn't matter so much as the mare being done for; we're out of it now good and strong. If we'd known it two days ago we might a-saved the money, but we've burned up a thousand."

"We'll have to start Lauzanne," said Allis, taking a brave pull at herself, and speaking with decision.

"We might send him to the post, but that's all the good it'll do us, I'm feared."

"I've seen him do a great gallop," contended Allis.

"He did it for you, but he won't do it for n.o.body else. There ain't no boy ridin' can make him go fast enough for a live funeral. But we'll start him, an' I'll speak to Redpath about takin' the mount."

Allis was thinking very fast; her head, with its great wealth of black hair, drooped low in heavy meditation.

"Don't engage him just yet, Dixon," she said, looking up suddenly, the shadow of a new resolve in her gray eyes; "I'll talk it over with you when we go back to the house. I'm thinking of something, but I don't want to speak of it just now--let me think it over a little."

Dixon was deep in thought, too, as he went back to his own stables. "We haven't got a million to one chance," he was muttering; "the money's burned up, an' the race is dead to the world, as far as we're concerned."

That Allis could evolve any plan to lift them out of their Slough of Despond he felt was quite impossible; but at any rate he got a distinct shock when, a little later, a slight-formed girl, with gray eyes, set large and full in a dark face, declared to him that she was going to ride Lauzanne in the Derby herself.

"My G.o.d, Miss!" the Trainer exclaimed, "you can't do it. What would people say--what would your mother say?"

"People will say the race was well ridden if I'm any judge, and mother won't be interested enough to know whether Lucretia was. .h.i.tched to a buggy in the Derby or not."

"But the Judge would never allow a girl--"

"There'll be no girl in it;". and Allis explained, in minute detail the result of her deep cogitation.

"It won't work; you never could do it," objected Dixon, with despondent conviction. "That big head of hair would give you dead away."

"The head of hair won't be in evidence; it will be lying in my trunk, waiting to be made up into a wig after we've won."

"No, no; it won't do," the Trainer reiterated; "everybody'd know you, an' there'd be a fine shindy. I believe you could ride the horse right enough, an' if he has a chance on earth you'd get it out of him. But give up the idea, everybody'd know you."

The girl pleaded, but Dixon was obdurate. He did not contend for an instant that she was not capable of riding the horse,--only in a race with many jockeys she would find it different from riding a trial gallop,--but his main objection was that she'd be known. Allis closed the discussion by saying that she was going home to encourage her father a little over the mare's defeat in the Handicap, and made Dixon promise not to engage Redpath for Lauzanne till her return next morning.

"He can't take another mount," she said, "because he's retained for Lucretia, and we haven't declared her out yet."

"I'm hopin' we may not have to," remarked Dixon. "Anyway, there's no hurry about switchin' the boy onto Lauzanne, so we'll settle that when you come back."