Thoroughbreds | Page 5

expects to win."
"The mare'll be there, or thereabouts," asserted her owner; "I never
knew a Lazzarone yet much good as a two-year-old. They're sulky
brutes, like the old horse; and if Lucretia's beat, it won't be Lauzanne
that'll turn the trick."
The bell clanged imperiously at the Judges' Stand. Porter pulled out his
watch and looked at it.
"That's saddling," he remarked, laconically; "I must go and have a bit
on the mare, and then take a look at her before she goes out."

As Porter went down the steps his companion leaned over the rail and
crooked his fingers at a thin-faced man with a blond mustache who had
been keeping a corner of his eye on the box.
"What are they making favorite, Lewis?" queried Danby, as the
thin-faced man stood beside him.
"Lucretia."
"What's her price?"
"Two to one."
"What's second favorite?"
"Lauzanne--five to two."
"Porter tells me Lucretia is good business," said Danby, in a tentative
tone.
"Langdon thinks it's all over bar the shouting; he says Lauzanne
outclasses his field," retorted Lewis.
"Langdon's a betting man; Porter's an owner, and a good judge,"
objected Danby; "and he's got a good boy up, too, McKay," he added,
slowly focusing his field glasses on the jockey board opposite the
Stand.
"Crooked as a dog's hind legs," snarled Lewis, biting viciously at his
cigar.
"Bob, it's damned hard to find a straight-legged dog," laughed Danby.
"And when John Porter starts a horse, there's never anything doing.
Here's six hundred; put' it on the mare--straight."
As Lewis pushed his way into the shoving, seething, elbowing crowd in
the betting ring, he was suddenly struck in the chest by something
which apparently had the momentum of an eight-inch shell; but it was
only John Porter, who, in breaking through the outer crust of the living
mass, had been ejected with more speed than was of his own volition.
Bob smothered the expletive that had risen to his lip when he saw who
the unwitting offender was, and asked, "What are they doin' to the mare
in the ring?"
"Not much," answered his assailant, catching his breath; "there's a
strong play on Langdon's horse, and if I didn't know my boy pretty well,
and Lucretia better, I'd have weakened a bit. But she can't lose, she
can't lose!" he repeated in the tone of a man who is reassuring himself.
Lewis battled his way along till he stood in front of a bookmaker with a
face cast very much on the lines of a Rubens' cherub; but the cherub-

type ended abruptly with the plump frontispiece of "Jakey" Faust, the
bookmaker. Lewis knew that. "If there's anythin' doin', I'm up against it
here," he muttered to himself. "What's Lauzanne's price?" he asked, in
an indifferent voice, for the bookmaker's assistant was busy changing
the figures on his list.
Faust pretended not to hear him.
"Sure thing!" whispered Lewis to himself. Then aloud he repeated the
question, touching the bookmaker on the elbow.
The Cherub smiled blandly. "Not takin' any," he answered, nodding his
head in the pleasant manner of a man who knows when he's got a good
thing.
"What's Lucretia?" persisted Lewis.
"Oh! that's it, is it? I'll lay you two to one."
The questioner edged away, shaking his head solemnly.
"Here! five to two--how much--" but Lewis was gone.
He burrowed like a mole most industriously, regardless of people's toes,
their ribs, their dark looks, and even angry expressions of strong
disapproval, and when he gained the green sward of the lawn, hurried
to his friend's box.
"Did you get it on?" queried the latter.
"No; I don't like the look of it. Faust is holding out Lauzanne, and
stretched me half a point about the mare. He and Langdon are in the
same boat."
"But that won't win the race," remonstrated Danby. "Lauzanne is a
maiden, and Porter doesn't often make a mistake about any of his own
stock."
"I thought I'd come back and tell you," said Bob Lewis, apologetically.
"And you did right; but if the mare wins, and I'm not on, after getting it
straight from Porter, I'd want to go out and kick myself good and hard.
But put it on straight and place; then if Lauzanne's the goods we'll
save."
Lewis was gone about four minutes.
"You're on," he said, when he returned; "I've two hundred on the
Chestnut for myself."
"Lauzanne?"
"It's booked that way; but I'm backin' the Trainer, Langdon. I went on
my uppers two years ago backing horses; I'm following men now."

"Bad business," objected his stout friend; "it's bad business to back
anything that talks."
When John Porter reached the saddling paddock, his brown mare,
Lucretia, was being led around in a circle in the lower corner. As he
walked