giving two lives for one. Death was reaping more than enough. They would try to save the “kid,” but it looked hopeless. Was it a girl? Yes, and an only child? She must be pinned under a seat. The fire would be about opening up on her. Sure–sure they would see what could be done. Anyway, the roof was due to smash down. But they’d see. But there were lots of others who needed a hand; others who were not pinned under seats with the flames hungry for them.
But Garrison had swung on to a near-by horse-cart, jammed into rubber boots, coats, and helmet, tying a wet towel over nose and mouth. And as some stared, some cursed, and some cheered feebly, he smashed his way through the smother of flame to the choking screams of the child.
The roof fell in. A great crash and a spouting fire of flame. An eternity, and then he emerged like one of the three prophets from the fiery furnace. Only he was not a Shadrach, Meshach, or Abednego. He was not fashioned from providential asbestos. He was vulnerable. They carried him to a near-by house. His head had been wonderfully smashed by the falling roof. His eyebrows and hair were left behind in the smother of flame. He was fire-licked from toe to heel. He was raving. But the child was safe. And that wreck and that rescue went down in history.
For weeks Garrison was in the hospital. It was very like the rehearsal of a past performance. He was completely out of his head. It was all very like the months he put in at Bellevue in the long ago, before he had experienced the hunger-cancer and compromised with honesty.
And again there came nights when doctors shook their heads and nurses looked grave; nights when it was understood that before another dawn had come creeping through the windows little Billy Garrison would have crossed the Big Divide; nights when the shibboleths of a dead-and-gone life were even fluttering on his lips; nights when names but not identities fought with one another for existence; fought for birth, for supremacy, and “Sue” always won; nights when he sat up in bed as he had sat up in Bellevue long ago, and with tense hands and blazing eyes fought out victory on the stretch. Horrible, horrible nights; surcharged with the frenzy and unreality of a nightmare.
And one of his audience who seldom left the narrow cot was a man who had come to look for a friend among the wreck victims; come and found him not. He had chanced to pass Garrison’s cot. And he had remained.
Came a night at last when stamina and hope and grit won the long, long fight. The crisis was turned. The demons, defeated, who had been fighting among themselves for the possession of Garrison’s mind, reluctantly gave it back to him. And, moreover, they gave it back– intact. The part they had stolen that night in the Hoffman House was replaced.
This restoration the doctors subsequently called by a very learned and mysterious name. They gave an esoteric explanation redounding greatly to the credit of the general medical and surgical world. It was something to the effect that the initial blow Garrison had received had forced a piece of bone against the brain in such a manner as to defy mere man’s surgery. This had caused the lapse of memory.
Then had come the second blow that night of the wreck. Where man had failed, nature had stepped in and operated successfully. Her methods had been crude, but effective. The unscientific blow on the head had restored the dislodged bone to its proper place. The medical world was highly pleased over this manifestation of nature’s surgical skill, and appeared to think that she had operated under its direction. And nature never denied it.
As Garrison opened his eyes, dazed, weak as water, memory, full, complete, rushed into action. His brain recalled everything– everything from the period it is given man to remember down to the present. It was all so clear, so perfect, so workmanlike. The long- halted clock of memory was ticking away merrily, perfectly, and not one hour was missing from its dial. The thread of his severed life was joined–joined in such a manner that no hitch or knot was apparent.
To use a third simile, the former blank, utterly fearsome space, was filled–filled with clear writing, without blotch or blemish. And on the space was not recorded one deed he had dreaded to see. There were mistakes, weaknesses–but not dishonor. For a moment he could not grasp the full meaning of the blessing. He could only sense that he had indeed been blessed above his deserts.
And then as Garrison understood what it all meant to him; understood the chief fact that he had not deserted wife and children; that Sue might be won, he crushed his face to the pillow and cried–cried like a little child.
And a big man, sitting in the shelter of a screen, hitched his chair nearer the cot, and laid both hands on Garrison’s. He did not speak, but there was a wonderful light in his eyes–steady, clear gray eyes.
“Kid,” he said. “Kid.”
Garrison turned swiftly. His hand gripped the other’s.
“Jimmie Drake,” he whispered. For the first time the blood came to his face.
CHAPTER XIII.
PROVEN CLEAN.
Two months had gone in; two months of slow recuperation, regeneration for Garrison. He was just beginning to look at life from the standpoint of unremitting toil and endeavor. It is the only satisfactory standpoint. From it we see life in its true proportions. Neither distorted through the blue glasses of pessimism–but another name for the failure of misapplication–nor through the wonderful rose-colored glasses of the dreamer. He was patiently going back over his past life; returning to the point where he had deserted the clearly defined path of honor and duty for the flowery fields of unbridled license.
It was no easy task he had set himself, but he did not falter by the wayside. Three great stimulants he had–health, the thought of Sue Desha, and the practical assistance of Jimmie Drake.
It was a month, dating from the memorable meeting with the turfman, before Garrison was able to leave the hospital. When he did, it was to take up his life at Drake’s Long Island breeding-farm and racing- stable; for in the interim Drake had passed from book-making stage to that of owner. He ran a first-class string of mounts, and he signed Garrison to ride for him during the ensuing season.
It was the first chance for regeneration, and it had been timidly asked and gladly granted; asked and granted during one of the long nights in the hospital when Garrison was struggling for strength and faith. It had been the first time he had been permitted to talk for any great length.
“Thank you,” he said, on the granting of his request, which he more than thought would be refused. His eyes voiced where his lips were dumb. “I haven’t gone back, Jimmie, but it’s good of you to give me a chance on my say-so. I’ll bear it in mind. And–and it’s good of you, Jimmie, to–to come and sit with me. I–I appreciate it all, and I don’t see why you should do it.”
Drake laughed awkwardly.
“It’s the least I could do, kid. The favor ain’t on my side, it’s on yours. Anyway, what use is a friend if he ain’t there when you need him? It was luck I found you here. I thought you had disappeared for keeps. Remember that day you cut me on Broadway? I ought to have followed you, but I was sore–“
“But I–I didn’t mean to cut you, Jimmie. I didn’t know you. I want to tell you all about that–about everything. I’m just beginning to know now that I’m living. I’ve been buried alive. Honest!”
“I always thought there was something back of your absent treatment. What was it?” Drake hitched his chair nearer and focused all his powers of concentration. “What was it, kid? Out with it. And if I can be of any help you know you have only to put it there.” He held out a large hand.
And then slowly, haltingly, but lucidly, dispassionately, events following in sequence, Garrison told everything; concealing nothing. Nor did he try to gloss over or strive to nullify his own dishonorable actions. He told everything, and the turfman, chin in hand, eyes riveted on the narrator, listened absorbed.
“Gee!” Jimmie Drake whispered at last, “it sounds like a fairy-story. It don’t sound real.” Then he suddenly crashed a fist into his open palm. “I see, I see,” he snapped, striving to control his excitement. “Then you don’t know. You can’t know.”
“Know what?” Garrison sat bolt upright in his narrow cot, his heart pounding.
“Why–why about Crimmins, about Waterbury, about Sis–everything,” exclaimed Drake. “It was all in the Eastern papers. You were in Bellevue then. I thought you knew. Don’t you know, kid, that it was proven that Crimmins poisoned Sis? Hold on, keep quiet. Yes, it was Crimmins. Now, don’t get excited. Yes, I’ll tell you all. Give me time. Why, kid, you were as clean as the wind that dried your first shirt. Sure, sure. We all knew it–then. And we thought you did–“
“Tell me, tell me.” Garrison’s lip was quivering; his face gray with excitement.
Drake ran on forcefully, succinctly, his hand gripping Garrison’s.
“Well, we’ll take it up from that day of the Carter Handicap. Remember? When you and Waterbury had it out? Now, I had suspected that Dan Crimmins had been plunging against his stable for some time. I had got on to some bets he had put through with the aid of his dirty commissioners. That’s why I stood up for you against Waterbury. I knew he was square. I knew he didn’t throw the race, and, as for you–well, I said to myself: ‘That ain’t like the kid.’ I knew the evidence against you, but it was hard to believe, kid. And I believed you when you said you hadn’t made a cent on the race, but instead had lost all you had, I believed that. But I knew Crimmins had made a pile. I found that out. And I believed he drugged you, kid.
“Now, when you tell me you were fighting consumption it clears a lot of space for me that has been dark. I knew you were doped half the time, but I thought you were going the pace with the pipe, though I’ll admit I couldn’t fathom what drug you were taking. But now I know Crimmins fed you dope while pretending to hand you nerve food. I know it. I know he bet against his stable time and ag’in and won every race you were accused of throwing. I tracked things pretty clear that day after I left you.
“Well, I went to Waterbury and laid the charge against the trainer; giving him a chance to square himself before I made trouble higher up. Well, Waterbury was mad. Said he had no hand in it, and I believed him. The upshot of it was that he faced Crimmins. Now, Crimmins had been blowing himself on the pile he had made, and he was nasty. Instead of denying it and putting the proving of the game up to me, he took the bit in his mouth at something Waterbury said.
“I don’t know all the facts. They came out in the paper afterward. But Crimmins and Waterbury had a scrap, and the trainer was fired. He was fired when you went to the stable to say good-by to Sis. He was packing what things he had there, but when he saw you weren’t on, he kept it mum. I believe then he was planning to do away with Sis, and you offered a nice easy get-away for him. He hated you. First, because you turned down the crooked deal he offered you, for it was he who was beating the bookies, and he wanted a pal. Secondly, he thought you had split about the dope, and he laid his discharge to you. And he hated Waterbury. He could square you both at one shot. He poisoned Sis when you’d gone.
“Every one believed you guilty, for they didn’t know the row Crimmins and Waterbury had. But Waterbury suspected. He and Crimmins had it out. He caught him on Broadway, a day or two later, and Crimmins walloped him over the head with a blackjack. Waterbury went to the hospital, and came next to dying. Crimmins went to jail. I guess he was down and out, all right, when, as you say, he heard from his brother that Waterbury was at Cottonton. I believe he went there to square him, but ran across you instead, and thought he could have a good blackmailing game on the side. That wife game was a plot to catch you, kid. He didn’t think you’d dare to come North. When you told him about your lapse of memory, then he knew he was safe. You knew nothing of his showdown.”
Garrison covered his face with his hands. Only he knew the great, the mighty obsession that was slowly withdrawing itself from his heart. It was all so wonderful; all so incredible. Long contact with misfortune had sapped the natural resiliency of his character. It had been subjected to so much pressure that it had become flaccid. The pressure removed, it would be some time before the heart could act upon the message of good tidings the brain had conveyed to it. For a long time he remained silent. And Drake respected his silence to the letter. Then Garrison uncovered his eyes.
“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it,” he whispered, wide-eyed. “It is too good to be true. It means too much. You’re sure you’re right, Jimmie? It means I’m proven clean, proven square. It means reinstatement on the turf. Means–everything.”
“All that, kid,” said Drake. “I thought you knew.”
Garrison hugged his knees in a paroxysm of silent joy.
“But–Waterbury?” he puzzled at length. “He knew I had been exonerated. And yet–yet he must have said something to the contrary to Miss Desha. She knew all along that I was Garrison; knew when I didn’t know myself. But she thought me square. But Waterbury must have said something. I can never forget her saying when I confessed: ‘It’s true, then.’ I can never forget that, and the look in her eyes.”
“Aye, Waterbury,” mused Drake soberly. He eyed Garrison. “You know he’s dead,” he said simply. He nodded confirmation as the other stared, white-faced. “Died this morning after he was thrown. Fractured skull. I had word. Some right-meaning chap says somewhere something about saying nothing but good of the dead, kid. If Waterbury tried to queer you, it was through jealousy. I understand he cared something for Miss Desha. He had his good points, like every man. Think of them, kid, not the bad ones. I guess the bookkeeper up above will credit us with all the times we’ve tried to do the square, even if we petered out before we’d made good. Trying counts something, kid. Don’t forget that.”
“Yes, he had his good points,” whispered Garrison. “I don’t forget, Jimmie. I don’t forget that he has a cleaner bill of moral health than I have. I was an impostor. That I can’t forget; cannot wipe out.”
“I was coming to that,” Drake scratched his grizzled head elaborately. “I didn’t say anything when you were unwinding that yarn, kid, but it sounded mighty tangled to me.”
“How?”
“How? Why, we ain’t living in fairy-books to-day. It’s straight hard life. And there ain’t any fools, as far as I can see, who are allowed to take up air and space. I’ve heard of Major Calvert, and his brains were all there the last time I heard of him–“
“What do you mean?” Garrison bored his eyes into Drake’s.
“Why, I mean, kid, that blood is thicker than water, and leave it to a woman to see through a stone wall. I don’t believe you could palm yourself off to the major and his wife as their nephew. It’s not reasonable nohow. I don’t believe any one could fool any family.”
“But I did!” Garrison was staring blankly. “I did, Jimmie! Remember I had the cooked-up proofs. Remember that they had never seen the real nephew–“
“Oh, shucks! What’s the odds? Blood’s blood. You don’t mean to say a man wouldn’t know his own sister’s child? Living in the house with him? Wouldn’t there be some likeness, some family trait, some characteristic? Are folks any different from horses? No, no, it might happen in stories, but not life, not life.”
Garrison shook his head wearily. “I can’t follow you, Jimmie. You like to argue for the sake of arguing. I don’t understand. They did believe me. Isn’t that enough? Why–why—-” His face blanched at the thought. “You don’t mean to say that they knew I was an imposter? Knew all along? You–can’t mean that, Jimmie?”
“I may,” said Drake shortly. “But, see here, kid, you’ll admit it would be impossible for two people to have that birthmark on them; the identical mark in the identical spot. You’ll admit that. Now, wouldn’t it be impossible?”
“Improbable, but not impossible.” Suddenly Garrison had commenced to breathe heavily, his hands clenching.
Drake cocked his head on one side and closed an eye. He eyed Garrison steadily. “Kid, it seems to me that you’ve only been fooling yourself. I believe you’re Major Calvert’s nephew. That’s straight.”
For a long time Garrison stared at him unwinkingly. Then he laughed wildly.
“Oh, you’re good, Jimmie. No, no. Don’t tempt me. You forget; forget two great things. I know my mother’s name was Loring, not Calvert. And my father’s name was Garrison, not Dagget.”
“Um-m-m,” mused Drake, knitting brows. “You don’t say? But, see here, kid, didn’t you say that this Dagget’s mother was only Major Calvert’s half-sister? How about that, eh? Then her name would be different from his. How about that? How do you know Loring mightn’t fit it? Answer me that.”
“I never thought of that,” whispered Garrison. “If you only are right, Jimmie! If you only are, what it would mean? But my father, my father,” he cried weakly. “My father. There’s no getting around that, Jimmie. His name was Garrison. My name is Garrison. There’s no dodging that. You can’t change that into Dagget.”
“How do you know?” argued Drake, slowly, pertinaciously. “This here is my idea, and I ain’t willing to give it up without a fight. How do you know but your father might have changed his name? I’ve known less likelier things to happen. You know he was good blood gone wrong. How do you know he mightn’t have changed it so as not disgrace his family, eh? Changed it after he married your mother, and she stood for it so as not to disgrace her family. You were a kid when she died, and you weren’t present, you say. How do you know but she mightn’t have wanted to tell you a whole lot, eh? A whole lot your father wouldn’t tell you because he never cared for you. No, the more I think of it the more I’m certain that you’re Major Calvert’s nephew. You’re the only logical answer. That mark of the spur and the other incidents is good enough for me.”
“Don’t tempt me, Jimmie, don’t tempt me,” pleaded Garrison again. “You don’t know what it all means. I may be his nephew. I may be–God grant I am! But I must be honest. I must be honest.”
“Well, I’m going to hunt up that lawyer, Snark,” affirmed Drake finally. “I won’t rest until I see this thing through. Snark may have known all along you were the rightful heir, and merely put up a job to get a pile out of you when you came into the estate. Or he may have been honest in his dishonesty; may not have known. But I’m going to rustle round after him. Maybe there’s proofs he holds. What about Major Calvert? Are you going to write him?”
Garrison considered. “No–no,” he said at length. “No, if–if by any chance I am his nephew–you see how I want to believe you, Jimmie, God knows how much–then I’ll tell him afterward. Afterward when–I’m clean. I want to lie low; to square myself in my own sight and man’s. I want to make another name for myself, Jimmie. I want to start all over and shame no man. If by any chance I am William C. Dagget, then– then I want to be worthy of that name. And I owe everything to Garrison. I’m going to clean that name. It meant something once–and it’ll mean something again.”
“I believe you, kid.”
Subsequently, Drake fulfilled his word concerning the “rustling round” after that eminent lawyer, Theobald D. Snark. His efforts met with failure. Probably the eminent lawyer’s business had increased so enormously that he had been compelled to vacate the niche he held in the Nassau Street bookcase. But Drake had not given up the fight.
Meanwhile Garrison had commenced his life of regeneration at the turfman’s Long Island stable. He was to ride Speedaway in the coming Carter Handicap. The event that had seen him go down, down to oblivion one year ago might herald the reascendency of his star. He had vowed it would. And so in grim silence he prepared for his farewell appearance in that great seriocomic tragedy of life called “Making Good.”
CHAPTER XIV.
GARRISON FINDS HIMSELF.
Sue never rightly remembered how the two months passed; the two months succeeding that hideous night when in paralyzed silence she watched Garrison away. The greatest sorrow is stagnant, not active. The heart becomes like a frozen morass. Sometimes memory slips through the crust, only to sink in the grim “slough of despond.”
Waterbury’s death had unnerved her, coming as it did at a time when tragedy had opened the pores of her heart. He had been conscious for a few minutes before the messenger of a new life summoned him into the great beyond. He used the few minutes well. If we all lived with the thought that the next hour would be our last, the world would be peopled with angels–and hypocrites.
Waterbury asked permission of his host, Colonel Desha, to see Sue alone. It was willingly granted. The girl, white-faced, came and sat by the bed in the room of many shadows; the room where death was tapping, tapping on the door. She had said nothing to her father regarding the events preceding the runaway and Waterbury’s accident.
Waterbury eyed her long and gravely. The heat of his great passion had melted the baser metal of his nature. What original alloy of gold he possessed had but emerged refined. His fingers, formerly pudgy, well- fed, had suddenly become skeletons of themselves. They were picking at the coverlet.
“I lied about–about Garrison,” he whispered, forcing life to his mouth, his eyes never leaving the girl’s. “I lied. He was square–” Breath would not come. “For-forgive,” he cried, suddenly in a smother of sweat. “Forgive–“
“Gladly, willingly,” whispered the girl. She was crying inwardly.
His eyes flamed for an instant, and then died away. By sheer will- power he succeeded in stretching a hand across the coverlet, palm upward. “Put–put it–there,” he whispered. “Will you?”
She understood. It was the sporting world’s token of forgiveness; of friendship. She laid her hand in his, gripping with a firm clasp.
“Thank you,” he whispered. Again his eyes flamed; again died away. The end was very near. Perhaps the approaching freedom of the spirit lent him power to read the girl’s thoughts. For as he looked into her eyes, his own saw that she knew what lay in his. He breathed heavily, painfully.
“Could–could you?” he whispered. “If–if you only could.” There was a great longing, a mighty wistfulness in his voice. Death was trying to place its hand over his mouth. With a mighty effort Waterbury slipped past it. “If you only could,” he reiterated. “It–it means so little to you, Miss Desha–so much, so much to–me!”
And again the girl understood. Without a word she bent over and kissed him. He smiled. And so died Waterbury.
Afterward, the girl remembered Waterbury’s confession. So Garrison was honest! Somehow, she had always believed he was. His eyes, the windows of his soul, were not fouled. She had read weakness there, but never dishonesty. Yes, somehow she had always believed him honest. But he was married. That was different. The concrete, not the abstract, was paramount. All else was swamped by the fact that he was married. She could not believe that he had forgotten his marriage with his true identity. She could not believe that. Her heart was against her. Love to her was everything. She could not understand how one could ever forget. One might forget the world, but not that, not that.
True to her code of judging not, she did not attempt to estimate Garrison. She could not bear to use the probe. There are some things too sacred to be dissected; so near the heart that their proximity renders an experiment prohibitive. She believed that Garrison loved her. She believed that above all. Surely he had given something in exchange for all that he owned of her. If in unguarded moments her conscience assumed the woolsack, mercy, not justice, swayed it.
She realized the mighty temptation Garrison had been forced against by circumstances. And if he had fallen, might not she herself? Had it not taken all her courage to renounce–to give the girl up North the right of way? Now she understood the prayer, “Lead us not into temptation.”
Yes, it had been weakness with Garrison, not dishonor. He had been fighting against it all the time. She remembered that morning in the tennis-court–her first intimacy with him. And he had spoken of the girl up North. She remembered him saying: “But doesn’t the Bible say to leave all and cleave unto your wife?”
That had been a confession, though she knew it not. And she had ignored it, taking it as badinage, and he had been too weak to brand it truth. Strangely enough, she did not judge him for posing as Major Calvert’s nephew. Strangely enough, that seemed trivial in comparison with the other. It was so natural for him to be the rightful heir that she could not realize that he was an impostor, nor apportion the fact its true significance. Her brain was unfit to grapple. Only her heart lived; lived with the passive life of stagnation. It was choked with weeds on the surface. She tried to patch together the broken parts of her life. Tried and failed. She could not. She seemed to be existing without an excuse; aimlessly, soullessly.
After many horrible days, hideous nights, she realized that she still loved Garrison. Loved with a love that threatened to absorb even her physical existence. It seemed as if the very breath of her lungs had been diverted to her heart, where it became tissue-searing flame.
And at Calvert House life had resolved itself into silence. The major and his wife were striving to live in the future; striving to live against Garrison’s return. They were ignorant of the true cause of his leaving. For Sue, the keeper of the secret, had not divulged it. She had been left with a difficult proposition to face, and she could not face it. She temporized. She knew that sooner or later the truth would have to come out. She put it off. She could not tell, not now, not now. Each day only rendered it the more difficult. She could not tell.
She had only to look at the old major; to look at his wife, to see that the blow would blast them. She had had youth to help her, and even she had been blasted. What chance had they? And so she said that Garrison and she had quarreled seriously and that in sudden anger, pique, he had left. Oh, yes, she knew he would return. She was quite sure of it. It was all so silly and over nothing, and she had no idea he would take it that way. And she was so sorry, so sorry.
It had all been her fault. He had not been to blame. It was she, only she. In a thoughtless moment she had said something about his being dependent on his uncle, and he had fired up, affirming that he would show her that he was a man, and could earn his own salt. Yes, it had been entirely her own fault, and no one hated herself as she did. He had gone to prove his manhood, and she knew how stubborn he was. He would not return until he wished.
Sue lied bravely, convincingly, whole-heartedly. Everything she did was done thoroughly. She would not think of the future. But she could not tell that Garrison was an impostor; a father of children. She could not tell. So she lied, and lied so well that the old major, bewildered, was forced to believe her. He was forced to acquiesce. He could not interfere. He could do nothing. It was better that his nephew should prove his manhood; return some time and love the girl, than that he should hate her for eternity.
Each day he hoped to see Garrison back, but each day passed without that consummation. The strain was beginning to tell on him. His heart was bound up in the boy. If he did not return soon he would advertise, institute a search. He well knew the folly of youth. He was broad- minded, great-hearted enough not to censure the girl by word or act. He saw how she was suffering; growing paler daily. But why didn’t Garrison write? All the anger, all the quarrels in the world could not account for his leaving like that; account for his silence.
The major commenced to doubt. And his wife’s words: “It’s not like Sue to permit William to go like that. Nor like her to ever have said such a thing even unthinkingly. There’s more than that on the girl’s mind. She is wasting away”–but served to strengthen the doubt. Still, he was impotent. He could not understand. If his nephew did not wish to return, all the advertising in creation could not drag him back.
Yes, his wife was right. There was more on the girl’s mind than that. And it was not like Sue to act as she affirmed she had. Still, he could not bring himself to doubt her. He was in a quandary. It had begun to tell on him, on his wife; even as it had already told on the girl.
And old Colonel Desha was likewise breasting a sea of trouble. Waterbury’s death had brought financial matters to a focus. Honor imperatively demanded that the mortgage be settled with the dead man’s heirs. It was only due to Sue’s desperate financiering that the interest had been met up to the present. That it would be paid next month depended solely on the chance of The Rogue winning the Carter Handicap. Things had come to as bad a pass as that.
The colonel frantically bent every effort toward getting the thoroughbred into condition. How he hated himself now for posting his all on the winter books! Now that the great trial was so near, his deep convictions of triumph did not look so wonderful.
There were good horses entered against The Rogue. Major Calvert’s Dixie, for instance, and Speedaway, the wonderful goer owned by that man Drake. Then there were half a dozen others–all from well-known stables. There could be no doubt that “class” would be present in abundance at the Carter. And only he had so much at stake. He had entered The Rogue in the first flush consequent on his winning the last Carter. But he must win this. He must. Getting him into condition entailed expense. It must be met. All his hopes, his fears, were staked on The Rogue. Money never was so paramount; the need of it so great. Fiercely he hugged his poverty to his breast, keeping it from his friend the major.
Then, too, he was greatly worried over Sue. She was not looking well. He was worried over Garrison’s continued absence. He was worried over everything. It was besetting him from all sides. Worry was causing him to take the lime-light from himself. He awoke to the fact that Sue was in very poor health. If she died– He never could finish.
Taken all in all, it was a very bad time for the two oldest families in Cottonton. Every member was suffering silently, stoically; each in a different way. One striving to conceal from the other. And it all centered about Garrison.
And then, one day when things were at their worst, when Garrison, unconscious of the general misery he had engendered, had completed Speedaway’s training for the Carter, when he himself was ready for the fight of his life, a stranger stepped off the Cottonton express and made his way to the Desha homestead. He knew the colonel. He was a big, quiet man–Jimmie Drake.
A week later and Drake had returned North. He had not said anything to Garrison regarding what had called him away, but the latter vaguely sensed that it was another attempt on the indefatigable turfman’s part to ferret out the eminent lawyer, Mr. Snark. And when Drake, on his return, called Garrison into the club-house, Garrison went white- faced. He had just sent Speedaway over the seven furlongs in record time, and his heart was big with hope.
Drake never wasted ammunition in preliminary skirmishing. He told the joke first and the story afterward.
“I’ve been South. Seen Colonel Desha and Major Calvert,” he said tersely.
Garrison was silent, looking at him. He tried to read fate in his inscrutable eyes; news of some description; tried, and failed. He turned away his head. “Tell me,” he said simply. Drake eyed him and slowly came forward and held out his large bloodshot hand.
“Billy Garrison–‘Bud’–‘Kid’–William C. Dagget,” he said, nodding his head.
Garrison rose with difficulty, the sweat on his face.
“William C. Dagget? Me? Me? Me?” he whispered, his head thrown forward, his eyes narrowed, starting at Drake. “Just God, Jimmie! Don’t play with me—-” He sat down abruptly covering his quivering face with his hands.
Drake laid a hand on the heaving shoulders. “There, there, kid,” he murmured gruffly, as if to a child, “don’t go and blow up over it. Yes, you’re Dagget. The luckiest kid in the States, and–and the damnedest. You’ve raised a muss-pile down South in Cottonton. Dagget or no Dagget, I’m talking straight. You’ve been selfish, kid. You’ve only been thinking of yourself; your regeneration; your past, your present, your future. You–you–you. You never thought of the folks you left down home; left to suffocate with the stink you raised. You cleared out scot-free, and, say, kid, you let a girl lie for you; lie for you. You did that. A girl, by heck! who wouldn’t lie for the Almighty Himself. A girl who–who—-” Drake searched frantically for a fitting simile, gasped, mopped his face with a lurid silk handkerchief, and flumped into a chair. “Well, say, kid, it’s just plain hell. That’s what it is.”
“Lied for me?” said Garrison very quietly.
“That’s the word. But I’ll start from the time the fur commenced to fly. In the first place, there’s no doubt about your identity. I was right. I’ve proved that. I couldn’t find Snark–I guess the devil must have called him back home. So I took things on my own hook and went to Cottonton, where I moseyed round considerable. I know Colonel Desha, and I learned a good deal in a quiet way when I was there. I learned from Major Calvert that his half-sister’s–your mother’s–name was Loring. That cinched it for me. But I said nothing. They were in an awful stew over your absence, but I never let on, at first, that I had you bunked.
“I learned, among other things, that Miss Desha had taken upon herself the blame of your leaving; saying that she had said something you had taken exception to; that you had gone to prove your manhood, kid. Your manhood, kid–mind that. She’s a thoroughbred, that girl. Now, I would have backed her lie to the finish if something hadn’t gone and happened.” Drake paused significantly. “That something was that the major received a letter–from your father, kid.”
“My father?” whispered Garrison.
“Um-m-m, the very party. Written from ‘Frisco–on his death-bed. One of those old-timey, stage-climax death-bed confessions. As old as the mortgage on the farm business. As I remarked before some right-meaning chap says somewhere something about saying nothing but good of the dead. I’m not slinging mud. I guess there was a whole lot missing in your father, kid, but he tried to square himself at the finish, the same as we all do, I guess.
“He wrote to the major, saying he had never told his son–you, kid–of his real name nor of his mother’s family. He confessed to changing his name from Dagget to Garrison for the very reasons I said. Remember? He ended by saying he had wronged you; that he knew you would be the major’s heir, and that if you were to be found it would be under the name of Garrison. That is, if you were still living. He didn’t know anything about you.
“There was a whole lot of repentance and general misery in the letter. I don’t like to think of it overmuch. But it knocked Cottonton flatter than stale beer. Honest. I never saw such a time. I’m no good at telling a yarn, kid. It was something fierce. There was nothing but knots and knots; all diked up and tangles by the mile. And so I had to step in and straighten things out. And–and so, kid, I told the major everything; every scrap of your history, as far as I knew it. All you had told to me. I had to. Now, don’t tell me I kicked in. Say I did right, kid. I meant to.”
“Yes, yes,” murmured Garrison blankly. “And–and the major? What–did he say, Jimmie?”
Drake frowned thoughtfully.
“Say? Well, kid, I only wish I had an uncle like that. I only wish there were more folks like those Cottonton folks. I do. Say? Why, Lord, kid, it was one grand hallelujah! Forgive? Say,” he finished, thoughtfully eyeing the white-faced, newly christened Garrison, “what have you ever done to be loved like that? They were crazy for you. Not a word was said about your imposition. Not a word. It was all: ‘When will he be back?’ ‘Where is he?’ ‘Telegraph!’ All one great slambang of joy. And me? Well, I could have had that town for my own. And your aunt? She cried, cried when she heard all you had been through. Oh, I made a great press-agent, kid. And the old major– Oh, fuss! I can’t tell a yarn nohow,” grumbled Drake, stamping about at great length and vigorously using the lurid silk handkerchief.
William C. Dagget was silent–the silence of great, overwhelming joy. He was shivering. “And–and Miss Desha?” he whispered at length.
“Yes–Miss Desha,” echoed Drake, planting wide his feet and contemplating the other’s bent head. “Yes, Miss Desha. And why in blazes did you tell her you were married, eh?” he asked grimly. “Oh, you thought you were? Oh, yes. And you didn’t deny it when you found it wasn’t so? Oh, yes, of course. And it didn’t matter whether she ate her heart out or not? Of course not. Oh, yes, you wanted to be clean, first, and all that. And she might die in the meantime. You didn’t think she still cared for you? Now, see here, kid, that’s a lie and you know it. It’s a lie. When a girl like Miss Desha goes so far as to– Oh, fuss! I can’t tell a yarn. But, see here, kid, I haven’t your blood. I own that. But if I ever put myself before a girl who cared for me the way Miss Desha cares for you, and I professed to love her as you professed to love Miss Desha, than may I rot–rot, hide, hair, and bones! Now, cuss me out, if you like.”
Garrison looked up grimly.
“You’re right, Jimmie. I should have stood my ground and taken my dose. I should have written her when I discovered the truth. But–I couldn’t. I couldn’t. Listen, Jimmie, it was not selfishness, not cowardice. Can’t you see? Can’t you see? I cared too much. I was so unworthy, so miserable. How could I ever think she would stoop to my level? She was so high; I so horribly low. It was my own unworthiness choking me. It was not selfishness, Jimmie, not selfishness. It was despair; despair and misery. Don’t you understand?”
“Oh, fuss!” said Drake again, using the lurid silk handkerchief. Then he laid his hand on the other’s shoulder. “I understand,” he said simply. There was silence. Finally Drake wiped his face and cleared his throat.
“And now, with your permission, we’ll get down to tacks, Mr. William C. Dagget–“
“Don’t call me that, Jimmie. I’m not that–yet. I’m Billy Garrison until I’ve won the Carter Handicap–proven myself clean.”
“Right, kid. And that’s what I wished to speak about. In the first place, Major Calvert knows where you are. Colonel and Miss Desha do not. In fact, kid,” added Drake, rubbing his chin, “the major and I have a little plot hatched up between us. Your identity, if possible is not to be made known to the colonel and his daughter until the finish of the Carter. Understand?”
“No,” said Garrison flatly. “Why?”
“Because, kid, you’re not going to ride Speedaway. You’re not going to ride for my stable. You’re going to ride Colonel Desha’s Rogue–ride as you never rode before. Ride and win. That’s why.”
Garrison only stared as Drake ran on. “See here, kid, this race means everything to the colonel–everything in the world. Every cent he has is at stake; his honor, his life, his daughter’s happiness. He’s proud, cussed proud, and he’s kept it mum. And the girl–Miss Desha has bucked poverty like a thoroughbred. I got to know the facts, picking them up here and there, and the major knows, too. We’ve got to work in the dark, for the colonel would die first if he knew the truth, before he would accept help even indirectly. The Rogue must win; must. But what chance has he against the major’s Dixie, my Speedaway, and the Morgan entry–Swallow? And so the major has scratched his mount, giving out that Dixie has developed eczema.
“Now, the colonel is searching high and low for a jockey capable of handling The Rogue. It’ll take a good man. I recommended you. He doesn’t know your identity, for the major and I have kept it from him. He only thinks you are /the/ Garrison who has come back. I have fixed it up with him that you are to ride his mount, and The Rogue will arrive to-morrow.
“The colonel is a wreck mentally and physically; living on nerve. I’ve agreed to put the finishing touches on The Rogue, and he, knowing my ability and facilities, has permitted me. It’s all in my hands–pretty near. Now, Red McGloin is up on the Morgan entry–Swallow. He used to be a stable-boy for Waterbury. I guess you’ve heard of him. He’s developed into a first-class boy. But I want to see you lick the hide off him. The fight will lie between you and him. I know the rest of the field–“
“But Speedaway?” cried Garrison, jumping to his feet. “Jimmie–you! It’s too great a sacrifice; too great, too great. I know how you’ve longed to win the Carter; what it means to you; how you have slaved to earn it. Jimmie–Jimmie–don’t tempt me. You can’t mean you’ve scratched Speedaway!”
“Just that, kid,” said Drake grimly. “The first scratch in my life– and the last. Speedaway? Well, she and I will win again some other time. Some time, kid, when we ain’t playing against a man’s life and a girl’s happiness. I’ll scratch for those odds. It’s for you, kid–you and the girl. Remember, you’re carrying her colors, her life.
“You’ll have a good fight–but fight as you never fought before; as you never hope to fight again. Cottonton will watch you, kid. Don’t shame them; don’t shame me. Show ’em what you’re made of. Show Red that a former stable-boy, no matter what class he is now, can’t have the licking of a former master. Show ’em a has-been can come back. Show ’em what Garrison stands for. Show ’em your finish, kid–I’ll ask no more. And you’ll carry Jimmie Drake’s heart– Oh, fuss! I can’t tell a yarn, nohow.”
In silence Garrison gripped Drake’s hand. And if ever a mighty resolution was welded in a human heart–a resolution born of love, everything; one that nothing could deny–it was born that moment in Garrison’s. Born as the tears stood in his eyes, and, man as he was, he could not keep up; nor did he shame his manhood by denying them. “Kid, kid,” said Drake.
CHAPTER XV.
GARRISON’S FINISH.
It was April 16. Month of budding life; month of hope; month of spring when all the world is young again; when the heart thaws out after its long winter frigidity. It was the day of the opening of the Eastern racing season; the day of the Carter Handicap.
Though not one of the “classics,” the Carter annually draws an attendance of over ten thousand; ten thousand enthusiasts who have not had a chance to see the ponies run since the last autumn race; those who had been unable to follow them on the Southern circuit. Women of every walk of life; all sorts and conditions of men. Enthusiasts glad to be out in the life-giving sunshine of April; panting for excitement; full to the mouth with volatile joy; throwing off the shackles of the business treadmill; discarding care with the ubiquitous umbrella and winter flannels; taking fortune boldly by the hand; returning to first principles; living for the moment; for the trial of skill, endurance, and strength; staking enough in the balances to bring a fillip to the heart and the blood to the cheek.
It was a typical American crowd; long-suffering, giving and taking– principally giving–good-humored, just. All morning it came in a seemingly endless chain; uncoupling link by link, only to weld together again. All morning long, ferries, trolleys, trains were jammed with the race-mad throng. Coming by devious ways, for divers reasons; coming from all quarters by every medium; centering at last at the Queen’s County Jockey Club.
And never before in the history of the Aqueduct track had so thoroughly a representative body of racegoers assembled at an opening day. Never before had Long Island lent sitting and standing room to so impressive a gathering of talent, money, and family. Every one interested in the various phases of the turf was there, but even they only formed a small portion of the attendance.
Rumors floated from paddock to stand and back again. The air was surcharged with these wireless messages, bearing no signature nor guarantee of authenticity. And borne on the crest of all these rumors was one–great, paramount. Garrison, the former great Garrison, had come back. He was to ride; ride the winner of the last Carter, the winner of a fluke race.
The world had not forgotten. They remembered The Rogue’s last race. They remembered Garrison’s last race. The wise ones said that The Rogue could not possibly win. This time there could be no fluke, for the great Red McGloin was up on the favorite. The Rogue would be shown in his true colors–a second-rater.
Speculation was rife. This Carter Handicap presented many, many features that kept the crowd at fever-heat. Garrison had come back. Garrison had been reinstated. Garrison was up on a mount he had been accused of permitting to win last year. Those who wield the muck-rake for the sake of general filth, not in the name of justice, shook their heads and lifted high hands to Heaven. It looked bad. Why should Garrison be riding for Colonel Desha? Why had Jimmie Drake transferred him at the eleventh hour? Why had Drake scratched Speedaway? Why had Major Calvert scratched Dixie? The latter was an outsider, but they had heard great things of her.
“Cooked,” said the muck-rakers wisely, and, thinking it was a show- down for the favorite, stacked every cent they had on Swallow. No long shots for them.
And some there were who cursed Drake and Major Calvert; cursed long and intelligently–those who had bet on Speedaway and Dixie, bet on the play-or-pay basis, and now that the mounts were scratched, they had been bitten. It was entirely wrong to tempt Fortune, and then have her turn on you. She should always be down on the “other fellow”–not you.
And then there were those, and many, who did not question, who were glad to know that Garrison had come back on any terms. They had liked him for himself. They were the weak-kneed variety who are stanch in prosperity; who go with the world; coincide with the world’s verdict. The world had said Garrison was crooked. If they had not agreed, they had not denied. If Garrison now had been reinstated, then the world said he was honest. They agreed now–loudly; adding the old shibboleth of the moral coward: “I told you so.” But still they doubted that he had “come back.” A has-been can never come back.
The conservative element backed Morgan’s Swallow. Red McGloin was up, and he was proven class. He had stepped into Garrison’s niche of fame. He was the popular idol now. And, as Garrison had once warned him, he was already beginning to pay the price. The philosophy of the exercise boy had changed to the philosophy of the idol; the idol who cannot be pulled down. And he had suffered. He had gone through part of what Garrison had gone through, but he also had experienced what the latter’s inherent cleanliness had kept him from.
Temptation had come Red’s way; come strong without reservation. Red, with the hunger of the long-denied, with the unrestricted appetite of the intellectually low, had not discriminated. And he had suffered. His trainer had watched him carefully, but youth must have its fling, and youth had flung farther than watching wisdom reckoned.
Red had not gone back. He was young yet. But the first flush of his manhood had gone; the cream had been stolen. His nerve was just a little less than it had been; his eye and hand a little less steady; his judgment a little less sound; his initiative, daring, a little less paramount. And races have been won and lost, and will be won and lost, when that “little Less” is the deciding breath that tips the scale.
But he had no misgivings. Was he not the idol? Was he not up on Swallow, the favorite? Swallow, with the odds–two to one–on. He knew Garrison was to ride The Rogue. What did that matter? The Rogue was ten to one against. The Rogue was a fluke horse. Garrison was a has- been. The track says a has-been can never come back. Of course Garrison had been to the dogs during the past year–what down-and-out jockey has not gone there? And if Drake had transferred him to Desha, it was a case of good riddance. Drake was famous for his eccentric humor. But he was a sound judge of horse-flesh. No doubt he knew what a small chance Speedaway had against Swallow, and he had scratched advisedly; playing the Morgan entry instead.
In the grand stand sat three people wearing a blue and gold ribbon– the Desha colors. Occasionally they were reinforced by a big man, who circulated between them and the paddock. The latter was Jimmie Drake. The others were “Cottonton,” as the turfman called them. They were Major and Mrs. Calvert and Sue Desha.
Colonel Desha was not there. He was eating his heart out back home. The nerve he had been living on had suddenly snapped at the eleventh hour. He was denied watching the race he had paid so much in every way to enter. The doctors had forbidden his leaving. His heart could not stand the excitement; his constitution could not meet the long journey North. And so alone, propped up in bed, he waited; waited, counting off each minute; more excited, wrought up, than if he had been at the track.
It had been arranged that in the event of The Rogue winning, the good news should be telegraphed to the colonel the moment the gelding flashed past the judges’ stand. He had insisted on that and on his daughter being present. Some member of the family must be there to back The Rogue in his game fight. And so Sue, in company with the major and his wife, had gone.
She had taken little interest in the race. She knew what it meant, no one knew better than she, but somehow she had no room left for care to occupy. She was apathetic, listless; a striking contrast to the major and his wife, who could hardly repress their feelings. They knew what she would find at the Aqueduct track–find the world. She did not.
All she knew was that Drake, whom she liked for his rough, patent manhood, had very kindly offered the services of his jockey; a jockey whom he had faith in. Who that jockey was, she did not know, nor overmuch care. A greater sorrow had obliterated her racing passion; had even ridden roughshod over the fear of financial ruin. Her mind was numb.
For days succeeding Drake’s statement to her that Garrison was not married she waited for some word from him. Drake had explained how Garrison had thought he was married. He had explained all that. She could never forget the joy that had swamped her on hearing it; even as she could never forget the succeeding days of waiting misery; waiting, waiting, waiting for some word. He had been proven honest, proven Major Calvert’s nephew, proven free. What more could he ask? Then why had he not come, written?
She could not believe he no longer cared. She could not believe that; rather, she would not. She gaged his heart by her own. Hers was the woman’s portion–inaction. She must still wait, wait, wait. Still she must eat her heart out. Hers was the woman’s portion. And if he did not come, if he did not write–even in imagination she could never complete the alternative. She must live in hope; live in hope, in faith, in trust, or not at all.
Colonel Desha’s enforced absence overcame the one difficulty Major Calvert and Jimmie Drake had acknowledged might prematurely explode their hidden identity mine. The colonel, exercising his owner’s prerogative, would have fussed about The Rogue until the last minute. Of course he would have interviewed Garrison, giving him riding instructions, etc. Now Drake assumed the right by proxy, and Sue, after one eager-whispered word to The Rogue, had assumed her position in the grand stand.
Garrison was up-stairs in the jockey’s quarters of the new paddock structure, the lower part of which is reserved for the clerical force, and so she had not seen him. But presently the word that Garrison was to ride flew everywhere, and Sue heard it. She turned slowly to Drake, standing at her elbow, his eyes on the paddock.
“Is it true that a jockey called Garrison is to ride to-day?” she asked, a strange light in her eyes. What that name meant to her!
“Why, yes, I believe so, Miss Desha,” replied Drake, delightfully innocent. “Why?”
“Oh,” she said slowly. “How–how queer! I mean–isn’t it queer that two people should have the same name? I suppose this one copied it; imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. I hope he does the name justice. Do you know him? He is a good rider? What horse is he up on?”
Drake, wisely enough, chose the last question. “A ten-to-one shot,” he replied illuminatingly. “Perhaps you’ll bet on him, Miss Desha, eh? It’s what we call a hunch–coincidence or anything like that. Shall I place a bet for you?”
The girl’s eyes kindled strangely. Then she hesitated.
“But–but I can’t bet against The Rogue. It would not be loyal.”
Mrs. Calvert laughed softly.
“There are exceptions, dear.” In a low aside she added: “Haven’t you that much faith in the name of Garrison? There, I know you have. I would be ashamed to tell you how much the major and I have up on that name. And you know I never bet, as a rule. It is very wrong.”
And so Sue, the blood in her cheeks, handed all her available cash to Drake to place on the name of Garrison. She would pretend it was the original. Just pretend.
“Here they come,” yelled Drake, echoed by the rippling shout of the crowd.
The girl rose, white-faced; striving to pick out the blue and gold of the Desha stable.
And here they came, the thirteen starters; thirteen finished examples of God and man’s handicraft. Speed, endurance, skill, nerve, grit–all were there. Horse and rider trained to the second. Bone, muscle, sinew, class. And foremost of the string came Swallow, the favorite, Red McGloin, confidently smiling, sitting with the conscious ease of the idol who has carried off the past year’s Brooklyn Handicap.
Good horses there were; good and true. There were Black Knight and Scapegrace, Rightful and Happy Lad, Bean Eater and Emetic–the latter the great sprinter who was bracketed with Swallow on the book-maker’s sheets. Mares, fillies, geldings–every offering of horse-flesh above three years. All striving for the glory and honor of winning this great sprint handicap. The monetary value was the lesser virtue. Eight thousand dollars for the first horse; fifteen hundred for the second; five hundred for the third. All striving to be at least placed within the money–placed for the honor and glory and standing.
Last of all came The Rogue, black, lean, dangerous. Trained for the fight of his life from muzzle to clean-cut hoofs. Those hoofs had been cared for more carefully than the hands of any queen; packed every day in the soft, velvety red clay brought all the way from the Potomac River.
Garrison, in the blue and gold of the Desha stable, his mouth drawn across his face like a taut wire, sat hunched high on The Rogue’s neck. He looked as lean and dangerous as his mount. His seat was recognized instantly, before even his face could be discerned.
A murmur, increasing rapidly to a roar, swung out from every foot of space. Some one cried “Garrison!” And “Garrison! Garrison! Garrison!” was caught up and flung back like the spume of sea from the surf- lashed coast.
He knew the value of that hail, and how only one year ago his name had been spewed from out those selfsame laudatory mouths with venom and contempt. He knew his public. Adversity had been a mighty master. The public–they who live in the present, not the past. They who swear by triumph, achievement; not effort. They who have no memory for the deeds that have been done unless they vouch for future conquests. The public–fickle as woman, weak as infancy, gullible as credulity, mighty as fate. Yes, Garrison knew it, and deep down in his heart, though he showed it not, he gloried in the welcome accorded him. He had not been forgotten.
But he had no false hopes, illusions. His had been the welcome vouchsafed the veteran who is hopelessly facing his last fight. They, perhaps, admired his grit, his optimism; admired while they pitied. But how many, how many, really thought he was there to win? How many thought he could win?
He knew, and his heart did not quicken nor his pulse increase so much as a beat. He was cool, implacable, and dangerous as a rattler waiting for the opportune moment to spring. He looked neither to right nor left. He was deaf, impervious. He was there to win. That only.
And he would win? Why not? What were the odds of ten to one? What was the opinion, the judgment of man? What was anything compared with what he was fighting for? What horse, what jockey among them all was backed by what he was backed with? What impulse, what stimulant, what overmastering, driving necessity had they compared with his? And The Rogue knew what was expected of him that day.
It was only as Garrison was passing the grand stand during the preliminary warming-up process that his nerve faltered. He glanced up –he was compelled to. A pair of eyes were drawing his. He glanced up –there was “Cottonton”; “Cottonton” and Sue Desha. The girl’s hands were tightly clenched in her lap, her head thrown forward; her eyes obliterating space; eating into his own. How long he looked into those eyes he did not know. The major, his wife, Drake–all were shut out. He only saw those eyes. And as he looked he saw that the eyes understood at last; understood all. He remembered lifting his cap. That was all.
*****
“They’re off! They’re off!” That great, magic cry; fingering at the heart, tingling the blood. Signal for a roar from every throat; for the stretching of every neck to the dislocating point; for prayers, imprecations, adjurations–the entire stock of nature’s sentiment factory. Sentiment, unbridled, unleashed, unchecked. Passion given a kick and sent hurtling without let or hindrance.
The barrier was down. They were off. Off in a smother of spume and dust. Off for the short seven furlongs eating up less than a minute and a half of time. All this preparation, all the preliminaries, the whetting of appetites to razor edge, the tilts with fortune, the defiance of fate, the moil and toil and tribulations of months–all brought to a head, focused on this minute and a half. All, all for one minute and a half!
It had been a clean break from the barrier. But in a flash Emetic was away first, hugging the rail. Swallow, taking her pace with all McGloin’s nerve and skill, had caught her before she had traveled half a dozen yards. Emetic flung dirt hard, but Swallow hung on, using her as a wind-shield. She was using the pacemaker’s “going.”
The track was in surprisingly good condition, but there were streaks of damp, lumpy track throughout the long back and home-stretch. This favored The Rogue; told against the fast sprinters Swallow and Emetic. After the two-yard gap left by the leaders came a bunch of four, with The Rogue in the center.
“Pocketed already!” yelled some derisively. Garrison never heeded. Emetic was the fastest sprinter there that day; a sprinter, not a stayer. There is a lot of luck in a handicap. If a sprinter with a light weight up can get away first, she may never be headed till the finish. But it had been a clear break, and Swallow had caught on.
The pace was heart-breaking; murderous; terrific. Emetic’s rider had taken a chance and lost it; lost it when McGloin caught him. Swallow was a better stayer; as fast as a sprinter. But if Emetic could not spread-eagle the field, she could set a pace that would try the stamina and lungs of Pegasus. And she did. First furlong in thirteen seconds. Record for the Aqueduct. A record sent flying to flinders. My! that was going some. Quarter-mile in twenty-four flat. Another record wiped out. What a pace!
A great cry went up. Could Emetic hold out? Could she stay, after all? Could she do what she had never done before? Swallow’s backers began to blanch. Why, why was McGloin pressing so hard? Why? why? Emetic must tire. Must, must, must. Why would McGloin insist on taking that pace? It was a mistake, a mistake. The race had twisted his brain. The fight for leadership had biased his judgment. If he was not careful that lean, hungry-looking horse, with Garrison up, would swing out from the bunch, fresh, unkilled by pace-following, and beat him to a froth. . . .
There, there! Look at that! Look at that! God! how Garrison is riding! Riding as he never rode before. Has he come back? Look at him. . . . I told you so. I told you so. There comes that black fiend across– It’s a foul! No, no. He’s clear. He’s clear. There he goes. He’s clear. He’s slipped the bunch, skinned a leader’s nose, jammed against the rail. Look how he’s hugging it! Look! He’s hugging McGloin’s heels. He’s waiting, waiting. . . . There, there! It’s Emetic. See, she’s wet from head to hock. She is, she is! She’s tiring; tiring fast. . . . See! . . . McGloin, McGloin, McGloin! You’re riding, boy, riding. Good work. Snappy work. You’ve got Emetic dead to rights. You were all right in following her pace. I knew you were. I knew she would tire. Only two furlongs– What? What’s that? . . . Garrison? That plug Rogue? . . . Oh, Red, Red! . . . Beat him, Red, beat him! It’s only a bluff. He’s not in your class. He can’t hang on. . . . Beat him, Red, beat him! Don’t let a has-been put it all over you! . . . Ride, you cripple, ride! . . . What? Can’t you shake him off? . . . Slug him! . . . Watch out! He’s trying for the rail. Crowd him, crowd him! . . . What’s the matter with you? . . . Where’s your nerve? You can’t shake him off! Beat him down the stretch! He’s fresh. He wasn’t the fool to follow pace, like you. . . . What’s the matter with you? He’s crowding you–look out, there! Jam him! . . . He’s pushing you hard. . . . Neck and neck, you fool. That black fiend can’t be stopped. . . . Use the whip! Red, use the whip! It’s all you’ve left. Slug her, slug her! That’s it, that’s it! Slug speed into her. Only a furlong to go. . . . Come on, Red, come on! . . .
Here they come, in a smother of dust. Neck and neck down the stretch. The red and white of the Morgan stable; the blue and gold of the Desha. It’s Swallow. No, no, it’s The Rogue. Back and forth, back and forth stormed the rival names. The field was pandemonium. “Cottonton” was a mass of frantic arms, raucous voices, white faces. Drake, his pudgy hands whanging about like semaphore-signals in distress, was blowing his lungs out: “Come on, kid come on! You’ve got him now! He can’t last! Come on, come on!–for my sake, for your sake, for anybody’s sake, but only come!”
Game Swallow’s eyes had a blue film over them. The heart-breaking pace-following had told. Red’s error of judgment had told. The “little less” had told. A frenzied howl went up. “Garrison! Garrison! Garrison!” The name that had once meant so much now meant–everything. For in a swirl of dust and general undiluted Hades, the horses had stormed past the judges’ stand. The great Carter was lost and won.
Swallow, with a thin streamer of blood threading its way from her nostrils, was a beaten horse; a game, plucky, beaten favorite. It was all over. Already The Rogue’s number had been posted. It was all over; all over. The finish of a heart-breaking fight; the establishing of a new record for the Aqueduct. And a name had been replaced in its former high niche. The has-been had come back.
And “Cottonton,” led by a white-faced girl and a big, apoplectic turfman, were forgetting dignity, decorum, and conventionality as hand in hand they stormed through the surging eruption of humanity fighting to get a chance at little Billy Garrison’s hand.
And as, saddle on shoulder, he stood on the weighing-scales and caught sight of the oncoming hosts of “Cottonton” and read what the girl’s eyes held, then, indeed, he knew all that his finish had earned him– the beginning of a new life with a new name; the beginning of one that the lesson he had learned, backed by the great love that had come to him, would make–paradise. And his one unuttered prayer was: “Dear God, make me worthy, make me worthy of them–all!”
Aftermath was a blur to “Garrison.” Great happiness can obscure, befog like great sorrow. And there are some things that touch the heart too vitally to admit of analyzation. But long afterward, when time, mighty adjuster of the human soul, had given to events their true proportions, that meeting with “Cottonton” loomed up in all its greatness, all its infinite appeal to the emotions, all its appeal to what is highest and worthiest in man. In silence, before all that little world, Sue Desha had put her arms about his neck. In silence he had clasped the major’s hand. In silence he had turned to his aunt; and what he read in her misty eyes, read in the eyes of all, even the shrewd, kindly eyes of Drake the Silent and in the slap from his congratulatory paw, was all that man could ask; more than man could deserve.
Afterward the entire party, including Jimmie Drake, who was regarded as the grand master of Cottonton by this time, took train for New York. Regarding the environment, it was somewhat like a former ride “Garrison” had taken; regarding the atmosphere, it was as different as hope from despair. Now Sue was seated by his side, her eyes never once leaving his face. She was not ordinarily one to whom words were ungenerous, but now she could not talk. She could only look and look, as if her happiness would vanish before his eyes. “Garrison” was thinking, thinking of many things. Somehow, words were unkind to him, too; somehow, they seemed quite unnecessary.
“Do you remember this time a year ago?” he asked gravely at length. “It was the first time I saw you. Then it was purgatory to exist, now it is heaven to live. It must be a dream. Why is it that those who deserve least, invariably are given most? Is it the charity of Heaven, or–what?” He turned and looked into her eyes. She smuggled her hand across to his.
“You,” she exclaimed, a caressing, indolent inflection in her soft voice. “You.” That “you” is a peculiar characteristic caress of the Southerner. Its meaning is infinite. “I’m too happy to analyze,” she confided, her eyes growing dark. “And it is not the charity of Heaven, but the charity of–man.”
“You mustn’t say that,” he whispered. “It is you, not me. It is you who are all and I nothing. It is you.”
She shook her head, smiling. There was an air of seductive luxury about her. She kept her eyes unwaveringly on his. “You,” she said again.
“And there’s old Jimmie Drake,” added “Garrison” musingly, at length, a light in his eyes. He nodded up the aisle where the turfman was entertaining the major and his wife. “There’s a man, Sue, dear. A man whose friendship is not a thing of condition nor circumstance. I will always strive to earn, keep it as I will strive to be worthy of your love. I know what it cost Drake to scratch Speedaway. I will not, cannot forget. We owe everything to him, dear; everything.”
“I know,” said the girl, nodding. “And I, we owe everything to him. He is sort of revered down home like a Messiah, or something like that. You don’t know those days of complete misery and utter hopelessness, and what his coming meant. He seemed like a great big sun bursting through a cyclone. I think he understands that there is, and always will be, a very big, warm place in Cottonton’s heart for him. At least, we-all have told him often enough. He’s coming down home with us now–with you.”
He turned and looked steadily into her great eyes. His hand went out to meet hers.
“You,” whispered the girl again.