"So I traipsed around to the ring to put down my money and that of my friends on Jodan. As I say, Jodan's price all over the ring was 100 to 1, and no takers. I had the five tens the Washington chaps had given me and the last fifty spot I had on earth in my mitt, ready to shoot around and plant it in $10 gobs on Jodan before the price could be rubbed, thus standing to win $5000 for myself and $5000 for the Washington fellows, with my share out of their winnings for putting them next. I was the very next man in line to plant my first ten with one of the books, when I felt a hard pinch on my right arm, and I wheeled around suddenly to swat the duck that had given it to me. It was my friend, the trainer of Jodan. He nodded me over to the little vacant space.
"'You were just going to take some Jodan, weren't you?' he asked me.
"'That's what,' said I. 'He'll turn the trick, won't he?'
"'No,' he replied shortly. 'I've been trying to find you for the last hour to tell you. The mutt's got another twist during the night somehow or another, and now it's about twice its right size. Stay off. He can't do it. He's not limping much, but I can't see how he'll go a quarter with such a leg. It'll be a miracle if that hard-luck skate finishes at all.'
"This was a hard fall for me, I'm telling you that. I had been building on it for one of my cinch hunch things, and to hear that it had gone rank took the nerve out of me. Of course, in a dismal kind of way, I was glad my friend the trainer had put me next to the state of things in time to keep me off the dead one for my whole fifty and the fifty of my friends in Washington, but that wasn't much salve for the hurt I got when he told me that Jodan couldn't possibly do it. With Jodan out of it I felt certain that the 6 to 5 favorite would come in all alone, and so I put the whole bundle down that way $120 to $100. It made me glum to think of the difference between that and $10,000 to $100.
"Then I went up to the stand to see the lot file past on their way to the post. My horse, the favorite, was just a-prancing and looked to me like a 1 to 10 thing with Jodan out. But my trainer chum had put me on right. Jodan's knee was as big as your hat, and he had his limp along with him. One of the stewards noticed this and made a bit of talk about not allowing Jodan to race, but when he was told that Jodan always went to the post with a bum knee, even after his warming up, he closed up and Jodan went around to the pump with his field.
"They got off the first break. The people in the stand were down on the favorite almost to a man, and the yelp they let out when he shot to the lead from the first jump was a heap noisy. My poor old Jodan plug was almost left at the post, but his boy got him going all right, and I was rather surprised to see him quickly join the rear bunch. By this time, at the half, the favorite was just buck-jumping five lengths out in front of the first division. Then the hind ones began to move up, and I stood by to see Jodan get shuffled out of it. But he didn't shuffle. He passed right by the rear gang and nearing the three-quarters he was at the saddle-girths of the front division and going like a cup defender in half a gale.
"'You'll chuck that in a minute, my boy,' I thought, with my mind on Jodan. 'Three-legged races look all right on paper, but they don't go through.'
"I lost the colors when they turned into the stretch, but I saw that the favorite was still a good two lengths in front. The track was so deep in dust that I couldn't make out the others until they were well into the stretch for the lope to the wire. Then when they were all settled down to their barrels in the flying yellow dust, I saw one of the front divisionites behind the leader shoot out around on the outside and bend down to it. Say, I closed my lamps down tight. That horse coming on the outside like a black devil, with his bit almost crunched into flinders, was Jodan. I opened up my eyes when they were about sixty yards from the wire. In the middle of the whirlwind of dust I saw the favorite faltering, with Jodan a neck away and going like as if his distance was only a quarter of a mile and he a-covering it there in the stretch. Then I pulled my glasses away from my head, sat down, shut my eyes again and shook hands with death for a few seconds while the Indians all around me were howling 'Jodan!' 'Jodan!'
"'Jodan wins!' they yelled when the horses got under the wire, and I opened up my eyes just in time to see Jodan with open daylight between him and the favorite. That was a three-legged miracle, all right. I was in a daze, but I had a picture in my head of five fellows in Washington that had treated me right waiting for the race train to get in so that I could hand them each a thousand. I couldn't stand for that, and I had too many different kinds of heartbreak warping me out under my vest to feel like trying to explain the thing to them. So I walked over to Alexandria and caught the afternoon train for Richmond, after leaving my bum string in the hands of another trainer. From Richmond I went on down to New Orleans, where I had some luck—never enough luck, though, to square the game up with me for that win of Jodan's, which made me feel old and tired for a long time afterward.