It was late autumn; the legitimate racing season had closed. In August Porter had taken his horses back to Ringwood for the winter.
When a man strives against Fate, when realization laughs mockingly at his expectations, there comes to him a time when he longs for a breathing spell, when he knows that he must rest, and wait until the wheel of life, slow-turning, has passed a little through the groove of his existence. John Porter had been beaten down at every point. Disastrous years come to all men, whether they race horses or point the truthful way, and this year had been but a series of disappointments to the master of Ringwood. After Lucretia's win in the Eclipse, Porter did not land another race. Lucretia caught cold and went off. He tried Lauzanne twice again, but the Chestnut seemed thoroughly soured. Now he was back at Ringwood, a dark cloud of indebtedness hanging over the beautiful place, and prospect of relief very shadowy. If Lucretia wintered well and grew big and strong she might extricate him from his difficulties by winning one or two of the big races the following summer. About any of the other horses there was not even this much of promise.
Thoroughly distrusting Lauzanne, embittered by his cowardice, Porter had given him away—but to Allis. Strangely enough, the girl had taken a strong liking to the son of Lazzarone; it may have been because of the feeling that she was indirectly responsible for his presence at Ringwood. Allis Porter's perceptions had been developed to an extraordinary degree. All her life she had lived surrounded by thoroughbreds, and her sensitive nature went out to them, in their courage and loyalty, in a manner quite beyond possibility in a practical, routine-following horseman. To her they were almost human; the play of their minds was as attractive and interesting as the development of their muscles was to a trainer. When the stable had been taken back to Ringwood, she had asked for Lauzanne as a riding horse.
“I'm going to give him away,” her father had replied; “I can't sell him—nobody would buy a brute with such a reputation.” This word brought to Porter's mind his chief cause of resentment against the Chestnut. The public having got into its head that Porter was playing coups, generously suggested that he was pulling Lauzanne to get him in some big handicap light.
“I won't feed such a skate all winter,” he declared angrily, after a little pause.
“Well, give him to me, father,” the girl had pleaded; “I am certain that he'll make good some day; you'll see that he'll pay you for keeping your word.”
As Allis rode Lauzanne she discovered many things about the horse; that instead of being a stupid, morose brute, his intelligence was extraordinary, and, with her at least, his temper perfect.
Allis's relationship with her father was unusual. They were chums; in all his trouble, in all his moments of wavering, buffeted by the waves of disaster, Allis was the one who cheered him, who regirt him in his armor:—Allis, the slight olive-faced little woman, with the big, fearless Joan-of-Arc eyes.
“You'll see what we'll do next summer, Dad,” she said cheerily. “You'll win with Lucretia as often as you did with her mother; and I'll win with Lauzanne. We'll just keep quiet till spring, then we'll show them.”
Langdon's horses, so silently controlled by Philip Crane, Banker, had been put in winter quarters at Gravesend, where Langdon had a cottage. Crane's racing season had been as successful as the Master of Ringwood's had been disastrous. He had won a fair-class race with The Dutchman—ostensibly Langdon's horse—and then, holding true to his nature, which was to hasten slowly, threw him out of training and deliberately planned a big coup for the next year. The colt was engaged in several three-year-old stakes, and Crane set Langdon to work to find out his capabilities. As his owner expected, he showed them in a severe trial gallop the true Hanover staying-power.
Although Crane had said nothing about it at the time, he had his eye on the Eastern Derby when he commissioned Langdon to purchase this gallant son of Hanover. It was a long way ahead to look, to lay plans to win a race the following June, but that was the essence of Crane's existence, careful planning. He loved it. He was a master at it. And, after all, given a good stayer, such as he had in The Dutchman, the mile-and-a-half run of the Derby left less to chance than any other stake he could have pitched upon; the result would depend absolutely upon the class and stamina of the horses. No bad start could upset his calculations, no little interference in the race could destroy his horse's chance if he were good enough to win. The Dutchman's races as a two-year-old would not warrant his being made a favorite, and Langdon, properly directed, was clever enough to see that The Dutchman was at a comfortable price for betting purposes.
Many things had crowded into this year of Crane's life. The bank, doing but a modest business always, was running so smoothly that it required little attention from the owner. This was one reason why he had thrown so much subtle energy into his racing; its speculation appealed to him. The plucking he had received as a moneyed youth rankled in his heart. The possession of such a faithful jackal as Langdon carried him to greater lengths than he would have gone had the obnoxious details been subject to his own execution. Though conscienceless, he was more or less fastidious. Had a horse broken down and become utterly useless, he would have ordered him to be destroyed without experiencing any feeling of compassion—he would have dismissed the matter entirely from his mind with the passing of the command; but rather than destroy the horse himself, he probably would have fed him. And so it was with men. If they were driven to the wall because of his plans, that was their own look out; it did not trouble Philip Crane.
Porter he had known simply in a business way. From the first he had felt that Ringwood would pass out of its owner's possession, and he had begun to covet it. The Lauzanne race had been Langdon's planning altogether. Crane, cold-blooded as he was, would not have robbed a man he had business dealings with deliberately. He had told his trainer to win, if possible, a race with Lauzanne, and get rid of him. That Langdon's villainous scheme had borne evil fruit for John Porter was purely a matter of chance selection. There was a Mephistophelean restitution in not striving to wrest the Eclipse from Lucretia with The Dutchman.
And now, in this year, had come the entirely new experience of an affection—his admiration for Allis Porter. It conflicted with every other emotion that governed his being. All his life he had been selfish—considering only Philip Crane, his mind unharrassed by anything but business obstacles in his ambitious career. Love for this quiet, self-contained girl, unadorned by anything but the truth, and honesty, and fearlessness that were in her big steadfast eyes, had come upon him suddenly and with an assertive force that completely mastered him. By a mere chance he had heard Allis give her recitation, “The Run of Crusader,” in the little church at Brookfield. Crane was not an agnostic, but he had interested himself little in church matters; and the Reverend Dolman's concert, that was meant to top down many weeds of debt that were choking the church, had claimed him simply because an evening in Brookfield had come to hang heavily on his hands. Now when the Reverend Dolman received Philip Crane's check for fifty dollars the next day, to be applied to the church encumbrance, he sought to allay his surprise by attributing the gift to his own special pleading that evening, of course backed up by Providence. If anybody had stated that the mainspring of the gift had been the wicked horse-racing poem of their denunciation he would have been scandalized and full of righteous disbelief. It is quite likely that even Crane would have denied that Allis's poem had inspired him to the check; but nevertheless it had.
The world of feeling and sympathy and goodness that had hung in her voice had set a new window in his soul slightly ajar—so slightly ajar that even now, months afterward, the lovelight was only beginning to stream through. When love comes to a man at forty he is apt to play the game very badly indeed; he turns it into a very anxious business, and moves through the light-tripping measure with the pedantic dignity of a minuet dancer. But Philip Crane was not given to making mistakes; he knew that, like Crusader, “His best racing days (in the love stakes) were over”—especially where the woman was but a girl. So he sat down and planned it all out as he planned to win the Brooklyn Derby months later. And all the time he was as sincerely in love as if he had blundered into many foolishness; but his love making was to be diplomatic. Even now all the gods of Fate stood ranged on his side; Allis's brother was in his bank, more or less dependent upon him; Ringwood itself was all but in the bank; he stood fairly well with John Porter, and much better with Allis's mother, for already he had begun to ingratitate himself with Mrs. Porter. He would cast from the shoulders of the Reverend Dolman a trifle more of the load he was carrying. He would send the reverend gentleman another check.
Why he should think it necessary to prepare his suit with so much subtlety he hardly knew; in all reason he should be considered a fair match for Allis Porter. He was not a bad man as the world understood him; he did not profess Christianity, but, on the other hand, his life was extremely respectable; he did not drink; he was not given to profane language; even in racing his presence seemed to lend an air of respectability to the sport, and it was generally supposed that he raced purely for relaxation. In truth, it seemed to him that his marriage with Allis would be a deuced good thing for the Porters.
In actuality there were just two things that stood in the way—two things which his position and wealth could not obviate—his age, and the Porter pride. If Porter had not been dubbed “Honest John” early in life, he might have been saddled with “Proud Porter” later on. The pride had come up out of old Kentucky with all the other useless things—the horse-racing, and the inability to make money, and the fancy for keeping a promise. Something whispered to Crane that Allis would never come to him simply out of love; it might be regard, esteem, a desire to please her parents, a bowing to the evident decree of fate. Perhaps even the very difficulty of conquest made Crane the more determined to win, and made him hasten slowly.
John Porter had been too interested in his horses and his home life to care much for social matters. Mrs. Porter was a home-body, too, caring nothing at all for society—at best there was but little of it in Brookfield—except where it was connected with church work. Perhaps that was one reason why Allis had grown so close into her father's life. It was a very small, self-contained household.
Mike Gaynor had become attached to the staff at Ringwood this winter as a sort of assistant trainer to Porter. Dixon only trained the Ringwood horses during the racing season, Porter always supervising them in winter quarters. Perhaps it was Porter's great cloud of evil fortune which had cast its sinister influence over Mike because of his sympathy for the master of Ringwood; certain it is that the autumn found him quite “on his uppers,” as he graphically described his financial standing. An arrangement was made by which Mike's disconsolate horses were fed at Ringwood, and he took care of both strings. This delighted Allis, for she had full confidence in Gaynor's integrity and good sense.
The early winter brought two visitors to Ringwood—Crane, who came quite often, and Mortimer, who went out to the farm a couple of times with Alan.
George Mortimer might be described as an angular young man. His face, large-featured, square-jawed, and bold-topped by broad forehead, suggested the solemnity Alan had found so trying. Of course a young man of his make-up was sure to have notions, and Mortimer's mind was knotted with them; there seemed no soft nor smooth places in his timber. That was why he had reasoned with the butcher by energetically grasping his windpipe the evening that worthy gentleman had expressed himself so distastefully over Allis Porter's contribution to the Reverend Dolman's concert. Perhaps a young man of more subtle grace would have received some grateful recognition for this office, but the matter had been quite closed out so far as Mortimer was concerned; Alan tried to refer to it afterward, but had been curtly stopped.
George Mortimer's chief notion was that work was a great thing, seemingly the chief end of man. Another notion almost equally prominent—he had derived it from his mother—was, that all forms of gambling were extremely bad business. First and foremost in this interdiction stood horse racing. The touch of it that hung like a small cloud over the Brookfield horizon had inspired Mrs. Mortimer, as it had other good people of the surrounding country, with the restricted idea that those who had to do with thoroughbred horses were simply gamblers—betting people. Her home was in Emerson, a dozen miles from Brookfield.
Quite paradoxically, if Allis Porter had not given “The Run of Crusader”—most certainly a racing poem—in the little church, this angular young man with stringent ideas about running horses probably would have never visited Ringwood. Something of the wide sympathy that emanated from her as she told of the gallant horse's death struck into his strong nature, and there commenced to creep into his thoughts at odd intervals a sort of gratuitous pity that she should be inextricably mixed up with race horses. His original honesty of thought and the narrowness of his tuition were apt to make him egotistically sure that the things which appealed to him as being right were incapable of variation.
At first he had liked Alan Porter, with no tremendous amount of unbending; now, because of the interest Allis had excited in him, the liking began to take on a supervisory form, and it was not without a touch of irritation in his voice that Alan informed his sister that he had acquired a second father, and with juvenile malignity attributed the incumbrance to her seductive influence.
With all these cross purposes at work it can be readily understood that Mortimer's visits to Ringwood were not exactly rose-leaved. In truth, the actors were all too conventionally honest, too unsocialized, to subvert their underlying motives. Allis, with her fine intuition, would have unearthed Mortimer's disapprobation of racing—though he awkwardly strove to hide it—even if Alan had not enlarged upon this point. This knowledge constrained the girl, even drove her into rebellion. She took his misunderstanding as a fault, almost as a weakness, and shocked the young man with carefully prepared racing expressions; reveled with strange abandon in talks of gallops, and trials, and work-outs, and breathers; threw ironmouthed horses, pullers, skates, and divers other equine wonders at his head until he revolted in sullen irritation. In fact they misunderstood each other finely; in truth their different natures were more in harmony two miles apart, the distance that lay between the bank and Ringwood.
By comparison Crane's visits to Ringwood were utopianly complacent. Strangely enough, Mrs. Porter, opposed to racing as she was, came quite readily under the glamor of his artistic unobtrusiveness. He had complete mastery over the science of waiting. His admission to the good lady of a passing interest in horses was an apology; there seemed such an utter absence of the betting spirit that the recreation it afforded him condoned the offense.
There was this difference between the two men, the old and the young: Crane knew exactly why he went there, while Mortimer had asked himself more than once, coming back from Ringwood feeling that he had been misunderstood—perhaps even laughed at—why he had gone there at all. He had no definite plan, even desire; he was impelled to it out of some unrecognized force. It was because of these conditions that the one potter turned his images so perfectly, and the other formed only poor, distorted, often broken, dishes of inferior clay.
It stood in the reason of things, however, that Mortimer, in spite of his uncompromising attitude toward racing, should be touched by its tentacles if he visited at Ringwood.
His first baptism came with much precipitancy on the occasion of his fourth visit to the Porters. He had driven out with Alan to spend his Saturday afternoon at Ringwood. An afternoon is not exactly like an evening in the matter of entertaining a guest; something must be done; cigars, or music, or small chatter are insufficient. If one is on the western slope of life's Sierra perhaps a nap may kill the time profitably enough, but this was a case where a young man had to be entertained, a young man difficult of entertainment under the circumstances.
Alan had some barbarous expedition of juvenile interest on hand; the unearthing of a woodchuck, or it might have been a groundhog, in a back field; but Allis would not become a party to the destruction of animal life for the sport of the thing. She had a much better programme mapped out for Mortimer. Some way she felt that if he could see the thoroughbred horses in their stalls, could come to know them individually, casually though it might be, he would perhaps catch a glimmer of their beautiful characters. So she asked Mr. Mortimer to go and have a look at her pets. Alan would none of it; he was off to his woodchuck or groundhog.
“I'm glad you don't want to go and kill anything,” she said, turning gratefully to Mortimer when he refused Alan's invitation, saying that he preferred to look at the horses. “I'll show you Diablo, and Lucretia, and Lauzanne the Despised—he's my horse, and I'm to win a big race with him next year. Gaynor is down at the stables; and I'll give you a tip"-Mortimer winced—“if you want to stand well in with Mike, let him suspect that you're fond of horses.”
At the stable door they met Mike Gaynor. Mike usually vacillated between a condition of chronic anger at somebody or something, and an Irish drollery that made people who were sick at heart laugh. Allis was as familiar with his moods as she was with the phases of Lauzanne's temper. On Mike's face was a map of disaster; the disaster might be trivial or great. That something was wrong the girl knew, but whether it was that a valuable horse was dead, or that a mouse had eaten a hole in a grain bag she could only discover by questioning Gaynor, for there were never degrees of expressed emotion in Mike's facile countenance; either a deep scowl or a broad grin were the two normal conditions.
“What's the matter, Mike?” questioned Allis.
“Mather, is it?” began Gaynor, “it's just this, Miss Allis; if yer father thinks I'm goin' to stand by an' see good colts spiled in their timper just because a rapscallion b'y has got the evil intints av ould Nick himself, thin he's mistook, that's all.”
“Who is it Mike—Shandy?”
“That's him, Miss. He's the divil on wheels, bangin' thim horses about as though he was King Juba.”
Allis saw that Gaynor was indeed angry.
“I'll speak to father about him, Mike,” she answered; “I won't have the horses abused.”
“Mark my words, Miss Allis, Diablo'll take it out of his hide some day. The b'y'll monkey wit' him once too often, then there'll be no b'y left.”
“May we see the horses, Mike—are they having their lie-down, or anything?”
“Not yet, Miss; they're gettin' the rub-down now; don't ye hear Diablo bastin' the boords av his stall wid that handy off hind-foot av his?”
“There's a filly for yer life,” exclaimed the Trainer, rapturously, as he opened gently the door of Lucretia's box stall. “There's the straightest filly iver looked through a halter,” he continued, putting his arm with the gentleness of a woman over the brown mare's beautiful neck. “Come here, ould girl,” he said, coaxingly, as he drew the haltered head toward the visitors.
Mortimer looked with interest at the big, comfortable box stall, littered a foot deep with bright, clean, yellow straw. How contented and at home the mare appeared! It seemed almost a complete recompense, this attentive care, for the cruelty he imagined race horses suffered.
“You don't tie her up?” he asked.
“Tie her up!” ejaculated Mike, a fine Celtic scorn in his voice; “I'd rather tie up a wife—if I had one,” he added by way of extenuation. “No man would tie up a mare worth tin thousand dollars if she's worth a cent, an' take chances av her throwin' hersilf in the halter; av coorse she's hitched fer a bit after a gallop while she's havin' a rub-down, but that's all.”
Lucretia's black nozzle came timidly forward, and the soft, velvety upper lip snuggled Allis's cheek.
“She knows ye, Miss,” said Mike. “That's the way wit' horses—they're like children; they know friends, an' ye can't fool thim. Now she's sizin' ye up, Mister,” as Lucretia sniffed suspiciously at Mortimer's chin, keeping a wary eye on him. “She'll know if ye like horses or not, an' I'd back her opinion agin fifty min's oaths.”
Allis watched with nervous interest the investigation. She almost felt that if Lucretia liked her companion—well, it would be something less to dislike in him, at all events. Lucretia seemed turning the thing over in her mind, trying to think it out. There was some mystery about this new comer. Evidently she did not distrust him entirely, else she would have put her ears back a trifle and turned away with a little impatient warning shake of her delicate head. She always turned in that cross manner from Shandy, the stable boy. She had also discovered that the visitor was not completely a horseman; she did not investigate his pockets, nor put her head over his shoulder, as she would have done with Mr. Porter or Mike, or even with one who was a stranger, as was Mortimer, had she felt the unmistakable something which conveyed to her mind that he was of the equine brotherhood.
“Lucretia has found you out,” said Allis, presently. “You do like horses; she knows it.”
“Oh, I like animals, I don't deny,” Mortimer answered, “but I know very little about them—nothing about race horses.”
Mike frowned and looked disparagingly at the visitor. “He must be a quare duck,” he muttered to himself. That a man should know nothing of thoroughbreds was perfectly inexplicable to Gaynor. He knew many racing men whose knowledge of horseflesh was a subject for ridicule, but then they never proclaimed their ignorance, rather posed as good judges than otherwise.
But with startling inconsistency Mike explained: “There's many like ye, sir, only they don't know it, that's all; the woods is full av thim. Would ye like to give the filly a carrot, Miss?” he added, turning to Allis. “I'll bring some.”
When he returned Allis gave one to Lucretia, then they passed to the next stall.
“That's a useful horse,” explained the Trainer; “he's won some races in his 'time.”
“What's his name?” asked Mortimer.
“Game Boy. He's by the Juggler. Ye remember him, don't ye?”
Mortimer was forced to confess that he didn't quite remember Juggler.
“That's strange,” commented Mike, turning the big bay about with evident pride; “he won the 'Belmont,' at Jerome Park, did the ould Juggler. Ye must av heerd av that.”
Mortimer compromised by admitting that he had probably forgotten it.
“Well, I haven't,” declared Mike, reproachfully. “If Game Boy stands a prep this summer ye'll hear from him,” he confided to Mortimer, as they left the stall. “Jist remember Game Boy; see, ye can't forget—a big bay wit' a white nigh fore leg, an' a bit rat-tailed. Yes, Game Boy's all right,” monologued Mike; “but here's a better; this is Diablo. He must have tabasco in his head, fer he's got the divil's own timper. But he can gallop a bit; he can go like a quarterhorse, an' stay till the cows come home; but he's like Lauzanne acrost yonder, he's got a bee in his bonnet an' it takes a divil to ride him.”
“That's hard on me, Mike,” expostulated Allis. “You see, Lauzanne goes better with me in the saddle than any of the boys,” she explained to Mortimer.
“The divil or angels, I was going to say, Miss, when ye interrupted me,” gallantly responded Mike.
Diablo's head was tied high in a corner of the stall, for Shandy, the boy, was hard at work on him with a double hand of straw, rubbing him down. The boy kept up a peculiar whistling noise through his parted lips as he rubbed, and Diablo snapped impatiently at the halter-shank with his great white teeth as though he resented the operation.
Mortimer gazed with enthusiasm at the shining black skin that glistened like satin, or watered silk. Surely there was excuse for people loving thoroughbreds. It was an exhilaration even to look at that embodiment of physical development. It was an animate statue to the excellence of good, clean living. Somehow or other Mortimer felt that though the living creature before him was only a horse, yet nature's laws were being adhered to, and the result was a reward of physical perfection and enjoyment of life. He began to feel that a man, or even a woman—it was the subtle presence of the woman at his side that made him involuntarily interject this clause into his inaudible thoughts—yes, even a woman of high moral attributes might find the most healthy form of interested amusement in watching the superb development of horses that were destined for no other purpose than to race and beget sons and daughters of the same wondrous stamina and courage and speed. His detestation of racing had been in reality an untutored prejudice; he had looked upon but one phase of the question, and that quite casually, as it introduced itself into his life by means of sensational betting incidents in the daily papers. To him all forms of betting were highly disastrous—most immoral. But here, like a revelation, came to him, in all its fascination, the perfect picture of the animal, which he was forced to admit stood next to man in its adornment of God's scheme of creation.
As Shandy swept his wisp of straw along the sensitive skin of Diablo's stomach, the latter shrunk from the tickling sensation, and lashed out impatiently with a powerful hind leg as though he would demolish his tormentor.
“He's not cross at all just,” explained Mike; “he's bluffin', that's all. Shure a child could handle him if they'd only go the right way about it.”
Then he leaned over and whispered in an aside to the visitors—“Bot' t'umbs up!” (this was Mike's favorite oath). “Diablo hates that b'y an' some day he'll do him up, mark my words.”
“Here, Shandy,” he cried, turning to the rubber, “loose the Black's head an' turn him 'round.”
Mortimer almost shrank with apprehension for the boy, for Diablo's ears were back on his flat, tapering neck, and his eyes looking back at them, were all white, save for the intense blue-shimmered pupil. To Mortimer that look was the incarnation of evil hatred. But the boy unsnapped the halter-shank without hesitation, and Diablo, more inquisitive than angry, came mincingly toward them, nodding his head somewhat defiantly, as much as to say that the nature of the interview would depend altogether upon their good behavior.
“See that!” ejaculated Mike, a pleasant smile of satisfaction rippling the furrows of his face; “see how he picks out the best friend the stable's got.”
Diablo had stretched his lean head down, and was trying to nibble with gentle lip the carrot Allis held half hidden behind her skirt. There was none of Lucretia's timidity in Diablo's approach; it was full of an assumption of equality, of trust in the intentions of the stranger who had come with the mistress he hart faith in.
“They're all like that when Miss Allis is about,” explained Mike; “there never would be a bad horse if the stable-b'ys worked the same way. Tie him up, Shandy,” he added. “Even the jockeys spoil their mounts,” Gaynor continued in a monotone; “the horse'll gallop better for women any time—they treat thim gentler, that's why.”
“Most interesting,” hazarded Mortimer, feeling some acknowledgment of Mike's information was due.
“It's the trut'. Miss Allis'd take Lauzanne, or the Black, or the little mare, an' get a better race out av thim than any jock I've seen ridin' hereabout.”
“Mike,” exclaimed Allis, “you flatter me; you almost make me wish that I were a jockey.”
“Well, bot' t'umbs up! Ye'd av made a good un, Miss, an' that's no disrespect to ye, I'm sayin'.”
Mortimer smiled condescendingly. Allis's quick eye caught his expression of amused discontent; it angered her. Mike's praise had been practically honest. To him a good jockey was the embodiment of courage and honesty and intelligence; but she knew that to Mortimer it simply meant a phase of life he considered quite outside the pale of recognized respectability. Somehow she felt that Mike's encomium had lowered her perceptibly in the opinion of this man whom she herself affected to look upon with but toleration.
They visited all the other stalls, eight of them, and listened to Mike's eulogies on the inmates. Coming down the other side of the passage, the last occupied box stall contained Lauzanne.
“Miss Porter'll tell ye about this wan,” said Mike, diplomatically. “He's shaped like a good horse, an' his sire, old Lazzarone, landed many a purse, an' the 'Suburban,' too—won it on three legs, fer he was clean gone in his pins, I'll take me oath to that. He was a good horse—whin he liked. Perhaps Lauzanne'll do the same some day, fer all I know.”
There was such a tone of doubt in the Trainer's voice that even Mortimer noticed it. Neither was there much praise of the big Chestnut; evidently Mike did not quite approve of him, though hesitating to say so in the presence of his mistress.
“Yes, Lauzanne is my horse,” volunteered Allis. “I even ride him in all his work now, since he took to eating the stable-boy.”
“And you're not afraid?” asked Mortimer.
For answer the girl slipped quietly into the stall, and going up beside the Chestnut, who was standing sulkily with his head in the corner of his box, took him by the ear and turned him gently around.
“He's just a quiet-mannered chap, that's all,” she said. “He's a big, lazy, contented old boy,” and she laid her cheek against his fawn-colored nozzle. “You see,” she explained, “he's got more brains than any of the other horses, and when he's abused he knows it.”
“But he's grateful when he's kindly treated,” commented Mortimer.
“Yes; that's why I like horses better than men.”
“Oh!” the exclamation slipped from Mortimer's lips.
“Most men, I mean,” she explained. “Of course, father, and Alan, and—” she hesitated; “you see,” she went on to explain, “the number of my men friends is limited; but except these, and Mike, and Mr. Dixon, I like the horses best.”
“I almost believe you're right, Miss Porter,” concurred Mortimer; “I've known men myself that I fancy were much worse than even Diablo.”
“Mike thinks Lauzanne is a bad horse,” the girl said, changing the subject, “but he'll win a big race this coming season. You just keep your eye on Lauzanne. Here's your carrot, old chap,” she said, stroking the horse's neck, “and we must go if we're to have that drive. Will you hitch the gray to the buggy for us, Mike?” she asked of Gaynor, as they came out of the stable, “we'll wait here.”
As Mike started off there came to their ears a sound of turmoil from Diablo's box; impatient kicks against the boards from the horse, and smothered imprecations from the boy.
“Hear that fiend!” the girl exclaimed, and there was wrath in her voice.
“He does seem a bad horse,” concurred Mortimer.
“I didn't mean Diablo; it's the boy. It's all his evil doing. Oh, I've only one glove,” she exclaimed. “I know where it is, though; that mischievous rascal, Lauzanne, nibbled it from the front of my jacket; I saw him do it, but forgot to pick it up.”
“Allow me, Miss Porter; I'll get it for you.”
“No; please don't!” with emphasis. As he started back, she laid a detaining hand on his arm. “I'd much prefer to go myself; Lauzanne distrusts strangers and might make trouble.”
As the girl entered the stable, Mortimer sauntered on in the direction Mike had gone.
Allis opened the door of Lauzanne's stall, passed in, and searched in the straw for the lost glove.
The noise of strife in Diablo's box had increased. There came the sound of blows on the horse's ribs; a muttered oath, and suddenly a scream of terror from the boy, drowned in an instant by the ferocious battlecry of the enraged stallion. Mortimer, thirty yards away, heard it, and felt his heart stand still; he had never heard anything so demoniac in his life. He turned in such haste that his foot slipped on the frozen earth, and he fell heavily.
At the first sound of blows Allis had started angrily toward Diablo's box. She was at the door when Shandy's cry of terror rang out. For an instant the girl hesitated; what she saw was enough to make a strong man quail. The black stallion was loose; with crunching jaws he had fastened on the arm of Shandy, in the corner of the stall, and was trying to pull the boy down that he might trample him to death. But for a second she faltered; if ever quick action were needed, it was now.
“Back—back, Diablo! back!” she cried, as pushing past the black demon she brought her hunting-crop down with full force between his ears.
Whether it was the sound of his mistress's voice, or the staggering blow, Diablo dropped the boy like a crushed rat, and, half rearing, looked viciously at the brave girl.
“Quick! through the hay window!” commanded Allis, standing between Shandy and the horse, and drawing the whip back over her left shoulder, ready to give it to Diablo full in the throat should he charge again.
Cowed, the boy clambered through the opening. Enraged at the sight of his assailant's escape, the horse gave another scream of defiance and sought with striking forefeet and spread jaws to pull down this new enemy. Not until then had Allis thought of calling for help; her one idea had been for the boy's safety.
Like a flash the full peril of the situation dawned upon her; perhaps her life would be given for the boy who well deserved his punishment. She had seen two stallions fight, and knew that their ferocious natures, once roused, could only be quelled by a force stronger than she possessed. Yes, surely she would be killed-her young life trampled out by the frenzied animal. Incoherently but altogether these thoughts filled her mind; also the knowledge that Mike was beyond hearing.
“Help, Mortimer!” she called.
He heard it as he reached the stable door. Even then he would have been too late had not other rescue come more quickly.
In rushing from Lauzanne's stall Allis had left the door swinging on its hinges. At the first cry of defiance from the black stallion Lauzanne had stretched high his head and sent back, with curled nostril, an answering challenge. Then with ears cocked he had waited for a charge from his natural enemy. When the mingled call of his mistress and Diablo's bugle note came to him he waited no longer, but rushed across the passage and seized the black horse by the crest just as he was overpowering the girl.
It was at that instant Mortimer reached the scene—in his hand a stable fork he had grabbed as he raced down the passage. Even Lauzanne's attack, though it gave Allis a respite, would not have saved her life; the madly fighting horses would have kicked and trampled her to death.
“My God! Back, back, you devils!” And pushing, crowding, hugging the side of the stall, Mortimer fought his way to the girl.
Once Diablo's hoof shot out and the man's left arm, snapping like a pistol, dropped useless at his side. His brain reeled with the shock. The oddly swinging arm, dangling like a doll's, with the palm turned backward, seemed to fascinate him. Why was he there? What was he doing? Why was he hammering the horses over the head with a stable fork held tightly in his right hand? He hardly knew; his mind was clouded; he was fighting by instinct, and always crowding along the wall toward the farther corner. The girl had quite faded from his sight. Somehow he felt that he must drive the horses back, back, out of the stall.
Allis, too, was fighting; bringing the crop down with cutting force over the withers, neck, head, any part of the plunging mass in front of her. She could escape now through the opening where the boy had gone; but was not Mortimer in the same position she had been? She had seen him drop to his knees when Diablo lashed out; he must be sorely hurt; now he was reeling like a drunken man as he fought the mad brutes.
“This way,” she panted, catching him by the coat, and pulling him toward the window.
Ah, that was it! He saw her now. It steadied his senses. It was the girl, and she had called him—“Mortimer!”
“Back,” he yelled irrelevantly, in answer, cutting Diablo across the face with the fork. It was pandemonium.
“Get through the window!” the girl screamed in his ear. “Quick! Now!” and she pushed him toward it.
“You—first—back, you devils!” and he pressed away from her, closer to the horses, thrusting and striking with the steel-pointed fork.
The horses were giving way; Diablo was fighting half through the door, weakening before the onslaught of the powerful chestnut. Even in battle, as in a race, the stamina of the Lazzarone blood was telling; the bulldog courage of the strain was strong upon Lauzanne, now that he was roused.
“Quick! You can get out!” again called the girl.
“You first!”
This drear, repetition was the only expression Mortimer's numbed senses were equal to; but he fought with the ferocity of a tiger—his wound but enraged him.
They could both escape, Allis knew, if she could bring Mortimer to understand; but they must do it quick, if at all. It was useless. He seemed conscious of but the one idea that he must drive the fighting animals out into the passage to save her. She was not afraid now; the man's presence had driven that all away. It was useless to speak to him of the window, neither would go first; so, with her riding whip she fought side by side with Mortimer; springing back from the swift-cutting forefeet; sometimes even hugging close to the side of a horse as he lashed out from behind; and once saving her companion from being cut down by pulling him swiftly from under a raised foot. In the end the stallions were forced out into the passage, just as Mike came rushing upon the scene.
But the battle had waned. Twice Diablo had been pulled to his knees, forced down by the fierce strength that was Lauzanne's; the Black was all but conquered. The Trainer's voice checked Lauzanne's fury; even the boy had plucked up courage to return; and between them the Chestnut was driven into his stall. All the fight had been taken out of Diablo. He struggled to his feet, and stood trembling like a horse that had come out of a fierce cutting race. On his neck were the marks of Lauzanne's teeth, where they had snapped like the jaws of a trap; from his crest trickled a red stream that dripped to the floor like water from a running eave. All the fierce fire of hate had gone from his eyes. He hung his head dejectedly, and his flanks quivered. Lauzanne, too, bore evidence of the vicious strife. On one quarter, where Diablo's sharp hoof had ripped, was a cut as though he had been lashed with a sickle, and his withers were torn.
Mortimer and Allis had come out of the stall. The man, exhausted by the struggle, leaned wearily, with pale, drawn face, against the wall; the floor seemed slipping from under him; he felt a sensation of swiftly passing off into nothingness. He was sleepy, that was all; but a sleepiness to fight against—he must still fight.
“You are badly hurt.” It was the girl's voice. He was almost surprised that he recognized it, everything was so confused. He answered heavily, “Yes, I'm—I'm—I want—to lie down.”
“Here, lean on my shoulder.” It was Mike's voice this time. “This is bad business,” the Trainer was saying; “we must get him out of this; he's nearly knocked out. Are ye all right, Miss?” turning to Allis.
The wounded man turned guiltily; he had forgotten the girl. Yes, surely she had been in that hell of noises with him—fighting too.
“I'm just frightened, that's all,” answered Allis. “Mr. Mortimer saved me.”
Had he? he wondered. How had he come in there, anyway? His mind refused to work out the problem; his side was so sore.
“Yer arm's broke,” said Mike, passing to Mortimer's right side. “Come, lean on me, sir. Can ye walk? I'll put ye in the buggy and drive ye to the house.”
At the first step Mortimer staggered and swayed like a drunken man. In his side were many sharp things pulling him down like grappling irons; on his head was a great weight that crushed his feet into the hard planks; his knees gave under this load, and he would have fallen but for Mike's strong arm.
“I'm—afraid;” then he set his teeth hard, his voice had sought to end the sentence in a groan of anguish; the thing that was tearing at his side had whistled in his lungs.
Allis stepped forward swiftly, and passing her arm about his waist, helped Mike lead him to the door. Twice she put her left hand up and brushed tears from her eyes; the struggle had unnerved her. Very helplessly against her swayed the man she had laughed at half an hour before. And he had been crushed saving her! But that was not why the tears came—not at all. She was unstrung. “And he's got grit,” she kept muttering to herself; “he has never even groaned.”
Together they succeeded in getting him into the buggy; then, gently, Mike drove to the house.