Thoroughbreds Part 4

"I've made a mess of it," answered Dixon, sullenly. "It seems there's hints of a job on, an' the Stewards have got the wrong end of the stick."

"They refused to let the mare go back to the paddock?" queried Porter.

"Yes; an' one of them said that if trainers would stick closer to their horses, an' keep out of the bettin' ring, that the public'd get a better run for their money."

"I'm sorry, Andy," said Porter, consolingly.

"It's pretty tough on me, but it's worse on you, sir. That boy hadn't spurs when he weighed, an' there's the rankest kind of a job on, I'll take me oath."

"We've got to stand to it, Andy."

"That we have; we've just got to take our medicine like little men. Even if we make a break an' take McKay off there isn't another good boy left.

If he jabs the little mare with them steels she'll go clean crazy."

"It's my fault, Andy. I guess I've saved and petted her a bit too much.

But she never needed spurs--she'd break her heart trying without them."

"By G.o.d!" muttered Dixon as he went back to the paddock, "if the boy stops the mare he'll never get another mount, if I can help it. It's this sort of thing that kills the whole business of racing. Here's a stable that's straight from owner to exercise boy, and now likely to throw down the public and stand a chance of getting ruled off ourselves because of a gambling little thief that can spend the income of a prince. But after all it isn't his fault. I know who ought to be warned off if this race is fixed; but they won't be able to touch a hair of him; he's too d.a.m.n slick. But his time'll come--G.o.d knows how many men he'll break in the meantime, though."

As John Porter pa.s.sed Danby's box going up into the stand, the latter leaned over in his chair, touched him on the arm and said, "Come in and take a seat."

"I can't," replied the other man, "my daughter is up there somewhere."

"I've played the mare," declared Danby, showing Porter a memo written in a small betting book.

The latter started and a frown crossed his brown face.

"I'm sorry--I'm afraid it's no cinch."

"Five to two never is," laughed his friend. "But she's a right smart filly; she looks much the best of the lot. Dixon's got her as fit as a fiddle string. When you're done with that man you might turn him over to me, John."

"The mare's good enough," said Porter, "and I've played her myself--a stiffish bit, too; but all the same, if you asked me now, I'd tell you to keep your money in your pocket. I must go," he added, his eye catching the flutter of a race card which was waving to him three seats up.

"Here's a seat, Dad," cried the girl, cheeringly, lifting her coat from a chair she had kept for her father.

For an instant John Porter forgot all about Lucretia and her troubles.

The winsome little woman had the faculty of always making him forget his trials; she had to the fullest extent that power so often found in plain faces. Strictly speaking, she wasn't beautiful--any man would have pa.s.sed that opinion if suddenly asked the question upon first seeing her. Doubt of the excellence of this judgment might have crept into his mind after he had felt the converting influence of the blue-gray eyes that were so much like her father's; in them was the most beautiful thing in the world, an undoubted evidence of truth and honesty and sympathy. She was small and slender, but no one had ever likened her to a flower. There was apparent sinewy strength and vigor in the small form. Her life, claimed by the open air, had its reward--the saddle is no cradle for weaklings. Bred in an atmosphere of racing, and surrounded as she had always been by thoroughbreds, Allis had grown up full of admiration for their honesty, and courage, and sweet temper.

III

In John Porter's home horse racing had no debasing effect. If a man couldn't race squarely--run to win every time--he had better quit the game, Porter had always a.s.serted. He raced honestly and bet openly, without cant and without hypocrisy; just as a financier might have traded in stocks in Wall Street; or a farmer might plant his crops and trust to the future and fair weather to yield him a harvest in return.

So much of the racing life was on honor--so much of the working out of it was in the open, where purple-clovered fields gave rest, and health, and strength, that the home atmosphere was impregnated with moral truth, and courage, and frankness, in its influence on the girl's development.

Every twist of her sinewy figure bore mute testimony to this; every glance from her wondrous eyes was an eloquent substantiating argument in favor of the life she affected. John Porter looked down at the small, rather dark, upturned face, and a half-amused smile of content came to his lips. "Did you see Lucretia?" he asked. "Isn't she a beauty? Hasn't Dixon got her in the pink of condition?"

"I saw nothing else, father." She beckoned to him with her eyes, tipped her head forward, and whispered: "Those people behind us have backed Lauzanne. I think they're racing folks."

The father smiled as an uncultured woman's voice from one row back jarred on his ear. Allis noticed the smile and its provocation, and said, speaking hastily, "I don't mean like you, father--"

"Like us," he corrected.

"Well, perhaps; they're more like betting or training people, though."

She put her hand on his arm warningly, as a high-pitched falsetto penetrated the drone of their half-whispered words, saying, "I tell you d.i.c.k knows all about this Porter mare, Lucretia."

"But I like her," a baritone voice answered. "She looks a rattlin'

filly."

"You'll dine off zwieback and by your lonely, Ned, if you play horses on their looks--"

"Or women either," the baritone cut in.

"You're a fair judge, Ned. But d.i.c.k told me to go the limit on Lauzanne, and to leave the filly alone."

"On form Lucretia ought to win," the man persisted; "an' there's never anythin' doin' with Porter."

"Perhaps not;" the unpleasant feminine voice sneered mockingly, with an ill-conditioned drawl on the "perhaps"; "but he doesn't ride his own mare, does he?"

John Porter started. Again that distasteful expression fraught with distrust and insinuation. There was a strong evil odor of stephanotis wafted to his nostrils as the speaker shook her fan with impatient decision. The perfume affected him disagreeably; it was like the exhalation of some noisome drug; quite in keeping with the covert insinuation of her words that d.i.c.k, as she called him--it must be d.i.c.k Langdon, the trainer of Lauzanne, Porter mused--had given her advice based on a knowledge quite irrespective of the galloping powers of the two horses.

"Did you hear that, father?" Allis whispered.

He nodded his head.

"What does it all mean?"

"It means, girl," he said, slowly, "that all the trouble and pains I have taken over Lucretia since she was foaled, two years ago, and her dam, the old mare, Maid of Rome, died, even to raising the little filly on a bottle, and watching over her temper that it should not be ruined by brutal savages of stable-boys, whose one idea of a horse is that he must be clubbed into submission--that all the care taken in her training, and the money spent for her keep and entries goes for nothing in this race, if Jockey McKay is the rascal I fear he is."

"You think some one has got at him, Dad?"

Her father nodded again.

"I wish I'd been a boy, so that I could have ridden Lucretia for you to-day," Allis exclaimed with sudden emphasis.

"I almost wish you had, Little Woman; you'd have ridden straight anyway--there never was a crooked one of our blood."

"I don't see why a jockey or anybody else should be dishonest--I'm sure it must take too much valuable time to cover up crooked ways."

"Yes, you'd have made a great jock, Little Woman;" the father went on, musingly, as he watched the horses lining up for the start. "Men think if a boy is a featherweight, and tough as a Bowery loafer, he's sure to be a success in the saddle. That's what beats me--a boy of that sort wouldn't be trusted to carry a letter with ten dollars in it, and on the back of a good horse he's, piloting thousands. Unless a jockey has the instincts of a gentleman, naturally, he's almost certain to turn out a blackguard sooner or later, and throw down his owner. He'll have more temptations in a week to violate his trust than a bank clerk would have in a lifetime."

"Is that why you put Alan in the bank, father?"

Porter went on as though he had not heard the daughter's query. "To make a first-cla.s.s jock, a boy must have nerves of steel, the courage of a bulldog, the self-controlling honesty of a monk. You've got all these right enough, Allis, only you're a girl, don't you see--just a good little woman," and he patted her hand affectionately.