Chapter III: Part 3

"Donnelly didn't demur much. The $150 was a huge sum itself for him, and he, of course, knew that Schreiber would do the right thing with the main bunch. As a matter of fact, Barney deposited the $3500 the next day to the credit of Donnelly's old mother, and Schreiber and the old woman were the only people who knew anything about that end of it for a long time afterward.

"We all gibed and roasted Red about the delirium-tremens finish we foresaw for him, and when he didn't turn up at the track at all on the following day, necessitating the turning of his dog-robbing work over to another man, there was a lot of talk about the tremendous barrel-house toot Red must have gone on down the levee way. That's where we were camping out. When we picked up the papers on turning out the following morning we found a scare-head story in one of them relating in great detail and elaborate diction how one Mr. John S. Donnelly, a gentleman well known on the Western turf, had swatted Ed McGuckin's faro bank, over in East St. Louis, to the tune of $16,000, playing steadily without meals from 7 o'clock on the evening of Monday until 11 o'clock on Wednesday night, when Ed turned the box on him and announced that it was all off for the present. We all shouted 'fake!' when we saw that, but a couple of us hopped into a cab and crossed over to McGuckin's place to see if there was anything in the yarn. Well, there was everything in it. We found Ed holding his fevered brow and mumbling deep, dark things about damned vagabonds slipping into his layout and running shoe tongues up into leather factories. We expressed our sympathies with Ed, for which we came perilously near being kicked, and then we went back to St. Louis to hunt up Red. We went over the barrel-house route with a fine-tooth comb, but no Donnelly. Then we decided to drive out to his mother's little old shack. Our route from the levee out there took us through the down-town district, and we both saw Red on the street at once. We drew up alongside the curb, and called him. He was cold sober, and he had $16,210 in bills in his inside waistcoat pocket. We asked him where he was going, and he nodded in the direction of the swellest tailoring establishment in St. Louis. We went along with him, and it was one lovely sight to observe the fabrics Red picked out wherewith to ornament his long, lithe person. He ordered a dozen suits, and then we went with him to the haberdasher's. He was all for green and yellow neckties, pink-striped shirts, and that sort, and we let him have his way. Then he became sleepy. We threw it into him pretty hard about that big bundle of money he had on him, and he finally consented to come along to a bank with us and deposit $14,000 of it in his name. We tried to hold out for having it put in his mother's name, but he wouldn't stand for that. After leaving the bank Red's eagle eye caught sight of the shiny things in a jeweler's window, and he decided then and there that he couldn't go to sleep without having the third finger of his left hand made conspicuous by a three-karat blue-white stone, for which he coughed $500. That left him with about $1500 in his clothes, and we dragged him then into the cab and drove out to his mother's little old shanty. The old lady had her little talk with Barney Schreiber about the $3500 by that time, and the to-do she made over her 'bye Johnnie' was worth the ride to see. When we told her about the other bunch that Red had copped and that we had plunked it into the bank for him, the quantities of corned beef and cabbage which she threw into the pot for the dinner which she wanted us to remain to share with her and her phenomenal son were amazing.

"Well, Donnelly astonished us all for a couple of weeks by his extraordinary conduct. He would ride out to the track in a hack, with a gilt-stamped cigarette in his face, attend to his job as usual around the betting-ring--that is, he'd supervise, for he quickly accumulated a staff of worshiping touts and hangers-on--and then he'd go up into the grand-stand to exhibit his cake-walk clothes and look at the races. He didn't put a bet down on a horse for two weeks. He remained pretty sober all the time, too. We joshed him about the frigid pedals he had suddenly got, but he only passed along with the remark: 'I'm letting 'em run for O'Flaherty. Nothin' doin'.'

"We waited for the crash, but it didn't seem to come on schedule time. One afternoon he called me aside and showed me his bank-book. It showed an additional deposit of $5000, making the total $19,000.

"'When did you pick up that new roll?' I asked him.

"'Went up against the wheel at Terhune's last night, and yanked it out in three hours,' he said.

"'When did you learn to play roulette?' I asked him.

"'Last night,' he replied.

"Along toward the end of June Donnelly turned up at the track one afternoon with a light in his eye. He went out into the paddock and spent three-quarters of an hour looking at a horse and by that time the third race was due. Red came into the ring and spread $1000 around on Madeira at 10 to 1. It was a maiden two-year-old race, but Madeira romped in two lengths to the good. That night Red, still moderately sober and level-headed, had $29,000 to his credit in the bank. We began to figure with a new brand of dope on Donnelly's game and to consider the possibility of his becoming a real fixture. A lot of owners with bum skates tried to work them off on Donnelly at big prices, but he only passed them the cold-storage smirk. This gave us an additional line of thinks with regard to what we thought was his increasing shrewdness. Besides, you see, Red began to be right good to us. He told us all very soberly one afternoon that he had a good thing, but that he didn't want to hurt his own ring, so he'd send his money to the out-of-town poolrooms. The good thing was David, who won the last race in a walk at 15 to 1, and Red cleaned up $15,000 on that.

"Right at this point, Schreiber and some other people got at Donnelly and tried to induce him to either invest a part of his money--he had almost $50,000 then--in a string of useful horses, to be put into the hands of a competent trainer--or to have the whole bundle properly invested in some sort of annuity, tie-up scheme whereby, when Red's streak of luck fizzled out, he wouldn't have to go back to buying cigarettes by the cent's worth. The man was too bull-headed, though, to listen to anything like this. He did, however, buy his old mother a fine house and install her in it, and the old lady had stiff black silk dresses and poppy-ornamented bonnets galore in which to go to mass.

"Meanwhile Red was going up against all kinds of games around town every night, and it honestly appeared as if he couldn't lose. Craps, stud poker, draw, wheel, red and black, mustang, bank--all seemed to be right in Donnelly's mitt. A lot of us used to turn up where he was bucking things every night, and, following his play, we always got the good end of it. He didn't know much about any of the games, and the idiotic things we had often to do in order to consistently follow his play made us gag, but nine times out of ten them came out right. One man in our party, a bookmaker, who determined to copper all of Red's play at the different games, on the theory that Donnelly's luck had to turn some time or another, almost went broke before he came into the fold and quit coppering.

"All of this time Donnelly had simply been nibbling at the red stuff. By the time his great luck was a month old, however, the booze had nailed him, and he got to throwing in the hooters early in the morning. A man can't drink in the morning and hang on either to luck or judgment. Red came into the ring palpably drunk one afternoon and spread around $20,000 on Strathmeath at even money. None of us wanted to take the money, for if ever there was a rank in-and-outer, that horse was Strathmeath. But Red was insistent and a bit ugly, and we accommodated him. Strathmeath ran third, beaten out by two dogs. That night Donnelly dropped $20,000 more at faro. Then he didn't go to bed for five nights, and at the end of that time he had about $6000 left. I never saw luck drop away from a man like it did from Red Donnelly. For instance, he was whacking at a bank one night, stupefied with hooters of half rye and half absinthe, and he shut one eye so he wouldn't see double and fixed it on the nine spot. He played the nine open for $100 a clip, and lost it twelve straight times. The frowns of the Lady Fortune got his nerve, and he began to play favorites at the track. The favorites went down to inglorious defeat, one after another, for days.

"Some of the right kind of people, including Schreiber, got hold of Red when he had only the $6000 left, landed him in a fix-up ward, and sobered him up. When he came out Donnelly was set up with an interest in an express business. I don't believe he ever saw the inside of the express office more than half dozen times, except to draw what was coming to him. He was at the track all the time the races lasted, and when the season closed he put in his time down on the levee. He never had a day's luck after his big streak up to the last hour of his death, somewhat less than a year after they came his way with a whoop and a rush.

"When the goddess smiles upon you, you want to stroke her hair, chuck her under the chin and be good to her, for she rarely acts amiable twice to a man who treats her favors wantonly."

AND "RED BEAK JIM" TOOK THE TIP.

_Plunge Made by a Hackman on the Suburban Handicap Won by Kinley Mack._

"We'll get Red Beak Jim to hike us down in his caloosh," said the main guy of the four. The four were job holders in one of the New York city departments, and they were talking about ways and means of reaching the Sheepshead track for the Suburban.

"Good thing," said the three others. "Go on and ask Jimmy for a figure, down and back, for the bunch. Hey, and don't let him dicker you out o' your gilt teeth. Jimmy's a robber."

So the main guy of the four sprinted after Red Beak Jim. He found him with the major portion of his countenance immersed in the collarette of an open-faced malt magnum.

"Hey, Jim," said the main guy, "hitch 'em up and bring 'em around about noon. Down to the Bay and back. There's four of us. What d'ye say to the note for $10 for the job?"

Red Beak Jim removed the mammoth piece of glassware from his face long enough to remark:

"Nothin' doin'."

"Ain't, hey?" said the main guy. "The old caloosh's fallen apart at last, hey?"

Red Beak Jim sat the beer-glass down and wiped off his mouth with the back of his coat-sleeve.

"It'll be jugglin' around when you're yelling for ice at any old price a hunnered," said he. "Nope, I'm 'ngaged f'r th' Bay."

"Say, you've got your fingers crossed or your suspenders," said the main guy. "Give you fifteen for the job."

"Goin' t' take three down," said Red Beak Jim. "Ten a head. Sorry I didn't ask 'em fifteen. Trucks is chargin' ten a head."

"Ten a head," said the main guy, sarcastically. "What in, zinc money? Hey, pull around, Jim, or you'll lose a wheel. Ten a head? Get away with that hasheesh. Give us a figure."

"You've got it," replied Red Beak Jim. "Ten per, round trip. I'm a good thing at that. But I'm 'ngaged."

"So's me little sister," said the main guy. "All right, work your edge. What's ten a head to us, at that? Hey, we got the baby to-day, Jim, and you want to put some braces under that old caloosh. We'll have two ton o' money coming back. Bring 'er around, then, at noon. Say, you ought to get a pair o' knucks and a sandbag. You're too good on the clutch to push a caloosh around. Have 'er there prompt at noon, now, Jim."

"Sure," said Red Beak Jim, and he was there at noon, all right, with the hack all varnished up and dusted off, and the pair looking fit to reel off a mile in five minutes, on the bit. The four were inside, stirring their pieces of ice around with the spoons, when Red Beak Jim pulled up. He jumped off the seat and stuck his head in the door.

"At the pump, gents," said he.

They yanked him in to have one before the start, and they all got him over into the dark corner. Then the main guy addressed him.

"Jim," said the main guy, "we're handing this to you because you're all right--from the heels down. On the level, though, Jim, we pass this along to you because it's right. It's prepared. It's a nightingale in the woods, and it'll be singing when all the rest of 'em are still trying to find out where the wire is. Horse of the century? Nix. Not for these little Willies. The black, let 'er sleep wonder? Not. We stay out there. The Whitney thing with the Frenchy name? Hoot, mon. Pass this squad by. Nope. We got it right, Jimmy. And we're handing you the forty bucks now so's you can plant it right. Here's the forty--and say, you want to remember that you're paid, see? Well, you get over the fence somehow--let a kid take care o' your two goats and the caloosh--and you put the whole forty on Kinley Mack. See? Got that chalked? You put the forty on Kinley Mack, and part o' the two ton o' gilt we'll have on the come-back 'll belong to you. Kinley Mack's going to stand 'em all on their heads and twist 'em round. Don't say we didn't put you next. Uneeda win. Well, you win. Nothing to it. Kinley Mack. Ain't that right, you ducks?"

"That's right, all right," said the other three, all together.

Red Beak Jim emptied the flagon thoughtfully.

"I got mine at that game," said he finally. "They made a bum o' me before you people was through playin' jacks. They can run f'r Hogan. These"--salting away the two twenties the main guy had handed him--"will do f'r me. I don't want t' git rich fast, nohow. I'd booze meself foolish. Much 'bliged, gents, but I can't see no Kinley Macks or Billy Bryans, f'r that matter, wit' a spy-glass."

"All right," said the main guy, disgustedly. "But when the ring's around Kinley Mack, and they're paying off the wise people on him, you want to muffle the bleats you'll have coming, see? Don't say we never dished you up a hot one. You're a sport, Jimmy, and so's a tadpole. You'll never butt in among the first six. All right. Come on, you people."

They clinked the pieces of ice against the sides of their glasses once more, and then they climbed into the hack and were away in a row, to a good start.

At each of the seven places at which they stopped for ice, with trimmings, on the way down to the Bay, they announced to friends that they met that it was only going to be a one horse race.

"Run on a fast track, hey?" said the main guy to everybody he knew at the stops. "Say, that's his graft. That's his main plant. A race-horse can run on any old kind of a track. Say, you get tied up with this horse of the century business and you smoke stogies for a few months. Ethelbert, the horse of the century, hey? Say, d'je ever happen to hear of Salvator and Tenny and Hanover and Lamplighter and Henry of Navarre and Sir Walter and Raceland and Hamburg and a few old two-dollar mutts like that? Did, hey? Well, say, do they butt in? Say, Hamburg could've run backward as fast as this horse of the century that you people have all got the bug about. Kinley Mack! Kinley Mack! Hey, fellers?"

"Thash ri'," said the other three, and then they climbed into the hack again.

When they got down to the track entrance and alighted the main guy of the four, still mindful of his duty toward struggling fellow men, made a final appeal to Red Beak Jim.

"Jim," said he, "how about taking our steer, hey? This is the good thing o' the year. It's going to be a long summer. Going to put that forty on Kinley Mack?"

"I'm goin' t' take a nap after I have a smoke," replied Red Beak Jim, filling his pipe.

The four walked away with an air of disgust, while Red Beak Jim grinned after them.

Each of the four had a one-hundred-dollar note wherewith to back Kinley Mack off the boards. The temptations of the first three races, however, collared them, and when the slate went up for the Suburban they each had a fifty-dollar note wherewith to play Kinley Mack, the good thing. When the horses were at the post for the third race, the main guy, who happened to be standing close to the fence that separates the grand-stand crowd from the people in the cheap field, saw Red Beak Jim, with his hands in his pockets and his pipe in his mouth, leaning against the rail. He called the hackman, and Red Beak Jim approached the fence with a grin.

"Thought you'd get on, anyhow, hey?" said the main guy.

"Naw, I jes' crep in t' see 'em run an' hear th' hard losers tell how it was they lost," said Red Beak Jim. "Nothin' doin' wit' me."

"Ain't going to put those forty on Kinley Mack, hey?" asked the main guy.

"Not if I'm awake," said Red Beak Jim, and the main guy walked away from the fence with an expression of commiseration on his face.

The horses were still at the post for the third race when the main guy was approached by a horseman he knew. The horseman was chewing a straw. He looked very wise.

"Cashed yet on Imp?" the horseman asked the main guy.

"Hey?" asked the latter, bending his ear.

"Only a canter for that one," said the horseman, in a low tone, temporarily removing the straw from his face. "Just a little exercise gallop for the black filly."

"Say, is that right?" inquired the main guy. "Is she so good as all that to-day?"

"Surest thing you know," said the horseman. "She'll give 'em all a fifty-pound beating or I don't know a hoof from a currycomb. I'm only spinning this along to the people I've got some use for. That's the reason I dip it up for you."

"But say," whispered the main guy of the four, "I got it straight as a ramrod on Kinley Mack."

The horseman smiled benignly.

"On this track?" said he. "That one wouldn't beat a fat man on this track. He wants slop and slush. I'm only telling you, that's all. You splurge on Imp, and it'll be all yours."

"I always was stuck on that darned old mare, anyhow," mused the main guy of the four, as he walked off in search of the other three. "She sure can rip the air when she's ripe. Got a thunder of a notion to switch to her at that. That fellow ought to know. He's been handling 'em long enough. Kinley Mack only a mudder, hey? Had kind of a hunch that way myself, but I didn't want to own up. Last week, before I got this Kinley Mack thing, I was sure going to play Imp, and I'd feel like a nickel's worth of lard if she'd go out and spread-eagle 'em now that I've got this Kinley Mack thing."

He stood still for a moment with his hands in his pockets, oblivious of the jostling crowd, and then he slapped his thigh.

"I've got the hunch--it's Imp!" he muttered. "Lemme find the fellers and put 'em next."

He found the other three. They were putty when the main guy told them what the horseman had said. They'd always liked Imp, anyhow.

Their four fifty-dollar notes went on Imp straight, when the slates went up. They all stood together and rooted for the black mare when the horses got off. When Kinley Mack romped in, an easy winner, they didn't say anything at all. They didn't even look at one another. They avoided one another's gaze, thrust their hands deep into their pockets and studied the jockeys as they dismounted. When the first numbness had passed the main guy of the four led them to the bar and they drank the longest one of the day in silence. They looked up into their glasses as they twiddled their spoons, but they didn't look at one another.

There was $17 still left among the four--not enough for any sort of celebration or doings when they got back to town. So the main guy gathered up the $17 in silence and put it all on a horse at 10 to 1 in the fifth race, with the idea of running the shoestring into a tannery. The 10 to 1 shot was never in the hunt at any stage of it, and they were all out. Silently they wended their way out of the gate.

Red Beak Jim was sitting on the seat of the hack, with his legs crossed, smoking a pipe. He looked interested when the four came along.

"Youse people must have all kinds," said he.

They climbed into the hack without a word.

"D'je play that one?" inquired Red Beak Jim, picking up the lines.

"Ask me aunt," growled the main guy.

Red Beak Jim clucked at the horses, and they moved off in good style.

The hackman pulled the horses up alongside the step in front of the first roadhouse.

"Hey, don't get too glad all of a sudden," growled the main guy to Red Beak Jim. "Who told you to do that?"

Red Beak Jim disposed of the lines and stepped down without making any reply, while the four watched him gloomily. Then he grinned, hoisted up the right-hand front flap of his livery coat, dug into his right-hand trousers pocket and pulled out a wad about the size of a healthy cantaloupe.

"I'll ask youse gents to split a couple o' quarts on me," said Red Beak Jim. "I got 8 to 1 f'r me forty."

They gazed at him and his wad with their jaws dropping.

"Did you play Kinley Mack?" they gurgled in unison.

"That's the one youse people said, ain't it?" inquired Red Beak Jim. "I t'ought I'd take a little flyer on him, jes' f'r luck."

THE GAME OF RUNNING "RINGERS."

_And How He Got a Horseman Without Much of a Conscience into Hot Water._

"No Man alive can afford to lose the friendship even of a yaller dog. Not even an ornery yaller dog can you afford to have agin' you at any stage of the game. The dog'll get back at you one time or another, sooner or later, and take a mouthful or two out of you, if you haven't had sense enough to keep him on your staff of friends."

The man who used to make a business of putting ringers over the plates at the outlaw race-tracks had passed from the reflective to the confidential mood. Perhaps the rings which he made on the cherry table with the bottom of his glass suggested circular race-tracks to him. Perhaps the prancing of the fox-terrier pup in the back room made him think of horses kicking up at the post. But, whatever the cause of it, his burst of confidence was unusual, and the other men at the table listened to him attentively.

"My yellow dog was a yellow man--that is, the one I'm thinking about just now," he went on. "He took a hunk out of me down at Alexander Island, Va., near Washington, about five years ago. He had me out. All he had to do was to count ten on me and take the pot, and he knew it. He worked the edge. I didn't blame him a bit then, and I don't now. But it was hard money to lose. When I get hold of the right end of a bulge on a man that I've got it in for, I don't hesitate to work it myself--but I always feel a bit sorry for a man that I get up into a corner, all the same. This yellow man felt sorry for me. He showed it. He was about as sympathetic a yellow man as ever I saw on the occasion I'm going to tell you about. But he wouldn't let go, for all that. He needed the money, of course, but then he wanted to get back at me, too.

"'I'se dun got de aige on yo' all, boss,' he told me, 'an I'm sure a-gwine t' wuk it laik uh mean nigguh. But yo' dun me dutty, Cap.'

"You see, I had employed this yellow man as a stable hand when I first got my string of ringers together and took them out. He was all right for the first few months of the winter campaign, but then he began to get jagged on me with a heap of regularity. He got mixed up with that gin that they keep on hand in Maryland for the Afro-American trade, and it spoiled him for me. He was no use whatever after the gin took hold of him. I warned him a lot, but it did no good. I was a little bit afraid of the job, for he knew a good deal about my string, but I finally decided that I'd have to take a chance and fire him. I turned up at the track stable one morning--this wasn't more'n a million miles from Baltimore--and I found my yellow man Lem sulky and ugly drunk, and the string chewing on their stalls. I gave him a boot and a hist out of the stable and told him not to come back.

"'This yellow man'll probably queer me,' I thought at the time, 'but I can't go along playing 1000 to 1 shots like him for favorites. If he peaches--well, there are other States besides Maryland.'

"I was rather surprised that he didn't come back when he got sober. But, nope, he didn't come back at all. I got another stableman and during the following week, the last of the meeting, I pulled off three good painted things with as good as 15 to 1 around two of 'em, without yellow Lem turning up to pester me at all. I thought of him a good deal. Every time I got one of my plugs at the post I stood by to see the yellow man walk into the judges' stand and give me away. I'll bet I lost ten pounds worrying about that darkey and what he might do during that last week in Maryland. I felt as light as a snowball when I got my string out of that State and over at the Alexander Island track, near Washington. When I got 'em all safe over there, says I to myself, 'This yellow ex-man o' mine is probably back in Thompson street, with his carcass full of gin by this time. So I'll just cut out the worry about him.'

"Well, I started in at the preliminary work of pulling off a real swell thing at Alexander Island. It was about as easy to enter a horse down there as it is to go broke up here, and I put the best one of my lot in the overnight races for a week. I entered him as a half-breed from a Warrenton farm--a maiden six-year-old. It went through easy, the overnight entering did, and I began to lay my horse up for a price. The horse had done a mile in 1.40-1/2 and he had the whole bunch down at Alexander Island outclassed by 212 pounds. The plug had belonged to the best of the Western selling-plater division as a three- and four-year-old and he had been in a few stakes at that. I got him as a five-year-old and he surely was a meal-ticket for me. He wasn't painted a bit--you didn't have to dye 'em at Alexander Island. If Hanover had been an outlaw you could have stuck him into any old race down there and they'd never have got next.

"I had a boy along with the string who'd been chased off the Western licensed tracks for funny work, and what that boy didn't know about riding like as if his life depended on his winning, and forty wraps on his mount all the time, wasn't worth knowing. Say, he had six separate and distinct bridle welts on both of his forearms that he got in pulling horses. He was invaluable, that boy. When we were out to win he never made anything but a nose finish of it even if our horse was up against the worst set of outlaw dray-plugs in training. Oh, that boy knew his gait all right! I did the best I could to keep him from going to Joliet for pocketpicking in Chicago a couple o' years ago, but it was no use. He's still doing his bit.

"Well, I had him sail this good nag of mine over the course in seven races the first ten days of the meeting. The horse was a bit too likely looking, and there was only 5 to 1 against him in the first race. He finished fourth. The boys in the ring quoted 8 to 1 around him in No. 2 race, and he finished sixth in a field of seven. And so on. He was in the ruck in most of the races, and he finished the last two of the seven a rank last. By that time you could have written your own ticket if you wanted to play him, which is what I was waiting for. My boy complained that during the last three races he had all colors of trouble in holding the horse in.

"'You'd better open the watermelon quick,' said he to me after the seventh race, 'or I'm liable to lose him and win the next time out.'

"And so I had the pie counter all spread out for his next time out. It was a six-furlong race, which was my horse's distance. Two of the cracks of the outlaw brigade were in the race, and they both opened up at even money. Then one of 'em was played down to 1 to 2 on. It was a twelve-horse race, and my nag opened up the rank outsider with any amount of 100 to 1 quoted around him. I didn't want to be too chesty and spoil my dough, and so I only took $50 worth of it, scattering it around in $10 gobs. I reckoned that $5000 would be a good-enough pulldown on the race, and I didn't want to take any chances on being shut out of the game down at Alexander Island. I put a few of the boys I knew next to what was going to happen, told 'em not to go it too strong or they'd queer me, and they mixed up $5 all over the ring on my 100 to 1 horse, that should have gone to the post at 1 to 100. They broke the price down to 30 to 1, but that didn't make any difference to me, for I had picked up all I wanted of the 100 to 1.

"When they went to the post I picked out a spot on the rail some distance away from the grand stand to watch the race. I felt pretty good. I knew it was going through. My horse had worked the six furlongs in 1:16 flat the afternoon before, and I knew that he was easy money. The only thing I was afraid of was that he would get away from the boy and beat the bunch by eight blocks, thus bringing me into the judges' stand on suspicion. I was thinking of all these things when I heard a voice behind me.

"'Aftuhnoon, Cap,' said the voice. 'How's yo' all tuh-day?'

"I looked around. The voice belonged to Lem, my fired yellow stable man. Lem was sober, and got up as if for a cake-walk. He had business in his eye, too.

"'Hello, there,' says I, kind of coddingly. 'How're you cutting it?'

"'Oh, tol'able, boss--tol'able,' he replied.

"'Where are you working?' I asked him.

"He smiled blandly in my teeth.

"'I'se a-wukkin' yo' all dis aftuhnoon, boss,' said he. 'But I ain't no hog. Jes' half o' de rake-down'll do me. Mus' hev dat much, fo' sure. Jes' nachully need dat much.'

"'What the devil are you talking about?' I asked him, but I knew he had me where he wanted me.

"'Well, yo' see, boss, it's jes' dis-a-way,' he replied. 'I'se a-gwine tuh quit rubbin' dem down an' take tuh speculashunin' m'sef. I'se a-gwine tuh staht fo' San Francisco tuh see whut all I kin do with de bookies out da-a-way, an' jes' nachully needs de coin tuh go on out an' begin wuk on 'em. Dis yeah's uh good one yo' all's pullin' down tuh-day, an' I was trailin' yo' w'en yo' all put yo' bets down. Yo' stan's tuh win $5,000 on de ole hoss, an' yo'll win it. I'll take ha'f o' dat, boss, an' go on out tuh de coast tracks with it.'

"I think I must have been looking pretty hard at that yellow man when he slung me this spiel. Oh, he had me all right. It was my looking at him so hard that made him get off the rest of the speech:

"'I'se dun got de aidge on yo' all, boss, an' I'm sure a-gwine tuh wuk it laik uh mean nigguh. But yo' dun me dutty, Cap.'

"As I say, I knew he had me, but just out of curiosity I shot this one at him:

"'S'pose, you yellow devil, that I don't cough up a red of it? What then?'

"He grinned and rolled his eyes over toward the judges' stand.

"'I'd jes' nachully be obleeged tuh do de bes' I could fo' de proteckshun o' de spoht o' racin,' he replied.

"The horses were still making false breaks at the post and it was too late for me to hop into the ring and lay enough down to win $2,500 for the yellow man and still have $5,000 to the good myself. It was a sore game, that, but I had to stand for it.

"'All right,' I said to the darkey, 'you've turned this trick and you'll get the $2,500. But you want to go West with it, as you say you are, or I'll get a night doctor or two on your trail. Chop away from here and I'll see you after the race.'

"'I knows yo' will, boss,' said the yellow man, giving me that triumphant grin of his, and he turned and went down the rail to take in the race. Race, did I say? Oh, it wasn't a race. My horse got away from the post three lengths to the bad, and he trailed after the bunch dismally all the way around to the stretch turn, but I never had a quake. I could see, if nobody else could, that my boy was ripsawing the horse's mouth, and I knew it was all right. At the stretch turn the boy let out a couple of links and the nag joined the front bunch. The boy drew it fine, as I had instructed him, and won by a short head, and it was funny to see the wise guys from Washington who had scattered all kinds of Government-earned money all over the ring turning mental flipflaps of despair. I watched to see if there'd be any holler about anything when the boy weighed in, but there wasn't, and the race was confirmed all right. I went around and did my own collecting, and several of the poor devils of bookies had to go out of business after the rest of the boys that I had put on to the thing came along and cashed their tickets. I found my yellow man waiting for me on the outside of the ring, and when I got him into the shadow I gave up the $2,500. I saw that he got a ticket and started for San Francisco the next day. I felt so sad when I heard a few months later that in an attempt to learn how to smoke hop out there, to add to his jag repertoire, he had died in a Chinese joint after hitting up thirty-six pills. I felt so sad."

The ex-ringer operator was plunged in meditation for a while, the others remaining sympathetically silent, and then he resumed in another strain.

"Next to the worst jolt I ever got--and the worst was the time down in Maryland when one of my plugs with two whitewashed barrel spots and a whitewashed forehead star got rained on at the post, practically out of a clear sky, and the spots got washed out, and I had to get out of the State of Maryland over fences--next to that jolt, the way one of my boys threw it into me at a county fair meeting in West Virginia was pretty bad. I had tongue-hammered that kid pretty hard two or three times at that meeting for winning when his mounts weren't due to win and I didn't want 'em to win, and he got sulky. I tried to coddle him up a bit, for I had a real good one to pull off on the last day of the fair, and I thought I had him all right on my staff again. The real good thing was a horse of mine that I had entered in the final race, which the jays down there called a mile race for the 1:55 running class.' 1:55! I had a skate with me down there that could just common canter a mile in 1:45, and he could have done it in three seconds better if pinched at any time. I had had the plug lose three or four races during the fair meeting, and he wasn't as good as Chinese money in the estimation of the West Virginians by the time the race that he was going to win came around. My boy was to have the mount, and our mutual confidence seemed to be restored by the time the good thing was booked to happen. But he had an ice-pick up his sleeve for me all the time."

"'Didn't try with the horse, and lost, eh?' asked one of the ex-ringer worker's listeners.

"'Oh, no, it wasn't that,' was the reply. The horse won by a tongue, and the boy gave him a beautiful tight ride to keep him from winning further off. But he put every grafter that he knew, and he knew 'em all at the fair meeting next to what was going to happen, and made split terms with all of them. That is, he put 'em on, on condition that he was to get half of each man's winnings on the race. Now, I had figured on picking up $8,000 or $10,000 easy on that good thing, and I had lain awake nights making plans to meet possible hitches. It certainly wasn't treating me right, the way that boy did. I thought I'd get as good as 25 to 1, anyhow, at the first betting. I intended to take a mess o' that and then wait for the betting to go up, for I confidently expected, and had a right to expect, that the nag's price, in view of what the farmers down there thought of him, would go up to 50 or 100.

"When the betting on the race opened I was on hand with my wad. Say, I couldn't get within twenty feet of a one of the twelve bookies doing business. I never saw such a scramble, even in the 50-cent field at Sheepshead. Of course, I thought they were all getting aboard of the favorite, and so I drew back, knowing that if they were playing the favorite my plug would be going up in price all the time. Then I noticed a lot of the educated money, the coin of the grafters that I knew around the grounds, going in, and I wondered if they were Rubes enough to play a favorite in the last race on get-away day. So I drew close to the bookies' stands--as close as I could get--and then I found that they were all writing my horse's name. Nothing but my horse. Not a horse in the race but my horse. It was a staggerer, that was. Of course, I thought of my miffed jockey right away, and I knew he had done it. When I finally was able to get up to the bookies, I found that my plug's price had been played down from 20 to 1 to 9 to 10 on, and I was so disgusted that I stayed off altogether, although I knew my horse was going to win. He did win. The boy couldn't peach because his rake-down had been too big, but he showed me $3,500 in bills an hour after the race, got off twenty feet and told me all about it, and then bolted. I haven't seen him since."

EXPERIENCES OF A VERDANT BOOKMAKER.

_Wherein It Is Shown That, When There Is "Something Doing," a Bank-roll
Is Liable to Be Wrecked._

"I heard somewhere the other day," said one of a party of turfmen who were dining together after the McGovern-Erne fight, "that Billy Thompson, the ex-Duke of Gloucester, is trying to cook up some scheme whereby the legal authorities of New Jersey 'll relent and permit him to start the old Gloucester merry-go-round again. I don't think he'll make it stick, if the story is true, but if Gloucester ever is started again I know a man who'd be very liable to burn the barns down some dark night. I don't think he'd let the Gloucester mud-lark and snow bird race-track operate while he lives.

"In 1880 this man I'm talking about--he had passed up a good grocery business to play the races a year before--had nursed together a wad of about six thousand dollars, and this gave him a bad case of the Sandow vest. He was so chesty over having all that money that he concluded he'd try a whirl on the block. There was only winter racing going on when he got that smoky notion into his hat, and that was at Gloucester. As you fellows know, they used to run 'em there in snow up to the saddle pommels, and the plug that could make out the best without going over the fence, or that didn't become crazy from snow blindness, always yanked down the money at Gloucester--that is, if he was meant to win.

"This ex-sugar-and-tea guy was a dead verdant one at the bookmaking game when he went on the block at Gloucester, but he kept his ears open and his mouth shut, and he had quite a streak of luck, besides, from the go-off, so that at the end of his first week at laying odds he found that he'd averaged a clean-up of about $200 a day. You couldn't see him then without sending up your card, he was so vast and heap-much. He was thinking of going down Dixieway to make a bid on the Belle Meade farm, and, by the end of his third week on the block, when he had run his $6000 into a bit more than $10,000, he was probably the haughtiest gazabo on this side of the Rocky Mountains.

"One day--it was at the beginning of his fourth week at bookmaking--a duck who had a string of good ones--of their kind--chasing the Gloucester will-o'-the-wisp for the poolroom purses, invited himself to take dinner with the ex-grocer with the streak of luck. After they had stored the feed away at the high-riding bookmaker's Philadelphia hotel, the man with the string leaned back in his chair and sprung what he had in mind. He mentioned the star sprinter of his string.

"'You know, of course,' said he confidentially, to the ex-grocer, 'that that nag can eat up any horse down here at three-quarters of a mile. He'd never be beaten at that distance if we let him out every time he went to the post to race. But, of course, if I'd let him win every time out, there would never be any price on him. He'd be a 1 to 20 shot every time he got a lead-pad on, and I'm not going down the line on that kind of prices. Neither am I running my string over at Gloucester for hygienic reasons. Perceive?'

"The new bookie perceived.

"'Well,' this oily geezer went on, 'that horse is entered in a six-furlong sprint to-morrow, as you know. He'll probably be an even-money favorite. He'll lose.'

"'He will, hey?' said the new man on the block, suspicious like. 'That's darned good of you to tell me. But you're not telling me that for your health, either. He's going to lose, eh?'

"'Yep, he'll lose,' repeated the smooth owner. 'Now, you're a pretty nice young fellow, ain't you? I like you. Understand?'

"'Um,' said the ex-grocer. 'What's your graft, anyhow?'

"'Well, as I say, that skate of mine is going to lose,' said the confidential owner once more. 'Now, you see this thousand-dollar William, don't you? Well, I want you to take a thousand-dollars' worth of my horse to win for my account, see, when you make your book on that race. He may be as good as 2 to 1, but he's going to lose anyhow. You see, I just want to pick up an honest dollar or so. You take this $1,000 of the suckers' money for me on your book, and your reward 'll be in knowing what's going to happen. You can hunch up the price, see? Is it a go?'

"Now, this looked like a pretty good thing to the groceryman. It looked like taking candy from a child. If that owner's horse wasn't going to lose, it looked like a cinch that he wasn't going to risk any thousand-dollar bills on the game. So the new bookie told the owner that he was on, took his $1,000, and figured on the pounding he was going to give the talent the next day. He chuckled to himself when the other books only laid even money against the sprinter when the betting on the race began the next afternoon.

"'They wouldn't do a thing but fall over themselves to lay a long price if they knew, like I do, that the favorite is going to kerflop,' mused the ex-groceryman--he wailed me the whole spiel afterward--and he laid 2 to 1 against the sprinter's chances on his slate. The other bookies over his way looked as if they thought he was wheely, but he only exulted whole lots inside of him.

"'You are wise people,' he thought, 'but this is where I get the big end of it.'

"Within three minutes after he had started his slate he had taken in the horse owner's $1,000 worth of his horse at 2 to 1. The handicappers just battled to get at his book at their figures. Said he to himself, 'I'll just tap myself on this watermelon,' and by the time the horses went to the post he had taken in $5,000 of the public money at 2 to 1 on that horse that was going to lose, and he knew that he'd be just $5,000 to the good.

"Of course you chaps are next. When the horses got away the skate that the ex-grocer had laid his whole $1,000 against walked in on the bit, fifteen lengths to the good in a buck-jump. He was under twenty wraps all the way from the flag-fall.

"The new bookie paid out his $10,000, bought a clay pipe and an eight-cent package of punk tobacco, and went out of business, and he's been out of business ever since. It took him about a week to get contiguous to the fact that the men who collected his $10,000 were the smooth owner's commissioners, but when he went gunning the owner had removed his string from Gloucester, and was taking a little winter cruise in a felucca in the AEgean Sea. But if Gloucester ever starts up again, and there's a conflagration, I'll know how it started."

"There's another chap that I know of who's been smoking unfragrant tobacco in a pipe for a good many years on account of an outlaw track deal," said one of the other turfmen at the table, "but he wasn't a new man at the game. He was an old-timer--so much of an old-timer that it was up to him to know that, once having made a tool of a man or a boy in the racing business, it is never the part of wisdom to throw him overboard on the presumption that he's a dead one. Turf followers, as you fellows all know, have a habit of resurrecting themselves at inopportune moments when it seems that they are so deeply buried that they'll never struggle to the top of the ground again, and when they do run a shoe-tongue into a tan-yard they are more than liable to get hunk with former pals who have cast them aside in the hour of adversity. Now, it is a particularly dangerous thing for any man connected with racing to do business with a jockey. I never heard of a bit of jockey-tampering that didn't get out sooner or later, to the disadvantage of the man that did the corrupting. I guess we all know of cases in which jockeys, after being ruled off for crooked work, have become exacting pensioners on the hands of the men responsible for their downfall for long stretches of years. The story I have in mind is of a jockey who, while he wasn't set down through following the directions of the bookmaker he did business with, was treated with characteristic meanness by the latter when he was up against it owing to an accident; and the way this jock got even with his former tamperer was unique.