Charles E. Van Loan

“ On get-away day the bookmaker wears deep creases in his brow, for few horses are "laid up" with him, and he wonders which dead one will come to life. On get-away day the tout redoubles his activities, hoping to be far away before his victims awake to a sense of injury. On get-away day the program boy bawls his loudest and the hot-dog purveyor pushes his fragrant wares with the utmost energy. On get-away day the judges are more than usually alert, scenting outward indications of a "job." On get-away day the betting ring boils and seethes and bubbles ”

“ Black Bill was beginning to run at last, as the grand stand acknowledged with frenzied yells. Yes, he was running, but a gaunt bay horse was running with him, stride for stride. Old Man Curry, at the paddock gate, tugged at his beard with one hand and fumbled for his tobacco with the other.
Side by side the black and the bay swept upon the floundering outsiders, overwhelmed them, and passed on. Side by side they turned into the home stretch, and only two horses were in front of them—Regulator and Miss Amber. The mare was under the whip.
"You say you got a-a-a hawss there!" taunted Mose. ”

“ This was Weaver speaking, a small, wiry man with a drooping moustache. "You know how talk gets around on a race track—tell the right man and you might as well rent the front page of the morning paper. As a matter of fact, Fieldmouse can't pack that weight and win."
"That's the way the form students will dope it out," said Al Engle, otherwise the Sharpshooter, the smiling, youthful, gold-toothed blond who directed the campaigns and dictated the policy of the turf pirates. "That much weight will stop most of 'em, but let her in there under ninety pounds and Fieldmouse is a cinch. ”

“ Between Engle and his gang after me, and the jockeys after Mose, we got our hands full."
"I'll bet. Going to gamble any on Obadiah to-day?"
"If I like the price. None of the bookmakers here will ever die of enlargement of the heart. If Obadiah is shorter than three to one, he'll run for the purse alone. The hoss that beats him on a sloppy track will know that he's been going some."
It happened just beyond the half-mile pole, in a sudden flurry of wind and rain. The spectators, huddling under the grand-stand roof, saw the horses dimly as through a heavy mist. ”

“ It was in the third mile that Jockey Moseby Jones began to urge the big horse. At first there seemed to be no result, but gradually, almost imperceptibly, the heavy plugging stride grew longer. Auckland still held her commanding lead, but Pharaoh marked his gain on Ambrose Churchill and The Maori, leaving them a bitter and hopeless battle for fourth place. In the home stretch the pace began to tell on Baron Brant, and he faded. Pharaoh caught and passed him just at the wire, with the Australian mare fifteen lengths in front and eating up the distance in smooth, easy strides. ”

“ As in other branches of sport, Van Loan was quick to see this and he gave us story after story of the kind that men love to read and chuckle over and retail to the first man they meet. And so when you peruse the pages of Old Man Curry's book, you will find Charlie Van Loan at his very best. When one says that it means you will follow a trail blazed by one of the most masterly short story writers we ever had. Better yet, he writes about real people and they do real believable things. You are not asked to stretch your imagination or endeavor to form an excuse for the happening as portrayed. ”

“ Before the judges knew that anything had happened a shabby, bearded old man in a rusty black frock coat dodged across the track from the paddock gate and splashed hurriedly through the infield. Old Man Curry never used binoculars; he had the eyes of an eagle.
"Been looking for it to happen every day!" he muttered. "And a right likely colt, too. The skunks! The miserable little skunks!"
Whitethorn, the winner of the race, was back in the ring and unsaddled before the old man reached the half-mile pole. ”

“ Last time you was here you had two hundred dollars, spoiled Egyptian money——"
"Oh, I guess it wasn't so darn badly spoiled at that!" interrupted the Kid. "I didn't have any trouble getting rid of it." He grinned sheepishly. "Your friend Solomon called the turn on the get-rich-quick stuff. 'He that maketh haste'—what's the rest of it, old-timer?"
"'He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent,'" quoted Old Man Curry, rolling out the syllables in sonorous procession. "But I reckon not being rich is worrying you more than not being innocent. Who took the roll away from you?" ”

“ A big, jovial-looking man, striding rapidly toward the stables, overtook them from the rear and announced his presence by slapping Old Man Curry resoundingly on the back. "Tough luck!" said he with a grin. "Awful tough luck, but you can't win all the time, you know, old-timer!"
"Why, yes," said Curry quietly; "that's a fact, Johnson. Nobody but a hog would want to win all the time. And I wish you wouldn't wallop me on the back thataway. I most nigh swallered my tobacco."
Johnson laughed loudly. "How do you like our track?" ”

“ If he was overboard in fifty feet of water and couldn't swim a lick, I'd toss him a bar of lead—that's how much I think of him. He did me a mean trick once and I haven't got over it yet. He—say! Don't you feed that black horse, or what?"
"Huh? Feed him? Of course we feed him! Why?"
"You don't feed him enough or he wouldn't be trying to eat up the top rail of the fence. Take a look, will you?"
Sure enough, Fairfax was gnawing at the pine board; the grating rasp of his teeth became audible in the silence. After a time the horse dropped his head and gulped heavily. ”

“ Racing has been systematized and ticketed and labeled in such a way that it is only very rich men who can afford to indulge in it. The tracks west of Louisville are all closed. The skeleton hand of the gloom distributor has put padlocks on the gates. Even if Old Man Curry was with us to-day, his sphere of action would be limited, unless he elected to play a game where the odds would be so immeasurably against him that he would be beaten long before he started. ”

“ Old Man Curry combed his beard with both hands—with him a sign of deep thought.
"Frank," said he at length, "where does this Chicken Liver nigger go while the race is being run?"
"Across the track to the infield. That was where he went yesterday. I was watching him."
"The infield.... Hm-m-m.... Thank you, Frank."
"You could tip it off to the judges," suggested the Kid, "and they'd have Chicken Liver searched. Like as not they'd rule Weaver off for life and set Murphy down——"
"There's a better way than searching that nigger," said Old Man Curry. ”

“ In the language of the tack rooms, the Bald-faced Kid was a hustler—a free lance of the turf, playing a lone hand against owner and bookmaker, matching his wits against secret combinations and operating upon the wheedled capital of the credulous. He was sometimes called a tout, but this he resented bitterly, explaining the difference between a tout and a hustler. "A tout will have six suckers betting on six different horses in the same race. Five [Pg 14] of 'em have to lose. A tout is guessing all the time, but a hustler is likely to know something. ”

“ So I had better hark back to the narratives of Old Man Curry and his connections, bidding you enjoy them to the limit, and assuring you that they need no eulogy from me or any one else. They speak for themselves. ”

“ The sport of emperors has to a great extent become the pastime of King Moneybags. And there is no place for ancient crusaders like Old Man Curry, so he has taken the remnants of his stable and gone back to the farm or merged into the humdrum and neutral tinted landscape which always designates the conventional and ordinary.
He doesn't fit in any more. The cost of maintaining a racing stable is almost ten times greater than it was in the days when he and his kind went up and down the country making the great adventure. ”

“ One horse a race is my motto—sometimes only one horse a day, but I've got to know something before I lead the sucker into the betting ring.... What is a sucker? Huh! He's a foolish party who bets money for a wise boy because the wise boy never has any money to bet for himself!"
Picking winners was the serious business of the Kid's life, hence the early morning hours and the careful scrutiny of the daybreak workouts. ”

“ Old Man Curry smiled and returned to Solomon.
"'A scorner seeketh wisdom and findeth it not, but knowledge is easy unto him that understandeth.'"
"Yes—'unto him that understandeth!' [Pg 160] That's the point; I don't understand. Nobody understands. Here's a dead horse come to life and he's got everybody guessing. Miracles are all right, but I'm never going to bet on one until I know how it's done. Say, old-timer, ain't you going to tell me what's happened to Eliphaz?" ”

“ The Bald-faced Kid drew out the leather-backed volume which was his constant companion, and began to thumb the leaves rapidly. "You're always heaving your friend Solomon at me. I'll give you a quotation I got out of the Fourth Reader at school—something about judging the future by the past. Look here: 'Jeremiah bled and was pulled up.' 'Jeremiah bled badly.' Why, everybody around here knows that he's a bleeder!"
"There you go again," said Old Man Curry patiently. "You study them dad-burned dope sheets, and all you can see is what a hoss has done. ”

“ The maidens came floundering down to the wire spread out like a cavalry charge and covering half the track. At the sixteenth pole a bold man would have hesitated to pick the winner; indeed, it looked to be anybody's race, with the sole exception of The Cricket, sulking far in the rear. It was Gabe Johnson who saw that the wraps were still about Mose's wrists, [Pg 270] but it was Old Man Curry who chuckled to himself as the horses passed the paddock gate, and it was Shanghai, Curry's negro hostler, who began to count tickets on General Duval. ”

“ It is a very stupid race horse which does not know its own stall. The stable hand released his hold on the halter and slapped the colt's flank.
"G'long with yo'!" said he.
Then, and not until then, did Henry M. Pitkin begin to estimate his misfortune correctly, for the bay colt which had won the maiden race in the name of General Duval and carried the racing colours of Gabriel Johnson to their first and only victory marched straight into Sergeant Smith's stall and thrust his muzzle into Sergeant Smith's feed box! ”

“ Pitkin escaped over the State line westward, beating the said warrant a nose in a whipping finish, and after a devious career covering many years and many States he turned up on the Jungle Circuit, bringing with him a string of horses, a gentle, soft-spoken old negro trainer, an Irish jockey named Mulligan, and two stable hands, each as black as the ace of spades. ”

“ It's human nature to get mad at a man that can prove he knows more than you do. This Hopwood has got it all whittled down to a fine point how he's going to do right well at the racing game, and the best [Pg 103] way is to let him try it a while. It'll cost him money to find out that a grocery store is a safer place for him than a race track. 'A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's back.' That's Solomon again. Hopwood has got the gad coming to him for sure."
"Ain't that the truth!" exclaimed the Kid. ”

“ They're both blind. Here's what bothers me: Old Man Curry is in that same race with Isaiah."
"Well, what of that?" said Engle. "That old fool is all same as a nightmare to you, ain't he?"
"Call him a fool if you want to," was the stubborn rejoinder, "but he made an awful sucker out of you with that trick horse of his. An awful sucker. If Old Man Curry is a fool, there's a lot of wise people locked up in the bug houses. That's all I've got to say!"
"He's had your goat ever since the meeting opened," grinned the Sharpshooter.
"That's all right," said O'Connor. ”

“ The Bald-faced Kid, who lived by doing the best he could and preferred to be called a hustler rather than a tout, spoke from the tack-room interior. He was a privileged character at the Curry barn.
"How does she look, old-timer? Going to clear up by noon?"
Old Man Curry shook his head. "Well, no," said he. "I reckon not. Looks to me like reg'lar Noah weather, Frank. If a man's got a mud hoss in his barn, now's the time to start him." ”

“ I'll let you know later on."
"On the level," said the Kid, "you don't figure that Elisha has got a chance to win that race—not with Regulator and Black Bill and Miss Amber in it? They're no Salvators, I admit, still they're the best we ever see in this part of the country. Black Bill is a demon over a distance, old-timer. He won that two-mile race last winter at Santa Anita. Elisha has never gone more than a mile and an eighth, and this is a mile and a half. Honest, now, you don't think he can beat horses like Black Bill and Regulator, do you?" ”

“ Old Man Curry clinched this general opinion by entering into no entangling alliances with brother owners, and the bookmaker did not live who could call him friend. He attended strictly to his own business, which was training horses and racing them to win, and while he did not swear, drink liquor, or smoke, he proved he was no Puritan by chewing fine-cut tobacco and betting on his horses when he thought they had a chance to win and the odds were to his liking. ”

“ I reckon from what he said 'bout Walsh that he's in with the jockey syndicate. No wonder he wins races! Sure, he could get Walsh for me, or any other crook-legged little burglar that [Pg 203] would send word to Johnson what I was doing! Mose, yonder goes the man we've got to beat!"
"Him too, boss?" Little Mose rolled his eyes. "Hawsses, judges, jocks, an' Johnson! Sutny is a tough card to beat!"
"'A just man falleth seven times and riseth up again,'" repeated the old man, "'but the wicked shall fall into mischief.' That's the rest of the verse, Mose." ”

“ The Bald-faced Kid took himself off in a highly inflamed state of mind, and the patriarch, looking after him, shook his head sorrowfully.
"'How much better is it to get wisdom than gold,'" he quoted, "but Frank, now—he wants 'em both at the same time!"
There were others who were earnest in their search for information, which became acute when Eliphaz, late Fairfax, won his fourth race, a brilliant victory over the best horses at the track. Among the seekers after knowledge, were Al Engle and Martin O'Connor, horsemen and turf pirates with whom Old Man Curry had been at war for some time. ”

“ Why couldn't you tell him a hard-luck story and get to sleep in his tack-room nights? Then you'd be right on the ground. Try a hard-luck story on him. The one you sprang on me wasn't so bad."
"H-m-m-m," mused Henry. "I might, and that's a fact. He ain't a bad guy, Old Man Curry ain't. He stakes the hustlers every once in a while."
"Well," said Goldmark insinuatingly, "if he should be such a sucker as to stake you, don't forget you was on my pay roll first; that's all I ask." ”

“ You know what Solomon says about that sort of thing, don't you?"
"I do not," answered the Kid promptly, "but I'll be the goat as usual. What does he say?"
"'Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him,'" quoted Old Man Curry, "and that's sound advice, my son. When a fool gets an idea crossways in his head, nothing but a cold chisel will get it out again, and, anyway, people don't thank you for pointing out their mistakes. ”

“ Mose, keeping watch out of the tail of his eye, saw the bay head bobbing close behind. Now it was at Elijah's heels; the next stride would bring it level with the saddle.... The next stride.
All that anyone ever saw was that Jockey Moseby Jones leaned slightly toward the flying Elisha as Merritt drew alongside, and very few spectators saw this much. Who cares to watch a loser when the winner is in sight? Old Man Curry, waiting at the paddock gate, saw the movement and immediately began to search his pockets for tobacco. ”