He passed through the narrow gate leading from the paddock to the Grand Stand. The gate keeper nodded pleasantly to him and said: “Hope you'll do the trick with the little mare, sir. I'm twenty years at the business, and I haven't got over my likin' for an honest horse and an honest owner yet.”
There was covert insinuation of suspicion, albeit a kindly one, in the man's voice. The very air was full of the taint of crookedness; else why should the official speak of honesty at all? Everyone knew that John Porter raced to win.
He crossed the lawn and leaned against the course fence, to take a deciding look at the mare and the Chestnut as they circled past the stand in the little view-promenade which preceded the race.
His trained eye told him that Lauzanne was a grand-looking horse; big, well-developed shoulders reached back toward the huge quarters until the small racing saddle almost covered the short back. What great promise of weight-carrying was there!
He laughed a little at the irrelevance of this thought, for it was not a question of weight-carrying at all; two-year-olds at a hundred pounds in a sprint of only five furlongs. Speed was the great factor to be considered, and surely Lucretia outclassed the other in that way. The long, well-ribbed-up body, with just a trace of gauntness in the flank; the slim neck; the deep chest; the broad, flat canon bones, and the well-let-down hocks, giving a length of thigh like a greyhound's--and the thighs themselves, as John Porter looked at them under the tucked-up belly of the gentle mare, big, and strong, and full of a driving force that should make the others break a record to beat her.
From the inquisition of the owner's study Lucretia stood forth triumphant; neither the Chestnut nor anything else in the race could beat her. And Jockey McKay--Porter raised his eyes involuntarily, seeking for some occult refutation of the implied dishonesty of the boy he had trusted. He found himself gazing straight into the small shifty eyes of Lucretia's midget rider, and such a hungry, wolfish look of mingled cunning and cupidity was there that Porter almost shuddered. The insinuations of Mike Gaynor, and the other things that pointed at a job being on, hadn't half the force of the dishonesty that was so apparent in the tell-tale look of the morally, irresponsible boy in whose hands he was so completely helpless. All the careful preparation of the mare, the economical saving, even to the self-denial of almost necessary things to the end that he might have funds to back her heavily when she ran; and the high trials she had given him when asked the question, and which had gladdened his heart and brought an exclamation of satisfaction from his phlegmatic trainer; the girlish interest of his daughter in the expected triumph--all these contingencies were as less than nothing should the boy, with the look of a demon in his eyes, not ride straight and honest.