Chapter IV: Part 4

"You all remember the boy Kelley? He wasn't exactly a boy at the time this thing happened--he was a man of twenty-two or so, which probably accounted for the fact that when he was riding at Guttenberg he had most of the other jockeys faded; give me a rider with a man's hand on his shoulders every time for my horse. Now, the morale of Guttenberg wasn't like unto that pervading a theological institution, but Kelley the jock wasn't any worse than his neighbors. He was like all the rest of the people mixed up with the weird game at the Gut. It was a poor jock at the Gut who didn't have a bookmaker on his staff, and Kelley wasn't a poor jock by fifty good pounds under the saddle. It used to be an off day with Kelley when he didn't put up a ride in accordance with this bookmaker's orders. All of the jocks at the Gut did similar things, and they were stood for. The hectic flush of humiliation didn't mantle the alabaster countenances of the Gut stewards to any huge extent when the 1 to 5 shot was beaten a furlong. Kelley was enabled to throw big money into his bookie's satchel, because, being such a top-notch rider of outlaws, most of his mounts went to the post favorites; so that when he snatched a horse it meant the good of the books, and of his bookmaker in particular, for the latter would of course lay the longest price in their judgment against one that he knew was going to run like a mackerel along a dusty road. Kelley profited fairly well at the hands of this bookmaker, and on his side he was absolutely loyal in his crookedness. He invariably delivered the goods. He had the knack of making it appear to the people with the field glasses that he was riding like a fiend, when in reality he had his horse pulled double, and when he was following orders he could permit the favorite under him to be beaten out by a tongue on the wire in a way that would raise the hair of the folks in the stand.

"Well, one day Kelley was dumped from a horse he was riding when the track was slippery and broke his leg. He had been improvident and extravagant, like most of the jocks of that day, so that when the accident put him on the flat of his back he found himself broke. What was more natural than that he should send to the bookmaker whose orders he had been following for a long time for assistance? He wrote to the bookie and asked for the loan of $100. The bookmaker ignored the request. Then the laid-up jockey sent a friend to the bookmaker. The latter made some remark about not coughing up for the oats and keep of dead ones--figuring, you see, that Kelley's injuries were such that he wouldn't be able to get back to the riding game until the close of the meeting. So the jockey had to stave off doctors' and other bills as best he could, and I guess that he set his teeth down pretty hard and did some robust thinking while his leg was healing.

"A couple of months after this accident Kelley, somewhat pale, turned up in the paddock at the Gut one morning and announced that he was fit to ride again. His services were immediately in demand, and Mike Daly got him to ride his horse Gloster in the first race on the card. Gloster was the best horse in the race and was certain to be favorite. The bookie, who had used Kelley before his accident and afterward turned him down, got to Kelley by the underground process, through an agent, with the inquiry as to whether a little business couldn't be done on Gloster. Kelley, with all the good nature in life, sent word that there could, certainly; that he could get Gloster beaten by an eyelash.

"The betting opened and Gloster was the favorite all over the ring at odds of 1 to 2 on. Then Kelley's bookmaker began to shoot the price up--first to 3 to 5 on, then to 4 to 5 on, then to even money, and then right up to 6 to 5 and even 7 to 5 against. The way that bookie hauled in the money on Gloster was a caution. It seemed that every plunger and casual bettor in the inclosure wanted a piece of Gloster at Kelley's bookmaker's odds--all the rest of the pencillers still held Gloster at 1 to 2 on--and the bookmaker took in thousands of dollars on the horse. When they were still whacking him with Gloster bets he became somewhat nervous and sent his agent to Kelley again for reassurance. Kelley told the agent again that Gloster wasn't going to win.

"'He's taking in billions on Gloster,' said the agent to Kelley.

"'Let him handle the whole mint on the nag,' replied Kelley. 'Gloster will just about get the place--maybe.'

"In the meantime the judges, who occasionally made a bluff at getting haughty and virtuous, got next to the big odds that one bookmaker--Kelley's bookmaker--was offering against Gloster, and, naturally enough, they became suspicious. Five minutes before the horses were due to go to the post, therefore, they called Kelley into the stand and asked him squarely if there was anything doing by which Gloster was going to get beat.

"'If Gloster doesn't win this race,' replied Kelley, 'you can rule me off for life.'

"Kelley had put every man, woman, child and dog that he knew at the track on to the fact that he was going to win by a Philadelphia block on Gloster, and the bookmaker who had turned him down when he was on the flat of his back with a broken stilt in the middle of winter got the play of all of them. Dollar bets and $1,000 bets all looked alike to the bookmaker. He took all the money that came along without rubbing. He thought he had a corked-up good thing.

"When the bugle sounded and the horses emerged from the paddock, the bookmaker, with his glasses in his hand, was leaning against the rail, and he looked up with a grin to catch Kelley's eye as the jockey rode by on Gloster. He caught Kelley's eye, but there was no responsive grin. There was, instead, a dirty sneer on Kelley's drawn, pale mug, and, as he caught sight of the leering bookie he drew Gloster up for just an instant and spat viciously in the direction of the man who had treated him with such ingratitude.

"The bookmaker saw in that instant that he was ditched. His face went white, and he clutched the rail, and he was still digging his fingernails into the rail when, a few minutes later, the victorious Gloster, who had won by about half a furlong, was led into the paddock, with Kelley walking alongside of him. When that bookie got through paying off the Gloster bets he had taken in he was out of business, and when the story of how it all came about leaked out, there wasn't a man in the game that didn't say that the bookie got all that was coming to him."

THE MAN WHO KNEW ALL ABOUT TOUTS.

_And the Evaporation of His Resolution to Have Nothing to Do With Them._

"Touts," said Busyday, oracularly, to his companion on a train bound for the Bay on Suburban day, "are the derned nuisances of the racing game. You want to watch out for them. If by chance you should get separated from me in the crowd, don't you let any of the sharp-eyed, soft-voiced ducks talk you into playing this or that one. Just you stick to those selections I wrote out for you on that piece of paper. They're the logical winners. A friend of mine, whose brother is a bookmaker, handicapped 'em for me, and I'm going to play every one of 'em myself. That's the only way to win; stick to your selections, and don't let yourself be touted. The man who listens to touts smokes a pipe. Understand?"

"Uh, huh," replied Busyday's friend, who was from Busyday's native town out West. He had never seen a horse race in his life, whereas Busyday was an old-timer and learned at the game, having seen three Handicaps and two Suburbans ran.

"They make kind of a lukewarm effort to keep the touts off the tracks," went on Busyday, disparagingly; "but the touts are too smooth for 'em, and they're always around, looking for good things like you, old man. All you've got to do is just to flout 'em from the jump, as soon as they edge up to you, and they'll shoo-fly instantly, rather than take chances on being spotted by the Pinkerton people. Tell 'em to go to the devil, that's all."

"Uh, huh," answered Busyday's friend and guest, once more.

It came to pass that Busyday and his visiting townsman were separated before they had got off the train. The car was jammed, and in the confusion of getting off they made their exits by different doors. Busyday frantically yelled out his friend's name as soon as he found himself alone on the platform, but, of course, he got no reply. His friend was engulfed in the crowd.

"I s'pose I ought to have held hold of his hand, like a fellow does when he takes his sister's kids out for a walk," he reflected. "This is blasted mean luck from the go-off. The touts'll get hold of him now, sure as shootin', and they'll strip him. Good thing he's got his ticket back to the little old slab of a town where we used to play shinny together."

Busyday roamed around the grand-stand and the betting ring for ten minutes before the slates went up for the first race, trying to catch sight of his friend, but it was no use. His townsman wasn't visible anywhere. Then a sudden swirling and eddying in the betting ring told him that the prices were up for the first race.

"I'll have to pass the old boy up until I get this bet down," said Busyday to himself, pulling out of his pocket the slip of paper that the handicapper had given him the evening before. "Let's see, what one of 'em have I got to win this? Oh, yes; Peaceful--good name, but it doesn't sound as if a horse with a name like that could run much. I'd rather have a horse called Lightning Express, or Cyclone, or Helen Blazes, or something like that, run for my money. S'pose, though, this handicapping chap knows what he is doing, and so I'll just put my first ten on Peaceful to win. Hey? How's that?"

There was a soft, persuasive buzz right in Busyday's ear.

"D'ye notice all the suckers breakin' their necks t' land on that Peaceful dead one?" were the words that formed the buzz.

Busyday jerked his head around suddenly, and he found within four inches of his ear the countenance of a young-old man with red hair, a freckled skin, and a pale-blue, shifty eye.

"Dead one?" echoed Busyday, the red-haired, young-old man smiling amiably in his face.

"Libster," said he of the pale-blue, shifty eye, looking entirely disinterested. "Out-and-out libster. Crab. Run about a dozen sprints, and still a merry maiden. And look at the chancts th' mutt's had to win! Leads th' percession into th' stretch every whirl, and then chucks it. A proper dog, Cap. That's on the dead. Worst quitter on th' grounds."

"Um," said Busyday, stroking his chin and wondering why his handicapper had picked Peaceful.

"I got th' baby," buzzed the freckle-faced, young-old man, after a silence.

"Hey?" asked Busyday.

"For a pipe," said the shifty-eyed one. "Say, I don't git out o' me Waldorf bunk at 3 o'clock every mornin' for me health."

"Is that so?" inquired Busyday, just for the sake of saying something.

"Not on yer dinner pail," said the aged youth with the shifty eye. "I light out fer th' tracks t' watch 'em at their early mornin' works. I'm a railbird, all right, but I know where th' dough is. I seen this baby that I'm tellin' you about do the five-eighths in a minute flat th' other mornin', an' if he ain't a moral fer this, here's my lid an' you can eat it," whereupon the shifty-eyed one removed his 50-cent straw hat and offered it to Busyday.

"What's the name of this wonder?" inquired Busyday, trying to work up a superior smile.

The aged youth bent over, placed his mouth within a quarter of an inch of Busyday's ear, and whispered:

"Stuart. He'll walk."

"Oh, well, then, I'll waste a ten-spot on Stuart," said Busyday, trying to say it languidly, as if he didn't take much stock in himself or anybody else. Then he plunged into the vortex around one of the bookmakers' elevated chairs, got his feet trod upon, his hat jammed down over his eyes, and his ribs treated to an all-hands elbow massage, and finally succeeded in passing up his ten-dollar bill on Stuart to win.

"Stuart, thirty-five to ten," droned the bookmaker to the sheet-writer, and then Busyday found himself beaten to the outskirts of the crowd.

"You on?" he heard in his ear, and, turning, he saw the freckle-faced one smiling up at him.

"Yep--dropped ten on it," replied Busyday. "Kind o' liked Stuart myself when I saw him entered."

Then Busyday steered for the lawn to see the finish of the race. He was trying to get some sense out of the list of owners' colors on his program, so as to be able to distinguish his horse as they raced under the wire, when a calm man next to him, with a pair of field-glasses to his eyes, mumbled:

"They're off!"

There was a big shout all around.

"Lady Uncas out in front," said the calm man coolly. "She'll curl up. She seems to be staying, though, at that. Nope, she's collared. Stuart's nailed her. He walks," and the calm man put down his glasses as the horses galloped past the sixteenth pole.

Stuart came in all alone, and Peaceful was back in the ruck.

"I had my suspicions about that Stuart horse right along," said Busyday to himself. He had never seen the horse's name until the evening before. "Don't know why, but I kind o' liked him. Probably because the Stuart were a pretty swift bunch," and he chuckled to himself over his humor as he made his way to the bookmaker's line to cash.

"Somethin' easy--like findin' it, hey?" he heard buzzed into his ear as soon as he put his foot into the betting ring, and there was the old-faced young man, grinning complaisantly up at him.

Busyday handed to the shifty-eyed one, who stuck to him right up to the paying-off line, buzzing learnedly all the time about the race just ran, a $10 bill out of his $35 winning.

"Th' next," said the red-haired wiseacre of the rail when Busyday had fought himself away from the cashing crowd, "is what you might call a one-hoss race. A one-hoss race, right."

"Lambent, of course?" said Busyday, looking at his piece of paper with the selections on it. Lambent was his handicapper's selection.

The freckle-faced screwed the whole left side of his face up into one prodigious wink.

"Not this cage," said he. "Try the next. Lambent?" and he put one large, white, freckled hand over his face, as if to hide his confusion, and grinned through his fingers.

"Well, Lambent figures to win, doesn't she?" asked Busyday weakly.

"Who, Lambent?" and the shifty-eyed smiled some more. "I'm goin' t' match her in a sweepstakes against me old aunt, and back me aunt off th' boards fer a hog-killin'. There's on'y one in this. Skinch. You can tap on it."

"Which one?" asked Busyday in a wabbly tone.

Again the aged youth bent over until his mouth was within a quarter of an inch of Busyday's ear.

"Swiftmas," he replied. "Been saved up for a good thing, right. If he don't buck-jump in, here's me lid," and once more he extended his half-dollar straw hat for Busyday's mastication.

"Well," said Busyday to himself between his teeth as he made his way through the jostling crowd to one of the bookmakers' stands, "I guess I'm a weak and erring brother, all right, but danged if I don't play that redhead once more, anyhow," and he got $40 for his $20 on Swiftmas to win. Swiftmas won by a head.

"They were too foxy t' win too far off," Busyday was informed by means of a buzz in his ear, by this time well known, as he was elbowing his way again to the cashing line. "Boy drew it fine so's not t' spoil th' price next time out."

The freckle-faced old youth got $15 out of Busyday's $40 winning, and then he looked Busyday over carefully and inquired:

"How about me?"

"You'll do," replied Busyday, candidly. "Name the next."

"His Nibs, the Prince of Melbourne," whispered the freckle-faced, and Busyday glanced at his handicapper's selections. It was the Prince of Melbourne there, too.

"He can't lose," said the shifty-eyed. "Just a pleasant airing fer him. Nothin' to it. W'en you put yer coin down, you might as well stay right here so's t' be foist in line. Put a bunch on."

"I've got some of their money," mused Busyday, "and I won't pass it all back to 'em in a lump."

He got $75 to $30 on Prince of Melbourne to win, bought three cigars for a dollar and a pint of wine, and then suddenly wondered where his townsman was.

"No use trying to look him up, though," he reflected, "in this jam of Indians. Poor old chap, I s'pose he's smashed flatter'n a pancake by this time, without the price of a bottle of pop," and he reproached himself a good deal for not having hung on to his guest when they left the train. He was aroused from his reflections by the yowl, "They're off!" and by the time he got out to the lawn the horses were coming down the stretch.

"His Princelets, with his mouth wide open," he heard the crowd yell, and then his chest expanded, and he muttered to himself: "I always did have a soft spot for that derned old plug!" For the moment he forgot that the Prince of Melbourne happened to be a two-year-old.

"Oh, w'en I pick up a good one as I go along I like t' put me fren's on," buzzed the freckle-faced in his ear, as he made for the paying-off line. Notwithstanding the fact that the Prince of Melbourne's name appeared on his handicapper's list of selections, Busyday very cheerfully gave up one-third, or $25 of his winnings, on the two-year-old to the red-haired youth. The latter soaked the bills away in his white-and-brown-striped trousers, and then he remarked, in an offhand sort of way:

"Well, this is where you pass me up, ain'd it, so?"

"Well," said Busyday, "I came down to play Banastar, and I think I'll have to stay with that hunch, if you're agreeable."

"Cert'nly," said the shifty-eyed, with an expression more of sorrow than of anger on his lined face. "Go ahead. Help yourself. Have all th' fun that's comin' t' you."

"Why, what's the matter?" inquired Busyday. "Ain't Banastar the play?"

"And he looks like a duck with a purty good top-knot on him, at that," said the freckle-faced, dreamily, paying no attention to Busyday's question, and apparently addressing empty air.

"What's the matter with Banastar?" repeated Busyday.

"I'm not queerin' yer fun, Cap," went on the shifty-eyed. "You come down wit' th' Banastar bug in yer nut, like all the rest, and I'm not a-switchin' you."

"Look a-here," said Busyday, "what the dickens are you giving us, anyhow? Don't you think Banastar'll win the Suburban?"

"Cap," said the aged youth, spitting dryly and for the first time looking Busyday squarely in the eye, "there's a mare in this bunch that'll run things around all the Banastars from here to Hoboken an' back. She kin fall down, an' win. She kin take naps between poles an' walk. She's a piperino, if ever one was pushed up fer geezers to nibble at. But I'm not a-switchin' you, un'stand?"

"Mare, hey?" said Busyday, looking over his program. "You mean that Imp?"

"Ain't it?" said the freckle-faced. "Well, I guess yah. She win th' last time out with' 126 up, eatin' peanuts down th' stretch, from a bunch purty near as good as this. Banastar? Cap, I ain't no hog, an' you've passed along what coin was a-comin' to me. I'll lay you 2 t' 1 Banastar won't git one, two, t'ree."

"Dog-goned if I know what to do," mused Busyday. "Here I've been shouting Banastar ever since the Handicap, and I promised my wife faithfully that I'd play Banastar. Say," addressing the freckle-faced, who stood by sorrowfully regarding him, "is this Imp fast enough, that's what I want to know? Won't Banastar beat her on speed?"

The aged youth held up one thumb vertically and indicated with the forefinger of his other hand.

"De Empire State Express," said he.

Then he held up his other thumb.

"Steam roller," said he. "Take yer pick."

Busyday made a sudden dive for a bookmaker's line.

"Which I may remark, in strict confidence," he said to himself as he tugged at his wad and counted out five twenty-dollar bills, "that there may be softer marks between here and High Bridge than myself; but, confound that freckle-faced tout's red head, I'm just a-going to slide along with him and play Imp at that, Banastar or no Banastar!" and ten seconds later the bookmaker was taking Busyday's five twenties and droning out, "Six hundred to $100 on Imp to win."

Busyday was lighting the last of his three-for-fifty cigars over in a corner of the betting ring when the well-known buzz reached his ears again.

"On?" inquired the buzz. "Good and hard?"

"Yep," said Busyday. "Hundred."

Imp's win is turf history. As Busyday handed the tout two crisp $100 bills the freckle-faced remarked:

"An' you ain't th' on'y collect I make on this, Cap. I got a hayseed on th' mare fer $300, an' I had him on all th' rest o' them good things, at that."

"Well, so long, Red," said Busyday. "I'm getting back to town to dinner. Next time I come down I'll give you my trade if I see you around."

Then Busyday went up into the stand to take a final look around for his townsman. He didn't see him, and he started for the gate. Just as he got outside the gate he saw his fellow townsman and guest stepping into a hack. His fellow townsman and guest looked pretty jaunty, but Busyday didn't notice it.

"Hey, there, old man," he called after his friend, and the latter looked around.

"Oh, here you are," said Busyday's friend, with an expensive cigar stuck at an angle of forty-five degrees in one corner of his mouth. "Trimmed?"

"Nope," said Busyday. "I landed on a few little good things that occurred to me after I got to looking at the program, and I win 'bout a thousand. Poor old jay, I suppose they put you out o' business, eh?"

"Not by a long sight!" said his friend. "I ran into a freckle-faced, red-headed duck as soon as I got in the grounds. I lost that piece o' paper you gave me with the whadyoucallem--selections--on it, and so I played what this red-headed chap told me to. Copped out 'bout $2800, altogether. Had $300 on Imp to win the big race."

Then Busyday knew to whom the freckle-faced had referred when he spoke of a hayseed.

A "COPPER-LINED CINCH" THAT DID GO THROUGH.

_Narrative of the Red-Haired, Freckle-Faced Tout Who Had a Good Thing up
His Sleeve._

When the first line of betting on the fifth race at Gravesend was chalked up shortly after 4 o'clock in the Harlem street poolroom on Wednesday afternoon last, the red-haired, freckle-faced tout gave one swift glance at the figures, clutched his armful of "dope" books and sped over to a corner of the room where two flashy, well-fed looking chaps sat tilted back in chairs, smoking and unconcernedly waiting for the running of a race at Latonia in which they had a good thing.

"Here's the soft spot o' your life," said the red-haired, freckle-faced tout, pulling a chair up alongside the two unconcerned-looking chaps. "This'll be like pullin' th' milk teeth out o' a fox terrier's face. This is a real dill pickle. Are you two comin' out into th' garden, Maud, or are you goin' t' let this one get away from you."

"Back t' your dray," said one of the unconcerned-looking chaps. "Another stiff, hey? T' your dray!"

The red-haired, freckle-faced tout pulled his chair closer to them.

"But this is th' hand-made, copper-coiled mash," said he, earnestly. "It's on'y onct in a while that you get them people that lays th' figures out o' line like they are on this one. This is th' mellow goods. Just send a few aces along on it, that's all. It's 100 to 1."

"Now you stawp, Red!" said the other unconcerned-looking man. "You stawp, you rude thing!"

"He'll come home on th' bit," said "Red." "Lemme show you where he's been landin', an' you can see if he's any 100 t' 1 toss. Lemme pass you th' line, an' if you don't take none o' it, then I'm on a cattle boat by way o' Glasgow," and the red-haired, freckle-faced tout opened up one of his dope books and started to show the pair of flashy looking chaps where Rolling Boer had finished in his previous races.

"Go take a sail with yourself, Red," put in one of the easy-looking chaps. "Nothin' doin'. Rolling Boer, hey? Not with Fenian bonds, good when Ireland's free. Rolling Boer, you say, Red? When did they get that one out o' the cavalry? Rolling Boer, 'll still be jogging down the stretch when you're in bed, Reddy. Say, it's a wonder you don't dig up a live one 'casionally. Stop trekkin. Winter'll be coming on soon, and you'll be nix the price of a doss. Rolling Boer! To the woods!"

The red-haired tout mopped his face with a frayed blue polka-dotted handkerchief.

"Sey, what's half a ten spot to you people?" he said in a tone of entreaty. "The one you're waitin' f'r'll be 'bout 1 to 4 on, an' this is sunshine money, at 100 to 1. You people know how they stan' them 1 to 4 things on their heads out in Latonia. Say, take me spiel on this, won't you, f'r a fi'muth? Look where he got off th' last time out, an' where he finished! If you can't see him t' win, take th' 20 to 1 third. It'll be a shame t' spen' t' money--but take it won't you?"

The two complaisant-looking chaps turned away from the red-haired tout and began a conversation between themselves. The tout looked very warm, and an expression of despair crossed his weazened features. He mopped his face again with his blue polka-dotted handkerchief and slunk away. He sided up to one of the board-markers and said, out of the corner of his mouth:

"Say, get an ace down on Rolling Boer f'r me, will you? It's a skinch."

The board-marker grinned.

"I'm all out, Red," he replied. "Pushed me last ace up on the last whizz, an' didn't get a whistle f'r it."

"This super's good f'r a deuce in any hock shop--I've had it in f'r three," went on the red-haired tout, appealingly, pulling out an old silver time-piece and trying to pass it to the board-marker. "Lemme have a buck on it, an' I'll pass you back five f'r it after th' ring's around Rolling Boer. How's that?"

"I'm all t' th' gruel, didn't I tell you?" replied the man with the chalk, with some asperity. "I got a ticker o' me own. You're puffin' secon's, Red. Rolling Boer couldn't beat me little sister skippin' rope."

The red-haired tout walked away with an expression of deep misery on his face.

"They think they are wise t' th' ponies, hey?" he muttered. "It's bean bag they ought t' be playin'!"

He dug a quarter, two dimes and a nickel out of his change pocket and looked at the coins dismally.

"It's me feed coin," he mumbled, "but maybe I can get some piker t' go along with f'r another four bits."

He walked over to a shabby-looking chap who was slouching around with his hands in his pockets.

"Say, you got a bundle on you?" the red-haired tout inquired of the shabby-looking man.

The shabby-looking man dug a fifty-cent piece out of his left-hand waistcoat pocket.

"That's all I was huntin' f'r," said the tout, displaying his coins. "Let's put th' two pieces t'gether an' nail 'em f'r $50 each."

"On what?" inquired the shabby-looking man without any apparent interest whatsoever.

"On a pipe," said the red-haired tout. "Rolling Boer. He'll make 'em dizzy and stroll in with his head a-swingin' an' his tail a-swishin'. Do you come in with me f'r the half?"

The shabby-looking man put his fifty-cent piece back in his left-hand waistcoat pocket.

"You'll be fallin' out o' bed in a minute, Red," said the shabby-looking man. "Not for me. I need the beers--ten of 'em."

"Yes, you're a sport right, I think nix," said the red-haired tout, walking gloomily away. "You're a dead game, with the copper on."

His eagle eye caught sight of a fat man with some three parts of a jag sitting at the "dope" table, alternately puffing at a ravelled cigar and nodding sleepily. This jagged man had on one side of his head a straw hat that looked as if it had been rained on and then sat on. The red-haired tout went over to him.

"Say, your lid's on the pork all right, ain't it?" he said amiably to the jagged man. "Been scrappin' with a cable-car?"

"Fade away--fade away," said the jagged man, sleepily. "Do a disappearing stunt."

"I'll tell you what I'll do with you," said the red-haired tout, edging over confidentially to the jagged man. "I'll pass you this cage o' mine--on'y bought it three days ago, and coughed a two-spot f'r it--f'r that one o' yours an' half a buck t' boot," and the red-haired tout removed the pretty fair-looking straw hat he was wearing and pushed it over to the jagged man. The jagged man took his ravelled cigar from his mouth and grinned broadly.

"Say," he said to the red-haired tout, "you gimme th' tizzy-wizzy--hones' yo do. Me wear a No. 2 lid? Say, do your fadin' stunt--fade away."

The tout picked up his hat, put it on, and walked away.

"Now they've hammered Rolling Boer down to 80 to 1, hey?" he said, looking up at the second line of betting. "B'jee, I'd climb a porch t' yank out a couple t' put on that one."

He was disconsolately biting his nails and looking around to see if there was any way out for him before the bunch of two-year-olds at Gravesend went to the post.

"They're at the pump at Gravesend!" announced the board-marker.

Just as the announcement was made, a little man with a straw-colored mustache and a red, white and blue band around his straw hat mounted the stairs, passed the spotter sitting at the door with a nod, lit a fresh cigarette, and walked up behind the red-haired tout.

"Thay, Red," he said, "what'th good in thith?"

The red-haired tout wheeled like a man who's been touched on the shoulder by a deputy sheriff.

"You haven't got a minute!" he said, rapidly, to the little man with the straw-colored mustache. "It's th' baby o' th' year! Gimme three aces--two f'r you, an' one f'r me, an' in four minutes from date you'll be lookin' over th' sides of a balloon, chucking off ballast made out o' money."

The lisping little man with the straw-colored mustache smiled indulgently and pulled out a roll, from which he stripped a five-dollar note.

"That'th the thmalletht I've got, Red," he said, handing over the note to the tout. "Thay"----

He chopped off the question, however, for the tout made two bounds for the money-taker's window.

"Three on Rolling Boer, T. L. M.!" he shouted, giving the initials of the little man with the straw-colored mustache. "Th' other two on th' same, just plain R-e-d, Red, and both bets straight."

The man behind the desk grinned.

"High-ball mazuma for the house, Red," he said, twisting his mustache. "That one ain't got a look-in."

The tout was back at the side of the little man with the straw-colored mustache who believed in him just as the operator sung out: "Off at Gravesend!"

"Thay, Red," said the tout's little man, "which one of 'em did you put thothe five"----

"Rolling Boer at the quarter by a head!" sang out the operator.

"On that one!" said the red-haired tout, giving his thigh a whack with his bundle of "dope" books. "It's a pleasant outing for that one! He'll"----

"Rolling Boer in the stretch by a nose!" called out the operator.

"Thay, he'll curl up, won't he, Red?" said the little man at the tout's side, nervously. "Did you play him straight or one, two, three"----

"Rolling Boer wins by a nose!" shouted the operator.

It was a bit too much for the red-haired tout. He didn't have any words handy. So he slammed his "dope" books down on a chair, pitched forward, turned a cart wheel, and then walked around the room on his hands with his coat hanging over his head, and a grin of indescribable happiness all over his freckled features. The little man with the straw-colored mustache who had believed in Red followed the tout about the room.

"Thay, what do we win, Red?" he asked. "What prithe wath that horth?"

"You yank out $240, an' mine's $160," said the red-haired tout, getting on his feet again.

"Thay, Red, you're all right," said the red-haired tout's benefactor, pumping him by both hands.

The two flashy-looking chaps who had first been tackled by the tout on the Rolling Boer proposition now walked up behind him with long faces.

"Say, Red, why didn't you pitch that at us a little stronger, hey?"

"Get t'ell away from me, you pikers!" was the red-haired tout's reply.

HE "COPPERED" HIS WIFE'S "HUNCHES."

_Wherein It Is Shown That the Feminine Intuition Is Liable to
Occasionally Slip a Cog._

"Yes, siree," said the man with the ravelled cigar and the granulated eyelids who swung precariously from a strap in a car of a returning Sheepshead Bay train the other evening, "it certainly is funny about these here hunches that women have, ain't it?"

"No," said the two seated men he was addressing.

"Certainly is queer what freaky ideas they get into their heads," went on the man with the ravelled cigar, ignoring the lack of encouragement extended to him. "And when it comes to picking out good things on a race-track, picking 'em out just on hunch, ain't they wonders, hey?"

"Nope," said the two men at whom he was directing his conversation.

"It sure beats the Painted Post Silver Cornet Band how they can stick a pin in a program with their eyes shut and light on a 100 to 1 shot that wins a-blinking," continued the man with the granulated eyelids, tearing two or three superfluous wrappers off his ravelled cigar. "Their system beats the dope and the handicapping all to shucks, don't it?"

"Nix," replied the two men in the seat.

"Never had such chance to size up the feminine hunch as I did out at Morris Park 'bout six or seven years ago," went on the man with the eccentric cigar. "Told my wife one night during the fall meeting at the park that I was going to the races the next day, that a shoe clerk I knew had told me about a good thing that was going to happen--he'd got it from a trainer to whom he'd sold a pair of shoes--and I was going after some of it.

"'Theophilus Nextdoor,' says she to me, 'how dare you deliberately tell me that you are going to gamble your money away, when I haven't a rag to my back and the coal not yet put in!'

"'Can't help it, Clarissa,' says I, 'I've just naturally got to invest $50 on this good thing. I know it ain't right, but I've got to do it, anyhow.'

"Then she let out on me, and we both got mad. I tried to square it up with her the next morning, and at the breakfast table I read her the names of the horses that were going to run in the race in which I had the good thing the shoe clerk had given me. When I came to the name of a horse called Jodan, she dropped her coffee cup with a clatter and stared at me.

"'Jodan,' said she. Isn't that short for Joseph Daniel?'

"'Yes'm, I guess so,' I said, not knowing whether it was or not, but anxious to stroke her the right way.

"'Is that the horse you are going to invest your money on?' she asked me, breathlessly.

"'No, it's another one,' said I.

"'Well, you might just as well stay home, then,' said she, positively. 'You'll lose your money. Jodan will win. I dreamt all night last night of my Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy, who was lost at sea when I was a little bit of a thing, and if Jodan is short for Joseph Daniel, as it must be, then Jodan will win.'

"'But that's plain superstition, and races ain't won that way,' I said to her.

"'I don't care one bit, so I don't,' she said to me. 'You will simply be throwing your money away, and I need so many things, if you invest it on any other horse than Jodan.'

"I tried to argue with her, but it was no go. She told me that her lost Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy had once won a full-rigged ship race from Shanghai to Boston, and was a pretty speedy old cuss in more ways than one, and that any horse named after her Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy couldn't lose. I told her that, while I didn't know anything about this Jodan horse, I didn't think he could beat the good thing my shoe-clerk friend had given me, but she wouldn't listen to me. The last thing she said to me before I left the house was:

"'If you are determined to be a horrid, vulgar, disgraceful gambler, you play Jodan. You'll be sorry if you don't.'

"Stubborn, when they get an idea into their heads, women, ain't they?"

"No," said the two men in the seat near the strap-clutching man with the ravelled cigar.

"Well, by jing, I got to thinking about my wife's queer hunch on that Jodan horse on my way out to the track, and the more I thought about it the weaker I became on that good thing my shoe-clerk friend had given me.

"'Women have got something away ahead of sense or reason,' says I to myself on the train on the way out, 'and I sure would feel almighty cheap and no-account if my wife happened to be right about her Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy and this Jodan horse. I sure would. I've got a good mind to put a little money on that Jodan horse anyhow, derned if I haven't.'

"I was still undecided about it when I got out to the track. That's the edge the bookmakers have got, ain't it--the people that have real good things and then wabble when it comes to sticking to them?"

"Nope," said the two men in the seat.

"Well, sir, when the prices were marked up for that race in which I had the good thing, blamed if Jodan wasn't chalked up at 100 to 1. My good thing horse was the second choice at 5 to 1. I stood there looking at the prices, getting pulled around and butted into, and I had the dingedest time making up my mind what I was going to do that you ever heard of in your life.

"'If my wife's hunch is right,' I thought, 'and that Jodan horse wins at 100 to 1 without my playing him, I'll never hear the last of it as long's I'm on top of the ground. She'll be telling me morning, noon and night, that she gave me a chance to win $5000, and that I didn't have enough gumption to take it. And if the good thing my shoe-clerk friend gave me wins at 5 to 1, I'll be sore on myself for throwing away a chance to pick up $250 if I don't play it.'

"I walked out onto the lawn so's I could have more room to make up my mind. Then I wheeled around suddenly and dived into the betting ring.

"'By cracky!' says I to myself, 'I'm doing this little gamble myself, and, feminine hunch or no hunch, I'm going to play that good thing my shoe-clerk friend gave me, and nothing else.'

"So I went to the first bookmaker I saw and got a $250 to $50 ticket on my good thing."

Here the man with the granulated lids sighed heavily and looked genuinely distressed.

"Say, it's the dickens, ain't it," he said, after a pause, "how these things happen?"

The two men in the seat to whom he had been addressing his conversation exhibited a certain suppressed interest as to the outcome.

"Of course Jodan just walked in that day, at 100 to 1?" said one of them finally, with a grin that clearly indicated his belief that he had the result discounted.

The man with a ravelled cigar struck a match and lit the same for the eighteenth time.

"Not on your zinc wedding did Jodan walk in!" he said, puffing away without removing his eyes from the match. "My good thing spread-eagled 'em from the jump, and won, pulled up, by eight lengths. Jodan was last. It sure is odd about these feminine hunches, ain't it?"

"Blamed if it ain't," said one of the men in the seat.

"I carried a twelve-pound lobster home to my wife that night and told her it was a fair replica of her Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy horse, and she told me that she just wouldn't believe that Jodan hadn't won until she saw the paper the next morning, so there now! She caved, though, when I uncovered the $250 and told her that she couldn't get that cerise-silk-lined tailor-made dress quick enough to suit me, and she said that she might have known that no horse named after her Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy, who didn't have any more luck than to go and get himself lost at sea, could win anything.

"Well, a month or so after that I went down to Washington on a little matter of business, and took my wife along with me. There was horse racing going on near Washington then, at a track called St. Asaph, across the Potomac in Virginia.

"'Clarissa,' said I to my wife one morning, after I'd got all through with my business in Washington and was ready to come back to New York, 'I think we'd better stay over to-day and go to the races at St. Asaph. A man that I met in the shooting gallery down the street gave me a good thing last night, and I think I ought to see to it. It's going to come off to-day.'

"Of course she told me again that I was going to rack and ruin, and never would make anything of myself, but I told her that I just naturally had to go over to St. Asaph that day and play Jodan.

"'Jodan!' she almost screamed at me. 'Theophilus Nextdoor, how can you have the hardihood to stand there and tell me that you are going to waste your money on that horrid beast, when both of us are absolutely in need of new fall outfits?'

"I told her that I'd see to the fall outfits, but that I sure couldn't get away from that Jodan good thing.

"'Why,' I said, don't you remember how wild you were about this same Jodan horse only a little more than a month ago?'

"'I just don't care one bit if I was,' she replied. 'I know and you know that any horse named after my Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy, who didn't have any more luck than to go and get himself lost at sea, cannot win, and I should think you would be ashamed of yourself to stand there and tell me to my face,' etc., etc.

"Well, she wouldn't go along with me to the track over at St. Asaph across the Potomac, and so I went alone. The man I had met in the shooting gallery had told me so earnestly about this Jodan horse that I couldn't fail to be impressed by his words, and when I found that my wife was so opposed to Jodan's chances was more than ever determined to play him, for I'd learned something about the nature of the feminine hunch, don't you see?

"It like to've carried me off my feet when I saw the price on the blackboards against Jodan. Jodan was quoted at 150 to 1. The favorite was at 3 to 5 on, and all of 'em, the whole fourteen in the race, were at shorter prices than Jodan. I clutched the $50 that I had intended playing on Jodan, thinking that he'd be about 10 to 1 or something like that, and I just thought and thought and thought over the thing.

"'By jimminy!' said I finally, after standing over in a corner alone for a while, thinking, 'my wife may be right about Jodan, and all that, but I came over here to play Jodan, and I'm going to play him or just bust, win or lose!'

"Then I went over to a bookmaker, got a $1500 to $10 ticket on Jodan to win. 'Take that hay out of your hair, pal,' the bookmaker said to me when I passed my money over--and went up to the stand to see the race, thinking all the time what a serious matter it is to take a chance on playing against the feminine hunch.

"Jodan, after being practically left at the post, came out of the clouds in the stretch, and won the derned old race on the wire by a nose from the favorite, and when I hired a rig and packed those $1500 over to my wife the way she warmed up to her one and only Theophilus was sure a caution.

"The feminine hunch," concluded the man with the ravelled cigar and the granulated eyelids, "is all right when you copper it, but it won't do to play it open. Am I right?"

"No," said the two men in the seat, and then the rush to get off the train began.

A RACE HORSE THAT PAID A CHURCH DEBT.

_He Was Thought to Be a No-Account Cripple, but He Proved Himself to Be
"All Horse" When Called Upon._

"A friend of mine who came here from Chicago for the Bennings meeting was telling me about that Jim McCleevy mule," said an old-time owner of thoroughbreds who is wintering a string of jumpers and breaking a bunch of yearlings out at the Bennings track. "That makes a queer story, and there are some strange things connected with the thoroughbred game, at that. This McCleevy horse wasn't worth a bag of moist peanuts at the beginning of the present racing season. He couldn't beat a fat man. He had never been in the money. He was a legitimate thousand-to-one shot in any company. He was the candidate for the shafts of a brick cart, when by some odd chance he passed into the possession of a nice young woman who was going to school somewhere in the State of Iowa. The girl's uncle was mixed up some way or another with the turf, and he bought the McCleevy plug for a joke, paying a few dollars for him. In a spirit of fun he wrote to his niece that he had bought Jim McCleevy in her name, and that the horse belonged to her and would be run in her interest. The young woman didn't know the difference between a race-horse and a chatelaine bag. She was an orphan, and struggling to get an education for herself. Her ambition was to take a course at a woman's college, but, up to the time of this incident, which lasted throughout the spring and summer, her hope of putting this ambition over the plate was pretty shadowy, and it looked like it was up to her to get a job teaching a country school in order to support herself. But she wrote to her uncle that she accepted the gift of the no-account racer with gratitude, and inquired if the horse could not trot right fast, for, if so, she might be able to dispose of him to some well-to-do farmer in her neighborhood.

"Jim McCleevy was attached to the string of a good trainer, who saw at once that the horse had been underestimated, that he had been badly handled, and that it would be worth the effort to try to make something of him. He spent two or three weeks monkeying with the skate and fixing him up, and then he sent him out one morning with a lummux of a stable boy on his back and put the watch on him. Jim McCleevy breezed a mile in 1:44, fighting for his head at the finish, and two days later he was slapped into a selling race at a mile and a sixteenth, with light weight, a bum apprentice lad up, and all kinds of a price, for there were some good ones in the race, which was at the Harlem track, in Chicago. The girl's uncle scattered a few dollars around the ring on the mutt, all three ways, and McCleevy came home on the bit. That was the beginning of McCleevy. He was put into a couple of races a week at a mile and more, at the Harlem and Hawthorne tracks, during the entire racing season at Chicago, and he won race after race, no matter how they piled the weight penalties up on him. When he didn't win he broke into the money, and as there was always a good price on him, seeing that almost every time he raced he was pitted against horses that seemed to outclass him, the uncle of the girl who owned him got some of the money every time. He parleyed the money that he won for his niece on Jim McCleevy's first race, and he got it back and a bunch besides every time. The fame of Jim McCleevy spread around Chicago, and a Chicago newspaper man went down to Iowa to interview the young woman who owned the horse. She told him, artlessly, that while she abhorred gambling--well, she certainly did enjoy the prospect of being enabled to complete her education. Her uncle deposited between $8000 and $9000 in her name, the amount he had won for her in purses and bets on Jim McCleevy, at the wind-up of the racing season, and the horse, which developed quite a bit of real class, still belongs to her.

"Odd, isn't it, that an underestimated race-horse should hop out and not only give a nice girl that had never so much as has stroked his sleek neck a chance to fulfil her ambition for an education, but win her a start in life that'll probably make her one of the eligible girls in the State of Iowa? But I recall a queerer one than that--how a cast-off crab suddenly developed into a race-horse and paid off a mortgage on a church.

"That happened out at Latonia four years ago. I was racing a few of my own out there at the time, and saw the affair from the beginning to the wind-up. I'll have to duck giving the names, for the good man who profited by the sudden development of the nag he accidentally became possessed of is still the pastor of a flock that congregates in a pretty little debt-free, brick and stone Roman Catholic church on the outskirts of Cincinnati.