“Come, I have some money to give you for Marmion, after we have settled the bills I hold; well, I will lay you ten to one to that.”
“That’s four hundred pounds. Well, I will take four thousand to four hundred,” Jack answered in the same quiet voice.
Muzada looked a little surprised; he evidently thought that Jack was mad with annoyance. The idea of winning what he had every reason to believe was Jack’s last four hundred pounds in the world was very sweet to him. There were one or two men present, who were fairly good judges, and their expressions seemed to tell Muzada that they thought Jack was mad.
“It’s a bet,” he said, as he wrote it down in his book.
“Why on earth have you thrown that money away?” I asked Jack, as I followed him into the street.
“It’s not thrown away yet,” he answered; “and I never could get as much money bet against the horse by any one else; he only does it because he knows that if I lose it will about break me.”
“Well, why should you be broke, why not keep your money in your pocket?” I insisted rather wearisomely, for it was not much use lecturing my friend when the mischief was done.
“Look here, I am going to win on Storm Drum. Take my advice and take ten to one or eight to one for the matter of that. You see, it’s like this,” Jack said, as he noticed my expression, “these races are my last chance of winning some money, so as to prevent that black scoundrel from selling me up. When I married I hadn’t much of my own, as you know, and though my wife owned the farm and the homestead, it was mortgaged a good bit. Instead of paying off the mortgage we have let matters go from bad to worse, and have taken things easily enough until we found that Muzada had been quietly getting hold of all the paper I had put my name to, and of all the charges on our property. It was just the revenge that would please him, to make us beggars, and show my wife that she had married a spendthrift, who had wasted all she had and brought her to ruin. Muzada knew that I trusted to winning a fair stake with Marmion, and he came up here to prevent it. He would spend a good deal of money to stop me from winning enough to keep his claws off Laurie’s Kloof. Well, I have determined to do my best to disappoint him. I have always had a sort of presentiment that some day or the other Storm Drum would surprise every one, and when I drew the horse in the lottery and no one bid the chance so that it was knocked down to me, the idea came into my head that my only chance of saving Laurie’s Kloof was to trust to that uncertain gentleman. Imprudent you may say, well perhaps it is, but let me tell you this, that I know more about the horse than you do, and something tells me that it will be all right, and Mr Muzada will find out to his cost that he has burnt his fingers in meddling with my affairs.”
I could do nothing but hope for the best, but I found it very difficult to feel much confidence in my friend’s scheme coming off successfully; and that evening I watched Muzada and noticed that he was in a high state of delight, and was counting beforehand on the discomfiture of the enemy.
Racecourse scenes are like one another all the world over. The crowd at the grand stand was composed of much the same materials as the crowd at minor meetings at home. The principal difference probably would be, that on the colonial racecourse people know much more about one another than they do at home; and there is strong personal interest felt in the result of the races. The story of Jack Harman’s having sold the horse to Muzada was well-known to every one on the course, and to a certain extent rather decreased the confidence felt in the favourite winning, though it was not easy to see what horse could beat him.