“Oh, well, it's this way,” he said, rather apologetically, “if an owner is badly treated by the handicapper, and is just giving his horse a run to get weight off, then it's right enough to catch hold a bit. But when a horse is favourite and the public are backing him it isn't right to take hold of him then. I would not do it.” This was his whole code of morals—not to pull a favourite; and he felt himself very superior to the scoundrel who would pull favourites or outsiders indiscriminately.
“What do you get for riding?” I asked him.
“Well,” he said, looking about uneasily, “we're supposed to get a fiver for a losing mount and ten pounds if we win, but a lot of the steeplechase-owners are what I call 'battlers'—men who have no money and get along by owing everybody. They promise us all sorts of money if we win, but they don't pay if we lose. I only got two pounds for that last steeplechase.”
“Two pounds!” I made a rapid calculation. He had ridden over eighteen fences for two pounds—had chanced his life eighteen times at less than half-a-crown a time.
“Good Heavens!” I said, “that's a poor game. Wouldn't you be better back on the station?”
“Oh, I don't know—sometimes we get laid a bit to nothing, and do well out of a race. And then, you know, a steeplechase rider is somebody—not like an ordinary fellow that is just working.”
I realised that I was an “ordinary fellow who was just working”, and felt small accordingly.
“I'm just off to weigh now,” he said—“I'm riding Contractor, and he'll run well, but he always seems to fall at those logs. Still, I ought to have luck to-day. I met a hearse as I was coming out. I'll get him over the fences, somehow.”
“Do you think it lucky, then, to meet a hearse?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, “if you meet it. You mustn't overtake it—that's unlucky. So is a cross-eyed man unlucky. Cross-eyed men ought to be kept off racecourses.”