The big town - Only One - (2)

So Ella says: “Maybe you have, but which one of us has got the husband?”
    “You, thank the Lord!” says Katie.
    “Thank him twice,” I said.
    Kate didn’t come home from her New York party till two o’clock and she overslept herself till it was too late to go down again and shop. So we all drove over to the track with Daley and most of the way over he acted like a child. Katie kept talking about what a good show she seen and had a grand time, and so forth, and he pretended he wasn’t listening. Finally she cut it out and give him the old oil and by the time we got to the clubhouse he’d tossed in the sponge.
    That was the last day at Jamaica and a couple of his horses was in. We was all down on them and they both copped, though Mercer had to give one of them a dude ride to pull us through. Daley got maudlin about what a grand rider the kid was and a grand little fella besides, and he had half a notion to bring him along with us back to the hotel and show him a good time. But Kate said what was the use of an extra man, as it would kind of spoil things and she was satisfied with just Daley. So of course that tickled him and everybody was feeling good and after supper him and Kate snuck out alone for the first time. Ella made me set up till they come back, so as she could get the news. Well, Daley had asked her all right, but she told him she wanted a little wile to think.
    “Think!” says Ella. “What does she want to think for?”
    “The novelty, I suppose,” said I.
    Only One was in the big stake race the next day, when we shifted over to Belmont. They was five or six others in with him, all of them pretty good, and the price on him was 3 to 1. He hadn’t started yet since Daley’d brought him here, but they’d been nursing him along and Mercer and the trainer said he was right.
    I suppose of course you’ve been out to Belmont. At that time they run the wrong way of the track, like you deal cards. Daley’s table was in a corner of the clubhouse porch and when you looked up the track, the horses was coming right at you. Even the boys with the trick glasses didn’t dast pretend they could tell who’s ahead.
    The Belmont national hymn is Whispering. The joint’s so big and scattered round that a German could sing without disturbing the party at the next table. But they seems to be a rule that when they’s anything to be said, you got to murmur it with the lips stuck to the opponent’s earlobe. They shush you if you ask out loud for a toothpick. Everywhere you’ll see two or three guys with their heads together in a whispering scene. One of them has generally always just been down to the horses’ dining room and had lunch with Man o’ War or somebody and they told him to play Sea Mint in the next race as Cleopatra had walked the stall all night with her foal. A little ways off they’ll be another pair of shushers and one of them’s had a phone call from Cleopatra’s old dam to put a bet on Cleo as Captain Alcock had got a hold of some wild oats and they couldn’t make him do nothing but shimmy.
    If they’s ten horses in a race you can walk from one end of the clubhouse to the other and get a whisper on all ten of them. I remember the second time Man o’ War run there. They was only one horse that wanted to watch him from the track and the War horse was 1 to 100. So just before the race, if you want to call it that, I seen a wise cracker that I’d got acquainted with, that had always been out last night with Madden or Waterbury, so just kidding I walked up to him and asked him who he liked. So he motioned me to come over against the wall where they wasn’t nobody near us and whispered, “Man o’ War’s unbeatable.” You see if that remark had of been overheard and the news allowed to spread round, it might of forced the price to, say, 1 to a lump of coal, and spoiled the killing.
    Well, wile the Jamaica meeting was on, the gals had spent some of their spare time figuring out how much they’d of been ahead if Daley had of let them bet more than ten to twenty smackers a race. So this day at Belmont, they said that if he liked Only One so much, he should ought to leave them raise the ante just once and play fifty apiece.
    But he says: “No, not this time. I’m pretty sure he’ll win, but he’s in against a sweet field and he ain’t raced for a month. I’ll bet forty on the nose for the two of you, and if he looks good you can gamble some real money the next time he runs.”
    So Ella and Kate had to be satisfied with $20 apiece. Daley himself bet $2,000 and I piked along with $200 that I didn’t tell the gals nothing about. We all got 3 to 1. A horse named Streak of Lightning was favorite at 6 to 5. It was a battle. Only One caught the Streak in the last step and win by a flea’s jaw. Everybody was in hysterics and the gals got all messed up clawing each other.
    “Nobody but Mercer could of did it!” says Daley, as soon as he could talk.
    “He’s some jockey!” yelled Kate. “O you Sid!”
    Pretty soon the time was give out and Only One had broke the track record for the distance, whatever it was.
    “He’s a race horse!” said Daley. “But it’s too bad he had to extend himself. We won’t get no price the next time out.”
    Well, altogether the race meant $14,000 to Daley, and he said we’d all go to Town that night and celebrate. But when we got back to the Decker, they was a telegram for him and he had to pack up and beat it for Kentucky.
    Daley being away didn’t stop us from going to the track. He’d left orders with Ernest, his driver, to take us wherever we wanted to go and the gals had it so bad now that they couldn’t hardly wait till afternoon. They kept on trimming the books, too. Kate got a phone call every morning that she said was from this Goldberg and he was giving her tips. Her and Ella played them and I wished I had. I would of if I’d knew who they was from. They was from Mercer, Daley’s boy. That’s who they was from.
    I and Ella didn’t wise up till about the third night after Daley’d went. That night, Kate took the train to Town right after supper, saying she had a date with Goldberg. It was a swell night and along about eight, I and Ella decided we might as well have a ride. So we got a hold of Ernest and it wound up by us going to New York too. We seen a picture and batted round till midnight and then Ella says why not go down to the Pennsylvania Station and pick Kate up when she come to take the train, and bring her home. So we done it. But when Katie showed up for the train, it was Mercer that was with her, not Goldberg.
    Well, Mercer was pretty near out to the car with us when he happened to think that Daley’s driver mustn’t see him. So he said good night and left us. But he didn’t do it quick enough. Daley’s driver had saw him and I seen that he’d saw him and I knowed that he wasn’t liable to be stuck on another of Daley’s employs that was getting ten times as much money as him and all the cheers, and never had to dirty himself up changing a tire. And I bet it was all Ernest could do was wait till Daley come back so as he could explode the boom.
    Kate and Ella didn’t know Ernest was hep and I didn’t tell them for fear of spoiling the show, so the women done their brawling on the way home in a regular race track whisper. The Mrs. told Kate she was a hick to be monking round with a jockey when Daley was ready and willing to give her a modern home with a platinum stopper in the washbowl. Kate told Ella that she wasn’t going to marry nobody for their money, and besides, Mercer was making more than enough to support a wife, and how that boy can dance!
    “But listen,” she says: “I ain’t married to neither one of them yet and don’t know if I want to be.”
    “Well,” says Ella, “you won’t have no chance to marry Daley if he finds out about you and Mercer.”
    “He won’t find out unless you tell him,” said Kate.
    “Well, I’ll tell him,” says Ella, “unless you cut this monkey business out.”
    “I’ll cut it out when I get good and ready,” says Kate. “You can tell Daley anything you please.”
    She knew they wasn’t no chance of Ella making good.
    “Daley’ll be back in a couple of days,” says the Mrs. “When he comes he’ll want his answer and what are you going to say?”
    “Yes or no, according to which way I make up my mind,” said Kate. “I don’t know yet which one I like best.”
    “That’s ridic’lous!” Ella says. “When a girl says she can’t make up her mind, it shows they’s nothing to make up. Did you ever see me when I couldn’t make up my mind?”
    “No,” said Katie, “but you never had even one whole man to choose between.”
    The last half of the ride neither of them were talking. That’s a world’s record in itself. They kind of made up the next morning after I’d told Ella that the surest way to knock Daley’s chances for a gool was to paste Mercer.
    “Just lay off of it,” I told her. “The best man’ll win in fair competition, which it won’t be if you keep plugging for Daley.”
    We had two more pretty fair days at the track on Kate’s tips that Mercer give her. We also went on a party with him down Town, but we used the train, not Daley’s car.
    Daley showed up on a Wednesday morning and had Ernest take him right over to the track. I suppose it was on this trip that Ernest squealed. Daley didn’t act no different when we joined him on the clubhouse porch, but that night him and Kate took a ride alone and come back engaged.
    They’d been pointing Only One for the Merrick Handicap, the fourth race on Saturday. It was worth about $7,000 to the winner. The distance was seven furlongs and Only One had top weight, 126 pounds. But Thursday he done a trial over the distance in 1.22, carrying 130 pounds, so it looked like a set-up.
    Thursday morning I and Ella happened to be in Katie’s room when the telephone rung. It was Mercer on the other end. He asked her something and she says: “I told you why in my note.”
    So he said something else and she says: “Not with no jail-bird.”
    And she hung up.
    Well, Ella wanted to know what all the pleasantries was about, but Kate told her to mind her own business.
    “You got your wish and I’m engaged to Daley,” she says, “and that’s all you need to know.”
    For a gal that was going to marry a dude that was supposed to have all the money in the world, she didn’t act just right, but she wouldn’t been Kate if she had of, so I didn’t think much about it.
    Friday morning I got a wire from one of the South Bend boys, Goat Anderson, sent from Buffalo, saying he’d be in New York that night and would I meet him at the Belmont at seven o’clock. So I went in Town from the track and waited round till pretty near nine, but he didn’t show up. I started to walk across to the Pennsylvania Station and on the way I dropped in at a place where they was still taking a chance. I had one up at the bar and was throwing it into me when a guy in the back part yelled “Hey! Come here!” It was Mercer yelling and it was me he wanted.
    He was setting at a table all alone with a highball. It didn’t take no Craig Kennedy to figure out that it wasn’t his first one.
    “Set down before I bat you down!” he says.
    “Listen,” I says: “I wished you was champion of the world. You’d hold onto the title just long enough for me to reach over and sock you where most guys has a chin.”
    “Set down!” he says. “It’s your wife I’m going to beat up, not you.”
    “You ain’t going to beat up nobody’s wife or nobody’s husband,” I says, “and if you don’t cut out that line of gab you’ll soon be asking the nurse how you got there.”
    “Set down and come clean with me,” he says. “Was your wife the one that told Daley about your sister-in-law and I?”
    “If she did, what of it?” I says.
    “I’m asking you, did she?” he says.
    “No, she didn’t,” I said. “If somebody told him his driver told him. He seen you the other night.”
    “Ernest!” he says. “Frank and Ernest! I’ll Ernest him right in the jaw!”
    “You’re a fine matchmaker!” I says. “He could knock you for a row of flat tires. Why don’t you try and get mad at Dempsey?”
    “Set down and have a drink,” says Mercer.
    “I didn’t mean that about your wife. You and her has treated me all right. And your sister-in-law, too, even if she did give me the air. And called me a jail-bird. But that’s all right. It’s Daley I’m after and it’s Daley I’m going to get.”
    “Sweet chance!” I says. “What could you do to him?”
    “Wait and see!” said Mercer, and smiled kind of silly.
    “Listen,” I says. “Have you forgot that you’re supposed to ride Only One to-morrow?”
    “Supposed to ride is right,” he says, and smiled again.
    “Ain’t you going to ride him?” I said.
    “You bet I am!” he says.
    “Well, then,” I said, “you better call it a day and go home.”
    “I’m over twenty-one,” he says, “and I’m going to set here and enjoy myself. But remember, I ain’t keeping you up.”
    Well, they wasn’t nothing I could do only set there and wait for him to get stiff and then see him to his hotel. We had a drink and we had another and a couple more. Finally he opened up. I wished you could of heard him. It took him two hours to tell his story, and everything he said, he said it over and over and repeated it four and five times. And part of the time he talked so thick that I couldn’t hardly get him.
    “Listen,” he says. “Can you keep a secret? Listen,” he says. “I’m going to take a chance with you on account of your sister-in-law. I loved that little gal. She’s give me the air, but that don’t make no difference; I loved that little gal and I don’t want her to lose no money. So I’m going to tell you a secret and if you don’t keep your clam shut I’ll roll you for a natural. In the first place,” he says, “how do you and Daley stack up?”
    “That ain’t no secret,” I said. “I think he’s all right. He’s been a good friend of mine.”
    “Oh,” says Mercer, “so he’s been a good friend of yours, has he? All right, then. I’m going to tell you a secret. Do you remember the day I met you and the gals in the car? Well, a couple of days later, Daley was feeling pretty good about something and he asked me how I liked his gal? So I told him she looked good. So he says, ‘I’m going to marry that gal,’ he says. He says, ‘She likes me and her sister and brother-in-law is encouraging it along,’ he says. ‘They know I’ve got a little money and they’re making a play for me. They’re a couple of rats and I’m the cheese. They’re going to make a meal off of me. They think they are,’ he says. ‘But the brother-in-law’s a smart Aleck that thinks he’s a wise cracker. He’d be a clown in a circus, only that’s work. And his wife’s fishing for a sucker with her sister for bait. Well, the gal’s a pip and I’m going to marry her,’ he says, ‘but as soon as we’re married, it’s good-by, family-in-law! Me and them is going to be perfect strangers. They think they’ll have free board and lodging at my house,’ he says, ‘but they won’t get no meal unless they come to the back door for it, and when they feel sleepy they can make up a lower for themself on my cement porch.’ That’s the kind of a friend of yours this baby is,” says Mercer.
    I didn’t say nothing and he went on.
    “He’s your friend as long as he can use you,” he says. “He’s been my friend since I signed to ride for him, that is, up till he found out I was stealing his gal. Then he shot my chances for a bull’s-eye by telling her about a little trouble I had, five or six years ago. I and a girl went to a party down in Louisville and I seen another guy wink at her and I asked him what he meant by it and he said he had St. Vitus’ dance. So I pulled the iron and knocked off a couple of his toes, to cure him. I was in eleven months and that’s what Daley told Kate about. And of course he made her promise to not tell, but she wrote me a good-by note and spilled it. That’s the kind of a pal he is.
    “After I got out I worked for Bradley, and when Bradley turned me loose, he give me a $10,000 contract.”
    “He told us twenty,” I said.
    “Sure he did,” says Mercer. “He always talks double. When he gets up after a tough night, both his heads aches. And if he ever has a baby he’ll invite you over to see the twins. But anyway, what he pays me ain’t enough and after to-morrow I’m through riding. What’s ten or fifteen thousand a year when you can’t drink nothing and you starve to death for the fear you’ll pick up an ounce! Listen,” he says. “I got a brother down in Oklahoma that’s in the oil lease game. He cleaned up $25,000 last year and he wants me to go in with him. And with what I’ve saved up and what I’m going to win to-morrow, I should worry if we don’t make nothing in the next two years.”
    “How are you going to win to-morrow?” I said. “The price’ll be a joke.”
    “The price on who?” says Mercer.
    “Only One,” I said.
    He give a silly laugh and didn’t say nothing for a minute. Then he asked if Daley done the betting for I and the two gals. I told him he had did it at first, but now I was doing it.
    “Well,” he says, “you do it to-morrow, see? That little lady called me a jail-bird, but I don’t want her to lose her money.”
    So I asked him what he meant and he asked me for the tenth or eleventh time if I could keep a secret. He made me hold up my hand and swear I wouldn’t crack what he was going to tell me.
    “Now,” he says, “what’s the name of the horse I’m riding to-morrow?”
    “Only One,” I said.
    “That ain’t all of it,” said Mercer. “His name to-morrow is Only One Left. See? Only One Left.”
    “Do you mean he’s going to get left at the post?” I says.
    “You’re a Ouija board!” says Mercer. “Your name is Ouija and the horse’s name is Only One Left. And listen,” he says. “Everything but three horses is going to be scratched out of this race and we’ll open at about 1 to 3 and back up to 1 to 5. And Daley’s going to bet his right eye. But they’s a horse in the race named Sap and that’s the horse my two thousand smackers is going down on. And you’re a sap, too, if you don’t string along with me.”
    “Suppose you can’t hold Only One?”
    “Get the name right,” said Mercer. “Only One Left. And don’t worry about me not handling him. He thinks I’m Billy Sunday and everything I say he believes. Do you remember the other day when I beat Streak of Lightning? Well, the way I done that was whispering in One’s ear, coming down the stretch. I says to him, ‘One,’ I says, ‘this Lightning hoss has been spilling it round that your father’s grandmother was a zebra. Make a bum out of him!’ That’s what I whispered to him and he got sore and went past Lightning like he was standing still. And to-morrow, just before we’re supposed to go, I’ll say to him, ‘One, we’re back at Jamaica. You’re facing the wrong way.’ And when Sap and the other dog starts, we’ll be headed towards Rhode Island and in no hurry to get there.”
    “Mercer,” I said, “I don’t suppose they’s any use talking to you, but after all, you’re under contract to give Daley the best you’ve got and it don’t look to me just like you was treating him square.”
    “Listen!” he says. “Him and square don’t rhyme. And besides, I won’t be under contract to nobody by this time to-morrow. So you save your sermon for your own parish.”
    I don’t know if you’ll think I done right or not. Or I don’t care. But what was the sense of me tipping off a guy that had said them sweet things about I and Ella? And even if I don’t want a sister-in-law of mine running round with a guy that’s got a jail record, still Daley squealing on him was rotten dope. And besides, I don’t never like to break a promise, especially to a guy that shoots a man’s toes off just for having St. Vitus’ dance.
    Well, anyway, the third race was over and the Merrick Handicap was next, and just like Mercer had said, they all quit but our horse and Sap and a ten-ton truck named Honor Bright. He was 20 to 1 and Sap was 6. Only One was 1 to 3 and Daley hopped on him with fifteen thousand men. Before post time the price was 1 to 5 and 1 to 6.
    Daley was off his nut all afternoon and didn’t object when I said I’d place the gals’ money and save him the trouble. Kate and Ella had figured out what they had win up to date. It was about $1,200 and Daley told them to bet it all.
    “You’ll only make $400 between you,” he says, “but it’s a cinch.”
    “And four hundred’s pretty good interest on $1,200,” says Kate. “About ten per cent., ain’t it?”
    I left them and went downstairs. I wrote out a card for a hundred smackers on Sap. Then my feet caught cold and I didn’t turn it in. I walked down towards the paddock and got there just as the boys was getting ready to parade. I seen Mercer and you wouldn’t of never knew he’d fell off the wagon.
    Daley was down there, too, and I heard him say: “Well, Sid, how about you?”
    “Never better,” says Mercer. “If I don’t win this one I’ll quit riding.”
    Then he seen me and smiled.
    I chased back to the clubhouse, making up my mind on the way. I decided to not bet a nickel for the gals on anything. If Mercer was crossing me, I’d give Ella and Kate their $400 like they had win it, and say nothing. Personally, I was going to turn in the card I’d wrote on Sap. That was my idear when I got to Joe Meyer. But all of a sudden I had the hunch that Mercer was going through; they wasn’t a chance in the world for him to weaken. I left Meyer’s stand and went to a bookie named Haynes, who I’d bet with before.
    Sap had went up to 8 to 1, and instead of a hundred smackers I bet a thousand.
    He finished ahead by three len’ths, probably the most surprised horse in history. Honor Bright got the place, but only by a hair. Only One, after being detained for some reason another, come faster at the end than any horse ever run before. And Mercer give him an unmerciful walloping, pretending to himself, probably, that the hoss was its master.
    We come back to our table. The gals sunk down in their chairs. Ella was blubbering and Kate was as white as a ghost. Daley finally joined us, looking like he’d had a stroke. He asked for a drink and I give him my flask.
    “I can’t understand it!” he says. “I don’t know what happened!”
    “You don’t!” hollered Kate. “I’ll tell you what happened. You stole our money! Twelve hundred dollars! You cheat!”
    “Oh, shut your fool mouth!” says Daley.
    And another Romance was knocked for a row of sour apple trees.
    Kate brought the mail in the dining room Monday morning. They was a letter for her and one for me. She read hers and they was a couple of tears in her eyes.
    “Mercer’s quit riding,” she says. “This is a farewell note. He’s going to Oklahoma.”
    Ella picked up my envelope.
    “Who’s this from?” she says.
    “Give it here,” I said, and took it away from her. “It’s just the statement from Haynes, the bookie.”
    “Well, open it up,” she said.
    “What for?” said I. “You know how much you lose, don’t you?”
    “He might of made a mistake, mightn’t he?” she says.
    So I opened up the envelope and there was the check for $8,000.
    “Gosh!” I said. “It looks like it was me that made the mistake!” And I laid the check down where her and Kate could see it. They screamed and I caught Ella just as she was falling off the chair.
    “What does this mean?” says Kate.
    “Well,” I said, “I guess I was kind of rattled Saturday, and when I come to make my bet I got balled up and wrote down Sap. And I must of went crazy and played him for a thousand men.”
    “But where’s our statement, mine and Sis’?” says Ella.
    “That’s my mistake again,” I said. “I wrote out your ticket, but I must of forgot to turn it in.”
    They jumped up and come at me, and before I could duck I was kissed from both sides at once.
    “O Sis!” yelps the Mrs. “Just think! We didn’t lose our twelve hundred! We didn’t lose nothing at all. We win eight thousand dollars!”
    “Try and get it!” I says.
    CHAPTER V