"Now, I've been at this game, on both sides of the fence, for more than twenty years, and, if any man is, I'm dead next to the fact that the horse game is hard and craggy. I never yet was guilty of looking upon the running game as something easy. Yet I'm bound to admit that I often get what you can call, if you want to, a hunch on a horse. Something that a plug does in his running, even if he doesn't get near the money, takes my eye, and from thinking about it I get a hunch on him. I don't get a hunch like this every day, or every week or month, for that matter, but I've noticed that these hunches of mine have gone through nine times out of ten during the past twenty years or so. Well, there was a horse called Jodan that had run in two or three six-furlong sprints at Morris Park that fall, and I had liked his work. He was out of the money in both of those races, but I liked the way he went at his work. That horse Jodan looked to me like he had it in him. These two Morris Park races had been captured, one, two, three by good ones, and I could see when I had a chance to look Jodan over in his stall that he was short of work. The string to which the horse belonged had a poor trainer, and I knew that a good trainer could get some six furlong races out of Jodan. I had a hunch on Jodan, and I fixed it in my head that if ever the horse got into the hands of a good trainer and was brought around right for the six-furlong distance, he'd get a piece of my money, no matter what company he was up against.
"Well, along toward the close of the St. Asaph meeting Jodan turned up at the track with another trainer handling him—a man who had as good a knack of conditioning horses as ever I met up with, and an old chum of mine. I rubbed up with him before he had been on the track fifteen minutes, and asked him what he was going to do with Jodan.
"'I am going to try him out in the first three-quarter event I can squeeze him into,' he told me, 'and I wouldn't be surprised to see him get a piece of it. His right fore-leg is a bit bum, but if it holds together I don't see why the fellows I know shouldn't get a bite off a real good thing in Jodan. He's got a turn of speed, and I've got him dead right. The only thing that worries me is that swollen knee, and I'm doing my best at patching that up.'
"I told him of the hunch I'd had at Morris Park on Jodan, and he told me to stay with it, and he'd attend to his end of it to help me out.
"'There'll be all kinds of a price on him when I send him to the pump,' he said, 'and I'll let you know in time just how he is.'
"Well, that hunch just grew and grew on me. The Washington chaps that I had met and pushed along with the good things that I didn't have the sap to play myself heard from me on the Jodan question. I told them that I had him up my sleeve and to stand by. They had never heard of the horse and they almost side-stepped when I told 'em he was as good as any of them over a three-quarter route—that he had never been got right. There were a lot of six-furlongers down at St. Asaph then that could negotiate the distance in .15 flat, and they couldn't see where a horse that they had never heard of had a look-in with that kind. I held my ground, however, and they said that when it was to come off they'd throw a little bit of a bet at the bird, just because I said so.
"A couple of days later Jodan's name showed up among the entries for a six-furlong sprint, and I had another chaw with his trainer.
"'He's good,' he told me. 'Stay with your hunch. He ought to do.'
"The race was to be run on a Saturday. I looked up my Washington friends and told them confidently what Jodan was going to do with a bunch of the best three-quarter runners in training. Four or five of them couldn't help but give me the hoot on the proposition, and they said they weren't going over to the track, anyhow—too busy closing up the week's business, and so on. They couldn't see where Jodan figured with the lot he was to meet. I went around to the rest of these Washington fellows on the Friday evening before the race and told them again about Jodan. They, too, were all going to be too busy with the Saturday wind-up of business to take in the races that day, but five of them gave me $10 each to put on Jodan for them. None of them had any confidence in the thing, though.
"The Jodan race was the first on the card. There were fourteen entries, and not a horse was scratched. The track was deep in dust, and I knew then Jodan liked that sort of going. It looked like a cinch. I knew that the bookies would be dead to Jodan, but I didn't think they'd take the liberties they did with him. The favorite opened up at 2 to 1, and he was played down to 6 to 5 in no time. Then there were four or five shots in it ranging from 3 to 1 to 15 to 1, when the rank outsiders were written in all the way up to 150 to 1. Jodan, my mutt, stowed away for a good thing, opened up at 100 to 1 and stuck there. I went out to the stable where Jodan was quartered to find his trainer, but I couldn't dig him up. He was mixed up with the bunch in the paddock or in the stand. So I decided that it wasn't necessary for me to see him, anyhow, before putting my money on Jodan. I had seen him the night before, when he whispered to me that Jodan was gorgeous, and that he was going to play him to win, no matter if the books laid 1000 to 1 against the horse.