Some one touched Mike on the arm, saying, "Come over into the paddock, Gaynor; you're barkin' up the wrong tree." It was Dixon.

"Bot' t'umbs up! This game's too tough fer me--I'll ship me plugs to Gravesend. Whin a straight man like Porther gets a deal av this kind."

"Never mind, Mike," interrupted Dixon; "let it drop."

Carson opened his lips to retort, then closed them tight, set his square jaw firmly, turned on his heel, and walked away.

"What d' ye think av it, b'ys?" appealed Mike to the others.

"You're wrong, Gaynor," declared a thin, tall, hawkfaced man, who was in his shirt sleeves; "my boy was in that run, and it isn't Carson's fault at all. It's dope, Mike. Lauzanne was fair crazy with it at the post; and McKay was dead to the world on the little mare--the Starter couldn't get him away."

"That's right, Mike," added Dixon; "Carson fined the boy fifty, an' the Stewards set him down."

"Is that straight goods?" asked Gaynor, losing confidence in the justice of his wordy a.s.sault.

"Yes, you're wrong, Mike," they all a.s.serted.

In five minutes Gaynor had found Carson, and apologized with the full warmth of a penitent Irishman.

V

For a week John Porter brooded over Lucretia's defeat, and, worse still, over the unjust suspicion of the unthinking public. Touched in its pocket, the public responded in unsavory references to Lucretia's race.

Porter loved a good horse, and liked to see him win. The confidence of the public in his honesty was as great a reward as the stakes. The avowed principle of racing, that it improved the breed of horses, was but a silent sentiment with him. He believed in it, but not being rich, raced as a profession, honestly and squarely. He had a.s.serted more than once that if he were wealthy he would never race a two-year-old. But his income must be derived from his horses, his capital was in them; and just at this time he was sitting in a particularly hard streak of bad luck; financially, he was in a hole; morally, he stood ill with the public.

His reason told him that the ill-fortune could not last; he had one great little mare, good enough to win, an honest trainer--there the inventory stopped short; his stock in trade was incomplete--he had not a trusty jockey. In his dilemma he threshed it out with Dixon.

"How's the mare doing, Andy?" he asked. "What did the race do to her?"

"She never was better in her life," the Trainer answered, proudly. Then he added, to ease the troubled look that was in the gray eyes of his master, "She'll win next time out, sir--I'll gamble my shirt on that."

"Not with another McKay up."

"I think she's good enough for the 'Eclipse,' sir, dashed if I don't. I worked her the distance, and she shaded the time they made last year."

"What's the use," said Porter, dejectedly; "where'll we get a boy?"

"Oh, lots of the boys are straight."

"I know that," Porter answered, "but all the straight ones are tied hand and foot to the big stables."

"I've been thinkin' it over," hazarded Dixon, tentatively--"Boston Bill's got a good lad--there's none of them can put it over him, an' his boss ain't got nothin' in the 'Eclipse,' I know."

"That means the same old game, Andy; we nurse the horse, get him into condition, place him where he can win, and then turn him over to a plunger and take the small end of the divide. Boston Bill would back her off the boards.

"The stake'd mount up to seven or eight thousand, an' the win would square the little mare with the public."

"And I'd do that, if I didn't land a dollar," said Porter. "Andy, it hurt me more to see the filly banged about there in the ruck than it did giving up the money."

The Trainer smiled. With him this was unusual; there was a popular superst.i.tion that he never smiled except when one of his horses won.

But his heart expanded at Porter's words, for he, too, was fond of the little mare.

Then Porter spoke again, abruptly, and fast, as though he feared he might change his mind: "They downed me last trip, Dixon--I guess I'm getting a bit slow in my paces; and you do just as you like--arrange with Boston Bill if you think it's good business. He makes a specialty of winning races--not pulling horses, and we need a win, too, I guess."

"Thank you, sir. We'll land that stake; an' p'raps the sharp division'll take a tumble. I'll bet a dollar they'll go for The Dutchman--he ran a great race the other day, an' he's in the Eclipse--if they start him.

Lurcetia's right on edge, she's lookin' for the key hole, an' may go back if we don't give her a race. We'd better get the money for the oat bill while it's in sight. She oughter be a long price in the bettin', too," continued Dixon, meditatively; "the public soon sour on a beaten horse. You'll have a chance to get even."

"I don't like that part of it," muttered Porter; "I'm in the black books now. People have no reason at all--no sense; they've got it into their heads that dirty job was of my making, and if the filly starts at ten to one, and I win a bit, they'll howl."

"You can't make a success of racin', sir, an' run your stable for the public--they don't pay the feed bill."

"Perhaps you're right, Dixon," answered Porter.

For immediate financial relief Porter knew that he must look to Lucretia--no other horse in his stable was ready to win; but more immediately he must arrange certain money matters with his banker, who was Philip Crane. To Porter, Crane had been a tolerant financier, taking the man's honesty liberally as a security; not but what Ringwood had been called upon as a tangible a.s.set. So that day, following his conversation with Dixin, the master of Ringwood had an interview with his banker. It was natural that he should speak of his prospects--his hopes of winning the Eclipse with Lucretia, and, corroboratively, mention her good trial.

"I think that's a good mare of yours, Mr. Porter," said Crane, sympathetically. "I only race, myself in a small way, just for the outdoor relaxation it gives me, you know, so I'm not much of a judge. The other horse you bought--the winner of the race, I mean, Lauzanne--will also help put you right, I should say."

Porter hesitated, uneasily. He disliked to talk about a man behind his back, but he knew that Langdon trained for Crane, and longed to give the banker a friendly word of warning; he knew nothing of the latter's manipulation of the trainer.

With a touch of rustic quaintness he said, with seeming irrelevance to the subject, "Have you ever picked wild strawberries in the fields, Mr.

Crane?"

"I have," answered the other man, showing no surprise at the break, for life in Brookfield had accustomed him to disjointed deals.

"Did you ever notice that going down wind you could see the berries better?"

Crane thought for a moment. "Yes, that's right; coming up wind the leaves hid them."

"Just so," commented Porter; "and when a man's got a trainer he's nearly always working up wind with him."

"The trainer hides things?" queried Crane.

"Some do. But the outsiders walking down wind see the berries."

And the Banker pondered for a minute, then he said, "Whose garden are the berries in, Mr. Porter, yours or mine?"

"Well, you've always been a good friend of mine, Mr. Crane," Porter answered, evasively.

"I see," said the other, meditatively; "I understand. I'm much obliged.

If I thought for an instant that any trainer wasn't dealing perfectly straightforward with me, I'd have nothing more to do with him--nothing whatever."

Crane sat looking through the open window at John Porter as the latter went down the street. About his thin-lipped, square-framed mouth hovered an expression that might have been a smile, or an intense look of interest, or a touch of avaricious ferocity. The gray eyes peeped over the wall of their lower lids, and in them, too, was the unfathomable something.

"Yes," he repeated, as though Porter still stood beside him, "if Langdon tried to deceive me, I'd crush him. Poor old Porter with his story of the strawberries! If he were as clever as he is honest, he wouldn't have been stuck with a horse like Lauzanne. I told Langdon to get rid of that quitter, but I almost wish he'd found another buyer for him. The horse taint is pretty strong in that Porter blood. How the girl said that line,

'And a hush came over the clamorous mob; Like a babe on his neck I was sobbing.'