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!