Story 8.A Duel at “Poker.”Nobody on the Diamond Fields quite knew the beginning of the ill-feeling between Dr Gorman and Mr Bowker.It had existed, as far as any one could remember, from the early days of the Fields, and had been increased and intensified by a hundred matters of grievance. It is only in a small community, where there is not much change of thought, and where a fresh face is not very often seen, that bitter personal hatred can grow luxuriantly, and the rancorous ill-will between those two men had become part of themselves, adding a sort of enjoyment to their lives, and influencing many of their actions. Men knew and counted upon the fact that one of them would oppose the other in every possible way, and those who were on bad terms with the one could always reckon on the support and friendship of the other.It was as much owing to their being respectively directors of the Long Hope and the New Colonial Mining Companies, as to anything else, that the disastrous litigation, which eventually swamped both companies, broke out and was carried on to the bitter end. It was owing to some one suggesting to Bowker that it was the cherished ambition of Dr Gorman to represent Kimberley in the House of Assembly, that the former first took to politics, and began that distinguished public career which we at the Diamond Fields believed was attracting the attention of Europe, while the latter, who had no more ambition to become a member of the Legislative Assembly than to be a bishop, when his enemy issued his address, at once came forward and began to canvass the constituency on his own account.That election was memorable in the annals of the Diamond Fields for years, and was fought with a spirit which a journal that made a good thing out of it said was creditable to both parties, and bore witness to the healthy vitality of the Diamond Fields. Money was thrown about with a splendid recklessness, and some men, who had the foresight to put their Kaffir workmen on the register, made a good thing out of the rise in the value of free and independent voters.There was no other candidate who stood a ghost of a chance while there were two seats, so the fight between the two was only for the honour of being senior member, but it was none the less brisk on that account. Bowker won, and then both parties got up petitions against each other’s return on account of gross bribery and corruption, and succeeded in turning each other out.From that day they were the prominent leaders in local politics, in fact they helped to form the two parties who became the Guelphs and Ghibbelines of the Diamond Fields.Bowker was supposed to own the ‘Assagai,’ a satirical journal that had a stormy existence for some months, and the doctor was believed to have found the money for the ‘Knobkerri,’ and to have imported its editor, a broken-down London journalist, whose power of invective, until he matured the incipient delirium tremens he brought out with him, was the terror of Mr Bowker and his party.When the former journal devoted a series of articles to the doctor’s former life, and to the incidents connected with the suspicious death of his half-aunt, Bowker was believed to have inspired the attack; while the biography of Bowker, giving a graphic account of his being tarred and feathered on the Ovens Gold Field in Australia, in connection with a charge of petty theft, which sent up the circulation of the ‘Knobkerri’ to a figure never before or afterwards reached by a newspaper on the Diamond Fields, was put down to the doctor. Bowker, who achieved a great reputation in colonial politics by his command of language, saying “that he recognised the contemptible handiwork of the medical assassin’s dastardly brain.” The enmity between these two men increased with the prosperity of the Diamond Fields, but did not go down with the shares when the bad times came.Through good times and bad the feud between them became more bitter. When things were at their worst, the one felt that the other’s bad fortune made up to a certain extent for his own. When things began to mend, Bowker felt that his satisfaction at finding himself on the breast of the wave of returning prosperity was diminished by seeing his old enemy floating in with him. But with Bowker’s shares the doctor’s house property rose in value, and when at length the latter, having become weary of the dust of the Fields, determined to shake it off his feet for ever, and return home, he felt that the knowledge that he was leaving Bowker behind him a prosperous man, who in a year or two would follow him with a larger fortune, spoilt much of his self-satisfaction.Bowker, on the other hand, heard with considerable chagrin of the other’s intended departure; he felt that in a way he would miss him, and thought that life would be dull now there was little chance of seeing his enemy come to grief, and now it seemed certain on the whole that his career on the Diamond Fields might be summed up as a successful one.One evening some days before Gorman was to leave Kimberley, he was with some of us in the card-room of the club. We had been playing some mild game of limited loo. We were discussing whether we should go on playing or leave off, no one taking much interest in the game, when Bowker came into the room with a look in his face which showed that he had been taking a fair amount of drink. At that time he was not on speaking terms with Gorman, but for all that, as he came into the room he stared more at him than any one else, and seemed to speak to him when he asked what game we were playing.“Limited loo! call that a game! No one has got the pluck to play now-a-days. Now I wouldn’t mind having a bit of a gamble to-night, but I ain’t come down to limited loo,” he said with a loud laugh, and a sneer at the doctor.“What do you want to play?” Gorman said, speaking to Bowker, rather to the surprise of those who were present.“Well, I’d play a game of poker if any one would sit down who knew how to play, as wasn’t afraid of the game,” Bowker growled out.“I know how to play, and I’m not afraid of the game either, Mr Bowker,” the doctor answered quietly enough, but with a note in his voice that some of us believed meant mischief.The rest of us did not offer to join in the play, from the first we fancied it would be a pretty warm game. It was anything but a friendly one, for it seemed to be rather a duel than a mere gamble, and we felt sure that when the two men sat down at the table, each one promised himself that if he could manage it, the other should look back with considerable regret to that little game of poker.The two men were a great contrast to each other. Bowker was a heavy, coarse-looking, bull-necked man of over six feet high, with a straggling yellow beard growing over his huge red cheeks and jowls. Gorman was a slight, dark man, clean shaven except a twisted moustache, with a pair of sharp black eyes. Both men occasionally played high, though they were not habitual gamblers, and the lookers-on expected to see some sensational playing.“What do you say to making the blind five pounds?” said the doctor, as he sat down and smiled at his opponent.“Thought you weren’t afraid of the game! but you know what you can afford,” the other answered.“Ten if you like,” said the doctor, and then the game began.For some time the luck ran with provoking evenness; both parties backed their hands with considerable freedom, but after a couple of hours’ play neither had lost or won very much.It happened that they both had a considerable sum in notes, which first collected before one player and then went across to the other. We watched the money pass from player to player, and waited for the more serious period of the game, when one party would have come to the end of his ready money, and play on credit would have begun. After a bit they increased the amount of the blind to thirty pounds, then to a hundred. First one player would be some hundred pounds to the good, then the other would get a turn of luck which would wipe it out again. For a long time they played without what is called a meet occurring; that is to say, when one happened to hold a good hand, the other generally held nothing.“Hanged if the rent of Gorman’s buildings mustn’t be going up a bit, since you’re man enough to play that game. What do you put your pile at?” Bowker had said, when the other had suggested the last increase of the blind.“Gorman’s buildings are worth about as much as twenty thousand pounds’ worth of stock in the Long Hope Company, are not they, Brown?” the doctor said, turning round to a share and estate agent who was looking on at the game.“Gorman’s buildings would fetch twenty-five thousand to-morrow, and we all know the market price of Long Hope,” Brown answered.“Well, play away and hold your jaw. I ain’t afraid of you and your damned shanties,” Bowker answered.After this change of remarks neither party said another word, except about the game. We, as we looked on, realised that there was more than mere gamblers’ greed in the savage hard look in their eyes. They were anxious to ruin one another, rather than to win money; the hatred of a dozen years seemed to find a vent in that game. The amount that Bowker held in the Long Hope Company was known to be about equal to the price put upon Gorman’s buildings, a row of offices near the mine; so the terms on which they met were quite fair. As hour after hour passed the game went on, neither party winning or losing much, but each in turn being to the good. They were both fine players, the doctor the more cautious of the two, while Bowker had on the whole the best luck, which carried him through one or two attempts to win by sheer force of bluffing. As the doctor looked into the mask of red flesh opposite him, he for some time found nothing there to give any clue as to the sort of hand his opponent held; but in the small hours of the morning he began to notice that every now and then the veins in his face would seem to swell, and his breathing would become harder. The luck just then was rather in the doctor’s favour, and after he had won several stakes he was able to diagnose his opponent’s symptoms of intense excitement pretty satisfactorily. When Bowker had a strong hand he would back it without showing these signs, but when he was in doubt, and backing his hand for more than it was worth, they would appear.“You had better not try that on again, it’s not good for your health, and worse for your pocket, you will find, my friend,” the doctor said to himself, as he dealt out the cards, determined that before long he would utilise the piece of knowledge which he fancied he had acquired.For some time after that, however, Bowker got hand after hand that there was no resisting, and the doctor’s winnings were reduced to nothing.It was getting on into the morning, but the club was still kept up, and several members stayed on watching the sensational game played out. At last the doctor took up a hand of three knaves, a king, and an ace, doubled the blind, and then changed the king and the ace, getting a queen and another knave. He had four knaves, but he had the best possible four, for he held a queen and had thrown away a king and an ace. Unless Bowker held a straight flush (that is to say, a sequence of the same suit) he could not hold as good a hand. Bowker had taken one card, and his heavy coarse face showed no sign. The betting went up at first gradually, then by leaps and bounds till it came to a thousand pounds.There was no limit to the amount that could be staked, but the game of poker played on the Diamond fields only allowed a player to raise the amount at one time to double what had already been staked.“Make it a thousand, that’s a good bit of your street,” Bowker said coolly enough.“Two,” said the doctor.“Four,” answered Bowker.The doctor began to wonder whether after all Bowker might not have a straight flush, but just then he felt sure that he saw the signs in his face he had noticed before.“Eight,” said the doctor, and there was an expression in his bright eyes that meant danger, as he looked into the other’s face.Bowker stared at his hand for some seconds, before, in a husky voice, he said—“Sixteen. That’s about all your shanties are worth,” he added, seeming to gain courage.“How much did you say, Brown—twenty-four thousand five hundred? Make it that; that’s the amount of my street and your shares, Bowker,” Gorman said, and we all noticed the tone of malice in his voice, which had kept calm and emotionless all through the play.For a second or two Bowker did not answer. He looked like an elephant which had received its death-wound, so a man who had just come down from the Zambesi said.“Twenty-four thousand five hundred. Well, I will make it up to that and go.” Then he stopped, as if he realised he had about got to the end of his tether.Not only the doctor, but every one in the room, felt pretty sure that he had a bad hand, and that the finish of the game had come.Every face was turned to Bowker; the lookers-on wondering what he would do, and how he would take his bad luck. For a second he seemed to be trying to think. Then a dazed look came into his face, and he half stood up, and then fell heavily forward, bringing the table down with him. There was a paraffin lamp on the table, which smashed as it fell, and in a second the cloth and table was blazing. There was a rush forward of the men looking on. Bowker was lifted on to a sofa, and a doctor, who on his way home from a case had dropped into the club, seeing it open, began to attend to him.“By Jove! the place will be burnt down!” some one cried, and some men rushed out of the room to get water, while others tried to put out the fire with rugs.Gorman stood holding his cards in his hand, looking first at his opponent and then at the blazing card-table.“Well, how are we going to play this out? This is a damn pretty thing,” he said. He did not care about Bowker’s state of health, nor did he care whether the building were burnt down or not.“See here, where are his cards? we have got to see this out. Twenty-four thou, is no laughing matter. He never raised, so we had better show our cards. What’s he got?” Gorman said, as he stood with his cards in hand.The fire was put out. Bowker was on the sofa looking rather bad, but the doctor seemed to be perfectly careless about everything except the stake he felt sure he had won.“Never mind about the game, man, now; maybe the poor fellow will never get round,” one of the men who was looking at Bowker said.“Beg pardon, but I do care about the game; it’s all very well his going into a fit, but that don’t alter the fact that we’ve got to play this out. Where are his cards?”“You want to see his hand, do you? Well, there you are,” some one said, holding up a charred mass which was all there was left of the cloth that had been on the table, or the rest of the cards, except the four knaves and a queen which Gorman held in his hand.Gorman looked at it for a second, and then with an oath he threw his own cards on to the floor.“Four knaves and a queen, and I had at first an ace and a king. So I must win with them.”“The question is, what had Bowker? He don’t look like telling you, and nobody else knows; besides, the game has not been played out. It’s a draw,” said one of the on-lookers, and this speech brought a murmur of consent from the others.Gorman gathered up his cards and showed them to the company. Then he said no more, but watched Bowker, who seemed to be coming to.“Look here, what was your hand?” he asked, when the latter seemed to be sensible.Bowker, however, did not answer the question, and it was some months before he could be induced to talk about that game. Until Gorman left the Fields his mind was a blank on the subject.The story went, however, that he was induced to tell in confidence the story of that night’s play to a particular friend.He had held three aces and two kings. Not a very good hand, but one worth backing for a little. Gorman, however, had taken him up, and instead of throwing up his hand, he had determined to bluff. He had originally held a queen, so he knew that Gorman could not hold four of aces, kings, or queens. He could remember getting to the end of his tether, and finding Gorman sticking to him like grim death; and then he could remember no more. It was only after Gorman had left for England that this story was told. Some people shrug their shoulders and laugh when they talk of that fit which Bowker had, and they say that under the circumstances it was the best thing he could have done. But the doctor who attended him knows it was real enough, and so does Gorman, who saw it coming on.
Nobody on the Diamond Fields quite knew the beginning of the ill-feeling between Dr Gorman and Mr Bowker.
It had existed, as far as any one could remember, from the early days of the Fields, and had been increased and intensified by a hundred matters of grievance. It is only in a small community, where there is not much change of thought, and where a fresh face is not very often seen, that bitter personal hatred can grow luxuriantly, and the rancorous ill-will between those two men had become part of themselves, adding a sort of enjoyment to their lives, and influencing many of their actions. Men knew and counted upon the fact that one of them would oppose the other in every possible way, and those who were on bad terms with the one could always reckon on the support and friendship of the other.
It was as much owing to their being respectively directors of the Long Hope and the New Colonial Mining Companies, as to anything else, that the disastrous litigation, which eventually swamped both companies, broke out and was carried on to the bitter end. It was owing to some one suggesting to Bowker that it was the cherished ambition of Dr Gorman to represent Kimberley in the House of Assembly, that the former first took to politics, and began that distinguished public career which we at the Diamond Fields believed was attracting the attention of Europe, while the latter, who had no more ambition to become a member of the Legislative Assembly than to be a bishop, when his enemy issued his address, at once came forward and began to canvass the constituency on his own account.
That election was memorable in the annals of the Diamond Fields for years, and was fought with a spirit which a journal that made a good thing out of it said was creditable to both parties, and bore witness to the healthy vitality of the Diamond Fields. Money was thrown about with a splendid recklessness, and some men, who had the foresight to put their Kaffir workmen on the register, made a good thing out of the rise in the value of free and independent voters.
There was no other candidate who stood a ghost of a chance while there were two seats, so the fight between the two was only for the honour of being senior member, but it was none the less brisk on that account. Bowker won, and then both parties got up petitions against each other’s return on account of gross bribery and corruption, and succeeded in turning each other out.
From that day they were the prominent leaders in local politics, in fact they helped to form the two parties who became the Guelphs and Ghibbelines of the Diamond Fields.
Bowker was supposed to own the ‘Assagai,’ a satirical journal that had a stormy existence for some months, and the doctor was believed to have found the money for the ‘Knobkerri,’ and to have imported its editor, a broken-down London journalist, whose power of invective, until he matured the incipient delirium tremens he brought out with him, was the terror of Mr Bowker and his party.
When the former journal devoted a series of articles to the doctor’s former life, and to the incidents connected with the suspicious death of his half-aunt, Bowker was believed to have inspired the attack; while the biography of Bowker, giving a graphic account of his being tarred and feathered on the Ovens Gold Field in Australia, in connection with a charge of petty theft, which sent up the circulation of the ‘Knobkerri’ to a figure never before or afterwards reached by a newspaper on the Diamond Fields, was put down to the doctor. Bowker, who achieved a great reputation in colonial politics by his command of language, saying “that he recognised the contemptible handiwork of the medical assassin’s dastardly brain.” The enmity between these two men increased with the prosperity of the Diamond Fields, but did not go down with the shares when the bad times came.
Through good times and bad the feud between them became more bitter. When things were at their worst, the one felt that the other’s bad fortune made up to a certain extent for his own. When things began to mend, Bowker felt that his satisfaction at finding himself on the breast of the wave of returning prosperity was diminished by seeing his old enemy floating in with him. But with Bowker’s shares the doctor’s house property rose in value, and when at length the latter, having become weary of the dust of the Fields, determined to shake it off his feet for ever, and return home, he felt that the knowledge that he was leaving Bowker behind him a prosperous man, who in a year or two would follow him with a larger fortune, spoilt much of his self-satisfaction.
Bowker, on the other hand, heard with considerable chagrin of the other’s intended departure; he felt that in a way he would miss him, and thought that life would be dull now there was little chance of seeing his enemy come to grief, and now it seemed certain on the whole that his career on the Diamond Fields might be summed up as a successful one.
One evening some days before Gorman was to leave Kimberley, he was with some of us in the card-room of the club. We had been playing some mild game of limited loo. We were discussing whether we should go on playing or leave off, no one taking much interest in the game, when Bowker came into the room with a look in his face which showed that he had been taking a fair amount of drink. At that time he was not on speaking terms with Gorman, but for all that, as he came into the room he stared more at him than any one else, and seemed to speak to him when he asked what game we were playing.
“Limited loo! call that a game! No one has got the pluck to play now-a-days. Now I wouldn’t mind having a bit of a gamble to-night, but I ain’t come down to limited loo,” he said with a loud laugh, and a sneer at the doctor.
“What do you want to play?” Gorman said, speaking to Bowker, rather to the surprise of those who were present.
“Well, I’d play a game of poker if any one would sit down who knew how to play, as wasn’t afraid of the game,” Bowker growled out.
“I know how to play, and I’m not afraid of the game either, Mr Bowker,” the doctor answered quietly enough, but with a note in his voice that some of us believed meant mischief.
The rest of us did not offer to join in the play, from the first we fancied it would be a pretty warm game. It was anything but a friendly one, for it seemed to be rather a duel than a mere gamble, and we felt sure that when the two men sat down at the table, each one promised himself that if he could manage it, the other should look back with considerable regret to that little game of poker.
The two men were a great contrast to each other. Bowker was a heavy, coarse-looking, bull-necked man of over six feet high, with a straggling yellow beard growing over his huge red cheeks and jowls. Gorman was a slight, dark man, clean shaven except a twisted moustache, with a pair of sharp black eyes. Both men occasionally played high, though they were not habitual gamblers, and the lookers-on expected to see some sensational playing.
“What do you say to making the blind five pounds?” said the doctor, as he sat down and smiled at his opponent.
“Thought you weren’t afraid of the game! but you know what you can afford,” the other answered.
“Ten if you like,” said the doctor, and then the game began.
For some time the luck ran with provoking evenness; both parties backed their hands with considerable freedom, but after a couple of hours’ play neither had lost or won very much.
It happened that they both had a considerable sum in notes, which first collected before one player and then went across to the other. We watched the money pass from player to player, and waited for the more serious period of the game, when one party would have come to the end of his ready money, and play on credit would have begun. After a bit they increased the amount of the blind to thirty pounds, then to a hundred. First one player would be some hundred pounds to the good, then the other would get a turn of luck which would wipe it out again. For a long time they played without what is called a meet occurring; that is to say, when one happened to hold a good hand, the other generally held nothing.
“Hanged if the rent of Gorman’s buildings mustn’t be going up a bit, since you’re man enough to play that game. What do you put your pile at?” Bowker had said, when the other had suggested the last increase of the blind.
“Gorman’s buildings are worth about as much as twenty thousand pounds’ worth of stock in the Long Hope Company, are not they, Brown?” the doctor said, turning round to a share and estate agent who was looking on at the game.
“Gorman’s buildings would fetch twenty-five thousand to-morrow, and we all know the market price of Long Hope,” Brown answered.
“Well, play away and hold your jaw. I ain’t afraid of you and your damned shanties,” Bowker answered.
After this change of remarks neither party said another word, except about the game. We, as we looked on, realised that there was more than mere gamblers’ greed in the savage hard look in their eyes. They were anxious to ruin one another, rather than to win money; the hatred of a dozen years seemed to find a vent in that game. The amount that Bowker held in the Long Hope Company was known to be about equal to the price put upon Gorman’s buildings, a row of offices near the mine; so the terms on which they met were quite fair. As hour after hour passed the game went on, neither party winning or losing much, but each in turn being to the good. They were both fine players, the doctor the more cautious of the two, while Bowker had on the whole the best luck, which carried him through one or two attempts to win by sheer force of bluffing. As the doctor looked into the mask of red flesh opposite him, he for some time found nothing there to give any clue as to the sort of hand his opponent held; but in the small hours of the morning he began to notice that every now and then the veins in his face would seem to swell, and his breathing would become harder. The luck just then was rather in the doctor’s favour, and after he had won several stakes he was able to diagnose his opponent’s symptoms of intense excitement pretty satisfactorily. When Bowker had a strong hand he would back it without showing these signs, but when he was in doubt, and backing his hand for more than it was worth, they would appear.
“You had better not try that on again, it’s not good for your health, and worse for your pocket, you will find, my friend,” the doctor said to himself, as he dealt out the cards, determined that before long he would utilise the piece of knowledge which he fancied he had acquired.
For some time after that, however, Bowker got hand after hand that there was no resisting, and the doctor’s winnings were reduced to nothing.
It was getting on into the morning, but the club was still kept up, and several members stayed on watching the sensational game played out. At last the doctor took up a hand of three knaves, a king, and an ace, doubled the blind, and then changed the king and the ace, getting a queen and another knave. He had four knaves, but he had the best possible four, for he held a queen and had thrown away a king and an ace. Unless Bowker held a straight flush (that is to say, a sequence of the same suit) he could not hold as good a hand. Bowker had taken one card, and his heavy coarse face showed no sign. The betting went up at first gradually, then by leaps and bounds till it came to a thousand pounds.
There was no limit to the amount that could be staked, but the game of poker played on the Diamond fields only allowed a player to raise the amount at one time to double what had already been staked.
“Make it a thousand, that’s a good bit of your street,” Bowker said coolly enough.
“Two,” said the doctor.
“Four,” answered Bowker.
The doctor began to wonder whether after all Bowker might not have a straight flush, but just then he felt sure that he saw the signs in his face he had noticed before.
“Eight,” said the doctor, and there was an expression in his bright eyes that meant danger, as he looked into the other’s face.
Bowker stared at his hand for some seconds, before, in a husky voice, he said—
“Sixteen. That’s about all your shanties are worth,” he added, seeming to gain courage.
“How much did you say, Brown—twenty-four thousand five hundred? Make it that; that’s the amount of my street and your shares, Bowker,” Gorman said, and we all noticed the tone of malice in his voice, which had kept calm and emotionless all through the play.
For a second or two Bowker did not answer. He looked like an elephant which had received its death-wound, so a man who had just come down from the Zambesi said.
“Twenty-four thousand five hundred. Well, I will make it up to that and go.” Then he stopped, as if he realised he had about got to the end of his tether.
Not only the doctor, but every one in the room, felt pretty sure that he had a bad hand, and that the finish of the game had come.
Every face was turned to Bowker; the lookers-on wondering what he would do, and how he would take his bad luck. For a second he seemed to be trying to think. Then a dazed look came into his face, and he half stood up, and then fell heavily forward, bringing the table down with him. There was a paraffin lamp on the table, which smashed as it fell, and in a second the cloth and table was blazing. There was a rush forward of the men looking on. Bowker was lifted on to a sofa, and a doctor, who on his way home from a case had dropped into the club, seeing it open, began to attend to him.
“By Jove! the place will be burnt down!” some one cried, and some men rushed out of the room to get water, while others tried to put out the fire with rugs.
Gorman stood holding his cards in his hand, looking first at his opponent and then at the blazing card-table.
“Well, how are we going to play this out? This is a damn pretty thing,” he said. He did not care about Bowker’s state of health, nor did he care whether the building were burnt down or not.
“See here, where are his cards? we have got to see this out. Twenty-four thou, is no laughing matter. He never raised, so we had better show our cards. What’s he got?” Gorman said, as he stood with his cards in hand.
The fire was put out. Bowker was on the sofa looking rather bad, but the doctor seemed to be perfectly careless about everything except the stake he felt sure he had won.
“Never mind about the game, man, now; maybe the poor fellow will never get round,” one of the men who was looking at Bowker said.
“Beg pardon, but I do care about the game; it’s all very well his going into a fit, but that don’t alter the fact that we’ve got to play this out. Where are his cards?”
“You want to see his hand, do you? Well, there you are,” some one said, holding up a charred mass which was all there was left of the cloth that had been on the table, or the rest of the cards, except the four knaves and a queen which Gorman held in his hand.
Gorman looked at it for a second, and then with an oath he threw his own cards on to the floor.
“Four knaves and a queen, and I had at first an ace and a king. So I must win with them.”
“The question is, what had Bowker? He don’t look like telling you, and nobody else knows; besides, the game has not been played out. It’s a draw,” said one of the on-lookers, and this speech brought a murmur of consent from the others.
Gorman gathered up his cards and showed them to the company. Then he said no more, but watched Bowker, who seemed to be coming to.
“Look here, what was your hand?” he asked, when the latter seemed to be sensible.
Bowker, however, did not answer the question, and it was some months before he could be induced to talk about that game. Until Gorman left the Fields his mind was a blank on the subject.
The story went, however, that he was induced to tell in confidence the story of that night’s play to a particular friend.
He had held three aces and two kings. Not a very good hand, but one worth backing for a little. Gorman, however, had taken him up, and instead of throwing up his hand, he had determined to bluff. He had originally held a queen, so he knew that Gorman could not hold four of aces, kings, or queens. He could remember getting to the end of his tether, and finding Gorman sticking to him like grim death; and then he could remember no more. It was only after Gorman had left for England that this story was told. Some people shrug their shoulders and laugh when they talk of that fit which Bowker had, and they say that under the circumstances it was the best thing he could have done. But the doctor who attended him knows it was real enough, and so does Gorman, who saw it coming on.
Story 9.“A Whiskey Drinker.”The ‘Queen’s Hotel,’ Kimberley, was doing a roaring trade. The bar was one dense mass of thirsty men, struggling to get served with splits and other drinks. The large dining-room, out of which the tables had been taken, was crowded. People from all parts of the colony were there. Dutch Africanders from the western province, Englishmen from the east; colonial soldiers; officers of the Cape Mounted Rifles, and mounted police officers from the frontier; merchants from Capetown and Port Elizabeth, and visitors from every part of South Africa. Besides these visitors there was every sort of Diamond-Field man represented. The honest digger—the expression is considered out there the correct one to use, though if it be your lot to have much dealing with the mining element of South Africa you will wonder how it came into vogue—with his broad-brimmed hat and big beard and bad language is making himself conspicuous as he generally does, wherever he be. The diamond-buyers, licensed and unlicenced, gentlemen of the Jewish persuasion for the most part, given as a rule to wearing much of their stock-in-trade on their hands, and indulging in that shiny smartness of dress so dear to the race; the latter, the unlicenced and unlawful dealers in diamonds, wearing in their eyes that restless uneasy look that is peculiar to those classes who are liable at any moment to find themselves involved in an embarrassing and one-sided misunderstanding with the police. There were merchants, speculators, lawyers, doctors, and civil servants there. About some men who took rather a prominent position there was the unmistakable betting man’s look; and they gave one the idea that they would be at home in the ring at any English race meeting. The occasion was the drawing of the lotteries for the forthcoming races, and as times had been good, and money was plentiful, sovereigns were flowing in very quickly to the men who were giving out the chances. I was looking on smoking when I recognised a slight, good-looking man who was taking a ticket in the lottery. His name was Jack Harman, an ex-officer in the army, who had been a digger on the Diamond Fields, had married and settled in the colony.“How is it you’re up here?” I said to him as I shook hands with him. “A married man like you ought not to be wandering about the country.”“You’re right—wish to goodness I was at home, for the missis is ill; but I have to look after my horses up here.”“Well, I suppose your horse Marmion is a certainty for the cup, eh?” I said. “Up here they think the race is over.”“All I can say is, that it isn’t, I wish it were, for it’s a rich prize, and goodness knows I want the money badly enough.”Just then a dark-bearded man pushed past Jack Harman, and as he did so gave him a look of recognition which the latter answered by a blank stare.“Who’s that?—who’s your friend?” I asked him.“That is one of the blackest-hearted scoundrels unhanged; he is a sort of fellow you read about in a book; Solomon Muzada is his name, and he is one of the greatest enemies I have. Do you know that brute wanted to marry my wife; it’s an infernal cheek because there is a touch of the tar-brush in him. Dutchman, Jew, and nigger—it’s a nice breed, isn’t it? Of course she wouldn’t look at him, and since our marriage he has been our enemy. There was a mortgage on Laurie’s Kloof, on which I ought to have paid the interest, but didn’t; well he has bought it, and by Jove he is going to sell us up. He has sworn he will make a bankrupt of me, and I believe he will do it. Do you hear that? I have drawn a horse Storm Drum. By George, that’s a rum thing!” he added, as he caught something which the steward of the races, who was managing the drawing, had shouted out. “Look here, are you going to do anything about the races, because don’t make any bets till you have seen me. I must see about the selling,” he said as he went off.A steward had got upon one of the tables, upon which a desk had been put, and was about to sell the chances. Anglo-Indians or South Africans need no explanation of a selling lottery, but to some Englishmen an explanation may be given. After the lotteries have been drawn the chances of the different horses are sold by auction; any ore present is allowed to bid, but in perhaps the generality of cases the owners of horses buy the chances, this being the best way of backing their horses to win a good amount. The highest bidder has to pay the amount of his bid twice over, once to the owner of the ticket that drew the horse, and again he has to pay it into the pool. The latter money, of course, he gets back again, together with the amount collected for the tickets and the prices paid for the other chances if the horse whose chance he bought wins. After the chance of some outsider had been sold for a few pounds the steward, who was acting as auctioneer, shouted out that the next chance to be sold was Marmion. “Gentlemen, Captain Harman’s Marmion, and three hundred and four pounds in the pool.”The sporting division began to make calculations in their betting-books, and to be all on the alert to learn what those who knew most about it thought of the horse’s chance.I watched Jack Harman carefully. “Poor beggar, he wants money badly! I hope he will be able to buy Marmion’s chance cheap,” I thought to myself, as I noticed the expression on his face. As I looked away from him I saw Solomon Muzada, the man Jack had told me about; he also was watching Jack, and I believe, from the devilish smile that was playing round his coarse, thick lips, that he too read the expression I saw.“Captain Harman’s Marmion, three hundred and four pounds in the pool,” the steward cried out, and the bidding began.Some one bid twenty pounds, some one thirty, thirty-five, forty, fifty, sixty, a hundred; then the bidding steadied, and went up a pound at a time till a hundred and fifty was reached.“That’s all it will go for,” said a bookmaker near me; “it’s buying money to give more.”He was wrong though; a hundred and ninety was reached before only two bidders were left—one was Jack Harman, the other was Solomon Muzada.“Going at one hundred and ninety, three hundred pounds in the pool,” said the steward.“Ninety-one,” cried out Jack Harman.“Ninety-two,” snarled out Solomon Muzada.“Three.”“Bah! what’s the good, I bid five,” said Muzada.Jack Harman seemed to be doing a sum in mental arithmetic then, he shrugged his shoulders and walked away, letting Marmion’s chance be knocked down to Solomon Muzada.“See, that is done to spite me; he’d do anything to prevent me winning any money, the brute! I’ll sell him though. If Mr Muzada thinks I keep horses in training to win money for him he makes a mistake,” Harman said, as he came up to me; then raising his voice he turned to Muzada, who was standing near: “Well, what do you expect to make by this? You’re pretty clever to buy a horse against an owner, but you’ll find if it wasn’t worth my while to pay for the horse’s chance it wasn’t worth yours.”“Ah! this is the Captain who is such an honourable gentleman, and he says he will humbug me, and not let his horse win because I bought the lottery,” Muzada sneered; “but I tink the honourable Captain can’t afford to throw away the stakes, so that’s why I buy Marmion’s chance.”“You think I can’t afford to lose the stakes—well, you will find out whether I can afford that; all I say is, that you sha’n’t win money by my horse.”“Your horse! well, he won’t be your horse long, you will have to sell him after the race. You’re a nice man to own horses—a beggar like you; you will be sold up soon after the race is over. I will buy your horse then.”“That depends on others as well as you, for the horse will be sold by public auction; but stop, since you have bought the horse’s lottery you had better buy him now at once, you shall have him with his engagements for fifteen hundred pounds, he is worth more to you than to any one else.”Muzada looked eagerly at Harman as he made this suggestion. He had set his mind on buying Marmion after the race, and he thought he might as well buy him before. He could not quite understand why Jack was willing to sell to him. The price mentioned seemed not to be very much, considering that the horse was sure to win the race the next day; so some of the purchase money would come back.“Don’t be a fool, the horse is worth more than that,” another owner of race-horses whispered to Jack.Muzada heard the whisper, and that determined him; after haggling for some time about the price he came to terms with Jack.“What have you done that for? it seems to me you would have done better to have secured the stakes before you sold the horse,” I said to Jack, after the sale had been completed.“I don’t think Marmion is going to win that race; it was not certain before, it certainly isn’t now,” Jack answered, somewhat to my mystification.“Why, what’s to beat him?” I asked; “what can?”“There is one that can beat him if he liked, and that’s the horse that I have drawn—Storm Drum.”I looked at Jack in surprise. Storm Drum was owned by a Kimberley canteen-keeper, who had bought him after the races the year before. He had gained an evil reputation by his savage temper, and had never started for a race without distinguishing himself by some display of vice. On one occasion he had shown a tendency towards indulging in the luxury of human flesh, having taken a large bite out of the leg of a jockey riding another horse.“Surely you don’t mean that you believe that brute can have a chance?” I asked incredulously.“It’s all chance. If he took it into his head to try it would be a certainty. You needn’t tell me all you know about him, you seem to forget that he was in our stable; he belonged to Markham of Port Elizabeth, and I won a race on him in Natal, and have ridden him often enough. He was a better horse than Marmion, in fact he is the best horse that ever came out to this country, only he is such an untrustworthy brute.”I shook my head. Jack Harman knew a good deal more about racing than I did, still I could not help feeling that his anger with Muzada was making him act rashly; and I was still more of this opinion after I had been present at an interview between them next morning. Muzada was standing at the bar of the ‘Queen’s Hotel,’ swaggering about the good bargain he had made with Jack, and the folly of the latter in selling out of pique, when Jack came in. Some one asked him if he was going to ride in the Kimberley Cup the next day.“Yes, I am; I ride Storm Drum,” Jack answered.Muzada burst out laughing. The horse’s eccentricities were so well-known, that he thought with pleasure how the man he hated was certain to look ridiculous.“So, Captain, you are going to ride; how much will you bet that you ever get round the course?” said Muzada, talking to Jack in his free and easy way, which I knew made my friend’s blood boil. “Come, you had better put your pride in your pocket, and ride forme,” he added, as it occurred to him that this would annoy Jack.“Thank you, but it is bad enough that you should own a thoroughbred horse, let alone that a white man should ride for you,” Jack answered with a glance at the other’s dark skin, which was full of meaning.Muzada looked for a second or two as if he were thinking of hitting Jack, then thinking better of it he pretended not to understand the allusion.“Well, who would like to back Captain Harman’s mount? I will bet ten to one against Storm Drum, even though this famous gentleman jockey does ride for Pat Brady.”“How much will you lay it to?” Jack asked.There was a gleam in Muzada’s eyes as he heard this question.“To a good deal more than you can afford to pay,” he answered, thinking to himself that Jack was going mad.The idea of Storm Drum’s having any chance of winning the race seemed too absurd to be entertained for a minute; and Muzada thought that Jack had realised that he was likely soon to become ruined, and had become desperate.Jack Harman said nothing, and I whispered to him a warning not to do anything rash.“Come, I have some money to give you for Marmion, after we have settled the bills I hold; well, I will lay you ten to one to that.”“That’s four hundred pounds. Well, I will take four thousand to four hundred,” Jack answered in the same quiet voice.Muzada looked a little surprised; he evidently thought that Jack was mad with annoyance. The idea of winning what he had every reason to believe was Jack’s last four hundred pounds in the world was very sweet to him. There were one or two men present, who were fairly good judges, and their expressions seemed to tell Muzada that they thought Jack was mad.“It’s a bet,” he said, as he wrote it down in his book.“Why on earth have you thrown that money away?” I asked Jack, as I followed him into the street.“It’s not thrown away yet,” he answered; “and I never could get as much money bet against the horse by any one else; he only does it because he knows that if I lose it will about break me.”“Well, why should you be broke, why not keep your money in your pocket?” I insisted rather wearisomely, for it was not much use lecturing my friend when the mischief was done.“Look here, I am going to win on Storm Drum. Take my advice and take ten to one or eight to one for the matter of that. You see, it’s like this,” Jack said, as he noticed my expression, “these races are my last chance of winning some money, so as to prevent that black scoundrel from selling me up. When I married I hadn’t much of my own, as you know, and though my wife owned the farm and the homestead, it was mortgaged a good bit. Instead of paying off the mortgage we have let matters go from bad to worse, and have taken things easily enough until we found that Muzada had been quietly getting hold of all the paper I had put my name to, and of all the charges on our property. It was just the revenge that would please him, to make us beggars, and show my wife that she had married a spendthrift, who had wasted all she had and brought her to ruin. Muzada knew that I trusted to winning a fair stake with Marmion, and he came up here to prevent it. He would spend a good deal of money to stop me from winning enough to keep his claws off Laurie’s Kloof. Well, I have determined to do my best to disappoint him. I have always had a sort of presentiment that some day or the other Storm Drum would surprise every one, and when I drew the horse in the lottery and no one bid the chance so that it was knocked down to me, the idea came into my head that my only chance of saving Laurie’s Kloof was to trust to that uncertain gentleman. Imprudent you may say, well perhaps it is, but let me tell you this, that I know more about the horse than you do, and something tells me that it will be all right, and Mr Muzada will find out to his cost that he has burnt his fingers in meddling with my affairs.”I could do nothing but hope for the best, but I found it very difficult to feel much confidence in my friend’s scheme coming off successfully; and that evening I watched Muzada and noticed that he was in a high state of delight, and was counting beforehand on the discomfiture of the enemy.Racecourse scenes are like one another all the world over. The crowd at the grand stand was composed of much the same materials as the crowd at minor meetings at home. The principal difference probably would be, that on the colonial racecourse people know much more about one another than they do at home; and there is strong personal interest felt in the result of the races. The story of Jack Harman’s having sold the horse to Muzada was well-known to every one on the course, and to a certain extent rather decreased the confidence felt in the favourite winning, though it was not easy to see what horse could beat him.Jack Harman had been a digger on the Diamond Fields before he married and settled down in the colony, and a good many of his old friends invested a sovereign or two on the chances of the horse he had elected to ride, but very little hope was felt as to his chance. The local bookmakers, who had many a time won money from those who had put their trust in Storm Drum’s good breeding, were anxious enough to lay odds against him again, although they had heard the story of Harman’s sensational bet.Pat Brady, who owned Storm Drum, was a short, thick-set, good-humoured little Irishman, who had often been subjected to a good deal of chaff on account of the way his horse would shut up and refuse to try a yard in public. At last he had sworn never to bet another farthing upon him, and had declared that after the Kimberley Cup he would sell him for what he would fetch. Jack Harman, however, seemed to have infected Pat with a good deal of his hopefulness.“Sure then the Captain is going to do the trick to-day; those fellows won’t be laughing about Storm Drum in half-an-hour’s time, you’ll find,” he said to his friends, as the bookmakers joked him about his horse.There were two or three other imported horses as well as Marmion, and one colonial-bred one who was thought to have a chance. I found myself standing on the top of the grand stand, next to Muzada, when the horses had gone down to the post, and I noticed with some pleasure that that gentleman did not seem to be enjoying himself very much. He was evidently thinking of the money he stood to lose on Storm Drum.“Laid ten to one against him did you? well, if he tried it would be odds on him, but it’s more than ten to one he don’t try,” a well-known colonial racing-man named Langford, whom I had just seen laying two hundred to fifty on Marmion, was saying to Muzada, as he looked through his race-glasses at the horses getting together at the starting-post.“How is he behaving now—him?” said Muzada, with a scowl on his ugly face. He was not over comforted at the other’s remarks. After all Jack Harman had not made such a bad bet, and he didn’t like the way the horse was being backed by one or two others; nor was he pleased to hear that Pat Brady had recovered that confidence in the gay deceiver which of old cost him so dear.“He is behaving himself wonderfully well; wait a bit though, and he will come out in his old character.”“Why, man, you look nervous,” said the other; “never fear, your horse is sure to win.”Muzada looked gratified.“I think the Captain will find he has humbugged himself this time; I think he’ll have to walk down to the colony after the race,” he said.“They’re off—it’s a good start,” said Langford, and we put up our glasses.Jack Harman went straight to the front.“Who’s that leading?”“Storm Drum.”“Storm Drum has bolted!” they were crying out.“Devil a bit bolted. Jack thinks that to win at all he must take the lead and keep it, and, by Jove, he’s right,” said Langford. “But I have never seen him go like that before.”“How about Storm Drum now?” shouted out some one, as he came past the stand leading by twenty lengths.“Ah, then, who’s got the laugh this day?” Pat Brady cried out.“There’s lots of time for him to come out with his old tricks, but if he don’t they won’t catch him,” said Langford.Muzada snarled out a sentence hideous with blasphemy.“Even if he wins his bet the triumph will have cost him something,” I thought, as I looked at his ugly face, and saw how sick he looked as Storm Drum came along, the gap between him and the other horse rather increasing than decreasing.“It’s a race! Marmion wins!” shouted some one, as for a second the favourite looked dangerous.“Not a bit of it; Storm Drum has the lot of ’em settled,” said Langford as he put down his glasses; “he is on his good behaviour for once, and he has made fools of us all.”As Storm Drum came past the post, an easy winner, men began to remember how they had always said he was the best bred horse in South Africa, and better class than anything else out there, and generally to be wise after the event.Muzada was not able to take his losses so philosophically. He got into a rage, swearing that he had been robbed, that Marmion had been got at, and that the whole thing was a swindle. Nobody sympathised with him very much, and even those who had lost their money found some consolation in his disappointment.“So, you see, I was not so rash as you thought; but then I happened to know something about the horse that no one else knew,” said Jack Harman to me that evening. “When Tom Markham owned him we found out that he could not be depended upon, and after he had let us in once or twice we determined to get rid of him. One day, however, at Cradock races, a man came up to us and said he thought he could tell us something about the horse. He had been employed in a stable at home, where Blue Peter, Storm Drum’s sire, was trained. Blue Peter was just such another customer as his son, till somehow it was found out that he had a weakness for strong drink. His favourite tipple was whiskey, Irish whiskey, the older and better it was the more he liked it—it seemed to put heart in him, and after he took to drink he won race after race for them, and our informant suggested that the taste might be inherited. Well, we determined to give his idea a trial, and before Storm Drum started for the race he won in Natal, he had his half bottle of whiskey. It seemed to agree with him, for he went right away and won. A few weeks after that Markham went to grief, and had to bolt to South America, and Storm Drum was seized by his creditors. One or two men owned him before he came to Pat Brady, but they all burnt their fingers with him; for no one knew of his family failing, and as a Good Templar he didn’t turn out a success, but I always remembered what he could do if he liked, and when Muzada interfered with me I thought how I could sell him if I put Storm Drum on his good behaviour. Well, it came off all right, but I didn’t enjoy that ride; every moment I was afraid that the brute would stop dead, but thanks to Pat’s whiskey, he had won the race before he remembered himself. It’s the last bet I shall make in this country. I shall go back and look after the farm, and the missis, and the kids, now that I am out of Muzada’s clutches again.”Jack Harman was as good as his word, and there is no steadier husband or better specimen of the colonial farmer than the ex-hussar. He lives happily at Laurie’s Kloof, and prosperous and well to do.
The ‘Queen’s Hotel,’ Kimberley, was doing a roaring trade. The bar was one dense mass of thirsty men, struggling to get served with splits and other drinks. The large dining-room, out of which the tables had been taken, was crowded. People from all parts of the colony were there. Dutch Africanders from the western province, Englishmen from the east; colonial soldiers; officers of the Cape Mounted Rifles, and mounted police officers from the frontier; merchants from Capetown and Port Elizabeth, and visitors from every part of South Africa. Besides these visitors there was every sort of Diamond-Field man represented. The honest digger—the expression is considered out there the correct one to use, though if it be your lot to have much dealing with the mining element of South Africa you will wonder how it came into vogue—with his broad-brimmed hat and big beard and bad language is making himself conspicuous as he generally does, wherever he be. The diamond-buyers, licensed and unlicenced, gentlemen of the Jewish persuasion for the most part, given as a rule to wearing much of their stock-in-trade on their hands, and indulging in that shiny smartness of dress so dear to the race; the latter, the unlicenced and unlawful dealers in diamonds, wearing in their eyes that restless uneasy look that is peculiar to those classes who are liable at any moment to find themselves involved in an embarrassing and one-sided misunderstanding with the police. There were merchants, speculators, lawyers, doctors, and civil servants there. About some men who took rather a prominent position there was the unmistakable betting man’s look; and they gave one the idea that they would be at home in the ring at any English race meeting. The occasion was the drawing of the lotteries for the forthcoming races, and as times had been good, and money was plentiful, sovereigns were flowing in very quickly to the men who were giving out the chances. I was looking on smoking when I recognised a slight, good-looking man who was taking a ticket in the lottery. His name was Jack Harman, an ex-officer in the army, who had been a digger on the Diamond Fields, had married and settled in the colony.
“How is it you’re up here?” I said to him as I shook hands with him. “A married man like you ought not to be wandering about the country.”
“You’re right—wish to goodness I was at home, for the missis is ill; but I have to look after my horses up here.”
“Well, I suppose your horse Marmion is a certainty for the cup, eh?” I said. “Up here they think the race is over.”
“All I can say is, that it isn’t, I wish it were, for it’s a rich prize, and goodness knows I want the money badly enough.”
Just then a dark-bearded man pushed past Jack Harman, and as he did so gave him a look of recognition which the latter answered by a blank stare.
“Who’s that?—who’s your friend?” I asked him.
“That is one of the blackest-hearted scoundrels unhanged; he is a sort of fellow you read about in a book; Solomon Muzada is his name, and he is one of the greatest enemies I have. Do you know that brute wanted to marry my wife; it’s an infernal cheek because there is a touch of the tar-brush in him. Dutchman, Jew, and nigger—it’s a nice breed, isn’t it? Of course she wouldn’t look at him, and since our marriage he has been our enemy. There was a mortgage on Laurie’s Kloof, on which I ought to have paid the interest, but didn’t; well he has bought it, and by Jove he is going to sell us up. He has sworn he will make a bankrupt of me, and I believe he will do it. Do you hear that? I have drawn a horse Storm Drum. By George, that’s a rum thing!” he added, as he caught something which the steward of the races, who was managing the drawing, had shouted out. “Look here, are you going to do anything about the races, because don’t make any bets till you have seen me. I must see about the selling,” he said as he went off.
A steward had got upon one of the tables, upon which a desk had been put, and was about to sell the chances. Anglo-Indians or South Africans need no explanation of a selling lottery, but to some Englishmen an explanation may be given. After the lotteries have been drawn the chances of the different horses are sold by auction; any ore present is allowed to bid, but in perhaps the generality of cases the owners of horses buy the chances, this being the best way of backing their horses to win a good amount. The highest bidder has to pay the amount of his bid twice over, once to the owner of the ticket that drew the horse, and again he has to pay it into the pool. The latter money, of course, he gets back again, together with the amount collected for the tickets and the prices paid for the other chances if the horse whose chance he bought wins. After the chance of some outsider had been sold for a few pounds the steward, who was acting as auctioneer, shouted out that the next chance to be sold was Marmion. “Gentlemen, Captain Harman’s Marmion, and three hundred and four pounds in the pool.”
The sporting division began to make calculations in their betting-books, and to be all on the alert to learn what those who knew most about it thought of the horse’s chance.
I watched Jack Harman carefully. “Poor beggar, he wants money badly! I hope he will be able to buy Marmion’s chance cheap,” I thought to myself, as I noticed the expression on his face. As I looked away from him I saw Solomon Muzada, the man Jack had told me about; he also was watching Jack, and I believe, from the devilish smile that was playing round his coarse, thick lips, that he too read the expression I saw.
“Captain Harman’s Marmion, three hundred and four pounds in the pool,” the steward cried out, and the bidding began.
Some one bid twenty pounds, some one thirty, thirty-five, forty, fifty, sixty, a hundred; then the bidding steadied, and went up a pound at a time till a hundred and fifty was reached.
“That’s all it will go for,” said a bookmaker near me; “it’s buying money to give more.”
He was wrong though; a hundred and ninety was reached before only two bidders were left—one was Jack Harman, the other was Solomon Muzada.
“Going at one hundred and ninety, three hundred pounds in the pool,” said the steward.
“Ninety-one,” cried out Jack Harman.
“Ninety-two,” snarled out Solomon Muzada.
“Three.”
“Bah! what’s the good, I bid five,” said Muzada.
Jack Harman seemed to be doing a sum in mental arithmetic then, he shrugged his shoulders and walked away, letting Marmion’s chance be knocked down to Solomon Muzada.
“See, that is done to spite me; he’d do anything to prevent me winning any money, the brute! I’ll sell him though. If Mr Muzada thinks I keep horses in training to win money for him he makes a mistake,” Harman said, as he came up to me; then raising his voice he turned to Muzada, who was standing near: “Well, what do you expect to make by this? You’re pretty clever to buy a horse against an owner, but you’ll find if it wasn’t worth my while to pay for the horse’s chance it wasn’t worth yours.”
“Ah! this is the Captain who is such an honourable gentleman, and he says he will humbug me, and not let his horse win because I bought the lottery,” Muzada sneered; “but I tink the honourable Captain can’t afford to throw away the stakes, so that’s why I buy Marmion’s chance.”
“You think I can’t afford to lose the stakes—well, you will find out whether I can afford that; all I say is, that you sha’n’t win money by my horse.”
“Your horse! well, he won’t be your horse long, you will have to sell him after the race. You’re a nice man to own horses—a beggar like you; you will be sold up soon after the race is over. I will buy your horse then.”
“That depends on others as well as you, for the horse will be sold by public auction; but stop, since you have bought the horse’s lottery you had better buy him now at once, you shall have him with his engagements for fifteen hundred pounds, he is worth more to you than to any one else.”
Muzada looked eagerly at Harman as he made this suggestion. He had set his mind on buying Marmion after the race, and he thought he might as well buy him before. He could not quite understand why Jack was willing to sell to him. The price mentioned seemed not to be very much, considering that the horse was sure to win the race the next day; so some of the purchase money would come back.
“Don’t be a fool, the horse is worth more than that,” another owner of race-horses whispered to Jack.
Muzada heard the whisper, and that determined him; after haggling for some time about the price he came to terms with Jack.
“What have you done that for? it seems to me you would have done better to have secured the stakes before you sold the horse,” I said to Jack, after the sale had been completed.
“I don’t think Marmion is going to win that race; it was not certain before, it certainly isn’t now,” Jack answered, somewhat to my mystification.
“Why, what’s to beat him?” I asked; “what can?”
“There is one that can beat him if he liked, and that’s the horse that I have drawn—Storm Drum.”
I looked at Jack in surprise. Storm Drum was owned by a Kimberley canteen-keeper, who had bought him after the races the year before. He had gained an evil reputation by his savage temper, and had never started for a race without distinguishing himself by some display of vice. On one occasion he had shown a tendency towards indulging in the luxury of human flesh, having taken a large bite out of the leg of a jockey riding another horse.
“Surely you don’t mean that you believe that brute can have a chance?” I asked incredulously.
“It’s all chance. If he took it into his head to try it would be a certainty. You needn’t tell me all you know about him, you seem to forget that he was in our stable; he belonged to Markham of Port Elizabeth, and I won a race on him in Natal, and have ridden him often enough. He was a better horse than Marmion, in fact he is the best horse that ever came out to this country, only he is such an untrustworthy brute.”
I shook my head. Jack Harman knew a good deal more about racing than I did, still I could not help feeling that his anger with Muzada was making him act rashly; and I was still more of this opinion after I had been present at an interview between them next morning. Muzada was standing at the bar of the ‘Queen’s Hotel,’ swaggering about the good bargain he had made with Jack, and the folly of the latter in selling out of pique, when Jack came in. Some one asked him if he was going to ride in the Kimberley Cup the next day.
“Yes, I am; I ride Storm Drum,” Jack answered.
Muzada burst out laughing. The horse’s eccentricities were so well-known, that he thought with pleasure how the man he hated was certain to look ridiculous.
“So, Captain, you are going to ride; how much will you bet that you ever get round the course?” said Muzada, talking to Jack in his free and easy way, which I knew made my friend’s blood boil. “Come, you had better put your pride in your pocket, and ride forme,” he added, as it occurred to him that this would annoy Jack.
“Thank you, but it is bad enough that you should own a thoroughbred horse, let alone that a white man should ride for you,” Jack answered with a glance at the other’s dark skin, which was full of meaning.
Muzada looked for a second or two as if he were thinking of hitting Jack, then thinking better of it he pretended not to understand the allusion.
“Well, who would like to back Captain Harman’s mount? I will bet ten to one against Storm Drum, even though this famous gentleman jockey does ride for Pat Brady.”
“How much will you lay it to?” Jack asked.
There was a gleam in Muzada’s eyes as he heard this question.
“To a good deal more than you can afford to pay,” he answered, thinking to himself that Jack was going mad.
The idea of Storm Drum’s having any chance of winning the race seemed too absurd to be entertained for a minute; and Muzada thought that Jack had realised that he was likely soon to become ruined, and had become desperate.
Jack Harman said nothing, and I whispered to him a warning not to do anything rash.
“Come, I have some money to give you for Marmion, after we have settled the bills I hold; well, I will lay you ten to one to that.”
“That’s four hundred pounds. Well, I will take four thousand to four hundred,” Jack answered in the same quiet voice.
Muzada looked a little surprised; he evidently thought that Jack was mad with annoyance. The idea of winning what he had every reason to believe was Jack’s last four hundred pounds in the world was very sweet to him. There were one or two men present, who were fairly good judges, and their expressions seemed to tell Muzada that they thought Jack was mad.
“It’s a bet,” he said, as he wrote it down in his book.
“Why on earth have you thrown that money away?” I asked Jack, as I followed him into the street.
“It’s not thrown away yet,” he answered; “and I never could get as much money bet against the horse by any one else; he only does it because he knows that if I lose it will about break me.”
“Well, why should you be broke, why not keep your money in your pocket?” I insisted rather wearisomely, for it was not much use lecturing my friend when the mischief was done.
“Look here, I am going to win on Storm Drum. Take my advice and take ten to one or eight to one for the matter of that. You see, it’s like this,” Jack said, as he noticed my expression, “these races are my last chance of winning some money, so as to prevent that black scoundrel from selling me up. When I married I hadn’t much of my own, as you know, and though my wife owned the farm and the homestead, it was mortgaged a good bit. Instead of paying off the mortgage we have let matters go from bad to worse, and have taken things easily enough until we found that Muzada had been quietly getting hold of all the paper I had put my name to, and of all the charges on our property. It was just the revenge that would please him, to make us beggars, and show my wife that she had married a spendthrift, who had wasted all she had and brought her to ruin. Muzada knew that I trusted to winning a fair stake with Marmion, and he came up here to prevent it. He would spend a good deal of money to stop me from winning enough to keep his claws off Laurie’s Kloof. Well, I have determined to do my best to disappoint him. I have always had a sort of presentiment that some day or the other Storm Drum would surprise every one, and when I drew the horse in the lottery and no one bid the chance so that it was knocked down to me, the idea came into my head that my only chance of saving Laurie’s Kloof was to trust to that uncertain gentleman. Imprudent you may say, well perhaps it is, but let me tell you this, that I know more about the horse than you do, and something tells me that it will be all right, and Mr Muzada will find out to his cost that he has burnt his fingers in meddling with my affairs.”
I could do nothing but hope for the best, but I found it very difficult to feel much confidence in my friend’s scheme coming off successfully; and that evening I watched Muzada and noticed that he was in a high state of delight, and was counting beforehand on the discomfiture of the enemy.
Racecourse scenes are like one another all the world over. The crowd at the grand stand was composed of much the same materials as the crowd at minor meetings at home. The principal difference probably would be, that on the colonial racecourse people know much more about one another than they do at home; and there is strong personal interest felt in the result of the races. The story of Jack Harman’s having sold the horse to Muzada was well-known to every one on the course, and to a certain extent rather decreased the confidence felt in the favourite winning, though it was not easy to see what horse could beat him.
Jack Harman had been a digger on the Diamond Fields before he married and settled down in the colony, and a good many of his old friends invested a sovereign or two on the chances of the horse he had elected to ride, but very little hope was felt as to his chance. The local bookmakers, who had many a time won money from those who had put their trust in Storm Drum’s good breeding, were anxious enough to lay odds against him again, although they had heard the story of Harman’s sensational bet.
Pat Brady, who owned Storm Drum, was a short, thick-set, good-humoured little Irishman, who had often been subjected to a good deal of chaff on account of the way his horse would shut up and refuse to try a yard in public. At last he had sworn never to bet another farthing upon him, and had declared that after the Kimberley Cup he would sell him for what he would fetch. Jack Harman, however, seemed to have infected Pat with a good deal of his hopefulness.
“Sure then the Captain is going to do the trick to-day; those fellows won’t be laughing about Storm Drum in half-an-hour’s time, you’ll find,” he said to his friends, as the bookmakers joked him about his horse.
There were two or three other imported horses as well as Marmion, and one colonial-bred one who was thought to have a chance. I found myself standing on the top of the grand stand, next to Muzada, when the horses had gone down to the post, and I noticed with some pleasure that that gentleman did not seem to be enjoying himself very much. He was evidently thinking of the money he stood to lose on Storm Drum.
“Laid ten to one against him did you? well, if he tried it would be odds on him, but it’s more than ten to one he don’t try,” a well-known colonial racing-man named Langford, whom I had just seen laying two hundred to fifty on Marmion, was saying to Muzada, as he looked through his race-glasses at the horses getting together at the starting-post.
“How is he behaving now—him?” said Muzada, with a scowl on his ugly face. He was not over comforted at the other’s remarks. After all Jack Harman had not made such a bad bet, and he didn’t like the way the horse was being backed by one or two others; nor was he pleased to hear that Pat Brady had recovered that confidence in the gay deceiver which of old cost him so dear.
“He is behaving himself wonderfully well; wait a bit though, and he will come out in his old character.”
“Why, man, you look nervous,” said the other; “never fear, your horse is sure to win.”
Muzada looked gratified.
“I think the Captain will find he has humbugged himself this time; I think he’ll have to walk down to the colony after the race,” he said.
“They’re off—it’s a good start,” said Langford, and we put up our glasses.
Jack Harman went straight to the front.
“Who’s that leading?”
“Storm Drum.”
“Storm Drum has bolted!” they were crying out.
“Devil a bit bolted. Jack thinks that to win at all he must take the lead and keep it, and, by Jove, he’s right,” said Langford. “But I have never seen him go like that before.”
“How about Storm Drum now?” shouted out some one, as he came past the stand leading by twenty lengths.
“Ah, then, who’s got the laugh this day?” Pat Brady cried out.
“There’s lots of time for him to come out with his old tricks, but if he don’t they won’t catch him,” said Langford.
Muzada snarled out a sentence hideous with blasphemy.
“Even if he wins his bet the triumph will have cost him something,” I thought, as I looked at his ugly face, and saw how sick he looked as Storm Drum came along, the gap between him and the other horse rather increasing than decreasing.
“It’s a race! Marmion wins!” shouted some one, as for a second the favourite looked dangerous.
“Not a bit of it; Storm Drum has the lot of ’em settled,” said Langford as he put down his glasses; “he is on his good behaviour for once, and he has made fools of us all.”
As Storm Drum came past the post, an easy winner, men began to remember how they had always said he was the best bred horse in South Africa, and better class than anything else out there, and generally to be wise after the event.
Muzada was not able to take his losses so philosophically. He got into a rage, swearing that he had been robbed, that Marmion had been got at, and that the whole thing was a swindle. Nobody sympathised with him very much, and even those who had lost their money found some consolation in his disappointment.
“So, you see, I was not so rash as you thought; but then I happened to know something about the horse that no one else knew,” said Jack Harman to me that evening. “When Tom Markham owned him we found out that he could not be depended upon, and after he had let us in once or twice we determined to get rid of him. One day, however, at Cradock races, a man came up to us and said he thought he could tell us something about the horse. He had been employed in a stable at home, where Blue Peter, Storm Drum’s sire, was trained. Blue Peter was just such another customer as his son, till somehow it was found out that he had a weakness for strong drink. His favourite tipple was whiskey, Irish whiskey, the older and better it was the more he liked it—it seemed to put heart in him, and after he took to drink he won race after race for them, and our informant suggested that the taste might be inherited. Well, we determined to give his idea a trial, and before Storm Drum started for the race he won in Natal, he had his half bottle of whiskey. It seemed to agree with him, for he went right away and won. A few weeks after that Markham went to grief, and had to bolt to South America, and Storm Drum was seized by his creditors. One or two men owned him before he came to Pat Brady, but they all burnt their fingers with him; for no one knew of his family failing, and as a Good Templar he didn’t turn out a success, but I always remembered what he could do if he liked, and when Muzada interfered with me I thought how I could sell him if I put Storm Drum on his good behaviour. Well, it came off all right, but I didn’t enjoy that ride; every moment I was afraid that the brute would stop dead, but thanks to Pat’s whiskey, he had won the race before he remembered himself. It’s the last bet I shall make in this country. I shall go back and look after the farm, and the missis, and the kids, now that I am out of Muzada’s clutches again.”
Jack Harman was as good as his word, and there is no steadier husband or better specimen of the colonial farmer than the ex-hussar. He lives happily at Laurie’s Kloof, and prosperous and well to do.
Story 10.Jumped—A Tale of the Kimberley Races.Chapter One.It was in the flush times on the Diamond Fields; the days afterwards remembered, in the bad times which came so soon, with so much wondering regret. In those days every one had made money out of shares and confidently hoped to make much more. Shares and companies were talked about morning, noon, and night; and what more delightful topic for conversation could any one wish to have? for then almost every one held shares, and those shares, independently of what they were in or where the ground possessed by the company was situated, went up every hour, so that, except when a public benefactor did some thing unusually criminal or eccentric, so giving the Diamond Field public a subject for much interesting talk, no one discussed and no one wished to discuss anything else.For a short time, however, when the mania was at its very height, shares became a subject of secondary interest, and as the topic of interest the Kimberley races took its place. With a characteristic unanimity and zest the public of the four camps began to talk, think, and speculate about the races. One would only hear scraps of conversation relating to weight for age, the rules of racing, and the performances of the imported horses, as one passed the open doors of bars and canteens.The sporting division scented the carcase from afar, and thought with glee of the abundance of money there was in the camp and the enthusiasm for sport which had come over the public. The big event of the races was the Diggers’ Stakes, a handicap, for which the weights were out, and very little admiration was expressed for the wisdom of the stewards who had made it. What with those who knew something about racing and had games of their own to play, and those who knew nothing about it but, though honest and ignorant, were too self-important to stand aside and refrain from taking any part in it, they had made the handicapping a farce. Men said there were only two horses in it which had any chance—Mr Musters’ Our Boy, and Mr Saul Gideon’s The Pirate. They were both of them imported horses, and the former had won a race or two in England; both were four-year-olds. Besides these there was one other imported horse, Captain Brereton’s Kildare, and a good many colonial horses. Kildare was said to be lame, and the handicappers had not given the colonial horses a chance; in fact it was hardly a handicap at all, as two favourites carried not much more than weight for age. That evening Mr Saul Gideon had come into the Claimholders’ Club in Kimberley with a glare in his hard black eyes and a twitching of his claw-like hands that might well have warned any one who knew him that he was dangerous. Mr Gideon was a sport, not a sportsman—anything but that—but certainly a sport. In any pastime on which money could be risked by way of wagering he took an interest. Before the law put down those institutions he had, with great profit to himself, kept a gambling saloon. When prize-fights occurred every now and then, just over the border of the Free State (the P.R. is or was an institution on the Diamond Fields), he had much to do with getting them up, and sometimes would have much to do with settling their issue in a peaceable and humane manner before the men went into the ring. In fact there were few sporting frauds on the Diamond Fields but Saul Gideon had a finger in the pie. He probably only just could tell the difference between a dray-horse and a racer, but he was satisfied he was clever enough to hold his own and win money at racing, and perhaps with reason, for success such as he coveted requires rather a knowledge of men than of horses. The Claimholders’ Club was crowded with men who were talking about the races, and Mr Gideon had not to wait long before they began to discuss the event in which he was interested, the Diggers’ Stakes.“Take moy tip, boys,” said Dr Buckeen, an Irish medical man much given to racing, who in his time had done a good deal to maintain in South Africa the character which some Irish sporting men have gained for themselves at home; “there is only one in it, that’s The Pirate; never mind about Our Boy and the race he won at Sandown. I know all about it, I was there and saw, and after the race Lord Swellington, who owned the horses that ran second and third, came up to me and said, ‘Buck, me boy’—all thim fellows call me Buck—‘Buck, me boy,’ me lord said, ‘be crimes, that wore the biggest robbery I ever wore in.’”“But Lord Swellington wouldn’t say ‘be crimes;’ he is not an Irishman,” said one of the doctor’s audience.“’Deed he did, though, to chaff me; the old divil is always chaffing me, we are like brothers.”“But, doctor, you could not have seen Our Boy win that race at Sandown; you weren’t home that year,” said another objector.“Not home that year?” said the doctor, taken rather aback. “That’s all you know about it. But never mind, what I say is that The Pirate will win the Diggers’ Stakes.”“That’s all you know about it, Buckeen,” said a tall man with a red nose and a squint, who looked as if he were gazing at the bottles behind the bar, though he really was watching Mr Gideon.“I will take a thousand to five hundred from any one,” said Buckeen, who liked to talk loudly about bets which no one who knew him would think of taking from him or dream of his ever intending to pay.“Not from me, Buckeen,” said the tall man, whose name was Crotty, as he continued to squint hideously while he watched Mr Gideon.Mr Crotty was remembering a little battle at the noble game of poker which he once engaged in with Mr Gideon. On that occasion he—Crotty—had been dealt four kings; and as at last they showed their hands after much money had been staked, Mr Gideon had said, “For the first time in my life, believe me—though I have played since I was a lad in California, in ’49—four aces.” And as he remembered this little episode in his life and watched Mr Gideon he hoped soon to be even with him.“Bedad, I must go and see after me patients. I am just murthered be the work I have to do in me profession,” said Buckeen, and he swaggered out of the club.“Well, Mr Crotty,” said Gideon when the doctor had gone, “what will you do about the stakes?”“Even money against The Pirate,” was Mr Crotty’s answer.“It is odds against my horse. Come, I will take two to one,” said Gideon.Mr Crotty only shook his head and asked Mr Gideon to take a drink with him, which offer the other excused himself from accepting on the plea that he had to go and see a man on business. “See you again in a half-an-hour or so,” he said, as he left the club to visit several other places where betting men congregated.However, he found there was not much to be done about his horse; betting men, like politicians, like to know how the cat jumps before they commit themselves to any great extent; and there was a tendency to wait a bit before doing much about “the Stakes.”After half-an-hour Mr Gideon returned to the Claimholders’ Club, looking more restless and anxious than ever.“Will you lay me six to four?” he asked Mr Crotty, who was still there.“Even money,” answered Crotty, who was a man of few words.For a minute or two Mr Gideon said nothing, then he gulped down his drink, and clearing his throat, said:“I hate fiddling about with one bet here and one bet there. Will you lay me a good big bet at even money?”“I am not a millionnaire, like you Diamond-Field men,” answered Crotty, “but I will lay you an even thousand against The Pirate.”“I will take that,” said Gideon.Mr Crotty produced his betting-book and wrote down the bet.“Will you double it?” said Gideon.“You want to sell me up,” said Crotty, “but I will double it,” and again he wrote in his book.Mr Gideon felt sure that Crotty would go on a little more, but something told him that he had better wait a bit. “I will see Nat first,” he said to himself; and he left the club, followed by the inquiring glances of most of the men who were present, for the bet he had made was a large one and excited a good deal of interest.When Mr Gideon left the club he got into a Cape cart, and was driven to an hotel near some stables, on the outskirts of the camp.An undersized man, with a look of Newmarket about him, which South Africa had not erased, who was sitting in the bar of the hotel, got up and went out when Mr Gideon touched him on the shoulder. Mr Gideon told him what he had done at the club, and the little man received his news with a long whistle.“You’re so clever, ain’t you?” he said, as he eyed Mr Gideon with unconcealed scorn. “You don’t look like a blessed infant with that nose on you, but blessed if you don’t be’ave like one.”“You ought to remember your proper place more,” said Mr Gideon, “and let me tell you something you don’t know. See here,” and he produced a telegram, “Our Boy has broken down.”“And don’t you think Crotty knew that? Why, I heard it just now,” answered the little man, “and a lot it matters; Kildare will win these stakes.”“He is no good; and he is lame.”“Lame? A party as knows what he sees saw him striding along at Buffelsfontein, where Captain Brereton has him as sound as a bell.”“But my horse can beat Kildare,” said Gideon.“Not weight for age he couldn’t, if what I hears is true. Only just now I got a letter from home about him, from a pal of mine. Fit and well, he is the best horse that ever came to this country, and fit and well he is. And your horse don’t meet him weight for age, you give him seven pounds; those precious stewards seem to have forgotten all about him,” answered Nat.“What’s to be done? What shall I do for all that money? I can’t lose two thou, and it seemed so good. Oh dear! oh dear me!” Gideon almost sobbed out.“Well, it ain’t lost yet, guv’nor. Kildare might go wrong,” said Nat Lane with an evil grin.“Oh, what a blessing that would be. Don’t you think now, Nat, something might be done?”“The Captain looks after the horse night and day, nothing could be done on the quiet; but Buffels is a very solitary place to keep a valuable animal like Kildare. Look here, now, suppose you put me on a thou, of that two thou. I might show you how to save that bet, and make a good bit more.”After a little haggling Mr Gideon consented to give Nat Lane a thou, if Kildare was made a dead ’un and The Pirate won.“It will have to be done with a rush if it is done at all, but there is a party in camp just now who can do the job if any man can, and I will go and see him,” said Nat. “It’s no good your coming, I will drop round to your place afterwards.”Mr Gideon walked off feeling much out of sorts and out of conceit with himself. His old acquaintance Crotty had got the best of him and had known just as much as he did and a little more when he made the bet. When Mr Gideon left him Nat Lane walked back into the town, or camp, as it was more often called, though its canvas age was over and it was gradually changing from iron to brick, and turning up a street by the side of the mine, which had already, though Kimberley was not ten years old, acquired a very evil reputation, made his way to a canteen known as the Red Bar. This establishment, which consisted of a room, billiard-room and bar combined, seemed to be doing a roaring business. A perspiring barman was hard at work opening bottles of champagne, spirits, and soda-water, while two very smartly-dressed young women were busy serving the crowd of customers who thronged round the bar, and at the same time carrying on a conversation with a favoured few. The majority of the company had an unmistakable Jewish type of face, but there were men of every other white race there. Few if any towns three times the size of Kimberley could produce such a choice selection of scoundrels as the guests at the ‘Red Bar,’ and Jews and Gentiles alike bore on their faces a hunted, a bird-of-prey look which denoted that they were at enmity with the honest portion of society. The most conspicuous figure in the place was that of a tall dark man, whose face might have been called a handsome one were it not for his sinister expression, exaggerated by a scar which reached from his mouth to his eye, and seemed to stand out all the more as the drink which he was taking flushed his face. From the way in which he lounged against the bar, taking up more room than three or four men might have done, though there were many men trying to get up to it to be served, and from the silence which was kept when he was speaking and the laughter and applause with which his not over-brilliant remarks were received, it was clear that he was a man who had managed to gain the respect of his associates.“Bill, I want to speak to you; I can put you on to a good job,” Nat Lane whispered into his ear.“Right; if there are good pieces in it, for I want some. They cleared me out at faro properly last night,” he answered as he left the bar and went out with Nat Lane. “Now, then, what do you want?” he said when they were outside.“It’s like this: I can put you on to a good game, for I suppose you’re on the same lay up yonder you were always on, and have one or two working with you?”“Yes, fire away and speak clear,” said Bill.“Well, Brereton has got two or three horses at Buffelsfontein, which would be well worth getting hold of; one of them is worth a thousand pounds almost.”“That’s no good game—too risky, and I couldn’t get much for the Captain’s horse. People who buy racers want to know more about them than I tell when I sell a horse.”“That could be managed all right, Bill,” said Nat. “If you only got the horse away there would be a good bit of money to come to you. And I take it you would sooner take a good horse than a bad one any day; besides there are the Captain’s two horses. I think I know how the job could be done.”Then the two men had a long conversation, and it was arranged between them that Nat Lane’s acquaintance, whose name was Bill Bledshaw, and whose place of residence was a kraal over the border in Bechuanaland near Tawns, where he carried on the fine old-fashioned calling of a cattle-lifter and horse-stealer, should find out when Brereton was going to take Kildare and his other horses into Kimberley, and with a party of his comrades surprise Brereton, seize the horses, and carry them over the border.Buffels Drift was not very far from the border, and there was a place which Bill knew of where he could surprise Brereton and get the horses. As soon as he had got away with Kildare he was to send a messenger back to Kimberley, who would let Nat Lane know that the plot had been successful, and give the confederates an opportunity of betting against the horse, which would be far away when the Diggers’ Stakes was run. Bill Bledshaw stood out for a good share of the spoil, for it was a very risky job, which would create much indignation against him on the Diamond Fields and perhaps lead to his arrest; but Nat Lane managed to dispel his scruples, and before they parted the two worthies had a drink together to the success of their venture, Bill Bledshaw promising to start the next morning for his head-quarters near Tawns, where he could complete his arrangements and see one ‘Long Alex,’ who would work the job with him.Chapter Two.“By Jove, no horse in this forsaken country ever galloped like that before,” said Jack Brereton, as he stood outside his house at Buffelsfontein and watched Kildare leave his other horse, The Muffin Man, as if the latter was standing still.Those horses and his pony Nobbier represented pretty nearly all Jack Brereton’s possessions, except the money he had already invested on Kildare’s chance for the Diggers’ Stakes.After having speculated in claims, diamonds, ostriches, and sheep, he had taken to the more congenial pursuit of putting his capital into thoroughbreds, and so far he had not done very badly in that somewhat risky investment.About eighteen months before, he had bought The Muffin Man, a colonial-bred racer, with some money he had made in a lucky digging venture. As he rode and trained his horse himself he was not robbed as other owners were, and had won several races at Kimberley, Cradock, and Port Elizabeth. He had bought Kildare with the money made by the other, having commissioned an old brother officer in England to buy a useful racer that was better than anything in South Africa. Kildare was an Irish-bred horse, and had been sold rather cheaply after his former owner had been warned off the turf for having him pulled in a two-year-old race. It was a shame, so Jack’s friend said, to send such a good horse to South Africa, but he felt bound to do his best for Jack.Jack Brereton was about thirty-five, and though he was as active as he ever was, and seemed to take life cheerily as he always did, his years had told on him more than men would at first think.The last ten years of his life had been spent in the colonies, the five years before that at home in a light cavalry regiment, and very marked was the contrast between them, though the Jack Brereton of the latter days and the former was outwardly much the same man, a little harder perhaps and more able to take care of himself, but the same light-hearted, happy-go-lucky fellow. The colonies are full of men whose lives have gone all askew—misfits well made enough, one would have thought, but all wrong when they are tried on. Jack Brereton seemed to be fit for something better than the adventurer and gambler he had drifted into becoming. There was the making of a good soldier in him, only he had gone to grief somehow and had to sell out.He was a good deal more shrewd in his knowledge of character and business than many a man who had succeeded on the Diamond Fields by sticking to his work instead of drifting from one thing to another as he had done. He was well liked and to a certain extent admired by almost every one, from the administrator of the province downwards, but he never got any appointment, though there were several billets he might very well have filled. Sometimes he had been very much down on his luck, sometimes he had experienced a run of good fortune, but he kept his bad or ill-luck to himself and was always in excellent spirits. Every one said he was a good fellow, and many half envied his light heart and good spirits. Of late he had lived a good deal out of Kimberley, looking after his horses, and the visits he paid to camp every now and then were the occasion of much revelry; very late hours being kept at the club, where men would sit up listening to his stories and bantering chaff till long past the usual hour for closing that establishment; but for all that men who knew him best thought they often saw a sad, wistful look in his eyes, and that in his laugh there was an after-sound of bitterness and melancholy. For all his cheeriness he was beginning to get very tired of the life he was leading, and to long to get home again, or to some new country where he could have a fresh start.As he watched Kildare gallop he was full of hope and excitement, and he felt certain that he would win the Diggers’ Stakes with him.“Yes, Captain, fit and well, the other horses won’t be very near him. But I wish the race were over and won; they seem to be doing a lot of betting on it at the Fields, laying two to one on Kildare, but there are lots of takers. The Pirate’s lot have backed their horse for a lot of money, and won’t lose it if they can help,” said a rough-looking man with a broken nose and scarred face, who was standing by the side of Jack Brereton.“They will have to lose it whether they like it or not. It’s a pity you can’t come back to Kimberley with us, I know you would like to see the little horse win.”“Yes, Captain, I’d like it dearly, but I shouldn’t be let see the race if I did come back; the man I hammered is so blamed vindictive that he would have me stuck in quod before I was in camp an hour. You see, his being a policeman makes it awkward. No, when you start I will just foot it in the other direction—Christiana way—wishing you good luck in the race.”“There is twenty pound on for you, Tom, if he wins, remember,” said Brereton, as he followed the horses back to their stables.Tom Bats was a not very excellent character who had once been in Jack Brereton’s regiment, and for a short time was his soldier-servant. He was not a bad-natured man, but unsteady, hot-tempered, and pugnacious. Jack Brereton had liked him very well, and he had from the first a wonderful affection and admiration for ‘the Captain.’ Strangely enough, both of them drifted to the Diamond Fields, where they met again, and very rejoiced was Tom Bats to see his old master. On the Diamond Fields Tom did not become a reformed character; he was straight, as the saying there was, and did not buy diamonds or do anything that was dishonest, but was much given to going on the spree and punching heads, and had on several occasions given the police a great deal of trouble.Unfortunately, when on the spree he had fallen foul of a policeman against whom he had an old grudge, and had knocked the guardian of the peace about severely, thus making Kimberley too warm for him, and obliging him to start off at once for some place of refuge.He had turned up at Buffelsfontein, where Jack Brereton gave him shelter and food for some days, and employed him looking after the horses, for Jack was not quite certain that though Buffelsfontein was a quiet place some forty miles from Kimberley, it would not be worth some one’s while to pay it a visit and try and get at Kildare.“Look ’ere, captain,” said Tom after Jack had left the tables, “I think I had better come back with you to-morrow, it’s rather a lonely journey for you to take with such valuable property as the horses, and no one but the Kaffir boys with you. I will see you as far as the camp and then turn back again.”“No, you shan’t do that; what’s the good? It’s lonely, but it’s as safe a road as any high-road in England; no one will harm the horse when I am by looking after him.”Tom Bats felt that this was about true, so he settled to leave for Christiana the next morning, when Jack and the horses started for Kimberley.The next morning Jack started for Kimberley riding his pony Nobbier, Kildare and The Muffin Man being ridden by two little bushmen who were in his service. It was a dreary journey from Buffels Drift to Kimberley, only one or two farm-houses were on the way, and a great part of the road was deep sand through which the horses laboured painfully. Jack had arranged for the horses to be put up at a farm-house on the way, so he took the journey easily enough; and as he rode along a little behind the others, he looked at Kildare and added up the money which he felt confident that he could win with the brave little horse. Kildare was a black horse—not very big. At first sight one would think that he was not quite big enough to hold his own, but any good judge would recognise that he was good enough if he were big enough; and when one saw him stride along one forgot about his being on a small scale.The Diggers’ Stakes would come to about five hundred pounds; besides that Jack had about a thousand pounds in bets for that race, for he stood half of the bet Crotty had laid Gideon. It was hard luck not being able to get odds about the horse, but as several people in Kimberley knew how good the horse was, and that the theory of his being lame which, somehow or the other, had got about was false, it was necessary to get this money on the race at the best terms they could. Though Kildare had been actually backed for very little by either Brereton or Crotty, for the latter had only bet against The Pirate, he was the favourite, with slight odds laid on him, and it would not be easy to back him to win much at any reasonable price. Still, there would be his lottery, which would come to some five hundred pounds or so more, and perhaps it would be possible to get a little more money on, but it was a pity that he could not make more of acoup. There was another race on the card which he hoped to win with Kildare, and he might win one or two minor races with The Muffin Man. Altogether Jack hoped, with what he could win and with the price he could get for his horses, which he intended to sell, he would be worth about five thousand pounds after the races. As he watched Kildare stepping along he thought that he would like to take him home to England and win a big handicap with him, as he believed he could; but his good sense told him that it would be better to sell the horse on the Fields. With the money that he would have after the races he determined he would clear out of the country, and either go home, where he might get something, or to some other colony. It is ill counting your chickens before they are hatched. As Jack was thinking what he would do with the money he would win he had come to a place where the road ran between some mountains, and where by the side of the road there was a good deal of thick bush. Just there some Kaffirs who were coming from the direction of Kimberley were passing the horses; they looked as if they had been working in the mines and were going back to the kraals up country, and Jack paid very little attention to them. Suddenly he was startled by seeing them close round the two horses, Muffin Man and Kildare, and take hold of their bridles.In a second he had whipped out a revolver and was riding up to them, when a man with crape on his face jumped from the bushes by the road and struck him a heavy blow on the head with a knobkerri, which stretched him on the ground senseless.When he came to again he found two white men with crape round their faces engaged in tying him up with a rope, which they knotted in a way that would puzzle the Davenport brothers. When they had finished they carried him away from the road along a water-course which came down from the hills. He did his best to struggle, but it was no use for he was helpless. As he was carried along he saw that the two horses and his pony were in the possession of the enemy, and the two bushmen were also captive and were being carried off by some of the Kaffirs.“Now, then, take it easy and keep quiet, or the rope will choke you,” said one of the men as he secured Jack to the tree with an elaborate and improved Tom Fool’s knot. “Well, you might as well have a smoke, there is nothing like making the best of things,” he added, as he pushed a cigar into Jack’s mouth and struck a light. There was some sense in this, so Jack pulled at the cigar.“So long, boss,” said the man who had spoken before, and after gazing at his workmanship with some pride he walked away with the other. Jack could hear them laugh as they crashed through the bushes, and he thought he heard one say:“What about Kildare for the Stakes?” Then voices were farther and farther off, and he was left alone to himself. Of course he began to try and get out of the knots, but there was no doubt about it that the man who tied him up was a master of his craft, and the rope round his neck tightened when he tried to struggle against the knots. Then he began to shout out, but that was no use; there was probably no one near, and the echo of his voice seemed to mock him. Then he kept quiet and tried to enjoy smoking. He might possibly burn the rope with the lighted end of his cigar, he thought; trying to do this gave him occupation for some little time, but he did not succeed, though he could just touch the rope with the end of his cigar, and at last the cigar burnt shorter, and he was unable to touch the rope with it, and then he began to cough and it fell out of his mouth. Then he began to think of the wretched plight he was in. The remark he thought he heard made him believe that the object of stealing the horse was to prevent his winning the Stakes; but for all that they would have to pay unless they could prove collusion between the men who had made the bets and the horse-thieves, and that would not be very easy.Hour after hour passed, and he began to think that if he were only free he would not mind about anything else, though if he lost all his bets, and lost his horses, he would be without a penny in the world—in fact, he would be hardly able to pay his losses. Then he remembered that it was the day the mail-cart passed along that road, and he calculated the time at which it would pass. It was about nine o’clock in the morning when he had been tied, and at about sunset the cart would pass, judging by the time at which it generally left Buffels Drift. He could not see the road from where he was, and the sand would prevent him hearing the cart as it came along; but as the sun went down and the time for the cart came near, he kept up a shouting, his voice growing hoarser and weaker, as he was afraid, every minute. At last the welcome sound came of some one coming through the bushes, and he heard in Dutch an exclamation of astonishment. It was the driver of the mail-cart who had heard shouting, and fortunately, as there was a passenger in the cart who could hold the rein, had got out to see what was the matter. The man was provokingly slow, staring at him stupidly for a little time and expressing his surprise again and again, but at last he cut the ropes and helped Jack, who was unable to walk, his limbs being all cramped, to get to the cart.About four hours after they had parted at Buffelsfontein, Tom Bats was taking a spell, having done about ten miles of his journey to Christiana. His thoughts were with Captain Brereton and Kildare, and he kept regretting that he was not with them and that he should not be on the racecourse to see the horse win the Diggers’ Plate. Though he knew that Brereton was very well able to look after himself and his horses, and that when he came into the camp he would have the advantage of sage advice from Mr Crotty, who was as sharp as most men, he felt somewhat mistrustful. The lot who were backing The Pirate would not stick at a trifle. He knew something of Mr Gideon. Once when he had been matched to fight a man for fifty pounds a side, that worthy had tried to drug him when he found he would not be squared, and he would be up to the same sort of game with the little horse, he was afraid.Well, he had better be getting on, he thought, as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and filled it up again. Just then he saw some men riding towards him, along a road which some miles south cut into the road from Buffelsfontein to Kimberley. They seemed to be some white men and some Kaffirs, all on horseback. As they came nearer Tom gave a start, nearly jumped up, but in a second crouched down amongst the bushes.He recognised two of the men, Bill Bledshaw and Long Alex; but that was not what alarmed him. What startled him was that he saw that Bill Bledshaw was riding The Muffin Man, while one of the Kaffirs was on Kildare, and another on Captain Brereton’s pony Nobbier. It did not take him long to understand what had taken place. Captain Brereton had been robbed, they had got the horses from him and were taking them away to Tawns, where Bledshaw’s head-quarters were. Tom felt very concerned about Brereton’s fate, for though he did not suppose that Bill would harm him more than he could help, he knew that Brereton would not let the horses go without a fight unless he were taken by surprise; but even if he were fit and well he would be in a sorry plight, Tom Bats thought, if he did not get back Kildare. “This is Master Gideon’s little game,” he said to himself, and he thought it would be worth a trip to Kimberley, dangerous though it would be, to have the pleasure of smashing that gentleman’s evil-looking face in. There were two white men and four or five Kaffirs, so it was useless to show himself and fight for the horses. Long Alex and Bill were both very awkward customers, and were sure to be well armed. About six miles off there was a place called Gordon, where there usually were one or two of the mounted police, but before he could get there and give information to the police, Bill would have the horses over the border; and Tom Bats was by no means eager to come across any of the mounted police, for they would most likely recognise him and know about the warrant there was against him.Near where Tom Bats was resting there was a pool of water, and when the horsemen came up to the place they off-saddled, the two white men throwing themselves down on the ground under a tree for a rest.Tom Bats’ heart began to beat, for he saw his chance when one of the Kaffirs took Kildare and another horse down to the water. He had a heavy iron-bound knobkerri, and clutching it with a grip that meant business he sneaked from the bush he was hiding behind to the water, without the Kaffir seeing him. Then when he had got close to the water he sprang up, and was on his man with a rush, dealing him one heavy blow with his stick. In a second he had jumped Kildare’s back and was riding as hard as he could in the direction of Gordon. The other Kaffirs had seen him, and as he rode he could hear them shouting out and waking up the white men, and turning round he saw that Long Alex had snatched up a carbine and was pointing it at him, while Bill was mounting The Muffin Man, to give him chase. Long Alex’s bullet whirled unpleasantly near him, but the ground, which sloped down a little, gave him a little cover. There was no saddle on Kildare, though his bridle was on, and Tom Bats, though he had been a trooper in a cavalry regiment, was by no means a finished horseman; still he was able to stick on. Long Alex had run up to the brow of the hill and there he took another shot, it was a long shot, but this time it hit, and Kildare stumbled as Tom let the rein fall loose over his head, as his shattered left arm fell helpless to his side. He was not hit so badly that he could not keep on. Bill on The Muffin Man was sticking to the chase, and he waved his hat and gave a yell when he saw Long Alex’s shot had taken effect. Tom Bats felt himself growing weaker every second, and for once in his life he longed to see the cord uniform of a mounted policeman as he rode on, longing to get to Gordon and safety—for the horse, that is to say; as for himself it was by no means a desirable haven.“Hullo, that’s a nice-looking horse; this looks a queer start, too,” said Sergeant Brown of the mounted police, who was lounging in the verandah of the one store at Gordon—the rising township of the future, which consisted at present of a farm-house, a store, and some tents belonging to the police, but which had a Market square, a Main street, a Church street, and several other streets, only the houses had not yet been put up—as Tom Bats rode up on Kildare.“Now, then, hold up, man!” he cried out, as Tom fell off the horse’s back in a swoon when he tried to get off. “By George, though, I think we want this gentleman; there is a warrant out for Bats, isn’t there, Jim?” he said to a police trooper, who was standing by, after he had picked up Tom and brought him into the store.“Yer right, sergeant, I am the man and there is a warrant; but never mind me, look after the horse—Captain Brereton’s Kildare, favourite for Diggers’ Stakes; they got Bill Bledshaw to jump him, and I have jumped him from Bill. Look after the little horse; he has been knocked about fearfully to-day,” said Tom, getting fainter and queerer as he spoke.The sergeant gave some orders about the horse, then looked after Tom Bats, whom he saw to be a good deal hurt, and when he was revived a little asked him more about the whereabouts of Bill Bledshaw.It happened that the sergeant took a good deal of interest in the Kimberley races, and he at once shared Tom Bats’ suspicion that Bill was acting for some one else; so thinking it would be a capital thing if those who plotted to get Kildare out of the way were caught in their own trap, he said nothing about Kildare having turned up in the letter he wrote to the authorities, while he wrote another letter, to be opened by either Brereton or Crotty, saying the horse was safe and did not seem much the worse. After he had sent off these letters by a Kaffir on a horse he started off with two policemen—all the force he had—to see if he could come across Bill Bledshaw.Chapter Three.“It’s all right, now go and back The Pirate for what you can get,” said Nat Lane, as he came into Mr Gideon’s house, where that gentleman had been waiting for some hours on the day of Jack Brereton’s misadventure in a fever of excitement.“Are you sure he has done it all right?” asked Gideon.“Certain; I have got this,” and Nat showed the other a piece of paper on which the words “Done the job all right” were written. “That’s what we settled that he was to write; a boy just brought it me. Now you go and look for clever Mr Crotty; we ought to have him for a good bit.”Mr Gideon at once started off to make prompt use of his information. First he went to two men who usually worked with him, and were in this robbery to a certain extent, and commissioned them to back The Pirate and lay against Kildare; then he tried to find Crotty, whom he intended to make his chief victim. They had made Kildare a very hot favourite. In fact, with the exception of The Pirate there was no other horse backed. It happened that Mr Crotty had gone to the river that day, so Mr Gideon was destined to be disappointed of his prey, and waited up hour after hour at the club without meeting him, for Mr Crotty on his return had supper at the house of the men he had gone to the river with, and then had gone straight to bed. After he had been in bed some hours he was roused by a knock at the door of his own house, and opening it let in Jack Brereton.“They have done us,” said Jack, as he helped himself to a brandy and soda, the materials for which were on the table.“What do you mean? they have not got at Kildare?”“Got at him? They have got him,” said Jack, and he told his story.Very furious did Mr Crotty become as he listened to it; he at once came to the conclusion that Mr Gideon had something to do with it. However, he saw that it would be very difficult to prove any knowledge, and saw that he would have to pay the bets he would lose. They talked for some hours, but were not able to comfort each other or devise any scheme for getting the horse back. Mr Crotty took his loss very well, and did not, as many a man in his place would have done, blame Jack at all for it. He was a somewhat sharp customer, was Mr Crotty, by no means scrupulous when he was dealing with outsiders, but he was straight to his friends, and he really felt as sorry for Jack as for himself, though perhaps his first feeling was bitter anger against Gideon.“Well, it is no good stopping up all night talking,” he said at last, and he got a mattress and some blankets for Jack.In the morning Jack was woke up by hearing a cry of triumph from Crotty.The letter from Gordon had come and Crotty had read it. “We have got ’em,” he cried as he gave the letter to Jack. They were both delighted; the only question was whether the horse would be much the worse for its knocking about. They came to the conclusion that they would chance that, as the note said the horse was all right, and they believed he could win on three legs. “Then leave me to deal with Mr Gideon,” Crotty said as he dressed; “I will take care to come across him this morning.”That morning it was all over the camp that Bill Bledshaw had jumped Kildare, and great was the consternation amongst the backers of the favourite, and the rejoicing of a section of the Jews who had backed The Pirate. Mr Gideon was afraid that it would be too late to victimise Mr Crotty, though for a minute or two as the latter came into the club, looking by no means out of spirits, he felt a little hopeful.“Well, how’s The Pirate?” he said to Gideon.“Fit as he could be. Will you go on laying against him?” answered Gideon.“Now why are you so keen about backing The Pirate this morning? Not because you have heard about Bill Bledshaw jumping Kildare?” said Crotty with a grin on his face; “but I think we shall sell you by getting him back from Bill.”Mr Gideon could not help laughing to himself, the idea of Bill’s being persuaded to give up the horse or allowing it to leave him fit to run for the Stakes seemed too absurd.Then the two had a long conversation, which ended in Mr Gideon laying the other three thousand to one thousand against Kildare, and stipulating that the money should be staked by that day, as he thought that he would win about as much from Gideon and his confederates as that division would think it worth while to pay.There was a lot of excitement all over the camp when it was known how Jack Brereton had been robbed. Jack had nothing to say but that the story was true; he took his bad luck as he had taken bad luck before, wonderfully coolly, but to his friends—and most ‘white men’ in the camp were his friends—he imparted the advice not to be in a hurry to bet against Kildare. “The little horse will win for all that you have heard,” he said.As a rule his friends thought that Jack did not speak without reason, and a good many of them took the odds which the Jews were eager to lay on their horse The Pirate. This state of things went on for some days, all sorts of stories going about as to the chances of the missing horse being recovered.Mr Gideon laughed when he heard these stories. It amused him to think that people could be fools enough to believe that a horse could be got out of Bill Bledshaw’s clutches, and be fit to run in a few days.One morning, a day or two before the races, most of the sporting element of the Diamond Fields were on the racecourse, watching the horses engaged in the races do their morning gallops.Gideon and Nat Lane were standing a little way from the rest of the company, and had been having a very confidential talk.“Altogether I stand about ten thousand to five thousand. Some of it I have laid on The Pirate, some against Kildare; Barney and Ike Sloeman have done half as much again between ’em! Where the money comes from I don’t know. S’help me, I can’t see what they are at—all backing a horse that Bill Bledshaw has jumped,” said Gideon.“It’s just as well for us that there are some fools,” answered the trainer.“Do you think any other horse has a chance of beating The Pirate? I heard something about May Morn.”“Never mind what you hear; that’s May Morn; looks like having a big chance, don’t it?” said Nat, pointing to a horse that was coming round. “Hullo! why that’s Captain Brereton and be damned to him. What is that he is on? something that can gallop a bit,” he added, as he saw another horse that had just come on to the course. “Is that one of yours, Mr Crotty?” he called out to that gentleman who was standing some yards off.Kildare had been brought into the camp the night before, and Jack was giving him his first gallop on the racecourse.Crotty and Jack had determined that they would not try to keep the secret of the horse’s recovery any longer, as it would be difficult to do so; and they had already backed it for as much as Gideon’s friends could pay. Even a tyro like Mr Gideon could see that the game little horse was of a very different class from the plater May Morn.“That, Mr Gideon! why that is Captain Brereton’s Kildare; you ought to know the horse. And now what price Kildare? what price Bill Bledshaw?” shouted Mr Crotty, and he burst into a peal of mocking laughter, in which a knot of men, his and Jack Brereton’s friends, who were standing near him joined.“The little horse is not much the worse for your kind attentions,” he added.“Curse ’em, but they have done us,” said Nat Lane between his teeth.Mr Gideon turned pale. The mocking laughter of Crotty and his friends maddened him. He was almost ruined, for the money he had staked represented pretty nearly all that he had in the world; his only hope was that still The Pirate might somehow win, and this hope was a very feeble one.Shout after shout of laughter came from the men on the course, who seemed all to have been let into the secret by Crotty, and followed by the jeers of their enemies Mr Gideon and Nat Lane got into a cart and were driven back to Kimberley.Mr Gideon and Nat Lane had several very anxious conversations before the day of the race, but their upshot was nothing but talk. It was impossible for them to hedge, and they could only trust in the chapter of accidents, which, however, did them no good.The story of the Diggers’ Stakes that year was a very simple one. It was rather a procession than a race. Kildare won with the greatest ease from The Pirate, while the rest of the field were beaten off. Good fellows on the Diamond Fields rejoiced, and for the most part had very substantial reasons for their joy.Mr Gideon and his friends “the sharp division,” as they thought themselves, for once were shorn, and they look back to that race with anything but pleasure. Mr Gideon paid all his losses, for he was afraid that if he did not an attempt might be made to prove he had something to do with stealing Kildare, and was anxious for some time lest Bill Bledshaw, who was afterwards caught before he got rid of Brereton’s other horses, should give evidence against him. It remains only to say that Tom Bats had the pleasure of seeing Kildare win. His arm was well enough to allow him to be brought into Kimberley, and public feeling was so much in his favour, as the man who had rescued Kildare from the enemy, that the magistrate took a lenient view of the charge of assault on which he was brought up, and only inflicted a fine, which in a few minutes was raised for him by subscriptions of those who had backed Brereton’s game little horse.
It was in the flush times on the Diamond Fields; the days afterwards remembered, in the bad times which came so soon, with so much wondering regret. In those days every one had made money out of shares and confidently hoped to make much more. Shares and companies were talked about morning, noon, and night; and what more delightful topic for conversation could any one wish to have? for then almost every one held shares, and those shares, independently of what they were in or where the ground possessed by the company was situated, went up every hour, so that, except when a public benefactor did some thing unusually criminal or eccentric, so giving the Diamond Field public a subject for much interesting talk, no one discussed and no one wished to discuss anything else.
For a short time, however, when the mania was at its very height, shares became a subject of secondary interest, and as the topic of interest the Kimberley races took its place. With a characteristic unanimity and zest the public of the four camps began to talk, think, and speculate about the races. One would only hear scraps of conversation relating to weight for age, the rules of racing, and the performances of the imported horses, as one passed the open doors of bars and canteens.
The sporting division scented the carcase from afar, and thought with glee of the abundance of money there was in the camp and the enthusiasm for sport which had come over the public. The big event of the races was the Diggers’ Stakes, a handicap, for which the weights were out, and very little admiration was expressed for the wisdom of the stewards who had made it. What with those who knew something about racing and had games of their own to play, and those who knew nothing about it but, though honest and ignorant, were too self-important to stand aside and refrain from taking any part in it, they had made the handicapping a farce. Men said there were only two horses in it which had any chance—Mr Musters’ Our Boy, and Mr Saul Gideon’s The Pirate. They were both of them imported horses, and the former had won a race or two in England; both were four-year-olds. Besides these there was one other imported horse, Captain Brereton’s Kildare, and a good many colonial horses. Kildare was said to be lame, and the handicappers had not given the colonial horses a chance; in fact it was hardly a handicap at all, as two favourites carried not much more than weight for age. That evening Mr Saul Gideon had come into the Claimholders’ Club in Kimberley with a glare in his hard black eyes and a twitching of his claw-like hands that might well have warned any one who knew him that he was dangerous. Mr Gideon was a sport, not a sportsman—anything but that—but certainly a sport. In any pastime on which money could be risked by way of wagering he took an interest. Before the law put down those institutions he had, with great profit to himself, kept a gambling saloon. When prize-fights occurred every now and then, just over the border of the Free State (the P.R. is or was an institution on the Diamond Fields), he had much to do with getting them up, and sometimes would have much to do with settling their issue in a peaceable and humane manner before the men went into the ring. In fact there were few sporting frauds on the Diamond Fields but Saul Gideon had a finger in the pie. He probably only just could tell the difference between a dray-horse and a racer, but he was satisfied he was clever enough to hold his own and win money at racing, and perhaps with reason, for success such as he coveted requires rather a knowledge of men than of horses. The Claimholders’ Club was crowded with men who were talking about the races, and Mr Gideon had not to wait long before they began to discuss the event in which he was interested, the Diggers’ Stakes.
“Take moy tip, boys,” said Dr Buckeen, an Irish medical man much given to racing, who in his time had done a good deal to maintain in South Africa the character which some Irish sporting men have gained for themselves at home; “there is only one in it, that’s The Pirate; never mind about Our Boy and the race he won at Sandown. I know all about it, I was there and saw, and after the race Lord Swellington, who owned the horses that ran second and third, came up to me and said, ‘Buck, me boy’—all thim fellows call me Buck—‘Buck, me boy,’ me lord said, ‘be crimes, that wore the biggest robbery I ever wore in.’”
“But Lord Swellington wouldn’t say ‘be crimes;’ he is not an Irishman,” said one of the doctor’s audience.
“’Deed he did, though, to chaff me; the old divil is always chaffing me, we are like brothers.”
“But, doctor, you could not have seen Our Boy win that race at Sandown; you weren’t home that year,” said another objector.
“Not home that year?” said the doctor, taken rather aback. “That’s all you know about it. But never mind, what I say is that The Pirate will win the Diggers’ Stakes.”
“That’s all you know about it, Buckeen,” said a tall man with a red nose and a squint, who looked as if he were gazing at the bottles behind the bar, though he really was watching Mr Gideon.
“I will take a thousand to five hundred from any one,” said Buckeen, who liked to talk loudly about bets which no one who knew him would think of taking from him or dream of his ever intending to pay.
“Not from me, Buckeen,” said the tall man, whose name was Crotty, as he continued to squint hideously while he watched Mr Gideon.
Mr Crotty was remembering a little battle at the noble game of poker which he once engaged in with Mr Gideon. On that occasion he—Crotty—had been dealt four kings; and as at last they showed their hands after much money had been staked, Mr Gideon had said, “For the first time in my life, believe me—though I have played since I was a lad in California, in ’49—four aces.” And as he remembered this little episode in his life and watched Mr Gideon he hoped soon to be even with him.
“Bedad, I must go and see after me patients. I am just murthered be the work I have to do in me profession,” said Buckeen, and he swaggered out of the club.
“Well, Mr Crotty,” said Gideon when the doctor had gone, “what will you do about the stakes?”
“Even money against The Pirate,” was Mr Crotty’s answer.
“It is odds against my horse. Come, I will take two to one,” said Gideon.
Mr Crotty only shook his head and asked Mr Gideon to take a drink with him, which offer the other excused himself from accepting on the plea that he had to go and see a man on business. “See you again in a half-an-hour or so,” he said, as he left the club to visit several other places where betting men congregated.
However, he found there was not much to be done about his horse; betting men, like politicians, like to know how the cat jumps before they commit themselves to any great extent; and there was a tendency to wait a bit before doing much about “the Stakes.”
After half-an-hour Mr Gideon returned to the Claimholders’ Club, looking more restless and anxious than ever.
“Will you lay me six to four?” he asked Mr Crotty, who was still there.
“Even money,” answered Crotty, who was a man of few words.
For a minute or two Mr Gideon said nothing, then he gulped down his drink, and clearing his throat, said:
“I hate fiddling about with one bet here and one bet there. Will you lay me a good big bet at even money?”
“I am not a millionnaire, like you Diamond-Field men,” answered Crotty, “but I will lay you an even thousand against The Pirate.”
“I will take that,” said Gideon.
Mr Crotty produced his betting-book and wrote down the bet.
“Will you double it?” said Gideon.
“You want to sell me up,” said Crotty, “but I will double it,” and again he wrote in his book.
Mr Gideon felt sure that Crotty would go on a little more, but something told him that he had better wait a bit. “I will see Nat first,” he said to himself; and he left the club, followed by the inquiring glances of most of the men who were present, for the bet he had made was a large one and excited a good deal of interest.
When Mr Gideon left the club he got into a Cape cart, and was driven to an hotel near some stables, on the outskirts of the camp.
An undersized man, with a look of Newmarket about him, which South Africa had not erased, who was sitting in the bar of the hotel, got up and went out when Mr Gideon touched him on the shoulder. Mr Gideon told him what he had done at the club, and the little man received his news with a long whistle.
“You’re so clever, ain’t you?” he said, as he eyed Mr Gideon with unconcealed scorn. “You don’t look like a blessed infant with that nose on you, but blessed if you don’t be’ave like one.”
“You ought to remember your proper place more,” said Mr Gideon, “and let me tell you something you don’t know. See here,” and he produced a telegram, “Our Boy has broken down.”
“And don’t you think Crotty knew that? Why, I heard it just now,” answered the little man, “and a lot it matters; Kildare will win these stakes.”
“He is no good; and he is lame.”
“Lame? A party as knows what he sees saw him striding along at Buffelsfontein, where Captain Brereton has him as sound as a bell.”
“But my horse can beat Kildare,” said Gideon.
“Not weight for age he couldn’t, if what I hears is true. Only just now I got a letter from home about him, from a pal of mine. Fit and well, he is the best horse that ever came to this country, and fit and well he is. And your horse don’t meet him weight for age, you give him seven pounds; those precious stewards seem to have forgotten all about him,” answered Nat.
“What’s to be done? What shall I do for all that money? I can’t lose two thou, and it seemed so good. Oh dear! oh dear me!” Gideon almost sobbed out.
“Well, it ain’t lost yet, guv’nor. Kildare might go wrong,” said Nat Lane with an evil grin.
“Oh, what a blessing that would be. Don’t you think now, Nat, something might be done?”
“The Captain looks after the horse night and day, nothing could be done on the quiet; but Buffels is a very solitary place to keep a valuable animal like Kildare. Look here, now, suppose you put me on a thou, of that two thou. I might show you how to save that bet, and make a good bit more.”
After a little haggling Mr Gideon consented to give Nat Lane a thou, if Kildare was made a dead ’un and The Pirate won.
“It will have to be done with a rush if it is done at all, but there is a party in camp just now who can do the job if any man can, and I will go and see him,” said Nat. “It’s no good your coming, I will drop round to your place afterwards.”
Mr Gideon walked off feeling much out of sorts and out of conceit with himself. His old acquaintance Crotty had got the best of him and had known just as much as he did and a little more when he made the bet. When Mr Gideon left him Nat Lane walked back into the town, or camp, as it was more often called, though its canvas age was over and it was gradually changing from iron to brick, and turning up a street by the side of the mine, which had already, though Kimberley was not ten years old, acquired a very evil reputation, made his way to a canteen known as the Red Bar. This establishment, which consisted of a room, billiard-room and bar combined, seemed to be doing a roaring business. A perspiring barman was hard at work opening bottles of champagne, spirits, and soda-water, while two very smartly-dressed young women were busy serving the crowd of customers who thronged round the bar, and at the same time carrying on a conversation with a favoured few. The majority of the company had an unmistakable Jewish type of face, but there were men of every other white race there. Few if any towns three times the size of Kimberley could produce such a choice selection of scoundrels as the guests at the ‘Red Bar,’ and Jews and Gentiles alike bore on their faces a hunted, a bird-of-prey look which denoted that they were at enmity with the honest portion of society. The most conspicuous figure in the place was that of a tall dark man, whose face might have been called a handsome one were it not for his sinister expression, exaggerated by a scar which reached from his mouth to his eye, and seemed to stand out all the more as the drink which he was taking flushed his face. From the way in which he lounged against the bar, taking up more room than three or four men might have done, though there were many men trying to get up to it to be served, and from the silence which was kept when he was speaking and the laughter and applause with which his not over-brilliant remarks were received, it was clear that he was a man who had managed to gain the respect of his associates.
“Bill, I want to speak to you; I can put you on to a good job,” Nat Lane whispered into his ear.
“Right; if there are good pieces in it, for I want some. They cleared me out at faro properly last night,” he answered as he left the bar and went out with Nat Lane. “Now, then, what do you want?” he said when they were outside.
“It’s like this: I can put you on to a good game, for I suppose you’re on the same lay up yonder you were always on, and have one or two working with you?”
“Yes, fire away and speak clear,” said Bill.
“Well, Brereton has got two or three horses at Buffelsfontein, which would be well worth getting hold of; one of them is worth a thousand pounds almost.”
“That’s no good game—too risky, and I couldn’t get much for the Captain’s horse. People who buy racers want to know more about them than I tell when I sell a horse.”
“That could be managed all right, Bill,” said Nat. “If you only got the horse away there would be a good bit of money to come to you. And I take it you would sooner take a good horse than a bad one any day; besides there are the Captain’s two horses. I think I know how the job could be done.”
Then the two men had a long conversation, and it was arranged between them that Nat Lane’s acquaintance, whose name was Bill Bledshaw, and whose place of residence was a kraal over the border in Bechuanaland near Tawns, where he carried on the fine old-fashioned calling of a cattle-lifter and horse-stealer, should find out when Brereton was going to take Kildare and his other horses into Kimberley, and with a party of his comrades surprise Brereton, seize the horses, and carry them over the border.
Buffels Drift was not very far from the border, and there was a place which Bill knew of where he could surprise Brereton and get the horses. As soon as he had got away with Kildare he was to send a messenger back to Kimberley, who would let Nat Lane know that the plot had been successful, and give the confederates an opportunity of betting against the horse, which would be far away when the Diggers’ Stakes was run. Bill Bledshaw stood out for a good share of the spoil, for it was a very risky job, which would create much indignation against him on the Diamond Fields and perhaps lead to his arrest; but Nat Lane managed to dispel his scruples, and before they parted the two worthies had a drink together to the success of their venture, Bill Bledshaw promising to start the next morning for his head-quarters near Tawns, where he could complete his arrangements and see one ‘Long Alex,’ who would work the job with him.
“By Jove, no horse in this forsaken country ever galloped like that before,” said Jack Brereton, as he stood outside his house at Buffelsfontein and watched Kildare leave his other horse, The Muffin Man, as if the latter was standing still.
Those horses and his pony Nobbier represented pretty nearly all Jack Brereton’s possessions, except the money he had already invested on Kildare’s chance for the Diggers’ Stakes.
After having speculated in claims, diamonds, ostriches, and sheep, he had taken to the more congenial pursuit of putting his capital into thoroughbreds, and so far he had not done very badly in that somewhat risky investment.
About eighteen months before, he had bought The Muffin Man, a colonial-bred racer, with some money he had made in a lucky digging venture. As he rode and trained his horse himself he was not robbed as other owners were, and had won several races at Kimberley, Cradock, and Port Elizabeth. He had bought Kildare with the money made by the other, having commissioned an old brother officer in England to buy a useful racer that was better than anything in South Africa. Kildare was an Irish-bred horse, and had been sold rather cheaply after his former owner had been warned off the turf for having him pulled in a two-year-old race. It was a shame, so Jack’s friend said, to send such a good horse to South Africa, but he felt bound to do his best for Jack.
Jack Brereton was about thirty-five, and though he was as active as he ever was, and seemed to take life cheerily as he always did, his years had told on him more than men would at first think.
The last ten years of his life had been spent in the colonies, the five years before that at home in a light cavalry regiment, and very marked was the contrast between them, though the Jack Brereton of the latter days and the former was outwardly much the same man, a little harder perhaps and more able to take care of himself, but the same light-hearted, happy-go-lucky fellow. The colonies are full of men whose lives have gone all askew—misfits well made enough, one would have thought, but all wrong when they are tried on. Jack Brereton seemed to be fit for something better than the adventurer and gambler he had drifted into becoming. There was the making of a good soldier in him, only he had gone to grief somehow and had to sell out.
He was a good deal more shrewd in his knowledge of character and business than many a man who had succeeded on the Diamond Fields by sticking to his work instead of drifting from one thing to another as he had done. He was well liked and to a certain extent admired by almost every one, from the administrator of the province downwards, but he never got any appointment, though there were several billets he might very well have filled. Sometimes he had been very much down on his luck, sometimes he had experienced a run of good fortune, but he kept his bad or ill-luck to himself and was always in excellent spirits. Every one said he was a good fellow, and many half envied his light heart and good spirits. Of late he had lived a good deal out of Kimberley, looking after his horses, and the visits he paid to camp every now and then were the occasion of much revelry; very late hours being kept at the club, where men would sit up listening to his stories and bantering chaff till long past the usual hour for closing that establishment; but for all that men who knew him best thought they often saw a sad, wistful look in his eyes, and that in his laugh there was an after-sound of bitterness and melancholy. For all his cheeriness he was beginning to get very tired of the life he was leading, and to long to get home again, or to some new country where he could have a fresh start.
As he watched Kildare gallop he was full of hope and excitement, and he felt certain that he would win the Diggers’ Stakes with him.
“Yes, Captain, fit and well, the other horses won’t be very near him. But I wish the race were over and won; they seem to be doing a lot of betting on it at the Fields, laying two to one on Kildare, but there are lots of takers. The Pirate’s lot have backed their horse for a lot of money, and won’t lose it if they can help,” said a rough-looking man with a broken nose and scarred face, who was standing by the side of Jack Brereton.
“They will have to lose it whether they like it or not. It’s a pity you can’t come back to Kimberley with us, I know you would like to see the little horse win.”
“Yes, Captain, I’d like it dearly, but I shouldn’t be let see the race if I did come back; the man I hammered is so blamed vindictive that he would have me stuck in quod before I was in camp an hour. You see, his being a policeman makes it awkward. No, when you start I will just foot it in the other direction—Christiana way—wishing you good luck in the race.”
“There is twenty pound on for you, Tom, if he wins, remember,” said Brereton, as he followed the horses back to their stables.
Tom Bats was a not very excellent character who had once been in Jack Brereton’s regiment, and for a short time was his soldier-servant. He was not a bad-natured man, but unsteady, hot-tempered, and pugnacious. Jack Brereton had liked him very well, and he had from the first a wonderful affection and admiration for ‘the Captain.’ Strangely enough, both of them drifted to the Diamond Fields, where they met again, and very rejoiced was Tom Bats to see his old master. On the Diamond Fields Tom did not become a reformed character; he was straight, as the saying there was, and did not buy diamonds or do anything that was dishonest, but was much given to going on the spree and punching heads, and had on several occasions given the police a great deal of trouble.
Unfortunately, when on the spree he had fallen foul of a policeman against whom he had an old grudge, and had knocked the guardian of the peace about severely, thus making Kimberley too warm for him, and obliging him to start off at once for some place of refuge.
He had turned up at Buffelsfontein, where Jack Brereton gave him shelter and food for some days, and employed him looking after the horses, for Jack was not quite certain that though Buffelsfontein was a quiet place some forty miles from Kimberley, it would not be worth some one’s while to pay it a visit and try and get at Kildare.
“Look ’ere, captain,” said Tom after Jack had left the tables, “I think I had better come back with you to-morrow, it’s rather a lonely journey for you to take with such valuable property as the horses, and no one but the Kaffir boys with you. I will see you as far as the camp and then turn back again.”
“No, you shan’t do that; what’s the good? It’s lonely, but it’s as safe a road as any high-road in England; no one will harm the horse when I am by looking after him.”
Tom Bats felt that this was about true, so he settled to leave for Christiana the next morning, when Jack and the horses started for Kimberley.
The next morning Jack started for Kimberley riding his pony Nobbier, Kildare and The Muffin Man being ridden by two little bushmen who were in his service. It was a dreary journey from Buffels Drift to Kimberley, only one or two farm-houses were on the way, and a great part of the road was deep sand through which the horses laboured painfully. Jack had arranged for the horses to be put up at a farm-house on the way, so he took the journey easily enough; and as he rode along a little behind the others, he looked at Kildare and added up the money which he felt confident that he could win with the brave little horse. Kildare was a black horse—not very big. At first sight one would think that he was not quite big enough to hold his own, but any good judge would recognise that he was good enough if he were big enough; and when one saw him stride along one forgot about his being on a small scale.
The Diggers’ Stakes would come to about five hundred pounds; besides that Jack had about a thousand pounds in bets for that race, for he stood half of the bet Crotty had laid Gideon. It was hard luck not being able to get odds about the horse, but as several people in Kimberley knew how good the horse was, and that the theory of his being lame which, somehow or the other, had got about was false, it was necessary to get this money on the race at the best terms they could. Though Kildare had been actually backed for very little by either Brereton or Crotty, for the latter had only bet against The Pirate, he was the favourite, with slight odds laid on him, and it would not be easy to back him to win much at any reasonable price. Still, there would be his lottery, which would come to some five hundred pounds or so more, and perhaps it would be possible to get a little more money on, but it was a pity that he could not make more of acoup. There was another race on the card which he hoped to win with Kildare, and he might win one or two minor races with The Muffin Man. Altogether Jack hoped, with what he could win and with the price he could get for his horses, which he intended to sell, he would be worth about five thousand pounds after the races. As he watched Kildare stepping along he thought that he would like to take him home to England and win a big handicap with him, as he believed he could; but his good sense told him that it would be better to sell the horse on the Fields. With the money that he would have after the races he determined he would clear out of the country, and either go home, where he might get something, or to some other colony. It is ill counting your chickens before they are hatched. As Jack was thinking what he would do with the money he would win he had come to a place where the road ran between some mountains, and where by the side of the road there was a good deal of thick bush. Just there some Kaffirs who were coming from the direction of Kimberley were passing the horses; they looked as if they had been working in the mines and were going back to the kraals up country, and Jack paid very little attention to them. Suddenly he was startled by seeing them close round the two horses, Muffin Man and Kildare, and take hold of their bridles.
In a second he had whipped out a revolver and was riding up to them, when a man with crape on his face jumped from the bushes by the road and struck him a heavy blow on the head with a knobkerri, which stretched him on the ground senseless.
When he came to again he found two white men with crape round their faces engaged in tying him up with a rope, which they knotted in a way that would puzzle the Davenport brothers. When they had finished they carried him away from the road along a water-course which came down from the hills. He did his best to struggle, but it was no use for he was helpless. As he was carried along he saw that the two horses and his pony were in the possession of the enemy, and the two bushmen were also captive and were being carried off by some of the Kaffirs.
“Now, then, take it easy and keep quiet, or the rope will choke you,” said one of the men as he secured Jack to the tree with an elaborate and improved Tom Fool’s knot. “Well, you might as well have a smoke, there is nothing like making the best of things,” he added, as he pushed a cigar into Jack’s mouth and struck a light. There was some sense in this, so Jack pulled at the cigar.
“So long, boss,” said the man who had spoken before, and after gazing at his workmanship with some pride he walked away with the other. Jack could hear them laugh as they crashed through the bushes, and he thought he heard one say:
“What about Kildare for the Stakes?” Then voices were farther and farther off, and he was left alone to himself. Of course he began to try and get out of the knots, but there was no doubt about it that the man who tied him up was a master of his craft, and the rope round his neck tightened when he tried to struggle against the knots. Then he began to shout out, but that was no use; there was probably no one near, and the echo of his voice seemed to mock him. Then he kept quiet and tried to enjoy smoking. He might possibly burn the rope with the lighted end of his cigar, he thought; trying to do this gave him occupation for some little time, but he did not succeed, though he could just touch the rope with the end of his cigar, and at last the cigar burnt shorter, and he was unable to touch the rope with it, and then he began to cough and it fell out of his mouth. Then he began to think of the wretched plight he was in. The remark he thought he heard made him believe that the object of stealing the horse was to prevent his winning the Stakes; but for all that they would have to pay unless they could prove collusion between the men who had made the bets and the horse-thieves, and that would not be very easy.
Hour after hour passed, and he began to think that if he were only free he would not mind about anything else, though if he lost all his bets, and lost his horses, he would be without a penny in the world—in fact, he would be hardly able to pay his losses. Then he remembered that it was the day the mail-cart passed along that road, and he calculated the time at which it would pass. It was about nine o’clock in the morning when he had been tied, and at about sunset the cart would pass, judging by the time at which it generally left Buffels Drift. He could not see the road from where he was, and the sand would prevent him hearing the cart as it came along; but as the sun went down and the time for the cart came near, he kept up a shouting, his voice growing hoarser and weaker, as he was afraid, every minute. At last the welcome sound came of some one coming through the bushes, and he heard in Dutch an exclamation of astonishment. It was the driver of the mail-cart who had heard shouting, and fortunately, as there was a passenger in the cart who could hold the rein, had got out to see what was the matter. The man was provokingly slow, staring at him stupidly for a little time and expressing his surprise again and again, but at last he cut the ropes and helped Jack, who was unable to walk, his limbs being all cramped, to get to the cart.
About four hours after they had parted at Buffelsfontein, Tom Bats was taking a spell, having done about ten miles of his journey to Christiana. His thoughts were with Captain Brereton and Kildare, and he kept regretting that he was not with them and that he should not be on the racecourse to see the horse win the Diggers’ Plate. Though he knew that Brereton was very well able to look after himself and his horses, and that when he came into the camp he would have the advantage of sage advice from Mr Crotty, who was as sharp as most men, he felt somewhat mistrustful. The lot who were backing The Pirate would not stick at a trifle. He knew something of Mr Gideon. Once when he had been matched to fight a man for fifty pounds a side, that worthy had tried to drug him when he found he would not be squared, and he would be up to the same sort of game with the little horse, he was afraid.
Well, he had better be getting on, he thought, as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and filled it up again. Just then he saw some men riding towards him, along a road which some miles south cut into the road from Buffelsfontein to Kimberley. They seemed to be some white men and some Kaffirs, all on horseback. As they came nearer Tom gave a start, nearly jumped up, but in a second crouched down amongst the bushes.
He recognised two of the men, Bill Bledshaw and Long Alex; but that was not what alarmed him. What startled him was that he saw that Bill Bledshaw was riding The Muffin Man, while one of the Kaffirs was on Kildare, and another on Captain Brereton’s pony Nobbier. It did not take him long to understand what had taken place. Captain Brereton had been robbed, they had got the horses from him and were taking them away to Tawns, where Bledshaw’s head-quarters were. Tom felt very concerned about Brereton’s fate, for though he did not suppose that Bill would harm him more than he could help, he knew that Brereton would not let the horses go without a fight unless he were taken by surprise; but even if he were fit and well he would be in a sorry plight, Tom Bats thought, if he did not get back Kildare. “This is Master Gideon’s little game,” he said to himself, and he thought it would be worth a trip to Kimberley, dangerous though it would be, to have the pleasure of smashing that gentleman’s evil-looking face in. There were two white men and four or five Kaffirs, so it was useless to show himself and fight for the horses. Long Alex and Bill were both very awkward customers, and were sure to be well armed. About six miles off there was a place called Gordon, where there usually were one or two of the mounted police, but before he could get there and give information to the police, Bill would have the horses over the border; and Tom Bats was by no means eager to come across any of the mounted police, for they would most likely recognise him and know about the warrant there was against him.
Near where Tom Bats was resting there was a pool of water, and when the horsemen came up to the place they off-saddled, the two white men throwing themselves down on the ground under a tree for a rest.
Tom Bats’ heart began to beat, for he saw his chance when one of the Kaffirs took Kildare and another horse down to the water. He had a heavy iron-bound knobkerri, and clutching it with a grip that meant business he sneaked from the bush he was hiding behind to the water, without the Kaffir seeing him. Then when he had got close to the water he sprang up, and was on his man with a rush, dealing him one heavy blow with his stick. In a second he had jumped Kildare’s back and was riding as hard as he could in the direction of Gordon. The other Kaffirs had seen him, and as he rode he could hear them shouting out and waking up the white men, and turning round he saw that Long Alex had snatched up a carbine and was pointing it at him, while Bill was mounting The Muffin Man, to give him chase. Long Alex’s bullet whirled unpleasantly near him, but the ground, which sloped down a little, gave him a little cover. There was no saddle on Kildare, though his bridle was on, and Tom Bats, though he had been a trooper in a cavalry regiment, was by no means a finished horseman; still he was able to stick on. Long Alex had run up to the brow of the hill and there he took another shot, it was a long shot, but this time it hit, and Kildare stumbled as Tom let the rein fall loose over his head, as his shattered left arm fell helpless to his side. He was not hit so badly that he could not keep on. Bill on The Muffin Man was sticking to the chase, and he waved his hat and gave a yell when he saw Long Alex’s shot had taken effect. Tom Bats felt himself growing weaker every second, and for once in his life he longed to see the cord uniform of a mounted policeman as he rode on, longing to get to Gordon and safety—for the horse, that is to say; as for himself it was by no means a desirable haven.
“Hullo, that’s a nice-looking horse; this looks a queer start, too,” said Sergeant Brown of the mounted police, who was lounging in the verandah of the one store at Gordon—the rising township of the future, which consisted at present of a farm-house, a store, and some tents belonging to the police, but which had a Market square, a Main street, a Church street, and several other streets, only the houses had not yet been put up—as Tom Bats rode up on Kildare.
“Now, then, hold up, man!” he cried out, as Tom fell off the horse’s back in a swoon when he tried to get off. “By George, though, I think we want this gentleman; there is a warrant out for Bats, isn’t there, Jim?” he said to a police trooper, who was standing by, after he had picked up Tom and brought him into the store.
“Yer right, sergeant, I am the man and there is a warrant; but never mind me, look after the horse—Captain Brereton’s Kildare, favourite for Diggers’ Stakes; they got Bill Bledshaw to jump him, and I have jumped him from Bill. Look after the little horse; he has been knocked about fearfully to-day,” said Tom, getting fainter and queerer as he spoke.
The sergeant gave some orders about the horse, then looked after Tom Bats, whom he saw to be a good deal hurt, and when he was revived a little asked him more about the whereabouts of Bill Bledshaw.
It happened that the sergeant took a good deal of interest in the Kimberley races, and he at once shared Tom Bats’ suspicion that Bill was acting for some one else; so thinking it would be a capital thing if those who plotted to get Kildare out of the way were caught in their own trap, he said nothing about Kildare having turned up in the letter he wrote to the authorities, while he wrote another letter, to be opened by either Brereton or Crotty, saying the horse was safe and did not seem much the worse. After he had sent off these letters by a Kaffir on a horse he started off with two policemen—all the force he had—to see if he could come across Bill Bledshaw.
“It’s all right, now go and back The Pirate for what you can get,” said Nat Lane, as he came into Mr Gideon’s house, where that gentleman had been waiting for some hours on the day of Jack Brereton’s misadventure in a fever of excitement.
“Are you sure he has done it all right?” asked Gideon.
“Certain; I have got this,” and Nat showed the other a piece of paper on which the words “Done the job all right” were written. “That’s what we settled that he was to write; a boy just brought it me. Now you go and look for clever Mr Crotty; we ought to have him for a good bit.”
Mr Gideon at once started off to make prompt use of his information. First he went to two men who usually worked with him, and were in this robbery to a certain extent, and commissioned them to back The Pirate and lay against Kildare; then he tried to find Crotty, whom he intended to make his chief victim. They had made Kildare a very hot favourite. In fact, with the exception of The Pirate there was no other horse backed. It happened that Mr Crotty had gone to the river that day, so Mr Gideon was destined to be disappointed of his prey, and waited up hour after hour at the club without meeting him, for Mr Crotty on his return had supper at the house of the men he had gone to the river with, and then had gone straight to bed. After he had been in bed some hours he was roused by a knock at the door of his own house, and opening it let in Jack Brereton.
“They have done us,” said Jack, as he helped himself to a brandy and soda, the materials for which were on the table.
“What do you mean? they have not got at Kildare?”
“Got at him? They have got him,” said Jack, and he told his story.
Very furious did Mr Crotty become as he listened to it; he at once came to the conclusion that Mr Gideon had something to do with it. However, he saw that it would be very difficult to prove any knowledge, and saw that he would have to pay the bets he would lose. They talked for some hours, but were not able to comfort each other or devise any scheme for getting the horse back. Mr Crotty took his loss very well, and did not, as many a man in his place would have done, blame Jack at all for it. He was a somewhat sharp customer, was Mr Crotty, by no means scrupulous when he was dealing with outsiders, but he was straight to his friends, and he really felt as sorry for Jack as for himself, though perhaps his first feeling was bitter anger against Gideon.
“Well, it is no good stopping up all night talking,” he said at last, and he got a mattress and some blankets for Jack.
In the morning Jack was woke up by hearing a cry of triumph from Crotty.
The letter from Gordon had come and Crotty had read it. “We have got ’em,” he cried as he gave the letter to Jack. They were both delighted; the only question was whether the horse would be much the worse for its knocking about. They came to the conclusion that they would chance that, as the note said the horse was all right, and they believed he could win on three legs. “Then leave me to deal with Mr Gideon,” Crotty said as he dressed; “I will take care to come across him this morning.”
That morning it was all over the camp that Bill Bledshaw had jumped Kildare, and great was the consternation amongst the backers of the favourite, and the rejoicing of a section of the Jews who had backed The Pirate. Mr Gideon was afraid that it would be too late to victimise Mr Crotty, though for a minute or two as the latter came into the club, looking by no means out of spirits, he felt a little hopeful.
“Well, how’s The Pirate?” he said to Gideon.
“Fit as he could be. Will you go on laying against him?” answered Gideon.
“Now why are you so keen about backing The Pirate this morning? Not because you have heard about Bill Bledshaw jumping Kildare?” said Crotty with a grin on his face; “but I think we shall sell you by getting him back from Bill.”
Mr Gideon could not help laughing to himself, the idea of Bill’s being persuaded to give up the horse or allowing it to leave him fit to run for the Stakes seemed too absurd.
Then the two had a long conversation, which ended in Mr Gideon laying the other three thousand to one thousand against Kildare, and stipulating that the money should be staked by that day, as he thought that he would win about as much from Gideon and his confederates as that division would think it worth while to pay.
There was a lot of excitement all over the camp when it was known how Jack Brereton had been robbed. Jack had nothing to say but that the story was true; he took his bad luck as he had taken bad luck before, wonderfully coolly, but to his friends—and most ‘white men’ in the camp were his friends—he imparted the advice not to be in a hurry to bet against Kildare. “The little horse will win for all that you have heard,” he said.
As a rule his friends thought that Jack did not speak without reason, and a good many of them took the odds which the Jews were eager to lay on their horse The Pirate. This state of things went on for some days, all sorts of stories going about as to the chances of the missing horse being recovered.
Mr Gideon laughed when he heard these stories. It amused him to think that people could be fools enough to believe that a horse could be got out of Bill Bledshaw’s clutches, and be fit to run in a few days.
One morning, a day or two before the races, most of the sporting element of the Diamond Fields were on the racecourse, watching the horses engaged in the races do their morning gallops.
Gideon and Nat Lane were standing a little way from the rest of the company, and had been having a very confidential talk.
“Altogether I stand about ten thousand to five thousand. Some of it I have laid on The Pirate, some against Kildare; Barney and Ike Sloeman have done half as much again between ’em! Where the money comes from I don’t know. S’help me, I can’t see what they are at—all backing a horse that Bill Bledshaw has jumped,” said Gideon.
“It’s just as well for us that there are some fools,” answered the trainer.
“Do you think any other horse has a chance of beating The Pirate? I heard something about May Morn.”
“Never mind what you hear; that’s May Morn; looks like having a big chance, don’t it?” said Nat, pointing to a horse that was coming round. “Hullo! why that’s Captain Brereton and be damned to him. What is that he is on? something that can gallop a bit,” he added, as he saw another horse that had just come on to the course. “Is that one of yours, Mr Crotty?” he called out to that gentleman who was standing some yards off.
Kildare had been brought into the camp the night before, and Jack was giving him his first gallop on the racecourse.
Crotty and Jack had determined that they would not try to keep the secret of the horse’s recovery any longer, as it would be difficult to do so; and they had already backed it for as much as Gideon’s friends could pay. Even a tyro like Mr Gideon could see that the game little horse was of a very different class from the plater May Morn.
“That, Mr Gideon! why that is Captain Brereton’s Kildare; you ought to know the horse. And now what price Kildare? what price Bill Bledshaw?” shouted Mr Crotty, and he burst into a peal of mocking laughter, in which a knot of men, his and Jack Brereton’s friends, who were standing near him joined.
“The little horse is not much the worse for your kind attentions,” he added.
“Curse ’em, but they have done us,” said Nat Lane between his teeth.
Mr Gideon turned pale. The mocking laughter of Crotty and his friends maddened him. He was almost ruined, for the money he had staked represented pretty nearly all that he had in the world; his only hope was that still The Pirate might somehow win, and this hope was a very feeble one.
Shout after shout of laughter came from the men on the course, who seemed all to have been let into the secret by Crotty, and followed by the jeers of their enemies Mr Gideon and Nat Lane got into a cart and were driven back to Kimberley.
Mr Gideon and Nat Lane had several very anxious conversations before the day of the race, but their upshot was nothing but talk. It was impossible for them to hedge, and they could only trust in the chapter of accidents, which, however, did them no good.
The story of the Diggers’ Stakes that year was a very simple one. It was rather a procession than a race. Kildare won with the greatest ease from The Pirate, while the rest of the field were beaten off. Good fellows on the Diamond Fields rejoiced, and for the most part had very substantial reasons for their joy.
Mr Gideon and his friends “the sharp division,” as they thought themselves, for once were shorn, and they look back to that race with anything but pleasure. Mr Gideon paid all his losses, for he was afraid that if he did not an attempt might be made to prove he had something to do with stealing Kildare, and was anxious for some time lest Bill Bledshaw, who was afterwards caught before he got rid of Brereton’s other horses, should give evidence against him. It remains only to say that Tom Bats had the pleasure of seeing Kildare win. His arm was well enough to allow him to be brought into Kimberley, and public feeling was so much in his favour, as the man who had rescued Kildare from the enemy, that the magistrate took a lenient view of the charge of assault on which he was brought up, and only inflicted a fine, which in a few minutes was raised for him by subscriptions of those who had backed Brereton’s game little horse.