The Max Brand Megapack (295 page)

The conclave of riders and the betting public had gathered at the farther end of the street, and it included the majority of Lukin. Only the center of the street was left religiously clear, and in this space half a dozen men led horses up and down with ostentatious indifference, stopping often to look after cinches which they had already tested many times. As Connor came up he saw a group of boys place their wagers with a stakeholder—knives, watches, nickels and dimes. That was a fair token of the spirit of the crowd. Wherever Connor looked he saw hands raised, brandishing greenbacks, and for every raised hand there were half a dozen clamorous voices.

“Quite a bit of sporting blood in Lukin, eh?” suggested Townsend.

“Sure,” sighed Connor. He looked at the brandished money. “A field of wheat,” he murmured, “waiting for the reaper. That’s me.”

He turned to see his companion pull out a fat wallet.

“Which one?” gasped Townsend. “We ain’t got hardly any time.”

Connor observed him with a smile that tucked up the corners of his mouth.

“Wait a while, friend. Plenty of time to get stung where the ponies are concerned. We’ll look them over.”

Townsend began to chatter in his ear: “It’s between Charlie Haig’s roan and Cliff Jones’s Lightning—You see that bay? Man, he can surely get across the ground. But the roan ain’t so bad. Oh, no!”

“Sure they are.”

The gambler frowned. “I was about to say that there was only one horse in the race, but—” He shook his head despairingly as he looked over the riders. He was hunting automatically for the fleshless face and angular body of a jockey; among them all Charlie Haig came the closest to this light ideal. He was a sun-dried fellow, but even Charlie must have weighed well over a hundred and forty pounds; the others made no pretensions toward small poundage, and Cliff Jones must have scaled two hundred.

“Which was the one hoss in your eyes?” asked the hotel man eagerly.

“The gray. But with that weight up the little fellow will be anchored.”

He pointed to a gray gelding which nosed confidently at the back hip pockets of his master.

“Less than fifteen hands,” continued Connor, “and a hundred and eighty pounds to break his back. It isn’t a race; it’s murder to enter a horse handicapped like that.”

“The gray?” repeated Jack Townsend, and he glanced from the corner of his eyes at his companion, as though he suspected mockery. “I never seen the gray before,” he went on. “Looks sort of underfed, eh?”

Connor apparently did not hear. He had raised his head and his nostrils trembled, so that Townsend did not know whether the queer fellow was about to break into laughter or a trade.

“Yet,” muttered Connor, “he might carry it. God, what a horse!”

He still looked at the gelding, and Townsend rubbed his eyes and stared to make sure that he had not overlooked some possibilities in the gelding. But he saw again only a lean-ribbed pony with a long neck and a high croup. The horse wheeled, stepping as clumsily as a gangling yearling. Townsend’s amazement changed to suspicion and then to indifference.

“Well,” he said, smiling covertly, “are you going to bet on that?”

Connor made no answer. He stepped up to the owner of the gray, a swarthy man of Indian blood. His half sleepy, half sullen expression cleared when Connor shook hands and introduced himself as a lover of fast horse-flesh.

He even congratulated the Indian on owning so fine a specimen, at which apparently subtle mockery Townsend, in the rear, set his teeth to keep from smiling; and the big Indian also frowned, to see if there were any hidden insult. But Connor had stepped back and was looking at the forelegs of the gelding.

“There’s bone for you,” he said exultantly. “More than eight inches, eh—that Cannon?”

“Huh,” grunted the owner, “I dunno.”

But his last shred of suspicion disappeared as Connor, working his fingers along the shoulder muscles of the animal, smiled with pleasure and admiration.

“My name’s Bert Sims,” said the Indian, “and I’m glad to know you. Most of the boys in Lukin think my hoss ain’t got a chance in this race.”

“I think they’re right,” answered Connor without hesitation.

The eyes of the Indian flashed.

“I think you’re putting fifty pounds too much weight on him,” explained Connor.

“Yeh?”

“Can’t another man ride your horse?”

“Anybody can ride him.”

“Then let that fellow yonder—that youngster—have the mount. I’ll back the gray to the bottom of my pocket if you do.”

“I wouldn’t feel hardly natural seeing another man on him,” said the Indian. “If he’s rode I’ll do the riding. I’ve done it for fifteen years.”

“What?”

“Fifteen years.”

“Is that horse fifteen years old?” asked Connor, prepared to smile.

“He is eighteen,” answered Bert Sims quietly.

The gambler cast a quick glance at Sims and a longer one at the gray. He parted the lips of the horse, and then cursed softly.

“You’re right,” said Connor. “He is eighteen.”

He was frowning in deadly earnestness now.

“Accident, I suppose?”

The Indian merely stared at him.

“Is the horse a strain of blood or an accident? What’s his breed?”

“He’s an Eden gray.”

“Are there more like him?”

“The valley’s full of ’em, they say,” answered Bert Sims.

“What valley?” snapped the gambler.

“I ain’t been in it. If I was I wouldn’t talk.”

“Why not?”

In reply Sims rolled the yellow-stained whites of his eyes slowly toward his interlocutor. He did not turn his head, but a smile gradually began on his lips and spread to a sinister hint at mirth. It put a grim end to the conversation, and Connor turned reluctantly to Townsend. The latter was clamoring.

“They’re getting ready for the start. Are you betting on that runt of a gray?”

CHAPTER FIVE

Conner shook his head almost sadly.
“A horse that stands not a hair more than fourteen-three, eighteen years old, with a hundred and eighty pounds up—No, I’m not a fool.”

“Which is it—the roan or the bay?” gasped Townsend. “Which d’you say? I’ll tell you about the valley after the race. Which hoss, Mr. Connor?”

Thus appealed to, the gambler straightened and clasped his hands behind his back. He looked coldly at the horses.

“How old is that brown yonder—the one the boy is just mounting?”

“Three. But what’s he got to do with the race?”

“He’s a shade too young, or he’d win it. That’s what he has to do with it. Back Haig’s horse, then. The roan is the best bet.”

“Have you had a good look at Lightnin’?”

“He won’t last in this going with that weight up.”

“You’re right,” panted Townsend. “And I’m going to risk a hundred on him. Hey, Joe, how d’you bet on Charlie Haig?”

“Two to one.”

“Take you for a hundred. Joe, meet Mr. Connor.”

“A hundred it is, Jack. Can I do anything for you, Mr. Connor?”

“I’ll go a hundred on the roan, sir.”

“Have I done it right?” asked Townsend fiercely, a little later. “I wonder do you know?”

“Ask that after the race is over,” smiled Connor. “After all, you have only one horse to be afraid of.”

“Sure; Lightnin’—but he’s enough.”

“Not Lightning, I tell you. The gray is the only horse to be afraid of though the brown stallion might do if he has enough seasoning.”

For a moment panic brightened the eyes of Townsend, and then he shook the fear away.

“I’ve done it now,” he said huskily, “and they’s no use talking. Let’s get down to the finish.”

The crowd was streaming away from the start, and headed toward the finish half a mile down the street beyond the farther end of Lukin. Most of this distance Townsend kept his companion close to a run; then he suddenly appealed for a slower pace.

“It’s my heart,” he explained. “Nothin’ else bothers it, but during a hoss race it sure stands on end. I get to thinkin’ of what my wife will say if I lose; and that always plumb upsets me.”

He was, in fact, spotted white and purple when they joined the mob which packed both sides of the street at the finish posts; already the choice positions were taken.

“We won’t get a look,” groaned Townsend.

But Connor chuckled: “You tie on to me and we’ll get to the front in a squeeze.” And he ejected himself into the mob. How it was done Townsend could never understand. They oozed through the thickest of the crowd, and when roughly pressed men ahead of them turned around, ready to fight, Connor was always looking back, apparently forced along by the pressure from the rear. He seemed, indeed, to be struggling to keep his footing, but in a few minutes Townsend found himself in the front rank. He mopped his brow and smiled up into the cool face of Connor, but there was no time for comments. Eight horses fretted in a ragged line far down the street, and as they frisked here and there the brims of the sombreros of the riders flapped up and down; only the Eden gray stood with downward head, dreaming.

“No heart,” said Townsend, “in that gray hoss. Look at him!”

“Plenty of head, though,” replied Connor; “here they go!”

His voice was lost in a yell that went up wailing, shook into a roar, and then died off, as though a gust of wind had cut the sounds away. A murmur of voices followed, and then an almost womanish yell, for Lightning, the favorite, was out in front, and his rider leaned in the saddle with arm suspended and a quirt which never fell. The rest were a close group where whips worked ceaselessly, except that in the rear of all the rest the little gray horse ran without urge, smoothly, as if his rider had given up all hope of winning and merely allowed his horse to canter through.

“D’you see?” screamed Townsend. “Is that what you know about hosses, Mr. Connor? Look at Cliff Jones’s Lightning! What do you—”

He cut his upbraidings short, for Connor’s was a grisly face, white about the mouth and with gathered brows, as though, with intense effort, he strove to throw the influence of his will into that mass of horse-flesh. The hotel-keeper turned in time to see Lightning, already buckling under the strain, throw up his head.

The heavy burdens, the deep, soft going, and the fact that none of the horses were really trained to sprint, made the half-mile course a very real test, and now the big leader perceptibly weakened. Out of the pack shot a slender brown body, and came to the girth—to the neck of the bay.

“The stallion!” shouted Townsend. “By God, you do know hosses! Who’d of thought that skinny fellow had it in him?”

“He’ll die,” said Connor calmly.

The bay and the brown went back into the pack together, even as Connor spoke, though the riders were flogging hard, and now the roan drew to the front. It was plain to see that he had the foot of the rest, for he came away from the crowd with every leap.

“Look! Look! Look!” moaned Townsend. “Two for one! Look!” He choked with pleasure and gripped Connor’s arm in both his hands in token of gratitude.

Now the race bore swiftly down the finish, the horses looming bigger; their eyes could be seen, and their straining nostrils now, and the desperate face of each rider, trying to lift his horse into a great burst.

“He’s got it,” sobbed Townsend, hysterical. “Nothin’ can catch him now.”

But his companion, in place of answer, stiffened and pointed. His voice was a tone of horror, almost, as he said: “I knew, by God, I knew all the time and wouldn’t believe my eyes.”

For far from the left, rounding the pack, came a streak of gray. It caught the brown horse and passed him in two leaps; it shot by the laboring bay; and only the roan of Charlie Haig remained in front. That rider, confident of victory, had slipped his quirt over his wrist and was hand-riding his horse when a brief, deep yell of dismay from the crowd made him jerk a glance over his shoulder. He cut the quirt into the flank of the roan, but it was too late. Five lengths from the finish the little gray shoved his nose in front; and from that point, settling toward the earth, as he stretched into a longer and longer stride, every jump increased his margin. The nose of the roan was hardly on the rump of the gelding at the finish.

A bedlam roar came from the crowd. Townsend was cursing and beating time to his oaths with a fat fist. Townsend found so many companion losers that his feelings were readily salved, and he turned to Connor, smiling wryly.

“We can’t win every day,” he declared, “but I’ll tell you this, partner; of all the men I ever seen, you get the medal for judgin’ a hoss. You can pick my string any day.”

“Eighteen years old,” Connor was saying in the monotonous tone of one hypnotized.

“Hey, there,” protested Townsend, perceiving that he was on the verge of being ignored.

“A hundred and eighty pounds,” sighed the big man.

Townsend saw for the first time that a stop-watch was in the hand of his companion, and now, as Connor began to pace off the distance, the hotel proprietor tagged behind, curious. Twenty steps from the starting point the larger man stopped abruptly, shook his head, and then went on. When he came to the start he paused again, and Townsend found him staring with dull eyes at the face of the watch.

“What’d they make it in?” asked the little man.

The other did not hear.

“They ran from this line?” he queried in a husky voice.

“Sure. Line between them posts.”

“Fifty-nine seconds!” he kept repeating. “Fifty-nine seconds! Fifty-nine!”

“What about the fifty-nine seconds?” asked Townsend, and receiving no answer he murmured to himself: “The heat has got to his head.”

Connor asked quietly: “Know anything about these gray horses and where they came from?”

“Sure. As much as anybody. Come from yonder in the mountains. A Negro raises ’em. A deaf mute. Ain’t ever been heard to say a word.”

“And he raises horses like that?”

“Sure.”

“And nobody’s been up there to try to buy ’em?”

“Too far to go, you see? Long ride and a hard trail. Besides, they’s plenty of good hoss-flesh right around Lukin, here.”

“Of course,” nodded Connor genially. “Of course there is.”

“Besides, them grays is too small. Personally, I don’t hanker after a runt of a hoss. I look like a fool on one of em.”