Chapter I: Part 1

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Produced by Roger Frank, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.

BY
CLARENCE L. CULLEN

AUTHOR OF
"Tales OF THE EX-TANKS."

G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK

_Copyright, 1898-1899-1900, By_
THE SUN PRINTING AND PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION.

_Copyright, 1900, By_
G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY.

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
THIS WIRETAPPER WAS COLOR-BLIND.
"WHOOPING" A RACE-HORSE UNDER THE WIRE.
JUST LIKE FINDING MONEY.
THIS SON OF FONSO WAS OF NO ACCOUNT.
HARD-LUCK WAIL OF AN OLD-TIME TRAINER.
STORY OF AN "ALMOST" COMBINATION.
"RED" DONNELLY'S STREAK OF LUCK.
AND "RED BEAK JIM" TOOK THE TIP.
THE GAME OF RUNNING "RINGERS."
EXPERIENCES OF A VERDANT BOOKMAKER.
THE MAN WHO KNEW ALL ABOUT TOUTS.
A "COPPER-LINED CINCH" THAT DID GO THROUGH.
HE "COPPERED" HIS WIFE'S "HUNCHES."
A RACE HORSE THAT PAID A CHURCH DEBT.
A SEEDY SPORT'S STRING OF HORSES.
THIS TELEGRAM WAS SIGNED JUST "BUB."
STORY OF A FAMOUS PAT HAND.
GREAT LUCK AT AN INOPPORTUNE TIME.
CARD-PLAYING ON OCEAN STEAMERS.
THIS DOG KNEW THE GAME OF POKER.
WIND-UP OF A TRAIN GAME OF POKER.
QUEER PACIFIC COAST POKER.
THE PROPER TIME TO GET "COLD FEET."
CATO WAS JUST BOUND TO PLAY POKER.
FINISH OF AN EDUCATED RED MAN.
THE UNCERTAIN GAME OF STUD POKER.
THIS MAN WON TOO OFTEN.
THE NERVE OF GAMBLERS AT CRITICAL MOMENTS.
THE INSIDIOUS GAME OF SQUEEZE-SPINDLE.

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

To the man who, at any period of his days, has been bitten by that ferocious and fever-producing insect colloquially known as the "horse bug," and likewise to the man whose nervous system has been racked by the depredations of the "poker microbe," these tales of the turf and of the green cloth are sympathetically dedicated. The thoroughbred running horse is a peculiar animal. While he is often beaten, the very wisest veterans of the turf have a favorite maxim to the effect that "The ponies can't be beat"--meaning the thoroughbred racers; which sounds paradoxical enough. Poker, too, is a mystifying affair, in that all men who play it appear, from their own statements, to lose at it persistently and perennially. There is surely something weird and uncanny about a game that numbers only losers among its devotees. However, poker-players are addicted to persiflage. The genuine, dyed-in-the-wool, blown-in-the-bottle pokerist rarely acknowledges that he is ahead of the game--until the day after.

These stories, which were originally printed in the columns of the New York _Sun_, belong largely to the eminent domain of strict truthfulness. If they do not serve to show that the "horse bug" and the "poker microbe" are good things to steer clear of, they will by no means have failed of their purpose; for the writer had nothing didactic in view in setting them down as he heard them.

_Clarence Louis Cullen_.

_New York_, _Sept. 1, 1900._

THIS WIRETAPPER WAS COLOR-BLIND.

_And His Visual Infirmity Cost Him $15,000 and His Reputation._

"I went down to New Orleans a couple of months ago to get a young fellow who was pretty badly wanted in my town for a two-months' campaign of highly successful check-kiting last summer," said a Pittsburg detective who dropped into New York on a hunt last week. "I got him all right, and he's now doing his three years. I found him to be a pretty decent sort of a young geezer, although a born crook. I don't remember ever having had such an entertaining traveling mate as he was on the trip up from New Orleans. Before we started I asked him if he was going to be good or if it would be necessary for me to put the bracelets on. He gave me an on-the-level look and said:

"'No, I don't think it will. But I pass it up to you. I don't want to throw you. All I ask is, don't give me too much of a chance if you keep the irons off of me. I wouldn't be jay enough to try a window-jumping stunt, but don't give me a show to make either one of the car doors. If you do I may have to give you a run for it.'

"Well, I could see that he would be all right without the cuffs, and so I didn't put 'em on him. He rode up with me in the sleeper all the way from New Orleans to Pittsburg--I let him do the sleeping, though, of course--and he had a drink when I did and played quarter ante when I did, and none of the rest of the passengers were any the wiser. He was a clinking good talker and he told me a lot of interesting stories of queer propositions that he had been up against. For instance, when we were running through the Blue Grass region of Kentucky, he turned to me and asked me where the blue grass was. I told him that the term blue grass was largely ornamental, and that, while the grass down there was no doubt high-grade and the limit as fodder for thoroughbreds, I thought it was mostly green, like the grass the world over.

"'Well, I'm blooming glad to hear you say that,' he replied. 'It proves that I'm not color blind on the whole gamut of colors, anyhow. If you'd said there really was blue grass in these fields we're running through, I'd have given myself up as a bad job in the matter of distinguishing colors. But as long as the grass is green like other grass--well, there's some hope for me.'

"'Color-blind, eh?' I asked him.

"'Yes, I guess I am, more or less,' he replied. 'I never knew it, though, until last spring, and it cost me $15,000 to find it out.'

"'Expensive information,' said I. 'How'd it happen?'

"'If you'll undertake to forget about it by the time we get to Pittsburg, I'll tell you,' he said. 'I was fooling around one of the big towns--one of the biggest towns on this side of the Mississippi--last spring, when I met up with a couple of wiretappers that got me interested. They were the real kind--not fake tappers who rope fellows into giving up coin just by showing 'em phony instruments in shady rooms, but professionals, who really knew how to tap the wires and pull down the money. They had been working together for some time, and when I happened to meet them they had just pulled off a swell hog-killing up in Toronto and had two or three thousand each in their clothes. They had only recently struck the big town, and, as they had never operated there before, they didn't have to do any sleuth dodging. Neither did I, although I was doing a bit of business in the check line occasionally, and was about a thousand to the good when I met them. We hitched up together, the three of us, for a drosky whirl, and then they told me that, while they made it a rule not to let outsiders into their game, they thought I was good enough to be admitted to a good thing that they were about to pull off.

"'One of the largest and best patronized of the poolrooms of the town was 'way on the outskirts of the city. The duck that runs it is worth close on to a million, and the ticket writers have instructions never to turn any man's money down, no matter how big the sum or how lead-pipey the cinch he appears to have. Lumps of $20,000 and $30,000 have frequently been taken out of that poolroom on single tickets, and it's one of the few poolrooms where track odds are given.

"'My two new pals had sized up the layout, and when I met them they already had things fixed to pull down a few comfortable wads. They had rented a vacant frame cottage about 300 yards across a big vacant lot from the poolroom, and, by a little night work--they were both practical wiremen, as well as expert telegraphers--had got the wire into a room on the second floor of the house all right. It was prairie land all around and slimly frequented territory, and they had no trouble in rigging up the wire paraphernalia, which they carried alongside a picket fence to the porch of the cottage, and thence upstairs. They had the thing all tested, and every dot and dash that reached the poolroom registered also in the second floor of that cottage.

"'One of the fellows had formerly worked in a poolroom himself and he had the race code down as pat as butter. They took me out to have a look at the layout, not because they wanted a dollar out of me, for they were on velvet, but simply because they both seemed to take a kind o' shine to me, and it surely looked good. I spent two or three afternoons in the second floor front room where the layout was fixed, and the chap who was expert with the racing code broke the report direct from the track a dozen times and sent it in himself, after having mastered the operator's style at the track end of the line, and the poolroom operator was never a bit the wiser. It was good, all right, that layout, and when they were all ready to begin work I was in on the play.

"'We decided to make the first killing on the day the Belmont Stakes were to be run for at Morris Park. I was against their starting it off on such a big stake event, especially as the race looked to be such a moral for Hamburg, but they said stake events were as good as selling races in their business, and so we had a little rehearsal and stood by. My end of the job was to happen in the poolroom. I was to locate there by a dust-covered window that looked out of the poolroom across the big vacant lot to the frame cottage where the layout was installed and wait for the signal. The signal was to be made by means of a handkerchief waved in the air by one of the fellows from the window. The color of the handkerchief was to tell the name of the winner. For instance, if Hamburg won a white handkerchief was to show at the second-story window; if Bowling Brook captured the stakes a yellow handkerchief was to be the signal, and so on. When I got the signal I was to put the money down on the winner, the tapper was to hold the result from the pool operator for five minutes to give me time to get the money down, and then I was just to wait for the poolroom operator to announce the race. It was the easiest thing in life, and it would have gone through with a rush, not only on that race, but on a whole lot of other ones later on, if I hadn't been color blind.

"'I was on hand in the poolroom on the afternoon that we were to do business and I put a few dollars down on the first races at Morris Park, just for the sake of getting the ticket writers used to my face and to avert suspicion. I had a pretty fair line on the horses in training then and I won two or three out of the bets that I played simply on form. The fourth race on the card was for the Belmont Stakes, and after the third race had been confirmed and the first line of betting came in on the stake race I lounged over to the dust-colored window and looked uninterested. But I had the tail of my eye on the window of that frame cottage all the time, nevertheless. I had $2,000 of my pals' money in my clothes and $1,000 of my own. I was a bit nervous, but I knew that I had a pipe, and I also knew that the poolroom people had mighty little show to get next. I had all kinds of a front on me then, and a $5,000 or even larger bet was, as I say, not so unusual in that poolroom as to scare 'em or cause 'em to become suspicious.

"'Well, the second line of betting came in, with Hamburg the natural favorite at 4 to 5 on in the betting, Bowling Brook 4 to 1 against and the rest at write-your-own-ticket figures. The poolroom took in thousands of dollars of Hamburg money, for nobody in the big crowd that surged about the poolroom could figure any other horse in the race to have a chance. I myself thought it was a sure thing for Hamburg, but I wasn't playing thinks, but cinches, and so I just stood at that window and waited for the signal. I was, I suppose, somewhat excited internally when I thought of the possibilities of the game, but nobody knew it. The poolroom operator announced, 'They're at the post at Morris Park,' and then I knew that 'ud be the last direct communication he'd have with Morris Park until after the running of the Belmont Stakes. I leaned there on that window, with one hand resting on my chin comfortably, waiting for the flutter of the handkerchief away across the vacant lot. The sun shone brilliantly, and the window of the frame cottage was in plain view, and I didn't figure it as among the possibilities that I could make a mistake.

"'Well, when the whole crowd in the poolroom had become sort o' mute with expectancy and the betting at the desk was almost over, I got the signal. It was the quickest flash in the world, a white handkerchief, as I was perfectly positive, nervously waved three times from the second-story window of the frame cottage. I didn't see my pal waving the handkerchief--only the flutter of the white handkerchief which announced that Hamburg had won. So, without any apparent excitement, but in the laziest kind of a way in the world, I just yawned, stretched my arms, and remarked to a few fellows standing nearby:

"'"What's the use of doping over the race. It's a pipe for Hamburg. I'm going up and put a couple of thousand on Hamburg."

"'So I walked up to the desk, passed over six $500 bills and said "Hamburg." The ticket writer took the money without any visible emotion and wrote me a ticket. Then I walked out among the crowd to hear the calling off of the race, which I knew would happen within three or four minutes.

"'"They're off for the Belmont," the operator shouted in about three minutes, and then said I to myself, "What an exercise gallop for Hamburg! What a dead easy way of picking up large pieces of money!"

"'I wasn't worried even a little bit when Bowling Brook was 'way in the lead in the stretch.

"'Hamburg's just laying in a soft spot right there, third, and when it comes to a drive, how cheap, he'll make a crab like Bowling Brook look!

"'Then the operator, after the ten seconds' delay following the announcement of the horses' positions in the stretch, called out:

"'"Bowling Brook wins!"

"'Say, I'm not an excitable kind of a duck, nor dead easy to keel over, but, on the level, my head went 'round and I had to grip hold of a chair top when I heard that announcement. I couldn't make it out. It seemed out of the question. I knew that my two pals hadn't dumped me, because hadn't I played $2,000 of their money? At first I thought the operator made a mistake, and I waited with a spark of hope for the confirmation of the race. The confirmation came in. Bowling Brook had walked in, and Hamburg had been disgracefully beaten.

"'An hour later I met my two pals downtown. They greeted me with grins, and held out their hands for the thousands.

"'"Thing didn't go through, did it?" I said to them. "Where was the mistake, anyhow? What was the white handkerchief--Hamburg's signal--waved for?"

"'They looked at me savagely. They were positive that I had tricked them--that I had really played Bowling Brook with the money and was holding it out on them.

"'"White handkerchief be blowed!" said the man that had given the signal, pulling a light yellow handkerchief from his pocket. "What color do you call this?"

"'Well, then I saw how the mistake had been made, and that I had made it. In the brilliant sunshine I had mistaken the light yellow handkerchief for a white one, and it was up to me. They didn't give me a chance to get in a word, though, for they believed, and believe yet, I suppose, that I had thrown them, and they both hopped me at once. I had to put up the fight of my life, but I downed them both finally with the aid of a chair and a spittoon, and got away. That's how I lost $15,000--counting the winnings we'd have made had I played Bowling Brook that time--by being color blind.'"

"WHOOPING" A RACE-HORSE UNDER THE WIRE.

_A Novel Method of Treating Sulky Thoroughbreds That Often Works
Profitably._

"I see they hollered an old skate home and got him under the wire first by three lengths out at the Newport merry-go-round the other day," said an old-time trainer out at the Gravesend paddock. "Don't catch the meaning of hollering a horse home? Well, it's scaring a sulker pretty near out of his hide and hair and making him run by sheer force of whoops let out altogether. This nag, Kriss Kringle, that was hollered home at Newport a few days ago, is a sulker from the foot-hills. He was sold as an N. G. last year for $25, and at the beginning of this season he prances in and wins nine or ten straight races right off the reel at the Western tracks, hopping over the best they've got out there. Then he goes wrong, declines to crawl a yard, and is turned out. They yank him into training again awhile back, put him up against the best a-running on the other side of the Alleghanies, and he makes 'em look like bull-pups one day and the next he can't beat a fat man. He comes near getting his people ruled off for in-and-out kidding, and then, a couple of weeks ago, or maybe a bit less, he goes out and chews up the track record, and gets within a second of the world's record for the mile and three-eighths, I believe it was.

"Then, Tuesday they have him in at a mile and a sixteenth, with a real nippy field, as Western horses go. The right people, knowing full well the old Springbok gelding's propensities, shove their big coin in on him anyway, and take a chance on him being unable to keep up with a steam roller after his swell race a while before, and the whole crowd fall into line and bet on Kringle until the books give them the cold-storage countenance and say, 'Nix, no more.' Then they get up into the stand and around the finishing rail and they see the aged Kriss, who's a rank favorite, begin like a land crab, when he usually goes out from the jump and spread-eagles his bunch. They begin the hard-luck moan when they see the sour son of Springbok trailing along third in a field of five, and they look into each other's mugs and chew about being on a dead one. Turning into the stretch, the old skate is a poor third, and stopping every minute, a plain case of sulks, like he's put up so many times before. The two in front of him have got it right between them, when Kris comes along into the last sixteenth, still third by a little bit, and then the gang let out in one whoop and holler that could be heard four miles. It's 'Wowee! come on here, ye danged old buck-jumper!' and 'Whoop-la! you Kringle!' from nearly every one of the thousand leather lungs in the stand and up against the rail, and the surly old rogue pins his ears forward and hears the yelp. Then it's all off. The old $25 cast-off jumps out like a scared rabbit at the sixteenth-pole. The nearer he gets to the stand the louder the yelping hits him and the bigger he strides; and he collars the two in front of him as if they were munching carrots in their stalls, and romps under the string three lengths to the good. That's what hollering a horse home means. It's a game that can only be worked on sulkers. The yelling scares the sulker into running, whereas it's liable to make a good-dispositioned horse stop as if sand-bagged.

"I've seen the holler-'em-in gag worked often at both the legitimate and the outlaw tracks, and for big money. One of the biggest hog-slaughterings that was ever made at the game was when an Iroquois nag, a six-year-old gelding named McKeever, turned a rank outsider trick at Alexander Island, Va., in 1895. The boys that knew what was going to happen that time surely did buy it by the basketful for a long time afterward. McKeever was worth about $2 in his latter career, and not a whole lot more at any stage of the game, according to my way of sizing 'em. As a five and six-year-old, he couldn't even make the doped outlaws think they were in a race, but his people kept him plugging away on the chance that some day or other he might pick up some of the spirit of his sire, the royal Iroquois, and pay for his oats and rubbing, anyhow. When he was brought to Alexander Island in the spring of '95, and tried out it was seen that he was just the same old truck-mule. One morning, after he'd been beaten a number of times by several Philadelphia blocks, when at 100 to 1 or so in the books, his owner had him out for a bit of a canter around the ring, with a 140-pound stable boy on him. A lot of stable boys and rail birds were scattered all around the infield, assembled in groups at intervals of 100 feet or so, chewing grass and watching the horses at their morning work. This old McKeever starts around the course as if he's doing a sleep-walking stunt. The boy gives him the goad and the bat, but it's no good. McKeever sticks to his caterpillar gait, and his owner leans against the rail with a watch in his mitt and mumbles unholy things about the skate. There's a laugh among the stable boys and the rail birds as McKeever goes gallumphing around. Then a stable lad that's got a bit of Indian in him leans over the rail just as McKeever's coming down, and lets out a whoop that can be heard across the Potomac. McKeever gives a jump, and away he goes like the wind. It looks so funny to the rail birds along the line that they all take up the yelp, and McKeever jumps out faster at every shout. He gets to going like a real, sure-enough race horse by the time he has made the circuit once, and he keeps right on. The owner gets next to it that it's the shouting that's keeping the old plug on the go, and he waves his arms and passes the word along for the boys to keep it up. McKeever does six furlongs in 1:14 with the assistance of the hollering, and the owner takes him off the track, gives him a look-over and some extra attention, and smiles to himself.

"Then he pushes McKeever into a six-and-half furlong race on the following day. He stations about twenty or twenty-five rail birds, all of 'em stable boys out of a job, in the infield, and hands them out their yelling instructions. McKeever is up against one of the best fields of sprinters at the track, and he goes to the post at 30 to 1 and sticks at that. His owner puts a large number of his pals next to what's going to happen, and not a man of them plays the good thing at the track. They have their coin telegraphed in bundles to the poolrooms all over the country. McKeever gets out in front, and he hasn't made more than a dozen jumps before one of the kids inside the rail throws a whoop that makes the people in the stand put their hands to their ears. McKeever gives a swerve and a side step, and away he goes like the Empire State express. A hundred feet further, when he's four lengths in the lead, and the others, including the even money shot, nowhere, a couple more rail birds shoot out another double-jointed yell, and McKeever jumps out again like an ice-yacht. He gets the holler at every 100 feet of his journey, the rail birds not taking any chances on his stopping, although after the first furlong he is six lengths to the good, and the result is that McKeever simply buck-jumps in, pulled double, with eight lengths of open daylight between him and the even money shot. The owner looks sad, like a man who hasn't put a dollar down, and says real hard things to McKeever when the horse is being led to his stable. When he gets him inside his stall, though, the hugs and loaf sugar that fall McKeever's way are a heap. The old-time poolroom people will tell you yet how they had to turn the box, a good many of 'em, the day that McKeever was hollered home at old Alexander Island.

"And, talking about Alexander Island, there were some funny ones yanked off over there, sure enough, some of them almost as funny as a few that happened over in New York at the legit tracks this passing season. Without hurling out any names, I'll just tell you of how a plunger who has been a good deal talked about this year, on account of his big winnings, got the dump-and-the-ditch at the hands of a poor-but-honest-not owner at Alexander Island in the same year of 1895. This plunger wasn't such a calcined tamale in those days as he is now, but he was some few, and he generally had enough up his sleeve in order to keep him in cigarettes and peanuts; which is to say that he had a winning way about him, and access to everything that was doing at that outlaw track. He dealt in jockeys quite a lot, giving them their figure with a slight scaling down, according to his own idea of what was coming to them for being kind to him. He was wise and he was haughty, and toward the wind-up of that Alexander Island season he fell into the notion, apparently, that things had to be done his way or the kickers fade out of the game.

"This poor owner that I'm talking about went on to Alexander Island with an ordinary bunch of sprinters, all except one filly, that was real good, but a bit high in flesh, and not ripe. It was a filly that could as a matter of fact beat anything at the track, being right and on edge, and she had the additional advantage of not being known all about. The poor owner has his own boy along with him, and he's pretty hard up. He sticks this filly in a six-furlong event, with the idea of really going after the purse, which he requires for expenses. He knows that the filly isn't right, but he dopes it that she can beat the lot pitted against her, anyhow, and he really means her to win. He tells his boy to take her right out in front and get as good a lead as he can, so that in case her flesh stops her the rest'll never be able to get near her. That's the arrangement right up until post time. The filly--well, suppose we call her Juliet--is not very well known at Alexander Island, and she has 5 to 1 against her.

"Now, it happens that this plunger knows all about Juliet being, as I say, a pretty fast proposition, but he doesn't think she can win in her condition, and, anyhow, he has something doing on another one in the race; he has so much doing in the race, in fact, that all the rest of 'em, except Juliet, are dead to the one he has picked to play. The plunger digs up the owner of Juliet and says to him:

"'My son, your baby won't do to-day.'

"'She'll make a stab, though,' said the owner. 'I need the cush, being several shy of paying my feed bills. The game has been throwing me lately. She's going to try.'

"'You need the purse, hey?' said the plunger. 'That's not much money. Only $200, ain't it? How'd $500 do?'

"'Spot coin?' asks the impecunious owner.

"'Spot coin after my weanling gets the money.'

"'You're on,' says the poor-but-honest-not owner. 'I'm not any more phony than my neighbors, but it's a case of real dig with me just now. Juliet'll finish in the ruck. Are you cinchy about the one you've got turning the trick?'

"'It's like getting money in a letter,' says the plunger.

"'All right,' says the poor owner, 'you can walk around to my stall and push me the five centuries after they're in.'

"The poor owner saw his boy, and Juliet's head was yanked off, with the boy's toes tickling her ears. She could have won in a walk, short of work as she was, but the boy had a biceps, and he held her down so that the plunger's good thing went through all right.

"After the race the plunger, who had made a great big thing out of it, hunted up the poor owner and beefed about the $500. He said that he hadn't been able to get as much money on his good one as he had expected and asked the poor owner to compromise for $300. The plunger's poor mouth doesn't tickle the poor owner a little bit, but he is a pretty foxy piece of work himself, and he takes the three hundred without letting on a particle that he thinks it a cheap gag. The plunger goes away thinking he has the poor owner on his staff for good, and the poor owner makes sundry and divers resolutions within himself, to the general effect that the next time he does business with that plunger he'll know it.

"Well, the poor owner doesn't race his good filly again for a couple of weeks, and all the time she's getting good. He gives her her work at about 3 o'clock every morning, in the dreamy dawn, so that nobody gets onto it just how good she is getting. He shoots her in about two weeks after he has been dickered down by the plunger. He knows that she's going to win, and with his other skates he has picked up nearly a thousand wherewith to play the Juliet girl to win. On the day before the race the plunger comes to him again.

"'I see you've got that nice little girl of yours in to-morrow,' he says. 'How good is she?'

"'She's got a show for the big end of it,' says the poor owner.

"'Um,' says the plunger. 'Well, she'll only be at 5 to 1, whereas I've got a cinch in that that'll be as good as 15 to 1. Do you think we can do a little business?'

"'On a strictly pay-in-advance basis, yes,' says the poor owner, chewing a straw. 'Maybe I'll be able to see my way to delivering the goods for a thousand down. Otherwise I win.'

"The plunger made a terrific beef, and tried persuasiveness, oiliness, bull-dozing the whole works, with the poor owner.

"'Why,' he says, 'I can buy all the Juliets from here to Kentucky and back for a thousand.'

"'Yes,' says the poor owner, 'but you can't shove a 15 to 1 shot through every day, either. Let's not talk about it any more. You've got my terms. Thousand down, right now, and Juliet will also ran. No thousand, Juliet walks, and I'll get the coin anyhow by betting on her.'

"He got the thousand two hours before the race was run. The poor owner looked Juliet over, and called his boy into a dark corner of the stable.

"'Take her out in front, son,' he said, 'and tow-rope them. Don't let 'em get within a block of you. I'll send your mother a couple o' hundred after you fetch her home.'

"'She'd win with a dummy on her,' says the kid.

"Then the poor-but-honest-not owner takes the thousand he already has in his kick, and the thousand the beefing plunger has given him, and spraddles it all over the United States on Juliet at from 5 to 7 to 1.

"Juliet wins by fourteen lengths, and the plunger, with his mouth twitching, hunts up the owner of Juliet. All he gets is a line of chile con carne conversation, and, finally, a puck in the eye.

"'Do others or they'll do you' isn't the way they used to teach it when I went to Sunday-school," concluded the old-time trainer, "but there are occasions when the rule just has to be twisted that way."

JUST LIKE FINDING MONEY.

_A Bottled-up Cinch That Came Off at One of the Chicago Tracks._

"The first bet that I ever put down on a horse race," said a horse owner and trainer at an uptown cafe the other night, "was on a horse that stood at 100 to 1 in the betting. It was also the first race I ever saw run by thoroughbreds. I was clerking in a Long Island City grocery store for $8 a week at the time, and I didn't know a race-horse from a ton of coal. I got a couple of my fingers crushed between two salt fish boxes one morning, and I had to lay off from work. I didn't want to hang around my room, and didn't know what to do with myself, and so when a no-account young fellow I knew suggested that I go over with him to Monmouth Park and have a look at the races, I fell in with the proposition. Besides the remains of my previous week's pay, about $3, I had $20 saved up out of my wages, and I kept this in one $20 note in my inside vest pocket. After paying for round-trip tickets for my friend and myself, and for two tickets of admission to the race grounds, I was practically broke with the exception of a few cents, for I didn't count the $20 as available assets. I intended to hang on to that unbroken. Well, I found that all my sporty friend wanted of me was to have me pay his way on the train and into the grounds, for he promptly lost me as soon as we got by the gate. I felt pretty sore at this treatment, not that I wanted his help, for I hadn't the least idea of doing any betting with my savings, but I didn't cotton to the notion of being played for a good thing and then thrown that way.

"I walked around among the crowd with my hands in my pockets, wondering a good deal over the dope talk of the ducks that knew all about the horses and their preferred weights, distances, riders, and so on; it was all Greek to me then. Finally I was shouldered and jostled into the betting ring. It wasn't long before I began to rubberneck at the prices laid against the horses on the bookies' blackboards. Although I didn't know anything about the nags then, I found out afterward, when I had made a study of the game and got a little next to it, that this race I made my first bet on was composed of a cheap mess of fourteen selling platers. They were at all kinds of prices, from 4 to 5 on to 100 to 1 against. The latter price was laid about three of 'em. I didn't exactly understand what the 100 to 1 meant, and so I asked a fellow standing near by to explain it. He looked me over out of the slants of his lamps, thinking, probably, that I was stringing him. When he saw that I was a green one he told me that the 100 to 1 meant that if a 100 to 1 shot won that I had put a dollar on I'd be $100 ahead of the game. This looked pretty good to me. I didn't know anything about horse form or horse quality then, and I thought that one of 'em had just as much chance as another to win. So I picked out the 100 to 1 shot whose name I liked best and elbowed my way up to a booky's stand to put a dollar down on it, holding my $20 bill tightly gripped in my hand. I passed the twenty up to the bookmaker--he went broke, and has been a dead 'un for a good many years now--and said:

"'Give me a dollar's worth of that fourth horse from the top--that one with the 100 to 1 chalked before his name.'

"The booky looked down at me contemptuously, without accepting the twenty I proffered him, and said:

"'I don't want no dollar bets.'

"Well, this made me feel pretty cheap, especially as all of the ducks back of me, waiting to pass up their fifties and hundreds gave me the laugh. I didn't like to be shown up in that public way. I was just as sore at that time about being made to look like thirty cents as I am to-day. So I did a bit of lightning thinking. 'Twenty's a big bunch to me,' I thought, 'and I've had to hop out of bed at half past 3 in the morning to go to meat market a good many times to get it together; but I'll be hanged if I'm going to let this fellow get away with his idea of making me look small, even if I haven't got a show on earth.' So I passed the bill up to him again, saying:

"'All right, there, billionaire. Just gimme $20 worth of that fourth horse from the top, with 100 to 1 chalked before his name.'

"I was chagrined to find that this strong play didn't help me a little bit. The booky only grinned as he chanted, 'Two thousand dollars to $20 on the fourth one from the top,' and the chap that wrote me the ticket grinned back at him, and the crowd behind me again gave me the hoarse hoot, loud and long continued. I'll bet I was blushing on the bottom of my feet when I snatched the ticket and hurried away from that booky's stall, with the chuckles of the hot-looking members ringing in my ears. Well, my horse walked in.

"When I went to cash my ticket for $2,020 the booky sized me up, with all kinds of wrath in his eyes.

"'A good make-up you've got for a Rube,' he said to me. 'You're good. That's the most scientific commissioner act I've seen pulled off up to date, and I've been at this game ever since Hickory Jim was a two-year-old.'

"I didn't know what he was talking about. The word commissioner was particularly mysterious to me, but I wasn't going to let him put it on me again, and I like to have drove him crazy with the slow grin I gave him. He chucked the bundle of $2,020 at me, and I just walked backward with it in my hands and grinning at him. He was the maddest-looking man I ever saw, before or since. I didn't go back to my grocery job, nor did I hop in and slough off my $2,000 on a game I didn't know anything about. I didn't play another horse that year, but went in and made a study of the game, going to the tracks every day to see 'em run and to think the whole institution over. It has taken me all of the years that have passed since to find out that the study of horse racing don't amount to a row of spuds, that study doesn't beat the game. I simply had a series of lucky plays after I figured it that I knew all there was to be learned about horse racing, and those plays put me on the velvet I've had to a greater or less extent ever since. I don't often play them now--I've got a fairly nifty string, and I run 'em and let the other fellows do the guessing.

"What set me to thinking about this first play of mine was a letter I received the other day from an owner, who's racing his string down at New Orleans, about the win of that plug Covington, Ky., the other day. The price laid against Covington, Ky., was at first 150 to 1, and the rail birds in the know battered it down to 60 to 1 at post time, throwing all kinds of misery into the layers when the plater romped in, after being practically left at the post. My friend says in his letter that a big bookmaker declined to take a dollar bet from one of the wise rail birds on Covington, Ky., at 150 to 1, and that the young fellow got chesty, dug into the pocket where he kept his silver, found $2 in quarters and halves, and handed the $3 to the bookie on Covington, Ky., to win. The layer took the money and it cost him $450. The bookie, my friend writes me, has been poked in the ribs over the thing by his fellow-layers ever since.

"I don't often pay any attention to good things," continued the turfman, "and it's rarer still that I am compelled to regret my indifference to the bottled-up cinches, but, in common with about 3,000 other people, I overlooked a proposition at Lakeside last fall that caused me several minutes' hard thinking. I didn't lose any money over it, but it's hard to think of the inside chance I neglected on that occasion to make an old-fashioned hog killing. I had four or five of my three-year-olds out at Lakeside and was pulling a purse down with 'em once in a while, and depending on the purses to keep me even with the game and strong for hay money. I wasn't doing any betting; I took my confirmed indifference to good things along with me to Chicago, and I think now, looking back at the season, that I made a bit of a mistake in doing so, for if there's any place in the country outside of the outlaw tracks where good things do have a habit of going through right often, then that place is Chicago. I didn't profit by any of 'em that were made to stick last fall, however, although I saw many a sure thing soaked down from 20 to 1 to 4 to 1 at post time, and then come in romping with all the money. A lot of men I knew out at Lakeside--fellows with small strings, none of which ever won or got in the money--were on all kinds of velvet by giving ear to the inside good things, but they didn't make me jealous a little bit. I'm in the game for keeps, and that's more than can be said for the good-thing players.

"Anyhow, for all that, I'm still regretting that I overlooked this chance I'm speaking of. I was in a Dearborn street hang-out for racing men one night, along toward the wind-up of the racing season, when a boy came inside and told me a man out at the front door wanted to see me. I went out and found a drunken stable hand waiting for me. He was employed as a general stable roustabout by the owner of a California string, and I had befriended the man in the paddock a few days before when he was engaged in a rum fight with another stable hand. He was getting the worst of the scrap when I stepped in and pulled his antagonist off of him. It didn't amount to anything, this, but the tank stable hand that was waiting for me outside of the Dearborn street place in the rain seemed to feel grateful to me for it.

"'Hello, Bill,' said I to him, 'what's up?'

"'Got fired this afternoon,' he replied.

"'Broke?' I asked him.

"'I didn't hunt you up to touch you, boss,' he said. 'I got a good thing I want to give to you. You've been square to me. The good thing's to come off to-morrow, and nobody's on. I'm preaching on it because I've been dropped from the track just for getting a skate on, and because I want to put you next, that's been on the level with me.'

"'You can pass me up,' I told the man. 'I don't play the sure ones, you know.'

"'But this is ripe, and it's going to happen,' persisted the man. 'It's a baby. It's a looloo. It's a cachuca. It's that filly Mazie V. in the two-year-old race to-morrow. You know who's stable she belongs in. I heard the chaw about it this afternoon before I got fired, and they didn't get on to it that I was listening. Mazie V.'s going to walk in to-morrow. No dope, but she's fit. She worked three-quarters in .15 flat early yesterday morning when nobody was looking, and she's on edge. They're going to burn up the books with it. I know that nobody can tout you, and I'm not trying to tout you. But here's a chance, and I came down to let you know.'

"Well, of course I had to thank the man, but I couldn't help but grin at him at that.

"'How long have you been rubbing 'em down?' I asked him.

"'I've been around the horses since I was ten years old,' he replied.

"'And still so easy?' I couldn't help but say. 'Well, I won't say anything of what you've told me so as to queer the price, if there's any play on Mazie V., but, of course, as for myself, I pass it up; thanks all the same to you. Need any money?'

"No, he didn't want any money, he said. He had simply hunted me up to put me on to one of the best things of the meeting, and he shambled off.

"When the books opened for that two-year-old race the next day, Mazie V., a clean-limbed filly that had never shown a particle of class, opened up the rank outsider in a big field, which included some very fairish two-year-olds. I looked the books over, not because I was betting, but just out of habit, and I saw that every nag in the race was being played but Mazie V., the 150 to 1 shot.

"'If they're going to burn the bookies out on Mazie V., I thought, amusedly, 'it's a wonder the stable connections don't take some of this good 150 to 1.'

"As I was thinking this over, the ex-stableman who had hunted me up with the Mazie V. good thing the night before plucked me by the sleeve. He was several times as drunk as an owl, and I didn't care to talk with him.

"'Are you down?' he asked me, lurching. 'Because 'f you ain't, you're campin' out, an' that's all there is to it.'

"'Go and take a sleep,' I told him, and passed on. But he didn't want any sleep. Instead, he drunkenly mounted a box that he found in the betting ring, and started to make an address to the hustling bettors.

"'Hey!' he shouted, 'if you mugs want to git aboard for the barbecue, play Mazie V. She's going to be cut loose. She's a 1 to 10 chance. She's going through. It's a cinch.'

"The crowd guyed him.

"'It's so good,' shouted the poor devil, 'that I just put the last $8 I got on earth on her to win--not to show, but to win. Hey! I'm not touting. I'm trying to give you all a win-out chance. You needn't think because I ain't togged out that I'm a dead one on this. Even if I have got a load along, why'----

"Just then somebody, probably an interested party, kicked the box from under the man and he went sprawling. That closed him up. The crowd roared, but not a man in the gang, of course, put down a dollar on Mazie V. If any of the pikers had even a dream of doing such a thing the stable hand's drunken recommendation of the filly switched them off. Just before the horses went to the post the $5 bills of people that weren't pikers, but stable connections, went into the ring in such quantities on Mazie V. that she closed at 100 to 1 in a few of the books, and at much smaller figures in most of the others.

"Well, the way that little filly Mazie V. put it all over her field was something ridiculous. The race was something easy for her. There was nothing to it but Mazie V. She got away from the post almost dead last, and then picked up her horses at leisure, revelling in the heavy going, and, loping up in the last sixteenth, walked in with daylight between her and the favorite. It was one of the killings of the Chicago racing season, and the books were soaked to over $20,000 on $5 bets.

"'That certainly is hard money to lose, to say the least,' I heard poor Mike Dwyer mumble on the day that he took 1 to 15 on Hanover, putting down $45,000 to win $3,000, and Hanover got himself disgracefully beaten by Laggard. And that's what I think about that Mazie V. good thing--hard money not to have won."

THIS SON OF FONSO WAS OF NO ACCOUNT.

_But When He Did Take It Into His Head to Run One Day, the Bookmakers
Were Damaged._

An old-time trainer, who is trying out a bunch of yearlings and keeping up a lot of old campaigners out at the old Ivy City track near Washington, was chewing wisps of hay the other afternoon and thinking aloud.

"One of the things that I can't exactly figure out," said he, "is whether I'm a ringer-worker or on the level. That proposition has been bothering me a heap in the middle of nights right along since the fall of '87. I got into the center of a game then that has kept me apologizing to myself ever since. And, then, again, that plug wasn't a sure-enough proper ringer. And I didn't put him over the plate, either. My end of it was only to cop out a few, and all I had to do was to----

"Well, anyhow, I went down to a yearling sale in Kentucky for the man I was training for in 1885. There were some Fonso bull-pups to be auctioned off, and the boss wanted a Fonso or two. You remember Fonso, don't you? He's the old nag, a great one in his times, who got the blue ribbon only the other day at the age of twenty-three for being still the finest specimen of a thoroughbred in Kentucky. The boss wanted a couple of Fonsos and I went after them. I got him two and myself one. The one I got was the worst-looking he-scrag that ever wore hoofs. He was out of a good mare, but he upset all the calculations of breeding. He was the worst seed in looks that ever I clapped my eyes on; and I've been fooling with yearlings for a quarter of a century. He was an angular swayback, leggy, low-spirited, thick-headed, and as fast as a caterpillar. Yet I bought him. I didn't expect ever to make anything out of him, but I was pretty flush then, and I didn't want to see a Fonso pulling a dray if there was a chance in a thousand of making anything out of him. That colt was a joke. The whole crowd gave him the hoot when he was led into the auction ring, and I couldn't hold down a grin myself when I sized up the poor mutt of a camel, the worst libel on a great sire that ever crawled into an auction ring for a bid. The whole gang jeered me when I offered $100 for the skate. I didn't blame 'em. But I led the colt out, put him in a stall, and then went back to the sale. I got two high-grade Fonsos for my boss, and they won themselves out for him twenty times over in the next three years. But they don't figure in this story.