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Ebook has 209 lines and 14877 words, and 5 pages

THE GOLDEN BRIDLE

Illustrated by Alfred

Say, that is mighty white. I do not mind if I do, though I remembers the day when I would not of touched beer with a ten-foot pole. Weight. Jockeys has got to watch their weight like it is tombstones they is putting on instead of pounds.

Well, here's luck, mister. May all your double parlays give the bookies fits.

What's that? Yeah, sure I am a jockey. Was. There is not no point in giving you the old three and five. You look like a right guy. Why should I kid you? I have not been up on a horse for four years. Six months cold for a jock is a wide turn, but four years--say, four years is--what the devil, I am washed up cleaner than a choirboy's ears.

And this is not my fault. That is what gives me the burn. It is not my fault. When Lady Luck smiles in the racing game she has got a grin so broad you can count her back fillings, but, when she quits smiling, brother, she just quits and you might as well go wrap your head in a sweat blanket and forget it.

You know, you is going along good, not winning no Champagne Stakes nor nothing like that, but hitting the percentages and going along O.K., see, when all of a sudden you finds that things begin to happen. And they keeps right on happening and you can spit in the wind all you want to and chew four-leaf clovers and take a horseshoe to bed with you and it does not have no effect. Things just keeps right on happening until after a while the trainers puts the double O on you and you can not even get a leg up on a spavined brood mare and everybody takes to calling you "Jinx."

That is me, mister. Jinx Jackson.

Oh, I am not beefing none. I manages, what with one thing and another. But believe me, buddy, it is enough to give you the yelping wipes when you stands there by the fence with the sun beating down on you, and the crowd milling around excitedlike, and the bugles blowing, and the flags waving, and the horses walking past--nervous--and the colors up with their pants skintight and their shirts bellying out like silk balloons, and then they are wheeling the barrier in, and you look at the track and it is smooth and sweet and fast as a filly with bees in her ears, and everything gets still except the popcorn peddlers, and there is that awful minute when you is waiting and the shirt sticks to your back and you gets that old, familiar, tight feeling on the inside of your thighs, and your tongue is like a sponge bit between your teeth, and then that cry--like a rising wind--"THEY'RE OFF!"

That--and when you see a snipe getting hisself boxed on a inside turn, or bearing out in the run through the stretch, or--aw, nuts with it. It gets you, that is all. It gets you.

Once you has got the feel of horses in your blood you is a goner. A gone goner. It is there, brother, and there is not no use fighting it. You cannot no more keep away from a paddock than you can stop blinking your eyes.

Jimmie Winkie used to say, "You can shake grief and sorrow, you can bury remorse--but you can't never lose the feel o' a horse."

Jimmie Winkie. Yeah, Wee Willie. That is the same.

Good! Man, he had the magic touch. Why, he could add twenty lengths to anything on four legs. Easy. Jimmie was tops. Why, I has seen him come from behind the hard way and spot them a extra advantage by pulling out and still win and there was not no photo finishes, neither. When he won, mister, he won.

He was a funny guy, he was. Had a kind of puckery face and big ears. Walked springy, like a banty rooster. Used to use a special bridle when he was up. Superstitious? It is not superstition exactly. It is just a kind of a feeling you get about certain things. Lots of us jocks are thataway. I know I would of had a hissy--four years ago--if I had of mislaid a old wore-out crop I always carried. Moe Prentice had a buckeye he would not of parted with for nobody. Jackie Watson had some sort of a medal on a silver chain. Cry Baby Noolan would not no more of thought of riding with his cap anyway but hind side to than he would of thought of riding without any clothes on. In fact, if he would of had to make a choice, I reckon he would of rode in his skin before he would of changed his cap proper. And, like I said, Jimmie has this here special bridle, though there is not much special about it except that it is goldish-looking if you hold it in the right light. But seems he takes a fancy to it and from the way he acts you would of thought it is made from the tanned hide of a Derby winner. But it is not no such thing, of course. It is just a bridle like any racing bridle only, like I said, it is goldish-looking in a unnoticeable manner.

He gets it one year when we is finishing up the circuit down in Tijuana. This is before he hits his stride. When he is going along, like me, not snaffling no tall money nor nothing but knocking off his percentages. He is plain Jimmie Winkie then. The newspapers has not tagged that there Wee Willie on to him yet and he is not endorsing no leather jackets, nor saying as how he likes Puffie Wuffies because they is superroasted and rolled on hoops.

Well, as I was saying, we is down in Tijuana and it is nighttime and we is walking down one of them crooked streets which is about as thick in Tijuana as saddle sores is in a riding academy. We is walking along with our hands in our pockets and not much else, being as how we has inadvertently got mixed up in a game knowed as faro, the same which is like being on the wrong end of a loco bronc, and which we would not of got into if Jimmie had not of wanted to increase a five-dollar bill into a ten-dollar bill so as to buy a real nice present for Ditsy. Anyhow, like I said, we is walking along minding our own business when there is--

Ditsy? Oh, Ditsy was Jimmie's sister. Name was Dorothy, but Jimmie called her Ditsy. He was crazy about her. Seemed like he had raised her since she was knee high to a feed box. Guess they had some muddy tracks, them two, and what with their not having nobody but theirselves and her being crippled, why, one way and another, he set a lot of store by her.

Anyway, we is walking along, Jimmie and me, and I am thinking about what we is going to eat for breakfast the next day, and lunch, and supper, and Jimmie is thinking about how is he going to buy Ditsy something when we hear a rumpus going on around a corner up ahead. It increases graduallike and when we gets to the corner we meets it, head-on you might say.

There is about a dozen people who is all personal acquaintances of John Barleycorn, and they is pestering a woman who looks like she is on her way to a masquerade at a insane asylum. She has got on a sheet all draped and wrapped every which way and her feet is laced up in sandals and there is a wreath on her hair, only now it is setting cockeyed on account of as how these here people has been chasing her, and she is carrying a bridle. In fact, if I had of spent my money on John Barleycorn instead of faro, I probably would of joined in on the side of these here people who is laughing theirselves sick and grabbing at this here sheet and having a big time, for which I cannot blame them any as this woman is sure a curious sight.

While I am thinking what a curious sight she is, Jimmie busts up the party. He does this with very little fuss, hitting merely one guy who goes down like a sack of wet oats and the rest takes to their heels as I am doubling up my fists preparing to wade in.

"Now, sister," Jimmie says, rubbing his knuckles tenderlike, "if I was you I would vamoose. Tijuana is no place for a lady without as how she has got company to see that she gets where she has started out for."

Well, this woman straightens her wreath and breaks out in some kind of a foreign language which sounds like nothing I ever heard unless it is "Chopsticks" played on a piano which is out of tune and is minus some of the keys.

"Look, sister," Jimmie says, "vamoose while the vamoosing is favorable."

The woman makes some motions and spouts some more of this here talk and there is just one word I get and that is "grease." She says this over and over, "Grease, grease," meanwhile gesturing for all she is able.

"Grease?" Jimmie says, puzzled, and she nods violently and shakes the bridle she is carrying and does a act like she is putting it on a horse and then flaps her arms like she is flying.

"Grease," she says.

I begins to get uneasy. "Say," I says to Jimmie, sotto voice, "let's us get out of here--this gal has got bats in her belfry."

"I think she has lost a horse," Jimmie says slow.

"Horse!" I says. "How is she going to straddle a horse in that getup? She has lost her mind. Let's us get out of here. Loonies is not no picnic."

This looney looks at him a minute, then her face kind of brightenslike. She points to the bridle Jimmie is holding and says, "Hippos."

"She has got the D. T.'s," I cheeps. "She is talking about a hippopotamus what flies or I will eat that there bridle. Come on," I says, "this is not no place for--" But I do not get no further because there is a faint whinny and this here woman shrieks joyfully and--without so much as a kiss-my-foot--lams in the direction of this here nickering which, judging from the sound, is a block or so to our rear--though we has not seen no sign of no horse when we is walking by thataway.

We stands there gawking after this dame while she disappears in the night and Jimmie, suddenlike, yells, "Hey, here is your bridle," and starts after her and me after Jimmie, because I has not got no wish to see Jimmie sucked in on something that is not kosher, and it is plain that there is something here that does not meet the eye right off.

I dope it that this here dame is a kind of a lead rein for some guys which is laying low in a alley or some place figuring to roll whoever she ropes in, and it is a unpleasant statistic that persons is often beat up severe when it is discovered they has not got no wherewith to make such a business profitable.

When we gets down the street a ways I catches up to Jimmie and stops him and I says, "Has you taken leave of your senses? This here is one of them cul-de-sacs or I am a ring-tailed--" But I do not say baboon, which I had intended, because somewhere I hears a noise like a lot of pigeons taking off--like they has been shooed--and from way up, like on a roof, I hears this woman laughing and it dwindles away and, then, it is quiet and a little white feather drifts down and lands in the gutter. It is all very weird and I do not like it.

"I would of swore a horse nickered down here a minute ago," Jimmie says.

"Shut up," I says, "and let's us get out of here before we is knifed in the back."

So we does and that is how Jimmie come by the bridle.

Well, say, I do not mind if I do. There is this about beer. You do not have to worry none the next morning about tying your shoes. Ever try sticking a hot knife in it? Many's the time I has seen my old man heat the poker until it is as red as the old Scratch hisself and then plunge it into the pail. That was when you could get all you wanted for a dime with boiled ham and cheese and bologna throwed in to boot and, like as not, a slice of liver for the cat.

Here's bumps, mister. And may you never tear up your ducats without looking twice.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, Tijuana. Well, here we is without a buffalo between us. Broke as a skillet of scrambled eggs and up in the fifth the next day, the same which dawns bright and early and finds me and Jimmie nearly splitting a girth trying to trade that there bridle for a plate of buckwheat cakes, but everybody gives us the zero gaze until I begins to wonder if we is coming down with smallpox. So we hunts up a dopester by the name of Stew Hatcher and he stakes us to a meal after which we hangs around until he has got up his sheet and then we rides out to the track with him and his girl. We asks Stew, just kidding, who he is picking in the fifth and Stew says it is not us and he is not kidding. For his money, he says, it is High Jinks, Admirella and Sky Eagle. One, two, three.

I am up on Black Boy and Jimmie he is up on Peajacket, so we thumbs our noses at Stew and gives him the buzz and says as how we is pleased to have met this girl he is with--which is a lie because she is very snooty--and we goes on in.

We gets into our colors and sets around with the fellows dishing out a lot of bull about what we done in Tijuana and Jimmie gives me the wink and says he has got hold of a nifty bridle he is willing to take a loss on. And he gets this here bridle out of his locker and says if anybody will give him a fin for it they can have it, though they will be rooking him on the deal.

I used to say to Jimmie, I would say, "Jimmie, remember the day at Tijuana when we nicked Moe and them for three bucks?" And Jimmie, he would say, "Yeah," and kind of draw in his breath like he was thinking about it--hard. Remembering how Peajacket upset the bookies' apple cart.

You see, Stew Hatcher is wrong. It is Peajacket, High Jinks and Admirella. One, two, three. And the owner of Peajacket--I forget his name, big loose-mouthed chap with a face like a side of beef--is fair to be hobbled because he has not bet on his own entry on account of as how it is a cinch to lose. It is a two-year-old he has picked up for seven and a quarter at a public sale and he is just feeling him out and damn if Jimmie does not bring in a win.

Me? Oh, I comes in with the tailbearers. I could of got in a lame fourth, but I am so whooper-jawed watching Jimmie go down the stretch like a lighted fuse that I lets this here Black Boy I am up on bear out--he was death on bearing out--and, of course, that puts the quietus on us. There is not no percentage in whipping a horse over for fourth place. A horse has got sense enough to know when you is making a fool out of him.

No, I do not guess you will recollect Peajacket. He turns out to be a foozle, after all. He is entered a couple of more times, Saratoga, I thinks, and Empire City--Syl Patton up--but he does not do nothing but pick up a coupla pounds of mud.

But he sure is not no foozle that afternoon at Tijuana.

Say, am I boring you with this? If I am--okke doke, any time you has had a sufficiency, say so.

Well, as I was saying, there is not no barrier. Outside of a little tail flicking and head tossing, Black Boy is as calm as a Jersey cow. High Jinks breaks once and Sky Eagle and some of the field prances around a bit, but Peajacket he acts like he has been fed hopped oats. In fact, there is some talk of it later on, but they cannot never prove nothing. Anyway, this here Peajacket is taking on for a fare-you-well with Jimmie trying to gentle him down and the starter getting mad and a jock, name of Happy Slauderwasser--that is a moniker for you, nice guy though--who is next to Peajacket swearing something fierce. Finally, Jimmie gets this here Peajacket backed in and he is lathered up like a ad for saddle soap, and the gun goes, and out of the tail of my eye as me and Black Boy takes off I sees Peajacket rearing up and I thinks, "Oh, Lordy," because it is a rule last one in has to pitch a buck in the kitty. And it is plain to see, in a field of fifteen, Jimmie is slated to be the last one in and then we will only have a buck apiece instead of a buck fifty.

I settles down and starts easing over to the inside track hoping for a pocket. High Jinks is up ahead and he is not anywheres near let out yet. There is three or four horses in between, then Admirella nosing up, Sky Eagle alongside, doing like me, playing a wait, and Jimmie and the rest of the field bunched in behind.

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