Boy Woodburn | Page 4

he asked innocently.
"He's not the only one," retorted the girl.
"O, I'm not bettin', Boy," pleaded the old man in the whimsical whine which he adopted when addressing his daughter. "Don't go and tell your mother that now. It wouldn't be right. Reelly it wouldn't. I'm only makin' a note or two for Mr. Silver here."
The girl was lost in the crowd by the ropes.
"She'd ha' come and sossed me, too, only you was with me," wheezed the old man confidentially. "You stick close to me, there's a dear. You're like a putection to an old man. She won't do me no 'arm while you're by, de we."
The other smiled. He was an upstanding young man, with the shoulders and the bearing of a soldier; and there was something large and slow and elemental about him. He wore white riding-breeches and tan-coloured boots. The blood polo-pony under the elms, with the little group of coachmen and grooms gathered in an admiring circle round him, was his: and those who had seen Mat drive on to the course in the morning knew that the young man had ridden over the Downs from Putnam's with him.
Boy took her place at the ropes.
The young man found himself standing at her side. He did not watch the race. That keen young face at his side, so self-contained and strong, absorbed him.
Once the girl looked up swiftly, and he was aware of her gray eyes, that flashed in his and were instantly withdrawn, to follow the bob of the heads of the jockeys lifting over a fence on the far side of the course.
"Lul-like my glasses?" he asked, with a slight stutter.
"No," she said. "I can see."
Later she climbed on to the top of an upturned hamper. As the horses made the turn for home, he heard her draw her breath.
"Is he down?" he asked.
"No," she said. "He's got 'em beat."
"How do you know?"
"He's begun to ride," replied the girl briefly.
Old Mat was nibbling his pencil in the rear.
"How's it going, Boy?" he wheezed.
"All right," replied the girl. "He's through now."
The dirty green of the Woodburn colours topped the last fence; and Goosey Gander came lolloping down the straight, his jockey, head on shoulder, wary to the end, easing him home.
"That's a little bit o' better," said Old Mat comfortably, totting up his accounts.
"By Jove, he's a fine horseman!" cried the young man with boyish enthusiasm.
"Monkey Brand!" said the girl, without emotion. "One of the has-beens, I should say."
CHAPTER III
Goosey Gander
Boy Woodburn came leading the winner through the cheering crowd.
It was Old Mat's horse, Old Mat's race; and they had all got a bit on. They were pleased with themselves, pleased with the horse, pleased with the jockey, who, perched up aloft on the great sweating bay, his hands still mechanically at work, his little dark face shining, chaffed his chaffers in the voice of a Punchinello.
"Get off him, Monkey," called a joker; "get off quick afore he falls to pieces. Do!"
"Same as you do when I get talkin' to ye!" retorted the little jockey.
There was a roar of laughter at the expense of the joker, who turned suddenly nasty.
"Who said Chukkers?" he cried.
There was an instant of silence, and then some groans.
"Not me," replied the little jockey grimly.
A snigger rippled through the crowd.
"What you done with your old friend this time, Monkey?" somebody asked. "Laid him out again lately?"
"No such luck," the other answered. "He's beat it."
"Where is he then?"
The little jockey tossed his head backward.
"Gone back to God's Own Country to find his birf certificate. No flowers by request."
The reference was to the fact that Monkey's old-time enemy, the vanquished of Cannibal's National fifteen years before, Chukkers, the greatest of cross-country riders, was an American citizen of uncertain origin.
The thrust was received with a fresh outburst from the hilarious crowd. Monkey Brand's relations with his "old friend" were well known to all.
The little jockey prepared to dismount.
Amid a burst of jeers and cheers, he threw his leg over his horse's withers, slipped to the ground, stripped off the saddle, and limped off to the weighing machine.
Old Mat watched him go.
"On his hoss, on his day," he muttered confidentially to the young man, "Monkey Brand can show his heels to most of 'em yet."
"How old is he?" asked the other.
The old trainer frowned and shook his head mysteriously.
"You must never ask a jockey his age, no more than a woman," he said. "He come to me the year I was married, and that's twenty year since come Michaelmas. And when he come he looked much just the very same as he do now. Might ha' been any age atween ten and a hundred." He dropped his voice. "Only way he shows his years--he ain't so fond of fallin' as he was. And I don't blame