Garrisons Finish | Page 8

reached sanctuary after an aeon of

chaos. He had found love, understanding in a beast of the field. Where
his fellow man had withheld, the filly had given her all and questioned
not. For Sis, by Rex out of Reine, two-year filly, blooded stock, was a
thoroughbred. And a thoroughbred, be he man, beast, or bird, does not
welch on his hand. A stranger only in prosperity; a chum in adversity.
He does not question; he gives.
"Well," said Crimmins, as Garrison slowly emerged from the stall,
"you take the partin' pretty next your skin. What's your answer to the
game I spoke of? Mulled it over? It don't take much thinking, I guess."
He was paring his mourning fringed nails with great indifference.
"No, it doesn't take much thinking, Dan," agreed Garrison slowly, his
eyes narrowed. "I'll rot first before I touch it."
"Yes?" The trainer raised his thick eyebrows and lowered his thin voice.
"Kind of tony, ain't yeh? Beggars can't be choosers."
"They needn't be crooks, Dan. I know you meant it all right enough,"
said Garrison bitterly. "You think I'm crooked, and that I'd take
anything--anything; dirt of any kind, so long's there's money under it."
"Aw, sneeze!" said Crimmins savagely. Then he checked himself. "It
ain't my game. I only knew the man. There's nothing in it for me. Suit
yourself;" and he shrugged his shoulders. "It ain't Crimmins' way to
hump his services on any man. Take it or leave it."
"You wanted me to go crooked, Dan," said Garrison steadily. "Was it
friendship--"
"Huh! Wanted you to go crooked?" flashed the trainer with a sneer.
"What are y' talking about? Ain't yeh a welcher now? Ain't yeh crooked
--hair, teeth, an' skin?"
"You mean that, Dan?" Garrison's face was white. "You've trained me,
and yet you, too, believe I was in on those lost races? You know I lost
every cent on Sis--"

"It ain't one race, it's six," snorted Crimmins. "It's Crimmins' way to
agitate his brain for a friend, but it ain't his way to be a plumb fool. You
can't shoot that bull con into me, Bud. I know you. I give you an offer,
friend and friend. You turn it down and 'cuse me of making you play
crooked. I'm done with you. It ain't Crimmins' way."
Billy Garrison eyed his former trainer and mentor steadily for a long
time. His lip was quivering.
"Damn your way!" he said hoarsely at length, and turned on his heel.
His hands were deep in his pockets, his shoulders hunched as he swung
out of the stable. He was humming over and over the old music-hall
favorite, "Good-by, Sis"--humming in a desperate effort to keep his
nerve. Billy Garrison had touched bottom in the depths.

CHAPTER II.
THE HEAVY HAND OF FATE.
Garrison left Long Island for New York that night. When you are hard
hit the soul suffers a reflex-action. It recoils to its native soil. New
York was Garrison's home. He was a product of its sporting soil. He
loved the Great White Way. But he had drunk in the smell, the
intoxication of the track with his mother's milk. She had been from the
South; the land of straight women, straight men, straight living, straight
riding. She had brought blood--good, clean blood--to the
Garrison-Loring entente cordiale--a polite definition of a huge mistake.
From his mother Garrison had inherited his cool head, steady eye, and
the intuitive hands that could compel horse-flesh like a magnet. From
her he had inherited a peculiar recklessness and swift daring. From his
father--well, Garrison never liked to talk about his father. His mother
was a memory; his father a blank. He was a good-looking, bad- living
sprig of a straight family-tree. He had met his wife at the New Orleans
track, where her father, an amateur horse-owner, had two entries. And
she had loved him. There is good in every one. Perhaps she had

discovered it in Garrison's father where no one else had.
Her family threw her off--at least, when she came North with her
husband, she gradually dropped out of her home circle; dropped of her
own volition. Perhaps she was afraid that the good she had first
discovered in her husband had been seen through a magnifying-glass.
Her life with Garrison was a constant whirlwind of changing scene and
fortune--the perpetual merry--or sorry--go-round of a book-maker;
going from track to track, and from bad to worse. His friends said he
was unlucky; his enemies, that the only honest thing in him was his
cough. He had incipient consumption. So Mrs. Garrison's life, such as it
was, had been lived in a trunk--when it wasn't held for hotel bills --but
she had lived out her mistake gamely.
When the boy came--Billy--she thought Heaven had