XIV

Shandy's escapade with Diablo had brought a new trouble to Mike Gaynor.

The boy had been discharged with a severe reprimand from Mr. Porter, and a punctuation mark of disapproval from the Trainer's horn-like hand.

He had departed from Ringwood inwardly swearing revenge upon everybody connected with that place; against Diablo he was particularly virulent.

Mike tried to secure a boy in the Brookfield neighborhood to ride Diablo in his work, but Shandy's evil tongue wagged so blatantly about the horse's bad temper that no lad could be found to take on in the stables.

Ned Carter might have ridden Diablo at work, but the big Black was indeed a horse of many ideas. He had taken a notion to gallop kindly while accompanied by Lucretia and Lauzanne; worked alone he sulked and was as awkward as a broncho of the plains. Also he disliked Carter--seemed to a.s.sociate his personality with that of Shandy's.

Mike's discontent over the hitch spread to John Porter. It was too bad; the horses had been doing so well. For three days Diablo had no gallop.

On the fourth Porter determined to ride the horse himself; he would not be beaten out by an ungrateful whelp like Shandy. In his day he had been a famous gentleman jock, and still light enough to ride work.

"I don't like the idea, sor; it's not good enough," remonstrated Mike.

But his master was obdurate. If Allis rode Lauzanne, why shouldn't he ride Diablo?

Gaynor would have ridden the horse himself rather than have his master do so, but he had a bad leg. Once upon a time it had been crushed against the rail. Somebody must ride Diablo; the horse, naturally highstrung, was becoming wild with nervousness through being knocked out of his work.

For three days after his discharge Shandy sat brooding with the low cunning of a forest animal over his fancied ill-treatment. More than once he had received money from Langdon for touting off to him Porter's stable matters; now in his unreasoning bitterness he contrasted Langdon and Porter.

"d.i.c.k's white, he is, an' I'll go git a job from him. I gits half eat by that crazy skate, an' fired without a cent fer it. G.o.d drat 'em!"

he muttered; "I'll get even, or know why. They'll put Ned up on Diablo, will they? The sneak! He split on me fer beltin' the Black, I know, d.a.m.n him! They ain't got another boy an' they won't git one. I'll fix that stiff, Carter, too; then they won't have no boy."

He drank beer, and as it irritated his ferret mind a devilish plot came into his being and took possession of him--a plot easy of execution because of his familiarity with the Ringwood stables.

That night he slipped through the dark, like a hyena pup, to Ringwood.

That the stable was locked mattered not. More than once, out of laziness, Shandy had shirked going to Mike's quarters for the keys and had found ingress by a small window, a foot square, through which the soiled straw bedding was thrown into the yard. Standing on the dung heap, Shandy worked open the board slide that closed this window, and wormed his weasel-form through the small opening. He pa.s.sed down the pa.s.sage between the stalls and entered a saddle room at the farther end.

"The bloomin' thing used to be on the fourth peg," he muttered, drawing his small figure up on tiptoe and feeling along the wall for something.

"Blow me!" and he chuckled fiendishly as his fingers encountered the cold steel of a bit, "I'd know that snaffle in h.e.l.l, if I got a feel of it."

There was a patent device of a twist and a loose ring in the center of the bit he clutched, which Porter had devised for Diablo's hard mouth.

Shandy gave the bridle a swing, and it clattered to the floor from its peg. Diablo snorted and pawed the planks of his stall nervously.

"All right, my buck," hissed Shandy, "you wait till to-morror; you'll git the run of yer life, I'm thinkin', d.a.m.n their eyes!" and he went off into a perfect torrent of imprecation against everybody at Ringwood, hushing his voice to a snarling whisper. Then he shut the door of the saddle room, sat down on the floor and pulled from his pocket a knife and stub of candle. He lighted the latter and held it flame down till a few drops of wax formed a tiny lake; into this he stuck the candle upright, shielding its flame with his coat. He opened the knife and laying it down, inspected minutely the bridle which lay across his leg.

"It's Diablo's right enough," he said; "I couldn't be mistook on the bit, nor them strong lines."

He picked up the knife, and holding the leather rein across the palm of his left hand started to saw it gently with the blade. Almost instantly he left off. "Of all the bloomin' ijits! G.o.d drat me fer a goat! He'd feel that cut the first slip through his fingers the leather took."

He gathered in the rein until he had it six inches from the bit. There he cut, stopping many times, and doubling the leather close to the light to see how deep he had penetrated.

"There, Mr. b.l.o.o.d.y Ned!" he exclaimed at last, as inspection showed that only the outer hard sh.e.l.l of the leather remained intact. "That'll just hold till the Black takes one of his cranky spells, an' you give him a stiff pull. G.o.d help you then!" Even this was a blasphemous cry of exultation; not a plea for divine a.s.sistance for the man he plotted against.

His next move proved that his cunning was of an exceptional order. From his coat pocket he brought forth a pill box. In this receptacle Shandy dipped a forefinger, and rubbed into the fresh cut of the leather a trifle of blackened axle grease which he had taken from a wagon wheel before starting out. Then he wiped the rein with his coat tail and looked at it admiringly.

"The bloke won't see that, blast him!"

He hung the bridle up in its place, put out the candle, dropped it in his pocket and made his way from the stable.

As he pa.s.sed Diablo's stall the big Black snorted again, and plunged in affright.

"You'll get enough of that to-morror," sneered the boy. "I hope you and Ned both break your d.a.m.n necks. Fer two cents I'd drop somethin' in your feed-box that'd settle you right now; but it's the skunk as split on me I want to get even with."

Shandy trudged back to where he nested in Brookfield and soon slept with calm restfulness, as though no evil had ever homed in his heart. In the first gray of the early morning he rose and went out to the race course.

XV

The course near Ringwood had formerly been a trotting track, and was still used at irregular intervals for the harness horses. In its primitive days a small, square, box-like structure had done duty as a Judges' Stand. With other improvements a larger structure had been erected a hundred yards higher up the stretch.

It was to the little old stand that Shandy took his way. Inside he waited for the coming of Gaynor's string of gallopers as supremely happy in his unrighteous work as any evil-minded boy might be at the prospect of unlimited mischief.

"Ned'll ride Diablo, sure; there's nothin' else to it," he muttered.

"I hope he breaks his blasted neck. I'll pay 'em out fer turnin' me off like a dog," he continued, savagely, the small ferret eyes blazing with fury. "I'll learn the d.a.m.n--h.e.l.lo!" His sharp ears had caught the m.u.f.fled sound of hoofs thudding the turf in a slow, measured walk. He peeped between the boards.

"Yes, it's Mike. And the girl, too--blast her! She blamed me fer near bein' eat alive by that black devil of a dope horse. h.e.l.l!"

This ambiguous exclamation was occasioned by the sight of his former master springing into the saddle on Diablo's back.

"That's the game, eh? G.o.d strike me dead! I hope you git enough of him. My arms ache yet from bein' near pulled out of the sockets by that leather-mouthed brute. Gee, if the boss hasn't got spurs on! If he ever tickles the Black wit' 'em--say, boys, there'll be a merry h.e.l.l to pay, and no pitch hot."

The young Arab spoke to the boards as though they were partners in his iniquity. Then he chuckled diabolically, as in fancy he saw Porter being trampled by the horse.

"The girl's on Lauzanne," he muttered; "she's the best in the lot, if she did run me down. A ridin' that sorrel mut, too, when she ought to be in the house washin' dishes. A woman ain't got no more business hangin'

'round the stable than a man's got in the kitchen. Petticoats is the devil; I never could abide 'em." Shandy sometimes harked back to his early English Whitechapel, for he had come from the old country, and had brought with him all the depravity he could acquire in the first five years of his existence there.

"Ned's got the soft snap in that blasted bunch," as his eye discovered Carter on Lucretia. "He's slipped me this go, but I've n.o.bbled the boss, so I don't care. I'm next 'em this trip."

As the three horses and their riders came on to the course he pulled out a cheap stop-watch Langdon had equipped him with for his touting, and started and stopped it several times.

"You'll pay fer their feed, you d.a.m.n ole skinflint," he was apostrophizing Porter, "an' I'll be next the best they can do, an'

stan' in on the rake-off. Gee! I thought they was out fer a trial," he muttered, looking disconsolately at the three as they cantered the first part of the journey. "I'll ketch 'em at the half, on the off chance," he added.

But though the timepiece in his hand clicked impatiently, after he pressed the stem with his thumb, as Diablo's black nozzle showed past the half-mile post, the three horses still cantered. Lauzanne was loping leisurely with the action of a wooden rocking-horse. Lucretia, her long, in-tipped ears c.o.c.ked eagerly forward, was throwing her head impatiently into the air as though pleading for just one strong gallop. Diablo's neck was arched like the half of a cupid's bow; his head, almost against his chest, hung heavy in the reins tight-drawn in Porter's strong hands.

His eyes, showing full of a suspicious whiteness, stood out from his lean, bony head; they were possessed of a fretful, impatient look. Froth flecked back from the nervous, quivering lips, and spattered against his black satin-skinned chest, where it hung like seafoam on holding sand.

"Whoa! Steady, old boy!" Porter was coaxing soothingly. "Steady, boy!"

"The ease up has put the very deuce into this fellow," he flung over his shoulder to Allis, who was at Diablo's quarter. "He's a hard-mouthed brute if ever there was one."

"He'll be all right, dad," she called forward, raising her voice, for the wind cut her breath; "Shandy rode him with a heavy hand, that's why."

"I'll put a rubber bit in his mouth, to soften it," he pumped brokenly.