Garrison\'s Finish

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GARRISON'S FINISH, A ROMANCE OF THE RACE-COURSE


by W. B. M. Ferguson




CHAPTER I.

A SHATTERED IDOL.

As he made his way out of the paddock Garrison carefully tilted his
bag of Durham into the curved rice-paper held between nicotine-stained
finger and thumb, then deftly rolled his "smoke" with the thumb and
forefinger, while tying the bag with practised right hand and even white
teeth. Once his reputation had been as spotless as those teeth.

He smiled cynically as he shouldered his way through the slowly moving
crowd--that kaleidoscope of the humanities which congregate but do not
blend; which coagulate wherever the trial of science, speed, and stamina
serves as an excuse for putting fortune to the test.

It was a cynical crowd, a quiet crowd, a sullen crowd. Those who had
won, through sheer luck, bottled their joy until they could give it vent
in a safer atmosphere--one not so resentful. For it had been a hard day
for the field. The favorite beaten in the stretch, choked off, outside
the money----

Garrison gasped as the rushing simulacra of the Carter Handicap surged
to his beating brain; that brain at bursting pressure. It had recorded
so many things--recorded faithfully so many, many things he would give
anything to forget.

He was choking, smothering--smothering with shame, hopelessness,
despair. He must get away; get away to breathe, to think; get away out
of it all; get away anywhere--oblivion.

To the jibes, the sneers flung at him, the innuendos, the open insults,
and worst of all, the sad looks of those few friends who gave their
friendship without conditions, he was not indifferent, though he seemed
so. God knows how he felt it at all. And all the more so because he
had once been so high. Now his fall was so low, so pitifully low; so
contemptible, so complete.

He knew what the action of the Jockey Club would be. The stewards would
do only one thing. His license would be revoked. To-day had seen his
finish. This, the ten-thousand dollar Carter Handicap, had seen his
final slump to the bottom of the scale. Worse. It had seen him a pauper,
ostracized; an unclean thing in the mouth of friend and foe alike. The
sporting world was through with him at last. And when the sporting world
is through--

Again Garrison laughed harshly, puffing at his cigarette, dragging its
fumes into his lungs in a fierce desire to finish his physical cataclysm
with his moral. Yes, it had been his last chance. He, the popular idol,
had been going lower and lower in the scale, but the sporting world had
been loyal, as it always is to "class." He had been "class," and they
had stuck to him.

Then when he began to go back--No; worse. Not that. They said he had
gone crooked. That was it. Crooked as Doyers Street, they said; throwing
every race; standing in with his owner to trim the bookies, and they
couldn't stand for that. Sport was sport. But they had been loyal. They
had warned, implored, begged. What was the use soaking a pile by dirty
work? Why not ride straight--ride as he could, as he did, as it had been
bred in him to? Any money, any honor was his. Instead--

Garrison, stung to madness by retrospect, humped his way through the
crowd at the gates of the Aqueduct. There was not a friendly eye in that
crowd. He stuffed his ears with indifference. He would not bear their
remarks as they recognized him. He summoned all his nerve to look them
in the face unflinchingly--that nerve that had been frayed to ribbons.

And then he heard quick footsteps behind him; a hand was laid heavily
on his shoulder, and he was twisted about like a chip. It was his stable
owner, his face flushed with passion and drink. Waterbury was stingy of
cash, but not of words.

"I've looked for you," he whipped out venomously, his large hands
ravenous for something to rend. "Now I've caught you. Who was in with
you on that dirty deal? Answer, you cur! Spit it out before the crowd.
Was it me? Was it me?" he reiterated in a frenzy, taking a step forward
for each word, his bad grammar coming equally to the fore.

The crowd surged back. Owner and jockey were face to face. "When thieves
fall out!" they thought; and they waited for the fun. Something was due
them. It came in a flash. Waterbury shot out his big fist, and little
Garrison thumped on the turf with a bang, a thin streamer of blood
threading its way down his gray-white face.

"You miserable little whelp!" howled his owner. "You've dishonored me.
You threw that race, damn you! That's what I get for giving you a chance
when you couldn't get a mount anywhere." His long pent-up venom was
unleashed. "You threw it. You've tried to make me party to your dirty
work--me, me, me!"--he thumped his heaving chest. "But you can't heap
your filth on me. I'm done with you. You're a thief, a cur--"

"Hold on," cut in Garrison. He had risen slowly, and was dabbing
furtively at his nose with a silk red-and-blue handkerchief--the
Waterbury colors.

"Just a minute," he added, striving to keep his voice from sliding the
scale. He was horribly calm, but his gray eyes were quivering as was his
lip. "I didn't throw it. I--I didn't throw it. I was sick. I--I've been
sick. I--I----" Then, for he was only a boy with a man's burdens, his
lip began to quiver pitifully; his voice shrilled out and his words came
tumbling forth like lava; striving to make up by passion and reiteration
what they lacked in logic and coherency. "I'm not a thief. I'm not. I'm
honest. I don't know how it happened. Everything became a blur in the
stretch. You--you've called me a liar, Mr. Waterbury. You've called me
a thief. You struck me. I know you can lick me," he shrilled. "I'm
dishonored--down and out. I know you can lick me, but, by the Lord,
you'll do it here and now! You'll fight me. I don't like you. I never
liked you. I don't like your face. I don't like your hat, and
here's your damn colors in your face." He fiercely crumpled the silk
handkerchief and pushed it swiftly into Waterbury's glowering eye.

Instantly there was a mix-up. The crowd was blood-hungry. They had paid
for sport of some kind. There would be no crooked work in this deal.
Lustfully they watched. Then the inequality of the boy and the man was
at length borne in on them, and it roused their stagnant sense of fair
play.

Garrison, a small hell let loose, had risen from the turf for the third
time! His face was a smear of blood, venom, and all the bandit passions.
Waterbury, the gentleman in him soaked by the taint of a foisted
dishonor and his fighting blood roused, waited with clenched fists. As
Garrison hopped in for the fourth time, the older man feinted quickly,
and then swung right and left savagely.

The blows were caught on the thick arm of a tan box-coat. A big hand
was placed over Waterbury's face and he was given a shove backward. He
staggered for a ridiculously long time, and then, after an unnecessary
waste of minutes, sat down. The tan overcoat stood over him. It was
Jimmy Drake, and the chameleonlike crowd applauded.

Jimmy was a popular book-maker with educated fists. The crowd surged
closer. It looked as if the fight might change from bantam-heavy to
heavy-heavy. And the odds were on Drake.

"If yeh want to fight kids," said the book-maker, in his slow, drawling
voice, "wait till they're grown up. Mebbe then yeh'll change your mind."

Waterbury was on his feet now. He let loose some vitriolic verbiage,
using Drake as the objective-point. He told him to mind his own
business, or that he would make it hot for him. He told him that
Garrison was a thief and cur; and that he would have no book-maker and
tout--

"Hold on," said Drake. "You're gettin' too flossy right there. When
you call me a tout you're exceedin' the speed limit." He had an
uncomfortable steady blue eye and a face like a snow-shovel. "I stepped
in here not to argue morals, but to see fair play. If Billy Garrison's
done dirt--and I admit it looks close like it--I'll bet that your
stable, either trainer or owner, shared the mud-pie, all right--"

"I've stood enough of those slurs," cried Waterbury, in a frenzy. "You
lie."

Instantly Drake's large face stiffened like cement, and his overcoat was
on the ground.

"That's a fighting word where I come from," he said grimly.

But before Drake could square the insult a crowd of Waterbury's
friends swirled up in an auto, and half a dozen peacemakers, mutual
acquaintances, together with two somnambulistic policemen, managed
to preserve the remains of the badly shattered peace. Drake sullenly
resumed his coat, and Waterbury was driven off, leaving a back draft
of impolite adjectives and vague threats against everybody. The crowd
drifted away. It was a fitting finish for the scotched Carter Handicap.

Meanwhile, Garrison, taking advantage of the switching of the lime-light
from himself to Drake, had dodged to oblivion in the crowd.

"I guess I don't forget Jimmy Drake," he mused grimly to himself. "He's
straight cotton. The only one who didn't give me the double-cross out
and out. Bud, Bud!" he declared to himself, "this is sure the wind-up.
You've struck bed-rock and the tide's coming in--hard. You're all to
the weeds. Buck up, buck up," he growled savagely, in fierce contempt.
"What're you dripping about?" He had caught a tear burning its way to
his eyes--eyes that had never blinked under Waterbury's savage blows.
"What if you are ruled off! What if you are called a liar and crook;
thrown the game to soak a pile? What if you couldn't get a clotheshorse
to run in a potato-race? Buck up, buck up, and plug your cotton pipe.
They say you're a crook. Well, be one. Show 'em you don't care a damn.
You're down and out, anyway. What's honesty, anyway, but whether you got
the goods or ain't? Shake the bunch. Get out before you're kicked out.
Open a pool-room like all the has-beens and trim the suckers right,
left, and down the middle. Money's the whole thing. Get it. Don't mind
how you do, but just get it. You'll be honest enough for ten men then.
Anyway, there's no one cares a curse how you pan out--"

He stopped, and his face slowly relaxed. The hard, vindictive look
slowly faded from his narrowed eyes.

"Sis," he said softly. "Sis--I was going without saying good-by. Forgive
me."

He swung on his heel, and with hunched shoulders made his way back
to Aqueduct. Waterbury's training-quarters were adjacent, and, after
lurking furtively about like some hunted animal, Garrison summoned all
his nerve and walked boldly in.

The only stable-boy about was one with a twisted mouth and flaming
red hair, which he was always curling; a remarkably thin youth he was,
addicted to green sweaters and sentimental songs. He was singing one now
in a key entirely original with himself. "Red's" characteristic was that
when happy he wore a face like a tomb-stone. When sad, the sentimental
songs were always in evidence.

"Hello, Red!" said Garrison gruffly. He had been Red's idol once. He was
quite prepared now, however, to see the other side of the curtain. He
was no longer an idol to any one.

"Hello!" returned Red non-committally.

"Where's Crimmins?"

"In there." Red nodded to the left where were situated the stalls.
"Gettin' Sis ready for the Belmont opening."

"Riding for him now?"

"Yeh. Promised a mount in th' next run-off. 'Bout time, I guess."

There was silence. Garrison pictured to himself the time when he had won
his first mount. How long ago that was! Time is reckoned by events, not
years. How glorious the future had seemed! He slowly seated himself on a
box by the side of Red and laid a hand on the other's thin leg.

"Kid," he said, and his voice quivered, "you know I wish you luck. It's
a great game--the greatest game in the world, if you play it right." He
blundered to silence as his own condition surged over him.

Red was knocking out his shabby heels against the box in an agony of
confusion. Then he grew emboldened by the other's dejected mien. "No,
I'd never throw no race," he said judicially. "It don't pay--"

"Red," broke in Garrison harshly, "you don't believe I threw that race?
Honest, I'm square. Why, I was up on Sis--Sis whom I love, Red--honest,
I was sure of the race. Dead sure. I hadn't much money, but I played
every cent I had on her. I lost more than any one. I lost--everything.
See," he ran on feverishly, glad of the opportunity to vindicate
himself, if only to a stable-boy. "I guess the stewards will let the
race stand, even if Waterbury does kick. Rogue won square enough."

"Yeh, because yeh choked Sis off in th' stretch. She could ha' slept
home a winner, an' yeh know it, Billy," said Red, with sullen regret.

There was a time when he never would have dared to call Garrison by his
Christian name. Disgrace is a great leveler. Red grew more conscious of
his own rectitude.

"I ain't knockin' yeh, Billy," he continued, speaking slowly, to
lengthen the pleasure of thus monopolizing the pulpit. "What have I to
say? Yeh can ride rings round any jockey in the States--at least, yeh
could." And then, like his kind, Red having nothing to say, proceeded to
say it.

"But it weren't your first thrown race, Billy. Yeh know that. I know
how yeh doped it out. I know we ain't got much time to make a pile if
we keep at th' game. Makin' weight makes yeh a lunger. We all die of th'
hurry-up stunt. An' yeh're all right to your owner so long's yeh make
good. After that it's twenty-three, forty-six, double time for yours. I
know what th' game is when you've hit th' top of th' pile. It's a fast
mob, an' yeh got to keep up with th' band-wagon. You're makin' money
fast and spendin' it faster. Yeh think it'll never stop comin' your way.
Yeh dip into everythin'. Then yeh wake up some day without your pants,
and yeh breeze about to make th' coin again. There's a lot of wise eggs
handin' out crooked advice--they take the coin and you th' big stick.
Yeh know, neither Crimmins or the Old Man was in on your deals, but yeh
had it all framed up with outside guys. Yeh bled the field to soak a
pile. See, Bill," he finished eloquently, "it weren't your first race."

"I know, I know," said Garrison grimly. "Cut it out. You don't
understand, and it's no good talking. When you have reached the top of
the pile, Red, you'll travel with as fast a mob as I did. But I never
threw a race in my life. That's on the level. Somehow I always get blind
dizzy in the stretch, and it passed when I crossed the post. I never
knew when it was coming on. I felt all right other times. I had to make
the coin, as you say, for I lived up to every cent I made. No, I never
threw a race--Yes, you can smile, Red," he finished savagely. "Smile if
your face wants stretching. But that's straight. Maybe I've gone back.
Maybe I'm all in. Maybe I'm a crook. But there'll come a time, it may
be one year, it may be a hundred, when I'll come back--clean. I'll make
good, and if you're on the track, Red, I'll show you that Garrison
can ride a harder, straighter race than you or any one. This isn't my
finish. There's a new deal coming to me, and I'm going to see that I get
it."

Without heeding Red's pessimistic reply. Garrison turned on his heel
and entered the stall where Sis, the Carter Handicap favorite, was being
boxed for the coming Belmont opening.

Crimmins, the trainer, looked up sharply as Garrison entered. He was a
small, hard man, with a face like an ice-pick and eyes devoid of pupils,
which fact gave him a stony, blank expression. In fact, he had been
likened once, by Jimmy Drake, to a needle with two very sharp eyes,
and the simile was merited. But he was an excellent flesh handler; and
Waterbury, an old ex-bookie, knew what he was about when he appointed
him head of the stable.

"Hello, Dan!" said Garrison, in the same tone he had used to greet Red.
He and the trainer had been thick, but it was a question whether that
thickness would still be there. Garrison, alone in the world since he
had run away from his home years ago, had no owner as most jockeys have,
and Crimmins had filled the position of mentor. In fact, he had trained
him, though Garrison's riding ability was not a foreign graft, but had
been bred in the bone.

"Hello!" echoed Crimmins, coming forward. His manner was cordial, and
Garrison's frozen heart warmed. "Of course you'll quit the game," ran
on the trainer, after an exchange of commonalities. "You're queered for
good. You couldn't get a mount anywhere. I ain't saying anything about
your pulling Sis, 'cause there ain't no use now. But you've got me and
Mr. Waterbury in trouble. It looked as if we were in on the deal. I
should be sore on you, Garrison, but I can't be. And why? Because Dan
Crimmins has a heart, and when he likes a man he likes him even if
murder should come 'atween. Dan Crimmins ain't a welcher. You've done
me as dirty a deal as one man could hand another, but instead of getting
hunk, what does Dan Crimmins do? Why, he agitates his brain thinking of
a way for you to make a good living, Bud. That's Dan Crimmins' way."

Garrison was silent. He did not try to vindicate himself. He had given
that up as hopeless. He was thinking, oblivious to Crimmins' eulogy.

"Yeh," continued the upright trainer; "that's Dan Crimmins' way. And
after much agitating of my brain I've hit on a good money-making scheme
for you, Bud."

"Eh?" asked Garrison.

"Yeh." And the trainer lowered his voice. "I know a man that's goin'
to buck the pool-rooms in New York. He needs a chap who knows the
ropes--one like you--and I gave him your name. I thought it would come
in handy. I saw your finish a long way off. This fellah's in the Western
Union; an operator with the pool-room lines. You can run the game. It's
easy. See, he holds back the returns, tipping you the winners, and you
skin round and lay the bets before he loosens up on the returns. It's
easy money; easy and sure."

Again Garrison was silent. But now a smile was on his face. He had been
asking himself what was the use of honesty.

"What d'you say?" asked Crimmins, his head on one side, his small eyes
calculating.

The smile was still twisting Garrison's lip. "I was going to light out,
anyway," he answered slowly. "I'll answer you when I say good-by to
Sis."

"All right. She's over there."

The handlers fell back in silence as Garrison approached the filly. He
was softly humming the music-hall song, "Good-by, Sis." With all his
faults, the handlers to a man liked Garrison. They knew how he had
professed to love the filly, and now they sensed that he would prefer
to say his farewell without an audience. Sis whinnied as Garrison raised
her small head and looked steadily into her soft, dark eyes.

"Sis," he said slowly, "it's good-by. We've been pals, you and I; pals
since you were first foaled. You're the only girl I have; the only
sweetheart I have; the only one to say good-by to me. Do you care?"

The filly nuzzled at his shoulder. "I've done you dirt to-day,"
continued the boy a little unsteadily. "It was your race from the start.
You know it; I know it. I can't explain now, Sis, how it came about. But
I didn't go to do it. I didn't, girlie. You understand, don't you? I'll
square that deal some day, Sis. I'll come back and square it. Don't
forget me. I won't forget you--I can't. You don't think me a crook, Sis?
Say you don't. Say it," he pleaded fiercely, raising her head.

The filly understood. She lipped his face, whinnying lovingly. In a
moment Garrison's nerve had been swept away, and, arms flung about the
dark, arched neck, he was sobbing his heart out on the glossy coat;
sobbing like a little child.

How long he stayed there, the filly nuzzling him like a mother, he did
not know. It seemed as if he had reached sanctuary after an aeon of
chaos. He had found love, understanding in a beast of the field. Where
his fellow man had withheld, the filly had given her all and questioned
not. For Sis, by Rex out of Reine, two-year filly, blooded stock, was
a thoroughbred. And a thoroughbred, be he man, beast, or bird, does not
welch on his hand. A stranger only in prosperity; a chum in adversity.
He does not question; he gives.

"Well," said Crimmins, as Garrison slowly emerged from the stall, "you
take the partin' pretty next your skin. What's your answer to the game I
spoke of? Mulled it over? It don't take much thinking, I guess." He was
paring his mourning fringed nails with great indifference.

"No, it doesn't take much thinking, Dan," agreed Garrison slowly, his
eyes narrowed. "I'll rot first before I touch it."

"Yes?" The trainer raised his thick eyebrows and lowered his thin voice.
"Kind of tony, ain't yeh? Beggars can't be choosers."

"They needn't be crooks, Dan. I know you meant it all right enough,"
said Garrison bitterly. "You think I'm crooked, and that I'd take
anything--anything; dirt of any kind, so long's there's money under it."

"Aw, sneeze!" said Crimmins savagely. Then he checked himself. "It
ain't my game. I only knew the man. There's nothing in it for me. Suit
yourself;" and he shrugged his shoulders. "It ain't Crimmins' way to
hump his services on any man. Take it or leave it."

"You wanted me to go crooked, Dan," said Garrison steadily. "Was it
friendship--"

"Huh! Wanted you to go crooked?" flashed the trainer with a sneer. "What
are y' talking about? Ain't yeh a welcher now? Ain't yeh crooked--hair,
teeth, an' skin?"

"You mean that, Dan?" Garrison's face was white. "You've trained me,
and yet you, too, believe I was in on those lost races? You know I lost
every cent on Sis--"

"It ain't one race, it's six," snorted Crimmins. "It's Crimmins' way to
agitate his brain for a friend, but it ain't his way to be a plumb fool.
You can't shoot that bull con into me, Bud. I know you. I give you an
offer, friend and friend. You turn it down and 'cuse me of making you
play crooked. I'm done with you. It ain't Crimmins' way."

Billy Garrison eyed his former trainer and mentor steadily for a long
time. His lip was quivering.

"Damn your way!" he said hoarsely at length, and turned on his heel. His
hands were deep in his pockets, his shoulders hunched as he swung out
of the stable. He was humming over and over the old music-hall favorite,
"Good-by, Sis"--humming in a desperate effort to keep his nerve. Billy
Garrison had touched bottom in the depths.



CHAPTER II.

THE HEAVY HAND OF FATE.

Garrison left Long Island for New York that night. When you are hard
hit the soul suffers a reflex-action. It recoils to its native soil.
New York was Garrison's home. He was a product of its sporting soil.
He loved the Great White Way. But he had drunk in the smell, the
intoxication of the track with his mother's milk. She had been from
the South; the land of straight women, straight men, straight living,
straight riding. She had brought blood--good, clean blood--to the
Garrison-Loring entente cordiale--a polite definition of a huge mistake.

From his mother Garrison had inherited his cool head, steady eye, and
the intuitive hands that could compel horse-flesh like a magnet. From
her he had inherited a peculiar recklessness and swift daring. From his
father--well, Garrison never liked to talk about his father. His mother
was a memory; his father a blank. He was a good-looking, bad-living
sprig of a straight family-tree. He had met his wife at the New Orleans
track, where her father, an amateur horse-owner, had two entries.
And she had loved him. There is good in every one. Perhaps she had
discovered it in Garrison's father where no one else had.

Her family threw her off--at least, when she came North with her
husband, she gradually dropped out of her home circle; dropped of
her own volition. Perhaps she was afraid that the good she had first
discovered in her husband had been seen through a magnifying-glass.
Her life with Garrison was a constant whirlwind of changing scene and
fortune--the perpetual merry--or sorry--go-round of a book-maker; going
from track to track, and from bad to worse. His friends said he was
unlucky; his enemies, that the only honest thing in him was his cough.
He had incipient consumption. So Mrs. Garrison's life, such as it was,
had been lived in a trunk--when it wasn't held for hotel bills--but she
had lived out her mistake gamely.

When the boy came--Billy--she thought Heaven had smiled upon her at
last. But it was only hell. Garrison loved his wife, for love is not a
quality possessed only by the virtuous. Sometimes the worst man can
love the most--in his selfish way. And Garrison resented the arrival of
Billy. He resented sharing his wife's affection with the boy.

In time he came to hate his son. Billy's education was chiefly
constitutional. There wasn't the money to pay for his education for any
length of time. His mother had to fight for it piecemeal. So he took
his education in capsules; receiving a dose in one city and jumping to
another for the next, according as a track opened.

He knew his father never cared for him, though his mother tried her best
to gloze over the indifference of her husband. But Billy understood
and resented it. He and his mother loved in secret. When she died, her
mistake lived out to the best of her ability, young Garrison promptly
ran away from his circulating home. He knew nothing of his father's
people; nothing of his mother's. He was a young derelict; his inherent
sense of honor and an instinctive desire for cleanliness kept him off
the rocks.