Luck at the Diamond Fields

by Dalrymple J. Belgrave

The first speaker spoke in the tones of an educated man and a gentleman. The second voice was a loud, gruff one, and seemed to belong to some one in a lower grade of society.

Joe Warton somehow thought he knew both voices, so he got up and looked over the fence. He found that the men had parted company; one had turned down a road and was out of sight; the other he could see. He was a heavily built man over six feet high, and Warton recognised him as a man called McNeil, who had not been long in Kimberley. He was rather a rough sort of fellow, who had knocked about the world a good deal. He professed to have come out to look at the mines, and report on them for a syndicate of capitalists at home. He was a good deal at the club, though some members thought him rather a doubtful character. The queer thing was, that Joe could not help suspecting that he had recognised in the other voice that of Ferriard. He remembered that Ferriard, though he was friendly enough to most men, had been rather standoffish to McNeil, and professed some surprise at meeting a man like him in a club, though he had afterwards played cards with him on several occasions, as they both seemed to have a keen taste for play. Yet if Warton’s suspicions were right, the two men seemed to be on the most confidential footing. After all he was not sure. He had no reason to suspect that Ferriard was not perfectly bonâ fide and straight, and because he disliked the man and was jealous of him, he ought to be all the more careful not to spread injurious reports about him. It was no business of his, and he would not mix himself up in it, he thought, as he undressed and went to bed.

When the day of the races came, Joe Warton’s chances of winning the Ladies’ Purse did not look any more hopeful than they were when the entries were published; nor had he managed to hedge any of the money he had put on Lone Star.

The public considered that it was a certainty for Induna, and it was generally thought that Mr Lascelles had been somewhat greedy and unsportsmanlike in entering his horse for the minor event, instead of trying to win one of the big ones. However, Mr Lascelles had joined his forces with some other owners, and had settled to take a share in the stakes they might win, instead of opposing them with Induna, one of the fastest horses ever bred in the colony, and one which several good judges thought might at the weights have a chance of beating the imported horses in the two principal handicaps. Men grumbled and said that the races were being made a cut and dried affair of, but Mr Lascelles did not care, so long as he was backed up by his friend Ferriard, about whom he swaggered and boasted more and more every day. He liked to think that Ferriard was going to ride for him. The race would be reported in the home papers, and there would be a crop of paragraphs about it, and the world in general would learn that Sir Harry Ferriard had sported his, Mr Lascelles, colours.

If Joe Warton’s chances of winning the race looked hopeless, his chances of winning what he cared a great deal more about, namely Polly Short’s affections, seemed to be almost as small. Their quarrel had grown more serious during the last few days. The Kimberley Race Ball had taken place, and Joe had attended it. He had not asked Polly to dance with him, and though he was an awkward dancer enough, generally managing to get her more or less torn and in trouble, she was none the less inclined to be angry with him for taking so little notice of her. At the same time Ferriard’s attentions had been very marked, and people were canvassing her chances of becoming Lady Ferriard. A good many of her friends laughed at the idea of his being such a fool as to bring home a bride from the Diamond Fields, but they did not know as much as Polly did, as she sat on the grand stand watching the horses entered for the Ladies’ Purse. The day before Ferriard had asked her to marry him, but his proposal had been a somewhat strange one. He had just received a cablegram he said, which made it necessary for him to put off his trip up country and start for England almost at once, and he wanted her to marry him in a week’s time and go home with him. Now that she had to make up her mind she felt half afraid. It had come so suddenly. Though she felt certain that Ferriard was in love with her, she felt somehow that she was doubtful whether she did not like her old lover best.

As she watched old Lone Star being saddled, and saw Joe Warton looking glum and out of spirits, she experienced a feeling of something like remorse. After all old friends were surest, she thought.

Lone Star had not many supporters. The old mare had won a good many races on the Diamond Fields, and his owner was one of the most popular men there. Little Lazarus might just as well have run Induna in one of the other races, and left the Ladies’ Purse for Lone Star, and one or two others, who would have had a fair chance. But there is no sentiment about betting, and the bookmakers’ cry of “Odds bar one, eight to one bar one, ten to one bar one!” met with very few responses. One or two men took the odds to a few sovereigns on the off-chance. People on the Diamond Fields are as a rule great believers in the off-chance. Still Joe Warton himself said he did not think he could win, and he advised his friends to leave it alone.

“Beg your pardon, sir, but will you let me have a look through your race-glasses for a second?” said a grey-haired, elderly-looking man, whom Joe never remembered having seen before, and who had just bustled into the grand stand, just as the horses were going down to the starting-post. “That black is the horse Sir Harry Ferriard rides, isn’t it? blue and yellow cap? Thank you, sir, I’ve seen what I want,” he added, with rather a satisfied air, as he gave the glasses back again to Warton.

“That’s the horse which will win,” Joe said, as he took the glasses.

“So they all seem to think, but maybe it isn’t one of Sir Harry’s lucky days,” the grey-haired man answered, as he bustled away, and Warton saw him in a second or two afterwards speaking rather earnestly to an inspector of police, who was in the ring. Whatever the grey-haired man had to say, seemed to surprise the latter a good deal.