Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/232

 one I expected, but sixty thousand for me if he wins! If he loses. ..

But you seen it in the papers. Knight Errant stumbled fifty yards from the finish, recovered too late, and run—fifth!

The jam at the rail breaks up quick. Lots of fellows is yelling with joy and running up to cash in their tickets as the numbers goes up, 6-3-1-Cirrus, Boniface, Mad Hatter. Others, like me, just stands there in a trance. It kind of slowly begins to get through my num head that I am clean—I ain't got a nickel in the wide, wide world. And as for Judy—miles away, hundreds of miles!

Then I think to myself: "Well, you big stiff, what are you going to do, bust out crying? Snap out of it! You couldn't get that twenty thousand back if you sobbed your eyes out— you can't get nothing if you're going to moan about it. Forget it, and start the ball rolling for another bank roll. It's all fun!"

I'm plowing my ways through the crowd back to Judy, a little bit older, but at least with my head up, when I bump smack into the last guy in the world I expect to see at a race track just then—Rags. He's tearing up some tickets and cursing Mr. Brock and Knight Errant, over and over again. Well, it kind of dumfounds me that Rags would be able to make a bet on anything when he's in a jam like he is now, so I ask him about it. He seems a bit startled to see me, peering at me out of a set of bloodshot eyes which has booze printed on 'em in raised letters.