"I got mine at that game," said he finally. "They made a bum o' me before you people was through playin' jacks. They can run f'r Hogan. These"—salting away the two twenties the main guy had handed him—"will do f'r me. I don't want t' git rich fast, nohow. I'd booze meself foolish. Much 'bliged, gents, but I can't see no Kinley Macks or Billy Bryans, f'r that matter, wit' a spy-glass."
"All right," said the main guy, disgustedly. "But when the ring's around Kinley Mack, and they're paying off the wise people on him, you want to muffle the bleats you'll have coming, see? Don't say we never dished you up a hot one. You're a sport, Jimmy, and so's a tadpole. You'll never butt in among the first six. All right. Come on, you people."
They clinked the pieces of ice against the sides of their glasses once more, and then they climbed into the hack and were away in a row, to a good start.
At each of the seven places at which they stopped for ice, with trimmings, on the way down to the Bay, they announced to friends that they met that it was only going to be a one horse race.
"Run on a fast track, hey?" said the main guy to everybody he knew at the stops. "Say, that's his graft. That's his main plant. A race-horse can run on any old kind of a track. Say, you get tied up with this horse of the century business and you smoke stogies for a few months. Ethelbert, the horse of the century, hey? Say, d'je ever happen to hear of Salvator and Tenny and Hanover and Lamplighter and Henry of Navarre and Sir Walter and Raceland and Hamburg and a few old two-dollar mutts like that? Did, hey? Well, say, do they butt in? Say, Hamburg could've run backward as fast as this horse of the century that you people have all got the bug about. Kinley Mack! Kinley Mack! Hey, fellers?"
"Thash ri'," said the other three, and then they climbed into the hack again.
When they got down to the track entrance and alighted the main guy of the four, still mindful of his duty toward struggling fellow men, made a final appeal to Red Beak Jim.
"Jim," said he, "how about taking our steer, hey? This is the good thing o' the year. It's going to be a long summer. Going to put that forty on Kinley Mack?"
"I'm goin' t' take a nap after I have a smoke," replied Red Beak Jim, filling his pipe.
The four walked away with an air of disgust, while Red Beak Jim grinned after them.