Story 9.
“A Whiskey Drinker.”
The ‘Queen’s Hotel,’ Kimberley, was doing a roaring trade. The bar was one dense mass of thirsty men, struggling to get served with splits and other drinks. The large dining-room, out of which the tables had been taken, was crowded. People from all parts of the colony were there. Dutch Africanders from the western province, Englishmen from the east; colonial soldiers; officers of the Cape Mounted Rifles, and mounted police officers from the frontier; merchants from Capetown and Port Elizabeth, and visitors from every part of South Africa. Besides these visitors there was every sort of Diamond-Field man represented. The honest digger—the expression is considered out there the correct one to use, though if it be your lot to have much dealing with the mining element of South Africa you will wonder how it came into vogue—with his broad-brimmed hat and big beard and bad language is making himself conspicuous as he generally does, wherever he be. The diamond-buyers, licensed and unlicenced, gentlemen of the Jewish persuasion for the most part, given as a rule to wearing much of their stock-in-trade on their hands, and indulging in that shiny smartness of dress so dear to the race; the latter, the unlicenced and unlawful dealers in diamonds, wearing in their eyes that restless uneasy look that is peculiar to those classes who are liable at any moment to find themselves involved in an embarrassing and one-sided misunderstanding with the police. There were merchants, speculators, lawyers, doctors, and civil servants there. About some men who took rather a prominent position there was the unmistakable betting man’s look; and they gave one the idea that they would be at home in the ring at any English race meeting. The occasion was the drawing of the lotteries for the forthcoming races, and as times had been good, and money was plentiful, sovereigns were flowing in very quickly to the men who were giving out the chances. I was looking on smoking when I recognised a slight, good-looking man who was taking a ticket in the lottery. His name was Jack Harman, an ex-officer in the army, who had been a digger on the Diamond Fields, had married and settled in the colony.
“How is it you’re up here?” I said to him as I shook hands with him. “A married man like you ought not to be wandering about the country.”
“You’re right—wish to goodness I was at home, for the missis is ill; but I have to look after my horses up here.”
“Well, I suppose your horse Marmion is a certainty for the cup, eh?” I said. “Up here they think the race is over.”
“All I can say is, that it isn’t, I wish it were, for it’s a rich prize, and goodness knows I want the money badly enough.”
Just then a dark-bearded man pushed past Jack Harman, and as he did so gave him a look of recognition which the latter answered by a blank stare.
“Who’s that?—who’s your friend?” I asked him.
“That is one of the blackest-hearted scoundrels unhanged; he is a sort of fellow you read about in a book; Solomon Muzada is his name, and he is one of the greatest enemies I have. Do you know that brute wanted to marry my wife; it’s an infernal cheek because there is a touch of the tar-brush in him. Dutchman, Jew, and nigger—it’s a nice breed, isn’t it? Of course she wouldn’t look at him, and since our marriage he has been our enemy. There was a mortgage on Laurie’s Kloof, on which I ought to have paid the interest, but didn’t; well he has bought it, and by Jove he is going to sell us up. He has sworn he will make a bankrupt of me, and I believe he will do it. Do you hear that? I have drawn a horse Storm Drum. By George, that’s a rum thing!” he added, as he caught something which the steward of the races, who was managing the drawing, had shouted out. “Look here, are you going to do anything about the races, because don’t make any bets till you have seen me. I must see about the selling,” he said as he went off.
A steward had got upon one of the tables, upon which a desk had been put, and was about to sell the chances. Anglo-Indians or South Africans need no explanation of a selling lottery, but to some Englishmen an explanation may be given. After the lotteries have been drawn the chances of the different horses are sold by auction; any ore present is allowed to bid, but in perhaps the generality of cases the owners of horses buy the chances, this being the best way of backing their horses to win a good amount. The highest bidder has to pay the amount of his bid twice over, once to the owner of the ticket that drew the horse, and again he has to pay it into the pool. The latter money, of course, he gets back again, together with the amount collected for the tickets and the prices paid for the other chances if the horse whose chance he bought wins. After the chance of some outsider had been sold for a few pounds the steward, who was acting as auctioneer, shouted out that the next chance to be sold was Marmion. “Gentlemen, Captain Harman’s Marmion, and three hundred and four pounds in the pool.”
The sporting division began to make calculations in their betting-books, and to be all on the alert to learn what those who knew most about it thought of the horse’s chance.
I watched Jack Harman carefully. “Poor beggar, he wants money badly! I hope he will be able to buy Marmion’s chance cheap,” I thought to myself, as I noticed the expression on his face. As I looked away from him I saw Solomon Muzada, the man Jack had told me about; he also was watching Jack, and I believe, from the devilish smile that was playing round his coarse, thick lips, that he too read the expression I saw.
“Captain Harman’s Marmion, three hundred and four pounds in the pool,” the steward cried out, and the bidding began.
Some one bid twenty pounds, some one thirty, thirty-five, forty, fifty, sixty, a hundred; then the bidding steadied, and went up a pound at a time till a hundred and fifty was reached.
“That’s all it will go for,” said a bookmaker near me; “it’s buying money to give more.”
He was wrong though; a hundred and ninety was reached before only two bidders were left—one was Jack Harman, the other was Solomon Muzada.
“Going at one hundred and ninety, three hundred pounds in the pool,” said the steward.
“Ninety-one,” cried out Jack Harman.
“Ninety-two,” snarled out Solomon Muzada.
“Three.”
“Bah! what’s the good, I bid five,” said Muzada.
Jack Harman seemed to be doing a sum in mental arithmetic then, he shrugged his shoulders and walked away, letting Marmion’s chance be knocked down to Solomon Muzada.
“See, that is done to spite me; he’d do anything to prevent me winning any money, the brute! I’ll sell him though. If Mr Muzada thinks I keep horses in training to win money for him he makes a mistake,” Harman said, as he came up to me; then raising his voice he turned to Muzada, who was standing near: “Well, what do you expect to make by this? You’re pretty clever to buy a horse against an owner, but you’ll find if it wasn’t worth my while to pay for the horse’s chance it wasn’t worth yours.”
“Ah! this is the Captain who is such an honourable gentleman, and he says he will humbug me, and not let his horse win because I bought the lottery,” Muzada sneered; “but I tink the honourable Captain can’t afford to throw away the stakes, so that’s why I buy Marmion’s chance.”
“You think I can’t afford to lose the stakes—well, you will find out whether I can afford that; all I say is, that you sha’n’t win money by my horse.”
“Your horse! well, he won’t be your horse long, you will have to sell him after the race. You’re a nice man to own horses—a beggar like you; you will be sold up soon after the race is over. I will buy your horse then.”
“That depends on others as well as you, for the horse will be sold by public auction; but stop, since you have bought the horse’s lottery you had better buy him now at once, you shall have him with his engagements for fifteen hundred pounds, he is worth more to you than to any one else.”
Muzada looked eagerly at Harman as he made this suggestion. He had set his mind on buying Marmion after the race, and he thought he might as well buy him before. He could not quite understand why Jack was willing to sell to him. The price mentioned seemed not to be very much, considering that the horse was sure to win the race the next day; so some of the purchase money would come back.
“Don’t be a fool, the horse is worth more than that,” another owner of race-horses whispered to Jack.
Muzada heard the whisper, and that determined him; after haggling for some time about the price he came to terms with Jack.
“What have you done that for? it seems to me you would have done better to have secured the stakes before you sold the horse,” I said to Jack, after the sale had been completed.
“I don’t think Marmion is going to win that race; it was not certain before, it certainly isn’t now,” Jack answered, somewhat to my mystification.
“Why, what’s to beat him?” I asked; “what can?”
“There is one that can beat him if he liked, and that’s the horse that I have drawn—Storm Drum.”
I looked at Jack in surprise. Storm Drum was owned by a Kimberley canteen-keeper, who had bought him after the races the year before. He had gained an evil reputation by his savage temper, and had never started for a race without distinguishing himself by some display of vice. On one occasion he had shown a tendency towards indulging in the luxury of human flesh, having taken a large bite out of the leg of a jockey riding another horse.
“Surely you don’t mean that you believe that brute can have a chance?” I asked incredulously.
“It’s all chance. If he took it into his head to try it would be a certainty. You needn’t tell me all you know about him, you seem to forget that he was in our stable; he belonged to Markham of Port Elizabeth, and I won a race on him in Natal, and have ridden him often enough. He was a better horse than Marmion, in fact he is the best horse that ever came out to this country, only he is such an untrustworthy brute.”
I shook my head. Jack Harman knew a good deal more about racing than I did, still I could not help feeling that his anger with Muzada was making him act rashly; and I was still more of this opinion after I had been present at an interview between them next morning. Muzada was standing at the bar of the ‘Queen’s Hotel,’ swaggering about the good bargain he had made with Jack, and the folly of the latter in selling out of pique, when Jack came in. Some one asked him if he was going to ride in the Kimberley Cup the next day.
“Yes, I am; I ride Storm Drum,” Jack answered.
Muzada burst out laughing. The horse’s eccentricities were so well-known, that he thought with pleasure how the man he hated was certain to look ridiculous.
“So, Captain, you are going to ride; how much will you bet that you ever get round the course?” said Muzada, talking to Jack in his free and easy way, which I knew made my friend’s blood boil. “Come, you had better put your pride in your pocket, and ride for me,” he added, as it occurred to him that this would annoy Jack.
“Thank you, but it is bad enough that you should own a thoroughbred horse, let alone that a white man should ride for you,” Jack answered with a glance at the other’s dark skin, which was full of meaning.
Muzada looked for a second or two as if he were thinking of hitting Jack, then thinking better of it he pretended not to understand the allusion.
“Well, who would like to back Captain Harman’s mount? I will bet ten to one against Storm Drum, even though this famous gentleman jockey does ride for Pat Brady.”
“How much will you lay it to?” Jack asked.
There was a gleam in Muzada’s eyes as he heard this question.
“To a good deal more than you can afford to pay,” he answered, thinking to himself that Jack was going mad.
The idea of Storm Drum’s having any chance of winning the race seemed too absurd to be entertained for a minute; and Muzada thought that Jack had realised that he was likely soon to become ruined, and had become desperate.
Jack Harman said nothing, and I whispered to him a warning not to do anything rash.
“Come, I have some money to give you for Marmion, after we have settled the bills I hold; well, I will lay you ten to one to that.”
“That’s four hundred pounds. Well, I will take four thousand to four hundred,” Jack answered in the same quiet voice.
Muzada looked a little surprised; he evidently thought that Jack was mad with annoyance. The idea of winning what he had every reason to believe was Jack’s last four hundred pounds in the world was very sweet to him. There were one or two men present, who were fairly good judges, and their expressions seemed to tell Muzada that they thought Jack was mad.
“It’s a bet,” he said, as he wrote it down in his book.
“Why on earth have you thrown that money away?” I asked Jack, as I followed him into the street.
“It’s not thrown away yet,” he answered; “and I never could get as much money bet against the horse by any one else; he only does it because he knows that if I lose it will about break me.”
“Well, why should you be broke, why not keep your money in your pocket?” I insisted rather wearisomely, for it was not much use lecturing my friend when the mischief was done.
“Look here, I am going to win on Storm Drum. Take my advice and take ten to one or eight to one for the matter of that. You see, it’s like this,” Jack said, as he noticed my expression, “these races are my last chance of winning some money, so as to prevent that black scoundrel from selling me up. When I married I hadn’t much of my own, as you know, and though my wife owned the farm and the homestead, it was mortgaged a good bit. Instead of paying off the mortgage we have let matters go from bad to worse, and have taken things easily enough until we found that Muzada had been quietly getting hold of all the paper I had put my name to, and of all the charges on our property. It was just the revenge that would please him, to make us beggars, and show my wife that she had married a spendthrift, who had wasted all she had and brought her to ruin. Muzada knew that I trusted to winning a fair stake with Marmion, and he came up here to prevent it. He would spend a good deal of money to stop me from winning enough to keep his claws off Laurie’s Kloof. Well, I have determined to do my best to disappoint him. I have always had a sort of presentiment that some day or the other Storm Drum would surprise every one, and when I drew the horse in the lottery and no one bid the chance so that it was knocked down to me, the idea came into my head that my only chance of saving Laurie’s Kloof was to trust to that uncertain gentleman. Imprudent you may say, well perhaps it is, but let me tell you this, that I know more about the horse than you do, and something tells me that it will be all right, and Mr Muzada will find out to his cost that he has burnt his fingers in meddling with my affairs.”
I could do nothing but hope for the best, but I found it very difficult to feel much confidence in my friend’s scheme coming off successfully; and that evening I watched Muzada and noticed that he was in a high state of delight, and was counting beforehand on the discomfiture of the enemy.
Racecourse scenes are like one another all the world over. The crowd at the grand stand was composed of much the same materials as the crowd at minor meetings at home. The principal difference probably would be, that on the colonial racecourse people know much more about one another than they do at home; and there is strong personal interest felt in the result of the races. The story of Jack Harman’s having sold the horse to Muzada was well-known to every one on the course, and to a certain extent rather decreased the confidence felt in the favourite winning, though it was not easy to see what horse could beat him.
Jack Harman had been a digger on the Diamond Fields before he married and settled down in the colony, and a good many of his old friends invested a sovereign or two on the chances of the horse he had elected to ride, but very little hope was felt as to his chance. The local bookmakers, who had many a time won money from those who had put their trust in Storm Drum’s good breeding, were anxious enough to lay odds against him again, although they had heard the story of Harman’s sensational bet.
Pat Brady, who owned Storm Drum, was a short, thick-set, good-humoured little Irishman, who had often been subjected to a good deal of chaff on account of the way his horse would shut up and refuse to try a yard in public. At last he had sworn never to bet another farthing upon him, and had declared that after the Kimberley Cup he would sell him for what he would fetch. Jack Harman, however, seemed to have infected Pat with a good deal of his hopefulness.
“Sure then the Captain is going to do the trick to-day; those fellows won’t be laughing about Storm Drum in half-an-hour’s time, you’ll find,” he said to his friends, as the bookmakers joked him about his horse.
There were two or three other imported horses as well as Marmion, and one colonial-bred one who was thought to have a chance. I found myself standing on the top of the grand stand, next to Muzada, when the horses had gone down to the post, and I noticed with some pleasure that that gentleman did not seem to be enjoying himself very much. He was evidently thinking of the money he stood to lose on Storm Drum.
“Laid ten to one against him did you? well, if he tried it would be odds on him, but it’s more than ten to one he don’t try,” a well-known colonial racing-man named Langford, whom I had just seen laying two hundred to fifty on Marmion, was saying to Muzada, as he looked through his race-glasses at the horses getting together at the starting-post.
“How is he behaving now—him?” said Muzada, with a scowl on his ugly face. He was not over comforted at the other’s remarks. After all Jack Harman had not made such a bad bet, and he didn’t like the way the horse was being backed by one or two others; nor was he pleased to hear that Pat Brady had recovered that confidence in the gay deceiver which of old cost him so dear.
“He is behaving himself wonderfully well; wait a bit though, and he will come out in his old character.”
“Why, man, you look nervous,” said the other; “never fear, your horse is sure to win.”
Muzada looked gratified.
“I think the Captain will find he has humbugged himself this time; I think he’ll have to walk down to the colony after the race,” he said.
“They’re off—it’s a good start,” said Langford, and we put up our glasses.
Jack Harman went straight to the front.
“Who’s that leading?”
“Storm Drum.”
“Storm Drum has bolted!” they were crying out.
“Devil a bit bolted. Jack thinks that to win at all he must take the lead and keep it, and, by Jove, he’s right,” said Langford. “But I have never seen him go like that before.”
“How about Storm Drum now?” shouted out some one, as he came past the stand leading by twenty lengths.
“Ah, then, who’s got the laugh this day?” Pat Brady cried out.
“There’s lots of time for him to come out with his old tricks, but if he don’t they won’t catch him,” said Langford.
Muzada snarled out a sentence hideous with blasphemy.
“Even if he wins his bet the triumph will have cost him something,” I thought, as I looked at his ugly face, and saw how sick he looked as Storm Drum came along, the gap between him and the other horse rather increasing than decreasing.
“It’s a race! Marmion wins!” shouted some one, as for a second the favourite looked dangerous.
“Not a bit of it; Storm Drum has the lot of ’em settled,” said Langford as he put down his glasses; “he is on his good behaviour for once, and he has made fools of us all.”
As Storm Drum came past the post, an easy winner, men began to remember how they had always said he was the best bred horse in South Africa, and better class than anything else out there, and generally to be wise after the event.
Muzada was not able to take his losses so philosophically. He got into a rage, swearing that he had been robbed, that Marmion had been got at, and that the whole thing was a swindle. Nobody sympathised with him very much, and even those who had lost their money found some consolation in his disappointment.
“So, you see, I was not so rash as you thought; but then I happened to know something about the horse that no one else knew,” said Jack Harman to me that evening. “When Tom Markham owned him we found out that he could not be depended upon, and after he had let us in once or twice we determined to get rid of him. One day, however, at Cradock races, a man came up to us and said he thought he could tell us something about the horse. He had been employed in a stable at home, where Blue Peter, Storm Drum’s sire, was trained. Blue Peter was just such another customer as his son, till somehow it was found out that he had a weakness for strong drink. His favourite tipple was whiskey, Irish whiskey, the older and better it was the more he liked it—it seemed to put heart in him, and after he took to drink he won race after race for them, and our informant suggested that the taste might be inherited. Well, we determined to give his idea a trial, and before Storm Drum started for the race he won in Natal, he had his half bottle of whiskey. It seemed to agree with him, for he went right away and won. A few weeks after that Markham went to grief, and had to bolt to South America, and Storm Drum was seized by his creditors. One or two men owned him before he came to Pat Brady, but they all burnt their fingers with him; for no one knew of his family failing, and as a Good Templar he didn’t turn out a success, but I always remembered what he could do if he liked, and when Muzada interfered with me I thought how I could sell him if I put Storm Drum on his good behaviour. Well, it came off all right, but I didn’t enjoy that ride; every moment I was afraid that the brute would stop dead, but thanks to Pat’s whiskey, he had won the race before he remembered himself. It’s the last bet I shall make in this country. I shall go back and look after the farm, and the missis, and the kids, now that I am out of Muzada’s clutches again.”
Jack Harman was as good as his word, and there is no steadier husband or better specimen of the colonial farmer than the ex-hussar. He lives happily at Laurie’s Kloof, and prosperous and well to do.