Muzada heard the whisper, and that determined him; after haggling for some time about the price he came to terms with Jack.
“What have you done that for? it seems to me you would have done better to have secured the stakes before you sold the horse,” I said to Jack, after the sale had been completed.
“I don’t think Marmion is going to win that race; it was not certain before, it certainly isn’t now,” Jack answered, somewhat to my mystification.
“Why, what’s to beat him?” I asked; “what can?”
“There is one that can beat him if he liked, and that’s the horse that I have drawn—Storm Drum.”
I looked at Jack in surprise. Storm Drum was owned by a Kimberley canteen-keeper, who had bought him after the races the year before. He had gained an evil reputation by his savage temper, and had never started for a race without distinguishing himself by some display of vice. On one occasion he had shown a tendency towards indulging in the luxury of human flesh, having taken a large bite out of the leg of a jockey riding another horse.
“Surely you don’t mean that you believe that brute can have a chance?” I asked incredulously.
“It’s all chance. If he took it into his head to try it would be a certainty. You needn’t tell me all you know about him, you seem to forget that he was in our stable; he belonged to Markham of Port Elizabeth, and I won a race on him in Natal, and have ridden him often enough. He was a better horse than Marmion, in fact he is the best horse that ever came out to this country, only he is such an untrustworthy brute.”
I shook my head. Jack Harman knew a good deal more about racing than I did, still I could not help feeling that his anger with Muzada was making him act rashly; and I was still more of this opinion after I had been present at an interview between them next morning. Muzada was standing at the bar of the ‘Queen’s Hotel,’ swaggering about the good bargain he had made with Jack, and the folly of the latter in selling out of pique, when Jack came in. Some one asked him if he was going to ride in the Kimberley Cup the next day.
“Yes, I am; I ride Storm Drum,” Jack answered.