Mrs. Porter, reading a book on the veranda, heard the crunch of wheels as a buggy, slow-moving, turned into the drive. She raised her eyes leisurely, the matter of the story still in her mind; but with a quick cry of “John!” she sprang to her feet, the volume, left to itself, rustling from her lap to the floor. The mother eyes saw that something was wrong, and the mother heart felt that some evil had come to Allis. Mrs. Porter had gone white in an instant. Over her hung heavy at all times the dread of some terrible accident coming to Allis through the horses.
“Did you call, wife?” Porter asked as he came to the door. Then he sprang quickly across the veranda at sight of his wife's blanched face, and made to catch her in his arms. But she stopped him, pointing down the drive. “It's Allis, John; oh, my God!”
“No, no,” he answered, “they're just coming back; here, sit down again, I'll see,” and he raced down the steps just as Mike pulled up.
“What's the matter, girl?” he began.
“The young gentleman's got a bit shook up, sir; nothin' bad loike,” Mike broke in hastily. The diplomatic rider, “nothin' bad,” was added for Mrs. Porter's benefit, his quick eye having seen her white face.
“Miss Allis 's not hurt at all,” he continued. “We'll help the young gintleman in, an' I'd best go for the docthor, I'm thinkin.”
Even as he was speaking they had helped Mortimer from the rig. He had not uttered a sound; his teeth were set hard against the agony that was in his side, and the queer dizziness that was over him left little beyond a consciousness that he was being looked after, and that if he could only keep going for a little, just use his legs a trifle, he would presently be allowed to sleep. Yes, that was what he wanted; he was so drowsy. As he went up the steps between the two men, a haggard face peered at him over the rail. It was familiar; he felt that some recognition was due, for it was a woman's face. He tried to smile. Then he was on a bed, and—and—sleep at last.
When the three men with the silence of disaster over them passed struggling into the house, Mrs. Porter threw herself on Allis's neck, and a passion of tears flooded down and damped the girl's shoulder.
“God be thanked, God be thanked!” gasped the troubled woman, and one hand that was over the girl's shoulder patted her with erratic rapidity. Then she interrupted herself. “What am I saying—it's wicked, and Mr. Mortimer like that. But I can't help it—I can't help it. Oh, Allis! my heart was in my mouth; I feel that some day you will come home like this.”
At that instant Gaynor dashed by them, leaped into the buggy, and called, as he drove off: “I'll have the docthor in a jiffy; the young man's all right!” He was still talking as the whirr of swift-rushing wheels smothered out his voice, and the dust rose like a steam-cloud, almost blotting him from the landscape.
“Oh, girl! I thought you'd been killed.”
“Here, sit down, mother; you're all worked up,” and Allis put a cool hand on her mother's hot forehead.
But the shock to her feelings had loosed the good woman's vocabulary. At all times smouldered in her heart a hatred of racing, even of the horses. “It's the anger of God,” Mrs. Porter denounced vehemently. “This gambling and racing is contrary to His law. Never a night passes, Allis, that I do not pray to God that He may open your father's eyes to the sin of racing. No good can come of it—no good has ever come of it—nothing but disaster and trouble. In a day the substance of a year is wasted. There never can be prosperity living in sin.”
“Hush, mother,” crooned Allis, softly. This outburst from Mrs. Porter startled the girl; it was so passionate, so vehement. When they had talked of racing in the home life the mother had nearly always preserved a reproachful silence; her attitude was understood and respected.
“I must speak, girl,” she said again; “this sinful life is crushing me. Do you think I feel no shame when I sit in meeting and hear our good minister denounce gambling and racing? I can feel his eyes on me, and I cannot raise my voice in protest, for do not I countenance it? My people were all church people,” she continued, almost apologetically, “tolerating no sin in the household. Living in sin there can be no hope for eternal life.”
“I know, mother,” soothed the girl; “I know just how you feel, but we can't desert father. He does not look upon it as a sin, as carrying any dishonor; he may be cheated, but he cheats no man. It can't be so sinful if there is no evil intent. And listen, mother; no matter what anybody may say, even the minister, we must both stick to father if he chooses to race horses all his life.”
“Ah, sweetheart!” John Porter cried out in a pleased voice, as he came out to them, “looking after mother; that's right. Cynthia has helped me fix up Mortimer. He'll be all right as soon as Mike gets back with Rathbone. I think we'd better have a cup of tea; these horses are trying on the nerves, aren't they, little woman?” and he nestled his wife's head against his side. “How did it happen, Allis? Did Mortimer slip into Diablo's box, or—”
“It was all over that rascally boy, Shandy. Diablo was just paying him back for his ill-treatment, and I went in to rescue him, and Mortimer risked his life to save mine.”
“He was plucky; eh, girl?”
“He fought the Black like a hero, father. But, father, you must never think bad of Lauzanne again; if he hadn't come Mr. Mortimer would have been too late.”
“It's dreadful, dreadful,” moaned the mother.
Allis shot a quick look at her father. He changed the subject, and commenced talking about Alan—wondering where he was, and other irrelevant matters.
Then there was fresh divertisement as Mike rattled up, and Doctor Rathbone, who was of a great size, bustled in to where Mortimer lay.
Three smashed ribs and a broken arm was his inventory of the damage inflicted by Diablo's kick, when he came out again with Porter, in an hour.
“I'm afraid one of the splintered ribs is tickling his lung,” he added, “but the fellow has got such a good nerve that I hardly discovered this unpleasant fact. He'll be all right, however; he's young, and healthy as a peach. Good nursing is the idea, and he'll get that here, of course. He doesn't want much medicine; that we keep for our enemies,—ha! ha!” and he laughed cheerily, as if it were all a joke on the battered man.
“Thim docthers is cold-blooded divils,” was Mike's comment. “Ye'd a thought they'd been throwin' dice, an' it was a horse on the other gintleman. Bot' t'umbs! it was, too. Still, if ould Saw-bones had been in the box yonder wit' Diablo, he wouldn't a-felt so funny.”
“Mortimer behaved well; didn't he, Mike?” asked Porter.
“Behaved well; is it? He was like a live divil; punched thim two big stallions till they took water an' backed out. My word! whin first I see him come to the stable wit' Miss Allis, thinks I, here's wan av thim city chumps; he made me tired. An' whin he talked about Lauzanne's knees, m'aning his hocks, I had to hide me head in a grain bag. But if ye'd seen him handle that fork, bastin' the Black, ye'd a thought it was single sticks he was at, wit' a thousand dollars fer a knock-out.”
“One can't always tell how a colt will shape, can they, Mike?” spoke Porter, for Mike's fanciful description was almost bringing a smile to Mrs. Porter's troubled face.
“Ye can't, sor, an' yer next the trut' there. I've seen a herrin'-gutted weed av a two-year-old—I remember wan now; he was a Lexington. It was at Saratoga; an' bot' t'umbs! he just made hacks av iverythin' in soight—spread-eagled his field. Ye wouldn't a-give two dollars fer him, an' he come out an' cleaned up the Troy Stake, like the great horse he was.”
“And you think Mortimer has turned out something like that; eh, Mike?”
“Well, fer a man that knows no more av horses than I know av the strology av stars, he's a hot wan, an' that's the God's trut'.”
Mortimer's gallant act had roused the Irishman's admiration. He would have done as much himself, but that would have been expected of a horseman, constantly encountering danger; that an office man, to be pitied in his ignorance, should have fearlessly entered the stall with the fighting stallions was quite a different matter.
Even Allis, with her more highly developed sense of character analyzation, felt something of this same influence. She had needed some such manifestation of Mortimer's integral force, and this had come with romantic intensity in the tragic box-stall scene. This drama of the stable had aroused no polished rhetoric; Mortimer's declamation had been unconventional in the extreme. “Back, you devils!” he had rendered with explosive fierceness, oblivious of everything but that he must save the girl. The words still rang in the ears of Allis, and also the echo of her own cry when in peril, “Mortimer!” There must have been a foreshadowing in her soul of the man's reliability, though she knew it not.
Even without the doctor's orders, it was patent that Mortimer must remain at Ringwood for a few days.
It was as if Philip Crane, playing with all his intense subtlety, had met his master in Fate; the grim arbiter of man's ways had pushed forward a chessman to occupy a certain square on the board for a time.
Mortimer had been most decisively smashed up, but his immense physique had wonderful recuperative powers. The bone-setting and the attendant fever were discounted by his vitality, and his progress toward recovery, was marvelous.
Crane heard of the accident on one of his visits to Brookfield a couple of days later, and of course must hurry to Ringwood to see his employee. It happened that the Reverend Mr. Dolman graced the Porter home with his presence the same evening that Crane was there.
Naturally the paramount subject of interest was the narrow escape of Miss Allis; but the individuality of discussion gradually merged into a crusade against racing, led by the zealous clergyman. John Porter viewed this trend with no little trepidation of feeling.
It was Mrs. Porter who precipitated matters by piously attributing Allis's escape to Providence.
“Undoubtedly, undoubtedly!” Mr. Dolman said, putting the points of his fingers together in front of his lean chest. He paused a moment, and Porter groaned inwardly; he knew that attitude. The fingers were rapiers, stilettos; presently their owner would thrust, with cutting phrase, proving that they were all indeed a very bad lot. Perhaps John Porter would have resented this angrily had he not felt that the Reverend Inquisitor was really honest in his beliefs, albeit intolerably narrow in his conclusions.
Dolman broke the temporary silence. “But we shouldn't tempt Providence by worshiping false images. Love of animals is commendable—commendable”—he emphasized this slight concession—“but race horses always appeal to me as instruments of the Evil One.”
“It wasn't the horse's fault at all, Mr. Dolman,” Allis interposed, “but just a depraved human's. It was the boy Shandy's fault.”
“I wasn't thinking of one horse,” continued the minister, airily; “I meant race horses in general.”
“I think Mr. Dolman is right,” ventured Mrs. Porter, hesitatingly; “it's flying in the face of Providence for a girl to go amongst those race horses.”
“Bad-tempered men make them vicious, mother,” Allis said; “and I believe that Shandy's punishment was the visitation of Providence, if there was any.”
The Reverend Dolman's face took on an austere look. It was an insult to the divine powers to assert that they had taken the part of a race horse. But he turned the point to his own ends. “It's quite wrong to abuse the noble animal; and that's one reason why I hold that racing is contrary to the Creator's intentions, quite apart from the evil effect it has on morals.”
“Are all men immoral who race, Mr. Dolman?” John Porter asked.
His question forced Dolman to define his position. Porter always liked things simplified; racing was either wrong in principle or right. Dolman found him rather a difficult man to tackle. He had this irritating way of brushing aside generalization and forcing the speaker to get back to first principles.
The reverend gentleman proceeded cautiously. “I should hardly care to go so far as that—to make the rule absolute; a very strong man might escape contamination, perhaps.”
Mrs. Porter sighed audibly. The minister was weakening most lamentably, giving her husband a loophole to escape.
“I hardly think racing quite so bad as it is generally supposed to be,” interposed Crane, feeling that Porter was being pilloried somewhat. He received a reproachful look from Mrs. Porter for his pains.
“I've never seen any good come of it,” retorted Dolman. “A Christian man must feel that he is encouraging gambling if he countenances racing, for they contend that without betting racing is impossible.”
“Everything in life is pretty much of a gamble,” Porter drawled, lazily; “there aren't any such things. The ships that go to sea, the farmer's crop—everything is more or less a matter of chance. If a man goes straight he has a fairly easy time with his conscience, no matter what he's at; but if he doesn't, well, he'd better go hungry.”
“A great many very honorable men are racing today,” added Crane; “men who have built up large fortunes through honest dealing, and wouldn't be racing if they felt that it was either unchristian or dishonorable.”
“They can't be Christians if they countenance gambling,” asserted the minister, doggedly.
It occurred to Mortimer that whenever the discussion took broader lines, Dolman drew it back into the narrow cell of his own convictions.
Porter scratched his head perplexedly. They had been discussing the moral influence of racing; this seemed more like theology. “It is certainly unchristian,” commented Mrs. Porter, severely. “I haven't seen much Christian spirit in any business,” said Porter, quietly; “they all seem more a matter of written agreements. In fact there's more done on honor in racing than in any of the business gambles. A man that's crooked in racing is sure to come to grief in the long run.”
Crane shifted in his chair, and Dolman coughed deprecatingly. “For my part,” continued Porter, “I've never found it necessary to do anything I'm ashamed of in racing.”
His wife saw an opening. “But, John dear, you were treated most shamefully last year; a dishonest boy hauled your horse—”
“Pulled, mother,” interposed Allis; “pulled father's horse, you mean.”
“Perhaps, though I fail to see where the difference can be, if the horse ran the other way and your father lost.”
Porter smiled indulgently. “The boy was punished, Helen,” he said. “Dishonesty is not tolerated on the race course.”
“Yes, but something is always happening,” she continued in lament. “It's contrary to the law of the church, John. It seems just like a visitation of divine wrath the way things happen. And you're so sanguine, John; last year you were going to win a big race with Diablo when he threw his leg—”
“Threw a splint, mother,” prompted Allis.
“I thought your father said it was his leg had something the matter with it,” argued Mrs. Porter.
“The splint was on his leg, mother dear.”
“Well, I'm not familiar with racing phrases, I must say, though I should be, goodness knows; I hear little else. And talk of cruelty to animals!” she turned to Mr. Dolman; “they burned the poor beast's leg with hot irons—”
The minister held up his hands in horror.
“It didn't give him as much pain as the doctor gave Mr. Mortimer setting his arm,” declared Allis.
“But it was racing injured the horse's leg,” interposed Dolman.
“But your horse has got a ringbone, Mr. Dolman,” said Allis, “and a spavin, too. I've been looking at him. That's because you drive him too fast on hard roads. And his feet are contracted from neglect in shoeing. It's just cruel the way that poor old horse has been neglected. Race horses are much better taken care of.”
Allis's sudden onslaught switched Mr. Dolman from the aggressive to the defensive with great celerity.
“I confess I know very little about horses,” he was forced to apologize; then, with something of asperity, “the spiritual welfare of my congregation takes up my entire time.”
This rebuke caused a momentary silence, and Dolman, turning to Mortimer, said, “I hope you don't approve of racing, sir.”
Mortimer didn't, but a look from Allis's eyes inexplicably enough caused him to hedge very considerably in his reply.
“I know nothing about the race course,” he said, “but from what I see of the thoroughbreds I believe a man would have to be of very low order if their noble natures did not appeal to him. I think that courage, and honesty, and gentleness—they all seem to have it—must always have a good influence. Why, sir,” he continued, with a touch of excitement, “I think a man would be ashamed to feel that he was making himself lower than the horses he had to do with.”
Allis looked grateful. Even Porter turned half about in his chair, and gazed with a touch of wonderment at the battered young man who had substituted common sense for sophistical reasoning.
The reverend gentleman frowned. “It's not the horses at all,” he said, “it's the men who are disreputable.”
Mrs. Porter gave a little warning cough. In his zealousness Mr. Dolman might anger her husband, then his logic would avail little.
“The men are like the horses,” commented Porter, “some bad and some good. They average about the same as they do in anything else, mostly good, I think. Of course, when you get a bad one he stands out and everybody sees him.”
“And sometimes horses—and men, too, I suppose—get a bad name when they don't deserve it,” added Allis. “Everybody says Lauzanne is bad, but I know he's not.”
“That was a case of this dreadful dishonesty,” said Mrs. Porter, speaking hastily. She turned in an explanatory way to Crane. “You know, Mr. Crane, last summer a rascally man sold my husband a crooked horse. Now, John, what are you laughing at?” for her husband was shaking in his chair.
“I was wondering what a crooked horse would look like,” he answered, and there were sobs in his voice.
“Why, John, when you brought him home you said he was crooked.”
As usual, Allis straightened matters out: “It was the man who was crooked. Mother means Lauzanne,” she continued.
“Yes,” proceeded the good woman, “a Mr. Langdon, I remember now, treated my husband most shamefully over this horse.”
Crane winced. He would have preferred thumbscrews just then. “John is honest himself,” went on Mrs. Porter, “and he believes other men, and this horse had some drug given him to make him look nice, so that my husband would buy him.”
“Shameful,” protested Dolman. “Are men allowed to give horses drugs?” he appealed to Mr. Porter.
“No; the racing law is very strict on that point.”
“But evidently it is done,” contended Dolman.
“I think there's very little of it,” said Porter.
This turn of the conversation made Crane feel very uneasy. “Do you think, Mr. Porter,” he asked, “that there was anything of that sort over Lauzanne? Do you think Langdon would—” He hesitated.
“Mr. Langdon has a tolerable idea of what I think,” answered Porter. “I shouldn't trust that man too much if I were you. He's got cunning enough, though, to run straight with a man like yourself, who has a horse or two in his stable, and doesn't go in for betting very heavily.”
“I know very little about him,” protested Crane; “and, as you say, he will probably act quite straightforward with me, at least.”
“Yes,” continued Porter, half wearily, as though he wished to finish the distasteful discussion; “there are black sheep in racing as there are in everything else. My own opinion is that the most of the talk we hear about crooked racing is simply talk. At least nine out of ten races are honestly run—the best horse wins. I would rather cut off my right hand than steal a race, and yet last summer it was said that I had pulled Lucretia.”
“I never heard of that, John,” cried Mrs. Porter, in astonishment.
“No, you didn't,” dryly answered her husband.
Allis smiled; she had settled that part of it with her father at the time.
“If you'll excuse me,” began Crane, rising, “I think Mr. Wortimer is getting tired. I believe I'll jog back to Brookfield.”
Reluctantly the Reverend Dolman rose, too. He felt, somehow, that the atmosphere of racing had smothered his expostulation—that he had made little headway. The intense honesty that was John Porter's shielded him about almost as perfectly as, a higher form of belief might have done.
But with almost a worldly cunning it occurred to the clergyman that he could turn the drawn battle into a victory for the church; and as they stood for a minute in the gentle bustle of leave-taking, he said: “The ever-continuing fight that I carry on against the various forms of gambling must necessarily take on at times almost a personal aspect—” he was addressing Mr. Porter, ostensibly—“but in reality it is not quite so. I think I understand your position, Mr. Porter, and—and—what shall I say—personally I feel that the wickedness of racing doesn't appeal to you as a great contamination; you withstand it, but you will forgive me saying so, thousands have not the same strength of character.”
Porter made a deprecatory gesture, but Dolman proceeded. “What I was going to say is, that you possibly realize this yourself. You have acted so wisely, with what I would call Christian forethought, in placing your son, Alan, in a different walk in life, and—” he turned with a grave bow in Crane's direction—“and in good hands, too.”
“His mother wished it,” Porter said, simply.
“Yes, John was very good about Alan's future,” the mother concurred. “But, husband, you quite agreed that it was much better for Alan to be in the bank than possibly drifting into association with—well, such dishonorable men as this Mr. Langdon and his friends. He is so much better off,” she continued, “with young men such as Mr. Crane would have about him.”
The Reverend Dolman smiled meekly, but it was in triumph. He had called attention to an act which spoke far louder than Mr. Porter's disclaiming words.
Porter was not at all deceived by the minister; in fact, he rather admired the other's cleverness in beating him on the post. He gave a little laugh as he said: “I should not have succeeded very well in a bank. I am more at home with the horses than I am with figures; but I expect I would have gone fairly straight, and hope the boy will do the same. I fancy one of the great troubles about banking is to keep the men honest, the temptation of handling so much money being great. They seem to have more chances to steal than men on the race course.”
As usual, Porter seemed to be speaking out of his thoughts and without malice; no one took offense. It was simply a straightforward answer to Dolman's charge.
Porter had simply summed up the whole business in a very small nutshell. That there was temptation everywhere, and that honest men and thieves were to be found on race courses, in banks, in every business, but that, like the horses, a fair share of them were honest.
“Speaking materially of race horses quite outside of the moral aspect,” said Crane, as he was taking his leave, “you'll have to be mighty careful of that Diablo, Mr. Porter, when Miss Allis is about; he seems a vindictive brute.”
“Yes, John; you'll have to sell him right away; I'll be frightened to death while he's about the place.”
“I shall never be a bit afraid of him,” remonstrated Allis; “Shandy, who made all the mischief, has been discharged.”
“Diablo has always been more trouble than he's worth,” said Porter. “I thought he was going to be a good horse, but he isn't; and if he has taken to eating people I'll give him away some day. I wouldn't sell him as a good horse, and nobody'd buy a man-eater.”
“I'll buy him when you make up your mind, Mr. Porter,” exclaimed Crane, somewhat eagerly. “I have nobody sweet enough to tempt his appetite. In the meantime, Miss Allis, if I were you I should keep away from him.”
Then presently, with good-nights and parting words of warning about Diablo, the guests were gone; and Mortimer, having declined Porter's proffered help, was somewhat awkwardly—having but one good hand—preparing to retire in Alan's room.
His mind worked somewhat faster than his fingers; several new problems had been given it to labor over within the compass of a single moon. That horse racing should ever become a disturbing interest in his life had seemed very improbable; now it was like a gale about his soul, it swayed him. He was storm-tossed in the disturbing element; he could come to no satisfying conclusion. On the one hand the thoroughbred horses were to be admired; they were brave and true, creatures of love. Also Porter was an honest man, the one thing he admired above all else.
And Miss Allis! Somehow or other his eyes wandered to a picture that rested on a mantelpiece in the room. He took it down, looking furtively over his shoulder as he did so, and taking it close under the lamp that was on the table sat and gazed steadfastly into the girlish face.
Even in the photograph the big, wondrous eyes seemed to say, “What of wrong, if we are not wrong?” That was the atmosphere so thoroughly straightforward and honest that wrong failed of contamination.
Still it was unconvincing to Mortimer. The horses might be good, the man honest, and the girl pure and sweet, but the life itself was distasteful. Reason as one might, it was allied to gambling. Mortimer rose with a sigh, the whole thing wearied him. Why should he distress his mind over the matter? As he put the photograph back on the mantel he held it for an instant, then suddenly; with a nervous, awkward gesture, brought it to his lips and kissed the eyes that seemed to command tribute.
The movement twisted his broken-ribbed side and an agony of pain came to him in quick retribution. It was as though the involuntary kiss had lurched him forward into a futurity of misery. The spasm loosed beads of perspiration which stood cold on his forehead. Swift taken from the stimulant of his thoughts, his nerves overtaxed by the evening, jangled discordantly, and he crept into bed, feeling an unutterable depression as though the room, was filled with evil, threatening spirits.
In coincidence the two men, Mortimer and Crane, had similar thoughts the day after Mr. Dolman's discussion; and, rather remarkably, their deductions were alike, having the same subject of mental retrospect—Allis Porter.
It was evident that outside of her family little interested her but horses; certainly not a very lofty aspiration. When the conversation had dealt with broad principles, men and their shortcomings, the previous evening, she had centralized it in Lauzanne, picturing him as symbolical of good acts and evil repute. Patently it was difficult to become interested in such a young woman; actually she monopolized their thoughts. Inconsistently the fair offender felt no recoil of this somewhat distressing situation; her mind busied itself chiefly over the reclamation of Lauzanne.
By inheritance all the qualities of a good horse had come to him except a submissive temper. Allis worked on the theory that his disposition had been set awry by injudicious handling; that unlimited patience would cause him to forget all that. He could gallop, else he had not won the race in which he beat The Dutchman. That he had needed a stimulant that day was because he had been soured and would not try with his wits about him. From the time of coming back to Ringwood Allis had ridden him in all his exercise gallops, and had asked Mike personally to supervise his stable education. It had taken all her great patience, all her youthful enthusiasm and faith, for the Chestnut had notions beyond all belief. At first, missing the abuse, he almost seemed to thirst for it; tried the gentle girl in every way—sulked, and loafed, and took little streaks of trying to cut the course, and made false breaks as though he were going to run with a full vigor; even laid hold of the horses with his teeth when opportunity offered. These antics did not break the girl's faith; she rode him with the gentle hand a woman knows and a horse soon learns to appreciate, and gave him to understand that he was to have fair treatment.
Porter viewed this continuous performance with silent skepticism. He did not abuse horses himself, neither did he put up with too much nonsense from them. To him they were like children, needing a lot of tolerant kindness, but, also, at times, to be greatly improved by a sound whipping. Once when he suggested something of this sort to Allis, saying that Lauzanne was a spoiled child, she admitted he was, but that thoughtless cruelty and not indulgence had done the harm, therefore kindness was the cure. The first sign of regeneration was the implicit faith that Lauzanne began to place in his young mistress. At first when she put up a hand to pet him he would jerk his head away in affright; now he snuggled her shoulder, or nibbled at her glove in full spirit of comradarie. Then one day in a gallop came a stronger manifestation, a brief minute of exhilaration, with after-hours of thankfulness, and beyond that, alas for the uncertainty of a spoiled temper, an added period of wallowing in the Slough of Despond!
It was on a crisp, sparkling morning, and with Shandy—it was before his downfall—on Lucretia, another stable lad, Ned Carter, on Game Boy, and Allis on Lauzanne, the three swung off for a working gallop of a mile or more. Lauzanne was in an inquisitive mood, as the other two raced on in front. What was his light-weighted rider up to anyway? Why did she always leave it to him to do just as he liked? Was she really deceiving him? Did she wish him to lie back there behind the others always? He fell to wondering what she would do if he were to take hold of the bit and spread his big muscles in one rushing gallop, and go on past the others and get home to the feed box first. He rattled the snaffle in his mouth with nervous indecision—he had a notion to try it.
“Steady, my boy!” said Allis, as she slipped the reins back through her fingers till they stretched tight. A dozen times she had sought in vain to make him think she did not wish him to gallop, but something in the crisp air this morning threw him off his guard. Why should he be forced to lag behind? He stretched the arch of his neck straight till the bit held hard in his mouth; the ears pitched forward in eager point; the great frame under the girl quivered and sank closer to earth; the roar of his beating hoofs came up to her ears, muffled by the drive of the wind that was now a gale as the Chestnut raced into it with the speed of an express. How her heart sang! Here was speed, and with such stride—strong, and straight, and true! Low she crouched, and her call to Lauzanne was but a joyous whisper. Her small hands were framed in steel, strength to steady the big Chestnut as he swung round the course glued to the rail. On Lauzanne sped, and to the rhythm of his big heaving quarters the girl's soul sang a song of delight. At last, at last was coming her reward.
And then, just when everything had been achieved, when the great gallop had brought them half up the stretch, something came to Lauzanne—perhaps the memory of the whipping finishes; at any rate, he curled up like a dog, threw his ears back—Allis could feel the sudden stiff prop of the forelegs as he set himself against the rush of speed—and in a dozen strides he was Lauzanne again, Lauzanne the Despised.
And so it had gone on for weeks, Allis working out her theory up to the time of the trouble over Diablo. There was something in the girl's quiet determination that was masterful; perhaps that was why she had always had her own way at home. Now this mastery was spreading out wonderfully; Lauzanne, and Mike, and her father, and Crane, and Mortimer, all in different degrees of subjection, but, as Fate knew, all subject.
Mrs. Porter's continual lament on the subject of racing had given Crane a keynote for his line of action. It was the day following her scoring of the tolerant husband that Crane revisited Ringwood full of his new idea.
He had an impulse to buy back Lauzanne. For almost the first time in his life he experienced twinges of remorse; this was because of Allis. Porter's affairs were in a bad way, and he would probably accept eagerly an offer from Crane to lighten his load. Individually he cared little for Porter's financial troubles, but it was a good opportunity to prepare the way for a stronger pressing of his suit with the girl. With his usual fine discrimination he spoke to Mrs. Porter first, intimating never so slightly that her words had won his entire sympathy; that if her husband would sell any of the horses he would buy them.
There was a convincing sincerity about Crane at all times; what he did he did with the full vigor of a man believing in its truth. One might almost have suspected that he deceived himself, that he had no conception of the unrighteousness of his acts. At any rate, he imposed most successfully upon the mother of Allis. Quite egotistically she attributed to herself the trend of his friendship. In racing phrase, Crane was out for a killing and playing his cards with consummate skill.
With the master of Ringwood he went very straight to the point. This was possible, as Porter could not hesitate to discuss his financial condition with his banker. Crane offered to buy Lucretia; this with him was purely a speculation, but Porter would not part with his little mare. Then the banker spoke of Lauzanne, saying that he felt somewhat guilty since learning the previous evening that the horse had been doped. Porter failed to see where Crane had anything to do with it. But the latter insisted that he had unwittingly helped Langdon by speaking of Lauzanne as a good horse. He had known nothing of the matter, beyond that his trainer had assured him the horse would win; in fact, he had backed him.
Porter laughed at the idea that responsibility could attach to Crane. As to the Chestnut, he was not worth a tenth of the three thousand he had cost—that was well known; and if Crane or any other man sought to buy him at that price it would savor too much of charity. At any rate, Lauzanne belonged to Allis, and Crane would have to bargain with her.
Then there was Diablo, Crane said; his presence was a menace to Miss Porter.
“I've nursed him for a good while,” Porter replied, “and he's a bad betting proposition—he's too uncertain. You don't want such a horse as that—nobody does. I'll keep him a bit longer, and put him in a handicap or two where the purse will be worth running for, and I won't have to back him; he'll get in with a featherweight, and some day may take it into his head to gallop, though he's a rank bad one.”
Crane did not press the point; he understood Porter's motives throughout. He knew the master of Ringwood was an unchanging man, very set in his ways, adhering closely to his plans and opinions. So Crane went back to Brookfield without purchasing a horse, saying as he left, “I claim first privilege when you wish to sell.”
He had talked to Porter in the stable, and Mike, busy near by, heard that part of their conversation referring to the horses.
“They haven't got money enough in the bank to take the little mare from us yet, have they, Mike?” Porter said to Gaynor, full of his pride in Lucretia.
“That they haven't, sor,” replied Mike, proudly. “But, faith, I wish th' gint hadn't come a-tryin' to buy her; it's bad luck to turn down a big offer fer any horse.”
Porter smiled indulgently. This stable superstition did not appeal to him.
“It would a-broke the bad luck, sor, to have let him took the Black.”
“It would have broken his bank, you mean, Mike.”
“Well, he'll break somewan's back here yet, an' I'm tellin' you that sthraight. They say a black cat's full av th! divil, but Diablo's ould Nick hisself, though I'm sayin'it was th' b'y Shandy's fault sp'ilin' him. An' if it wasn't fer Miss Allis it's a pity you couldn't a-sold him the Chestnut. He's a sawhorse—he's as heavy in th' head as a bag of salt; he'll never do no good to nobody. Them's the kind as kapes a man poor, eatin' their heads off, an' wan horse, or maybe two, in the stable earnin' th' oats fer them. It's chaper to cut th' t'roats av such cattle.”
“I believe you're right, Mike,” Porter answered, quietly, as he left the stable.
Crane, driving back to Brookfield, turned over in his mind the matter of his mission. He was satisfied. He had succeeded in the main objective point. It would have been a good move to have acquired Lucretia, to have tempted her owner to part with her for ready money in sight. The money would soon have disappeared; then Porter, with a lot of bad horses on his hand, would almost certainly have come more firmly into the grasp of Crane. The offer to buy Lauzanne had been a bit of saving grace, a faint, generous impulse, begot of Allis's regenerating influence; but Crane had discovered that Porter did not at all suspect him of interest in the fraud—that was a great something. He had also established himself firmly in Mrs. Porter's good graces, he could see. It would be indeed strange if in the end he did not succeed completely.
Shandy's escapade with Diablo had brought a new trouble to Mike Gaynor.
The boy had been discharged with a severe reprimand from Mr. Porter, and a punctuation mark of disapproval from the Trainer's horn-like hand. He had departed from Ringwood inwardly swearing revenge upon everybody connected with that place; against Diablo he was particularly virulent.
Mike tried to secure a boy in the Brookfield neighborhood to ride Diablo in his work, but Shandy's evil tongue wagged so blatantly about the horse's bad temper that no lad could be found to take on in the stables. Ned Carter might have ridden Diablo at work, but the big Black was indeed a horse of many ideas. He had taken a notion to gallop kindly while accompanied by Lucretia and Lauzanne; worked alone he sulked and was as awkward as a broncho of the plains. Also he disliked Carter—seemed to associate his personality with that of Shandy's.
Mike's discontent over the hitch spread to John Porter. It was too bad; the horses had been doing so well. For three days Diablo had no gallop. On the fourth Porter determined to ride the horse himself; he would not be beaten out by an ungrateful whelp like Shandy. In his day he had been a famous gentleman jock, and still light enough to ride work.
“I don't like the idea, sor; it's not good enough,” remonstrated Mike.
But his master was obdurate. If Allis rode Lauzanne, why shouldn't he ride Diablo?
Gaynor would have ridden the horse himself rather than have his master do so, but he had a bad leg. Once upon a time it had been crushed against the rail. Somebody must ride Diablo; the horse, naturally highstrung, was becoming wild with nervousness through being knocked out of his work.
For three days after his discharge Shandy sat brooding with the low cunning of a forest animal over his fancied ill-treatment. More than once he had received money from Langdon for touting off to him Porter's stable matters; now in his unreasoning bitterness he contrasted Langdon and Porter.
“Dick's white, he is, an' I'll go git a job from him. I gits half eat by that crazy skate, an' fired without a cent fer it. God drat 'em!” he muttered; “I'll get even, or know why. They'll put Ned up on Diablo, will they? The sneak! He split on me fer beltin' the Black, I know, damn him! They ain't got another boy an' they won't git one. I'll fix that stiff, Carter, too; then they won't have no boy.”
He drank beer, and as it irritated his ferret mind a devilish plot came into his being and took possession of him—a plot easy of execution because of his familiarity with the Ringwood stables.
That night he slipped through the dark, like a hyena pup, to Ringwood. That the stable was locked mattered not. More than once, out of laziness, Shandy had shirked going to Mike's quarters for the keys and had found ingress by a small window, a foot square, through which the soiled straw bedding was thrown into the yard. Standing on the dung heap, Shandy worked open the board slide that closed this window, and wormed his weasel-form through the small opening. He passed down the passage between the stalls and entered a saddle room at the farther end.
“The bloomin' thing used to be on the fourth peg,” he muttered, drawing his small figure up on tiptoe and feeling along the wall for something. “Blow me!” and he chuckled fiendishly as his fingers encountered the cold steel of a bit, “I'd know that snaffle in hell, if I got a feel of it.”
There was a patent device of a twist and a loose ring in the center of the bit he clutched, which Porter had devised for Diablo's hard mouth.
Shandy gave the bridle a swing, and it clattered to the floor from its peg. Diablo snorted and pawed the planks of his stall nervously.
“All right, my buck,” hissed Shandy, “you wait till to-morror; you'll git the run of yer life, I'm thinkin', damn their eyes!” and he went off into a perfect torrent of imprecation against everybody at Ringwood, hushing his voice to a snarling whisper. Then he shut the door of the saddle room, sat down on the floor and pulled from his pocket a knife and stub of candle. He lighted the latter and held it flame down till a few drops of wax formed a tiny lake; into this he stuck the candle upright, shielding its flame with his coat. He opened the knife and laying it down, inspected minutely the bridle which lay across his leg.
“It's Diablo's right enough,” he said; “I couldn't be mistook on the bit, nor them strong lines.”
He picked up the knife, and holding the leather rein across the palm of his left hand started to saw it gently with the blade. Almost instantly he left off. “Of all the bloomin' ijits! God drat me fer a goat! He'd feel that cut the first slip through his fingers the leather took.”
He gathered in the rein until he had it six inches from the bit. There he cut, stopping many times, and doubling the leather close to the light to see how deep he had penetrated.
“There, Mr. Bloody Ned!” he exclaimed at last, as inspection showed that only the outer hard shell of the leather remained intact. “That'll just hold till the Black takes one of his cranky spells, an' you give him a stiff pull. God help you then!” Even this was a blasphemous cry of exultation; not a plea for divine assistance for the man he plotted against.
His next move proved that his cunning was of an exceptional order. From his coat pocket he brought forth a pill box. In this receptacle Shandy dipped a forefinger, and rubbed into the fresh cut of the leather a trifle of blackened axle grease which he had taken from a wagon wheel before starting out. Then he wiped the rein with his coat tail and looked at it admiringly.
“The bloke won't see that, blast him!”
He hung the bridle up in its place, put out the candle, dropped it in his pocket and made his way from the stable.
As he passed Diablo's stall the big Black snorted again, and plunged in affright.
“You'll get enough of that to-morror,” sneered the boy. “I hope you and Ned both break your damn necks. Fer two cents I'd drop somethin' in your feed-box that'd settle you right now; but it's the skunk as split on me I want to get even with.”
Shandy trudged back to where he nested in Brookfield and soon slept with calm restfulness, as though no evil had ever homed in his heart. In the first gray of the early morning he rose and went out to the race course.