Garrisons Finish | Page 5

venom, and all the bandit passions.
Waterbury, the gentleman in him soaked by the taint of a foisted
dishonor and his fighting blood roused, waited with clenched fists. As
Garrison hopped in for the fourth time, the older man feinted quickly,
and then swung right and left savagely.
The blows were caught on the thick arm of a tan box-coat. A big hand
was placed over Waterbury's face and he was given a shove backward.
He staggered for a ridiculously long time, and then, after an
unnecessary waste of minutes, sat down. The tan overcoat stood over
him. It was Jimmy Drake, and the chameleonlike crowd applauded.
Jimmy was a popular book-maker with educated fists. The crowd
surged closer. It looked as if the fight might change from bantam-heavy
to heavy-heavy. And the odds were on Drake.
"If yeh want to fight kids," said the book-maker, in his slow, drawling
voice, "wait till they're grown up. Mebbe then yeh'll change your
mind."
Waterbury was on his feet now. He let loose some vitriolic verbiage,
using Drake as the objective-point. He told him to mind his own
business, or that he would make it hot for him. He told him that
Garrison was a thief and cur; and that he would have no book-maker
and tout--
"Hold on," said Drake. "You're gettin' too flossy right there. When you
call me a tout you're exceedin' the speed limit." He had an
uncomfortable steady blue eye and a face like a snow-shovel. "I

stepped in here not to argue morals, but to see fair play. If Billy
Garrison's done dirt--and I admit it looks close like it--I'll bet that your
stable, either trainer or owner, shared the mud-pie, all right--"
"I've stood enough of those slurs," cried Waterbury, in a frenzy. "You
lie."
Instantly Drake's large face stiffened like cement, and his overcoat was
on the ground.
"That's a fighting word where I come from," he said grimly.
But before Drake could square the insult a crowd of Waterbury's
friends swirled up in an auto, and half a dozen peacemakers, mutual
acquaintances, together with two somnambulistic policemen, managed
to preserve the remains of the badly shattered peace. Drake sullenly
resumed his coat, and Waterbury was driven off, leaving a back draft of
impolite adjectives and vague threats against everybody. The crowd
drifted away. It was a fitting finish for the scotched Carter Handicap.
Meanwhile, Garrison, taking advantage of the switching of the lime-
light from himself to Drake, had dodged to oblivion in the crowd.
"I guess I don't forget Jimmy Drake," he mused grimly to himself.
"He's straight cotton. The only one who didn't give me the double-
cross out and out. Bud, Bud!" he declared to himself, "this is sure the
wind-up. You've struck bed-rock and the tide's coming in--hard. You're
all to the weeds. Buck up, buck up," he growled savagely, in fierce
contempt. "What're you dripping about?" He had caught a tear burning
its way to his eyes--eyes that had never blinked under Waterbury's
savage blows. "What if you are ruled off! What if you are called a liar
and crook; thrown the game to soak a pile? What if you couldn't get a
clotheshorse to run in a potato-race? Buck up, buck up, and plug your
cotton pipe. They say you're a crook. Well, be one. Show 'em you don't
care a damn. You're down and out, anyway. What's honesty, anyway,
but whether you got the goods or ain't? Shake the bunch. Get out before
you're kicked out. Open a pool-room like all the has-beens and trim the
suckers right, left, and down the middle. Money's the whole thing. Get

it. Don't mind how you do, but just get it. You'll be honest enough for
ten men then. Anyway, there's no one cares a curse how you pan out--"
He stopped, and his face slowly relaxed. The hard, vindictive look
slowly faded from his narrowed eyes.
"Sis," he said softly. "Sis--I was going without saying good-by. Forgive
me."
He swung on his heel, and with hunched shoulders made his way back
to Aqueduct. Waterbury's training-quarters were adjacent, and, after
lurking furtively about like some hunted animal, Garrison summoned
all his nerve and walked boldly in.
The only stable-boy about was one with a twisted mouth and flaming
red hair, which he was always curling; a remarkably thin youth he was,
addicted to green sweaters and sentimental songs. He was singing one
now in a key entirely original with himself. "Red's" characteristic was
that when happy he wore a face like a tomb-stone. When sad, the
sentimental songs were always in evidence.
"Hello, Red!" said Garrison gruffly. He had been Red's idol once. He
was quite prepared now, however, to see the other side of the curtain.
He was no longer