Read Ebook: The golden bridle by Rice Jane Alfred Newton H Illustrator

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Ebook has 209 lines and 14877 words, and 5 pages

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.

I remembers wondering who it could be. There is High Jinks and Admirella in plain sight. Sky Eagle and me practically pat-a-caking at each other, some of the field ahead, but they is giving by now and, so far as I know, what is left in tow is not capable of doing nothing but horse apples.

I do not take my mind off this here opening, though. It is getting ripe, I can see that, and I am bound I am going to be there when it is due before it closes in and strings out.

Then, I catches a glimpse of this here horse on the off side of Sky Eagle. A kind of consciousness it is of this here third horse and I am sort of cheered when I see it is not bothering none about no openings, nor no inside track, nor nothing like that. And, while I am being cheered and thinking what a smart guy I am, this here third horse pounds ahead past Sky Eagle, a shoulder, half a length, a length, and that opening I been hovering over swings wide as a barn door and Sky Eagle is through it because I am yawping at Jimmie Winkie with his ears skinned back crouched high on Peajacket, and if I had not of knowed better I would of swore he was scared green, and while I am yawping, Black Boy bears out so, as I said, that puts the quietus on us.

There has been better races run and bigger ones has been won by darker horses, but, off-hand, I cannot call any to mind that I got such a thrill out of. I do not know whether it is because I am so cocksure Jimmie is bringing up the rear, or because Moe Prentice--he is up on High Jinks--is took down a peg or two, or maybe because there is a certain something about the way that there horse runs with his nostrils red and wide, and his tail streaming out behind him like it has been starched, and his hoofs beating music out of that there track like a crazy drummer, and Jimmie pasted to him close as a surcingle and with a kind of a look about him like night wind sounds, if you know what I mean. A kind of a queer, wild, blowy look. But most of all I guess it is the horse.

Jimmie says it is the horse and he ought to of knowed being as how he was up on him. Jimmie says it is also a great surprise to him that Peajacket wins, but, naturally, he does not say this out--but just to me--as it is not a good policy to let on that you are surprised when you bring in a winner.

While the guy is wrapping it up, Jimmie goes over and picks up a vase which is setting on a shelf with a lot of other vases. This here vase he picks up is blue and has a lot of well-built dames on it holding garlands of flowers. Jimmie kind of whistles.

"Look at this here," he says.

I agrees it is nice, but points out that we has got exactly twenty-nine cents between us and the price is marked clear two fifty.

"This is a strange coincidence," he says, more to hisself than me, and I says it is not no coincidence it is a vase and if he is thinking about switching over, why, there is a vase on the shelf above which is better-looking on account of as how it has a scene painted on it and the price is twenty-five cents cheaper.

This guy comes up about this time and washes his hands in the air and asks if we are interested in a vase.

"No," I says.

"Yes," Jimmie says. "Who is this here middle dame on this here vase?"

"They represent the Muses," this guy says. "A marvelous buy for the money."

"This here middle dame is a Muse?" asks Jimmie.

"They are all Muses," this guy says, "goddesses of the arts and poetry and science. A very artistic vase. Only two fifty."

"Did any of them have a horse?" Jimmie asks.

"Horse?"

"Horse."

"I could not say. It is a very handsome vase, howinever, and I will make you a special price of two twenty-five, if you are interested."

"Where can I find out if any of them had a horse?"

"I could not say, unless it is the library. Two dollars even I will make it. Below that I cannot go."

"Very well," I chimes in, being tired of Jimmie ribbing this here guy about a horse, "we will take it in place of the powder box."

With that this guy freezes over like the outside of a mint julep and he says chillylike, "I have just remembered that this vase has been put aside for another party."

And I says, "That is very odd being as how you were so all fired set on us having it at reduced cost."

"Herman," this guys says.

And another guy with a neck like a Percheron, shoulders his way through a curtain in the back and stands there like as if he is itching for somebody to say "When." So we takes our package and we leaves.

I am in favor of hunting up a crap game and shooting our twenty-nine cents and Jimmie says that is a splendid idea and for me to do so and he will meet me at the pool parlor in a hour. I asks where is he going? And he says the library. And as he has never been inside a library in his life to my certain knowledge, I figure he is telling me in a nice way to mind my own business. Which I does. And in a hour I has run the twenty-nine cents into eight bits and a Masonic emblem.

I meets Jimmie like he said and I can see right away he is exceptional thoughtful. We go to a place called La Cucuracha where the second cup of coffee is free and you gets gravy with your potatoes, although Jimmie seems to have lost his appetite. He keeps transferring his food from one side of his plate to the other until I outs and asks him pointblank what is ailing him.

"Did you ever hear tell of a horse called Pegasus?" he says by way of answer.

"No," I says. "Who sired him?"

"He is out of Medusa by Neptune," says Jimmie.

"I never heard of them, neither," I says shoveling in a mouthful of potatoes and gravy. "What has this here Peg-whoit got to do with you?"

"I am not certain for sure," he says, "but I has got a idea,"

"Which is?"

"Could be he got blowed off his course," Jimmie says, "or got scared by another gadfly or some such, landed in Tijuana and this here Muse comes after him and--"

"Look," I says, "one of us has got a screw loose and it is not me. Begin over and repeat slow and there is apple pie with the dinner and if you do not want it I will eat your piece, if it is all the same to you. Now what was you saying?"

He shoves his plate back. "I am going to break the track record tomorrow," he says, and there is something about the way he says it, some quality in his voice that makes me sit up and take notice all of a sudden.

I gives Jimmie one of them searching looks you read about, but it does not tell me nothing except that he is a mite tightened-uplike and is letting some fifty cents worth of food go to waste.

"Thanks for the tip," I says. "Who you planning on being up on? Man-o'-War?"

"Ditsy has always wanted a grand piano," he says, "since she was not bigger'n a boot-jack." And he says, "I will get her the best one money can buy."

It is obvious that he tightened up more than I think because there is not enough space in that two-room flat in Cleveland to hold both Ditsy and a grand piano at the same time.

"That will be dandy," I says, "but I am afraid there will not be no grand piano in it. Them things cost folding money."

"A yellow chamois bag under the buttons," I says and, recalling to mind a chap named Joe Hankins who fought a bunch of Comanches all one night in a psycopathic ward at a hospital in Louisville, I continues to smile pleasantly while I eases my chair back.

"Yeah," Jimmie says, "lined with flannel so as the bridle will not get scratched up none."

"Sure," I agrees, "flannel."

"Saratoga," says Jimmie, "Havre de Grace, Narragansett, Hialeah, Aqueduct."

"Hawthorne, Churchill Downs, Empire City, Belmont Park, Thistledown," I chimes in nodding like a Chinese laundryman who has lost your wash. I holds my breath and gets to my feet praying that I will be able to ease him out quiet.

"Through?" Jimmie says, cool as a cucumber. "What say we see if we can get a game of pool on the cuff?"

The next day he breaks the track record.

I has thought about it a great deal since then and do you know what I figure? I figure it like this. I figure that Jimmie had got on to a secret. There is a secret to doing everything. Like tight-rope walking, or shooting par golf consistent, or whizzing a ball over a tennis net so as it falls just so and dribbles off before it can be got up off the ground. There is a secret to juggling plates and a secret to pole vaulting higher than anybody else. The plates and the pole and the rope and the golf clubs and tennis racquet is all the same. What I mean is you could take half a dozen plates and throw them up in the air and they would land behind the eight ball. But take these here same identical plates and give them to a juggler and he will make them perform without so much as mussing his tie. Why? Because he knows the secret.

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