A Race Card

by

W. A. Fraser

ROM ace to deuce there is no card in the pack that carries the entailed romance of a man's visiting-card. They exchange cards, do the two messieurs, and to-morrow, at gray dawn, they are spitting each other. And in this record is shown how an oblong slip of pasteboard, inscribed “Doctor Keswick,” settled the business of a big steeplechase.

At the very beginning of the happenings, Banfield Leigh popped into the city train at Gravesend. He was irritable; a day wasted—that was all. He had traveled all the way to Gravesend to buy a steeplechaser that should have been pulling a cab about the streets of New York. The horse was light of bone, top-heavy, evil-tempered—everything that was bad. No wonder his owner wanted to sell him! So, when a swarthy little man, carrying a hunting-saddle, bumped into the seat beside Leigh, and filled the latter's lap with a mass of greasy, muddy pigskin, the latter waxed antagonistic.

In addition to the saddle on his knee, the little man had something of disquietude upon his mind—it made him restless; he fairly massaged his neighbor's ribs with an elbow; sometimes it was the pummel of the saddle, and again the stirrup-irons that made vicious pilgrimages into Leigh's domain.

He was also voluble, talkative, questioning, familiar—taking no cognizance of the barrier that hedges the unacquainted.

Did Leigh know if they'd get to the Forty-second Street depot by seven-thirty? Was the seven-thirty the last train for Colton? Then the little man rummaged pockets—relegating to his neighbor's care the saddle and brought forth a time-table.

Yes, by Jingo! seven-thirty was the last train. Curse the luck! Also his boss, Trainer Bill Chester, who was a swine! Then he re-searched his pockets, exploring the corners of those in his trousers with minute care; but whatever it was he looked for, it did not abide in the numerous receptacles of his clothes.

With a sigh that carried to Leigh's nostrils the trying odor of beer, the little man dragged the saddle from its custodian's lap, raking the victim's legs with the heavy strap-buckles, and exclaimed despondently: “Well, I'm damned!”

His companion thought encore to this observation,

Then the little man recurred to his troubles of the day. He had the time of his life delivering the worst mule-brained bronco that ever masqueraded as a race-horse. Blinkum was a rank 'un—and Trainer Chester was another.

Leigh gleaned from the recital that Trainer Chester—who was a union of Devil and Shylock—had sent Dodson (the stranger claimed emphatically that he was Hank Dodson, the best horse-rubber in America, bar none) up from Colton with a horse to deliver, and barely enough money in his pocket for expenses; and the horseman had met other horsemen of the days of yore, at Gravesend, and now he hadn't a stiver in his pocket. He'd miss his train, sure, and have to sleep on the curb.

Beyond doubt, the parchment-faced little man who reeked of the stables was an affliction; but, also, he carried the badge of freemasonry that exists on the turf—he was a companion of thoroughbreds. So Leigh melted, in commiseration for the stranger's plight, and loaned him five dollars.

Of course fate had arranged all this—it was just the beginning of several things tending to an end; but neither Leigh nor the garrulous one knew this.

The money delayed Dodson's anxiety, and Leigh felt that the obtained restfulness Of the journey up Third Avenue was worth the price.

At Twenty-third Street Dodson asked for the time.

“Seven-thirty! Missed it, by hickory!” he cried; “but I guess I'm on Easy Street, so it don't cut much ice now. I'll get to Colton early in the morning. I got a stiff day ahead for to-morrow; got to bring the horses up to Morris Park. Say”—he interrupted his monologue to ask—“do you play the horses at all, sir—do you ever bet on a good thing?”

“Not often.”

“But you do, sometimes. You're white, you are; you derricked me out of a hole, an' I ain't takin' somethin' for nothin' never no more, see? I'll give vou a good thing for Morris Park; you can bet your sleeve-links on it, and if it don't win, you just write on your cuff that Hank Dodson is a chink. We got a horse in our stable named Gun Metal—write that down, mister, for its solid mahogany, Gun Metal. He's by Artillery, out of Steel Blue, and he's the best steeplechaser I ever clapped eyes on. He can just fly his jumps, and gallop a mile in one-forty flat. But the boss he's a crook from way-back, an' here's some hanky-panky on with Gun Metal. There's another duck got a horse in the stable named Little Jack. This chap keeps it dark about ownin' this horse, but I'm on, see? They'll just about win with the one that gets 'em the goods. If you're out to the races, come an' ask me—I'll put you wise to what's doin'. Forty-second Street! I got to skip. Don't forget Gun Metal! I'll send this fiver{{bar|2}”

But the little man was gone, using the saddle as a battering-ram to clear a passage to the platform.

The scrunching thing of velocity that whirled Leigh up-town speedily drew him beyond the confines of the momentary atmosphere that had wedged, like a drive of east wind, into his day's chapter. The man who had had the time of his life with Blinkum, who had an optimistic faith in Gun Metal, obscured into the mosaic of life's bric-à-brac. Had Leigh known that the chess-men were as definitely marshalled as though it were a Ruy Lopez, he might have called this “move one”; but he knew nothing beyond the fact that he was probably out a fiver. So he ate his dinner, and slept, and pottered around all the forenoon over the important unimportant things, and at one o'clock, seated at a little table in the Café Martin for a bite of lunch, some more Gun Metal obtained.

Leigh's table was one of those that stand in Indian file facing the long leather-backed seat that runs the full length of the room. At the table on his left two men faced each other. Unmistakably one was a horseman; his personality was bathed in the consequential solemnity of a trainer. Vis-à-vis was one whose face, dark-skinned, avarice-glazed, hawk-drooped, effected Leigh disagreeably. It was a compelling, persuasive face. Now, drawn with the intensity of some engrossing thought, it was wholly vicious. Its owner leaned an elbow on the table, and alternately talked and penciled something on a card. Once or twice a clear enunciated word of little meaning reached to Leigh's ears, piping through the shuffling clatter of the café. He heard, half-clearly, “twenty thousand to split.” That was nothing: all the big cafés up and down Broadway and Fifth Avenue echoed and reechoed to such large sums at every lunch-time. But presently a name that claimed his interest came riding on the back of a carrying jumble—"Gun Metal”—and immediately he heard a correlative: “It won't hurt him.”

Then practically the curtain dropped. Leigh's waiter came with resonant dishes; the two men on his left had their coffee and cigars, their bill, and were gone.

As Leigh presently reached down his hat from a hook on the wall and turned, his waiter tendered daintily, between finger and thumb, a card, saying: “This is m'sieu's, I think; m'sieu must have dropped it.”

Leigh took the card; it was inscribed: “Doctor Louis Keswick.” He turned it over curiously, and on the back he read:

The waiter had gone, and Leigh, puzzling over the curious coincidence of Gun Metal's name coming again to his attention, put the card in his case.

Out on Twenty-fifth Street, its inception outlined in his mind. The hawk-faced man who had elbowed the table, pencil in hand, had certainly written it—the name, Gun Metal, attested to that fact. Leigh drew the card forth and studied the prescription. In an abstract way he knew something of the stimulating horse-dope—cocaine and strychnin were the base for these instigators to exertion. A dope of this sort was introduced subcutaneously with a little syringe, or put on the horse's tongue. But the card carried a formula for a ball, and the large dose, four drams, suggested a sedative, a brake upon the animal's speed.

He crossed to the drug-store on the corner, and asked the clerk what the prescription really meant.

The druggist looked curiously at the questioner and answered: “You can't get that put up here without a doctor's prescription. If you took that, you'd never wake up; it's a dose for a horse!”

“For a horse! Would it kill a horse?”

The clerk studied closely the quantities for a minute and answered: “No, it wouldn't kill him; but it would make him feel pretty dopey.”

Leigh returned the card to his case, and all up Broadway the curious coincidence of Gun Metal's name coming back almost as an echo of Dodson's tip clung to him. Perhaps the racy-looking man was Chester, the trainer; and very likely Doctor Keswick was the man who had the other horse, Little Jack, in Chester's stable. However, even now, Gun Metal, his possibilities and his troubles were but a nebulous something far out on the horizon of Leigh's orbit. He had worries of his own without interesting himself in something that was distinctly not business. It required a little force of will to oust the matter from his mind, however.

Perhaps if fate had not presented Leigh with a desire for the theater that evening, Gun Metal and the vicissitudes of his career might have troubled him no more.

We eat, sleep, and out of ourselves perform little acts, and all the time the other thing that has no name puts our hand and our mind to that which is, or is to be. So Leigh, with the entanglement of this It enmeshing him, looked up from his seat in the stalls and saw Kathleen Braund in an upper box. Up to that time the play had been of fair interest; but now—well, at the end of the first act Leigh, capturing an usher, sent a card to Kathleen's box, and presently, trailing the messenger, was on his way to present himself in answer to the lady's command.

As his guide drew aside the curtain and Leigh entered, he noticed with some surprise that Kathleen was alone. This was curious. She appeared not to have heard his entrance. Her head drooped low, cradled in the palm of her hand, the arm resting on the box-rail.

Leigh coughed announcingly. Without turning her head, Kathleen said, a shade of impatience in her tones: “Oh, I know you're there! Draw up a chair and keep quiet. I am interested in this aria from Il Trovatore that cornetist interests me more to-night than troubles over race-horses. Why did you bring worries to the theater—one comes here to shut out the disagreeable old world with its disappointments—why did you come, anyway?”

Inconsistently enough, the lady had talked herself out of interest in the aria, and now turned a petulant face toward her visitor.

Leigh was transfixed by astonishment. The voice was not Kathleen's, and now the face was one he had never before seen.

“I'm—afraid-there's some mistake.” he stammered apologetically. “I—I—where is Miss Braund?”

It was the lady's turn to open her bright eyes wide in astonishment. They sought to penetrate the shadowed interior of the box that half-hid the embodiment of this unfamiliar man's voice. In her new interest she quite discarded the aria, and, rising, took a step toward the intruder.

“I don't know you, sir—you sent me this card?” She held the pasteboard in her small, gloved fingers.

“Yes—I—I sent it to Miss Braund.”

“And what has Miss Braund to do with my horse, Gun Metal, please?”

Gun Metal! that,infernal name again. And the bewildering entanglement of it all!

Leigh stared idiotically.

“And how came you  to send Doctor Keswick's card—you're not Doctor Keswick?”

“Doctor Keswick's card?”

“Yes. And what is this medicine thing—is Gun Metal ill? What is it all about, anyway?”

A ray of light darted in upon the clouded consciousness of the bewildered young man; he had sent the card he had picked up in the Café Martin; also the usher had brought it to the wrong box. He must give the explanation the lady was waiting for.

First, partly sparring for a minute's thought, he said: “Won't you please be seated, madam?”

He drew a chair for the lady. Standing in front of her, he continued: “It's all very extraordinary: I assure you I'm a victim of circumstances. I never heard of Gun Metal before yesterday, but since then nothing else is allowed to occupy my mind.”

“But how did you have Doctor Kesvick's card?” the lady interrupted. “And what does the writing on it mean?”

“I could explain that”

“Please do, then.”

“But I'm terribly in the dark. Is Doctor Keswick—he might be your husband, for all I know.”

“He's not—I'm Mrs. Van Zandt.”

Leigh bowed.

“Doctor Keswick may be your friend.”

“He may be.” There was an enigmatical inflection in the lady's comment.

“Well, an explanation is certainly due you, madam; I will tell you just how I became possessed of that card, and how it passed into your possession.

Then Leigh related concisely what had occurred, not omitting Dodson's grateful offer of a tip. He felt that Mrs. Van Zandt was freely entitled to the knowledge that had come so casually his way; he was betraying no one's confidence.

When he had finished, Mrs. Van Zandt asked: “And what does this medicine thing on the card mean?”

“A druggist informs me that it would have a stupefying effect upon a horse; and I fancy that, if given on the morning of a race, he would either be unable to start, or run very sluggishly indeed.”

“It's simply extraordinary—don't you think so, Mr.” There was a query in the lady's tone.

“Leigh is my name.”

“Oh! it is—you are Mr. Banfield Leigh? Now I know; I thought your face was strangely familiar; I've seen you ride in a steeplechase. And Miss Braund is a friend of mine. She's enthusiastic over your riding. You can do me the greatest favor on earth; I'm going to start Gun Metal in the Union Steeplechase, and won't you ride him for me? My trainer has a jockey, but I think he's not honest.”

“I'll ride the horse for you, Mrs. Van Zandt. It seems as though chance had been arranging it all.”

“Thank you. Now I shall win the Union; and I have reasons for being very anxious to win it. I can't tell you just what they are, but they are real reasons. I'll take Gun Metal away from that trainer—I'll report him to the stewards—the villain! I'll have him arrested; wretch, to poison a horse!” Mrs. Van Zandt was working herself into a temper: her large dark eyes flashed, and- she was crushing her fan with angry fingers.

“I shouldn't do all that—in fact, I shouldn't do anything, if I were you,” Leigh advised quietly. “Is Doctor Keswick a friend of”

“He's a friend of my husband's.”

“Well, you see you have nothing very definite; it might make trouble; and you can't very well take the horse away from the trainer on the eve of a race—not on suspicion. You couldn't state any case they couldn't explain away; they would say the horse had fever, and this was to be given him, perhaps to-day, to quiet his nerves.”

“What am I to do then?”

“You can trust the man, Dodson, who looks after Gun Metal; and, if you like, I'll see him quietly, and tell him to watch the horse. And he can be told that if the trainer acts too suspiciously—insists on anything crooked, that he is to make a stand, tell Chester plainly what he knows, and that he'll get into trouble. That'll stop it. Dodson is as sharp as a ferret—he'll know if there's anything really wrong.”

“I think you are right,” Mrs. Van Zandt concurred; “I'll leave it to you. Here is my address—if you wish to see me about anything. And here is the card about the medicine—you might—need it. But I shall look for you Saturday in the paddock, prepared to ride Gun Metal. I'll go out to the stables early Saturday morning myself, and I'll speak to Dodson, telling him that he'll be well rewarded for watching the horse. You're sure I can depend upon him?”

“Yes; he is not friendly to the trainer—he thinks Chester is crooked, and he's clever enough to outwit him, I know.”

“Well, I fancy fate put this matter in your hands, Mr. Leigh. I hope there's nothing wrong; but now that we're on the alert, I think it will be all right. You spoke of Miss Braund; she's in the next box. I think you had better go to her. I happen to know that you will be welcome. I am waiting for my husband. I expect him every minute—he was detained. Gun Metal carries one hundred and sixty in the Union; you had better know the weight, so that you can starve a little. I should think it would bother you to ride at that weight. Good-by, and thank you.”

Leigh found Kathleen this time; but he said nothing about his extraordinary adventure simply told her that he was going to ride for Mrs. Van Zandt.

The next morning, Friday, he went out to Morris Park, crossed over to the stabling on the far side of the course, and presently discovered the little man who had massaged his ribs with the saddle the day they journeyed together from Gravesend. He explained the situation to Dodson, promising him a handsome reward for his trouble if he succeeded in getting the horse to the post in good condition.

“I guess I don't need any price for stopping that crook,” Dodson answered; “he's a tough! I owe him something myself. He won't get at Gun Metal while I'm in charge of the horse. You just leave it to me. I knowed he didn't mean winnin' with Gun Metal—not this race; I happened to overhear somethin' between him an' that gentleman crook who owns Little Jack. I don't know what the game is, for Little Jack ain't starting in the Union I guess they want to get Gun Metal well beat, an' make a killin' on him when he starts next time in easy company.”

Saturday morning Leigh repeated his visit. As he sauntered carelessly past No. 6 stabling, he saw Dodson standing by the open door of Gun Metal's stall. Leigh continued on, and turned the corner of the stable. There he waited. In a very few minutes he was joined by Dodson.

“Little Jack is carded to start in the Steeplechase to-day,” Leigh said. “What do you make of that?”

Dodson grinned. “I knew this mornin' that Little Jack was goin' in the Union. I was ordered to give him just a little pipe-opener, and his hay was cut out last night. But that don't make no diff'rence. Gee! but they'll be mad. There was somethin' doin' this mornin' bright an' early, I can tell you. You see, sir, I slept in Gun Metal's box last night, an' about twelve o'clock I gets walking in me sleep I'm subject to that, sir—I gets up, an' I guess I must have swapped hosses, puttin' Gun Metal out. of No. 9, in Little Jack's stall, that's No. 8, an' Little Jack in Gun Metal's stall. They look a heap alike in the day, let alone in the night. Then I guess I must have fell asleep with Gun Metal in No. 8. About four o'clock in the mornin' somebody woke me, makin' a noise openin' the door of the box in which I had put Little Jack. I reckon the nigger had the boss' key, for the boxes was locked up, and I had the stable key. Just about daylight I swaps the hosses back ag'in; an', say! if Little Jack ain't dopey this mornin' call me a Dutchman.”

“What did you do that for?”

“Well, I didn't want to have no row with the boss; an' I wasn't supposed to be sleeping in Gun Metal's stall—see? I didn't know Little Jack was going to start to-day, an' I figured that they meant to give Gun Metal the dope in the night, close to mornin', to see how it would act. I'm goin' to skip back to the stall now; I don't believe the boss has caught on yet that he's give the wrong horse a sleepin' draft. I'll stay by Gun Metal, an' if they try any more hanky-panky I'll jus' call 'em down good an' hard. You can gamble on gettin' the old horse in the paddock sound as a bell. You jus' weigh out an' leave the rest of it to me.”

When Leigh went to the paddock that afternoon to weigh out for the race, he met Mrs. Van Zandt. She was waiting for him, evidently. “What is this about last night?” she asked. “That man Dodson says there was something unusual, but says I'm to ask you. He says Gun Metal is all right—is he?”

They walked over to where Dodson was stripping the horse of his clothing under a tree, Leigh saying, as they walked: “I'll tell you about it after the race—it would only worry you, and Dodson kept the horse free from harm. Look at his eye,” he continued, as they stood beside Gun Metal; “he is as healthy as a babe—he's as cool and bright.”

“I'm glad of that—so glad; I've had a little trouble on my mind that winning this race will put right. I told the trainer yesterday that you were to ride Gun Metal—there he is, standing by the office, and you can get my colors from him—it's time for you to get ready.”

As Leigh moved away, Dodson followed. His mummy face was drawn into wrinkled lines of gravity, as he said: “A dreadful thing has happened, sir; Little Jack's sick, an' they got to scratch him. That swine, Chester, is swearin' that somebody got at his hoss. Say, he's takin' a chance! An' he knocked hell's delight outen the nigger as give Little Jack the ball. He thinks the nigger made a mistake an' got into the wrong box; the nigger thinks so, too, that's the best of it. But Gun Metal's all right; he's as bright's a pea—there won't nothin' beat him to-day; he's fit to run the race of his life.”

Leigh went up to the trainer and asked: “Where are the colors for Gun Metal, Mr. Chester?”

The trainer looked sullenly at him from under shaggy eyebrows, and, pointing to a little red-faced man who leaned against the wall of the building, said: “There's Gun Metal's colors, that blue jacket. And that's the boy that's goin' to ride the horse. Pat Clancey is carded for this race, so you needn't bother about the colors.”

Leigh was dumfounded. But in an instant the thought came to him that this was another trick in the game the trainer was playing.

“Did Mrs. Van Zandt instruct you to put Clancey on Gun Metal?” he asked, in a dry voice.

“That's my business—it's all my business; when I run a stable, I run it—I'm boss, see? Clancey's the stable jock; Little Jack's scratched, an' my boy's got first call for the mount; he's carded to ride the horse, see? So you'd better trot back to the stand, like a good little man, and watch the race. That's the place for amateur jocks—I ain't got no use for gentlemen riders; professionals are crooked enough, but when swells are up the books don't bet, see?””

“I've just come from Mrs. Van Zandt—she expects me to ride Gun Metal, and I'm going to do so,” Leigh answered, in a determined tone.

“Oh, you are, eh? See here, young man, if you make any fuss, interfering with me in my business, I'll have Pinkerton's men put you on the outside, see? I've arranged the jockey for every horse I ever trained. Now, that settles it—clear out!”

“Well, Mr. Chester, I see nothing will do you but a bit of pressure. You and your precious associates in villainy drugged Little Jack, thinking that you were getting at Gun Metal, and now you want to ride a jockey who will take orders from you. And”

Leigh was interrupted by an oath. The trainer's face had gone greenish-white at first, now it was red with rage.

“I'll make you prove that!” he spluttered.

“I shouldn't, if I were you—it would be foolish, also easy.”

Leigh drew from his vest pocket his card-case, and, with provoking deliberation, extracted a card. “You have seen this before, I fancy, Mr. Chester,” he said. “It's Doctor Keswick's formula for dulling a horse's ambition; the doctor wrote it in the Café Martin.”

Leigh proceeded to read the prescription, in a quiet, drawling voice; then he put it back in his pocket, Chester watching this performance with blinking eyes.

“Now, Mr. Chester,” Leigh continued, “get that blue jacket off your man. I'll weigh about one hundred and fifty-five in the silks—Gun Metal carries one hundred and sixty, so I'll trouble you for a five-pound saddle.”

“I'm damned if I'll set Pat down for any”

“Stop that!” commanded Leigh. “Do as I say, or I'll have the stewards intervene, and you'll go over the road. Speak to the proper official and get permission to make the change in riders; tell him your jockey can't make the weight, or is sick, or means to pull the horse—anything you like. You played a crooked game and you've lost, that's all there is to it.”

The trainer turned sullenly away and spoke to Clancey.

The jockey went into the dressing-room, stripped the colors off, and threw them angrily on a chair. Leigh put them on; then, with the saddle on his arm, made the weight. He watched closely the saddling of Gun Metal. A slack girth might yet throw the game Chester's way.

The trainer saw the steel-gray eye of Leigh upon him as he cinched the saddle-girth, and cursed under his breath.

But now the call to mount horses sounded through the paddock, and Leigh swung to the back of the big bay.

“Good luck!” Mrs. Van Zandt cried, as Leigh turned his horse into line and passed to the course,

Somehow, beyond the paddock gate, Leigh felt the thrill of optimistic exhilaration; something in the strong, powerful stride of the horse as he cantered down to the post told the rider that Dodson's faith was well placed.

At the start there was a wheeling scurry of thoroughbreds, like a troop of awkward cavalry; a mad scramble; the cutting of big saucer hoofs in the turf; the crackling of crisp silk; the roar of the wind in Leigh's ears, and the joy of the gallop in his heart. And on the lawn the horse's owner, sitting with Kathleen Braund, saw Gun Metal taken back in his field to trail at the heels of the other gallopers urged to unwise haste by riders who saw only the winning-post. Up the first round they thundered, the big bay lifting at his jumps as though his feet were winged. And the horse himself, tugging gently at the bit, seemingly called back over the leathern reins: “Faster, faster, faster!”

But when a soft voice came to him coaxingly: “Steady, boy, steady!” and a hand, gentle as a woman's, just lifted at the bit set against his teeth, and he felt the pressure of knees against his shoulder-blades, he lapsed into confidence, and galloped free of rebellion.

Ears pricked, tail straight out, and big, bright eyes wide open in delight, Gun Metal watched in content the five of his kind in front, taking the mud wall, the post and rails, the water-jump without fault, and with the springing swoop of a deer. Down the back stretch, first Gray Bird, and then Red Man are passed. Stronger and stronger and more eager they race; out in front, beating the troubled earth with iron hoofs, are King Cole and Rollo. Their riders are driving; the horses, warm to the strife, stretch their necks, flatten to the ground, and now at the huge wall together they gather their loins for the lift.

The soft earth gives from under the push of Rollo's hoofs; he sways, he strikes—down, his neck drawn to an arch, he goes, and King Cole, half a length behind, crashes into the gray. Right across the jump, close to the wall, is a mass of crumpled life, horse and man,

Too late for Gun Metal to check; too late for Leigh to pull to the right or to the left, or to falter. He sees but one thing—to act. He draws his whip. Like a vise his long legs cleave to the girth; he calls on the bay, he crouches to the wither to take the weight off the straining loins. One cut of the whip, and Gun Metal, answering bravely, lifts high and long and broad, and clears mud wall and fallen horse, staggers from the impact, gathers himself, and again he is galloping, now in the lead.

The stand that had held its breath, cheered with relief. Somebody cried: “What a jockey! Heavens! that is a horse!”

Two women that had sat white-faced felt the hot blood pump back from their hearts and rouge-pale cheeks. One gave a great sob of relief; and after a long pause the other said: “Kathie, your friend Leigh is magnificent. Do you love him, girl? I should, if I weren't married.”

“Your horse is winning, Bertha; you'll be able to settle that trouble of Frank's now. I fancy Leigh didn't know how much the winning of this race meant to your brother. There he's won! There! don't kiss me, you little goose; I didn't ride the horse!”