CHAPTER IX
DORGAN
In due course a small, clean-shaven man who walked with a slight limp surveyed the big chestnut with a shrewd, bright eye. This was Rennie's friend, the ex-jockey.
"Like his looks, Pete?" Rennie queried.
Pete, whose surname was Dorgan, nodded. "I like 'em some ways," he admitted. "He's got power to burn, and that'll give him speed—some. In five miles he'd be runnin' strong, but he might not be fast enough at a mile. 'Course, I don't know nothin' about what he'll be up ag'inst. What time has this race been run in, other years?" When Angus told him he grunted. "Good as that? Must be some real horses here. You're sure he ain't stolen? I wouldn't want to be mixed up in a deal like that, even if I am out of the game."
"He ain't stolen. This old Injun is as straight as you are."
"Well, I've been called crooked before now," Dorgan grinned. "But if you say so, Dave, I guess this old boy is all right. You can tell him I'll put the horse in the best shape I can, and maybe I'll ride him. If I don't, I'll get a boy. But I ain't goin' to live with a bunch of Injuns while I'm doin' it, and the horse has to be taken out of here." He eyed Paul Sam's primitive stable arrangements with disgust. "He's ruinin' his feet."
Paul Sam made no objection, and the big chestnut which Dorgan christened "Chief," was brought to the Mackay ranch. There he was installed in a disused building which lay behind the other stables and some distance from them.
"The way I get it," said Dorgan, "we better keep this horse under cover as long as we can. From what you say, there ain't been no class to the hay-hounds the Siwashes has started other years, and so an Injun entry is a joke entry. Nobody knows this horse, and seein' him the way he is now, not many'd pipe what he really is unless they was wised up. But you let some of these wise local birds lamp him after I've had him a couple of weeks, and they might smell something. Then I may's well keep dark myself. Not that I'm ashamed of myself more'n I ought to be, but somebody might remember me, though I ain't ridden for years. So I'll be an extra hand you've hired, see? Me and Chief will take our work-outs on the quiet as long as we can."
So Dorgan gave the horse his exercise on a little prairie a mile back of the ranch. As he had predicted, a couple of weeks made a vast difference in his appearance. Groomed till his chestnut coat was gleaming, dappled satin, his feet trimmed and cleaned and polished and shod by Dorgan himself, fed bright, clean grain and savory mashes and bedded to the knees nightly in sweet straw, Chief tasted for the first time the joys of the equine aristocracy to which he belonged.