Luck at the Diamond Fields

by Dalrymple J. Belgrave

Jumped—A Tale of the Kimberley Races.

Chapter One.

It was in the flush times on the Diamond Fields; the days afterwards remembered, in the bad times which came so soon, with so much wondering regret. In those days every one had made money out of shares and confidently hoped to make much more. Shares and companies were talked about morning, noon, and night; and what more delightful topic for conversation could any one wish to have? for then almost every one held shares, and those shares, independently of what they were in or where the ground possessed by the company was situated, went up every hour, so that, except when a public benefactor did some thing unusually criminal or eccentric, so giving the Diamond Field public a subject for much interesting talk, no one discussed and no one wished to discuss anything else.

For a short time, however, when the mania was at its very height, shares became a subject of secondary interest, and as the topic of interest the Kimberley races took its place. With a characteristic unanimity and zest the public of the four camps began to talk, think, and speculate about the races. One would only hear scraps of conversation relating to weight for age, the rules of racing, and the performances of the imported horses, as one passed the open doors of bars and canteens.

The sporting division scented the carcase from afar, and thought with glee of the abundance of money there was in the camp and the enthusiasm for sport which had come over the public. The big event of the races was the Diggers’ Stakes, a handicap, for which the weights were out, and very little admiration was expressed for the wisdom of the stewards who had made it. What with those who knew something about racing and had games of their own to play, and those who knew nothing about it but, though honest and ignorant, were too self-important to stand aside and refrain from taking any part in it, they had made the handicapping a farce. Men said there were only two horses in it which had any chance—Mr Musters’ Our Boy, and Mr Saul Gideon’s The Pirate. They were both of them imported horses, and the former had won a race or two in England; both were four-year-olds. Besides these there was one other imported horse, Captain Brereton’s Kildare, and a good many colonial horses. Kildare was said to be lame, and the handicappers had not given the colonial horses a chance; in fact it was hardly a handicap at all, as two favourites carried not much more than weight for age. That evening Mr Saul Gideon had come into the Claimholders’ Club in Kimberley with a glare in his hard black eyes and a twitching of his claw-like hands that might well have warned any one who knew him that he was dangerous. Mr Gideon was a sport, not a sportsman—anything but that—but certainly a sport. In any pastime on which money could be risked by way of wagering he took an interest. Before the law put down those institutions he had, with great profit to himself, kept a gambling saloon. When prize-fights occurred every now and then, just over the border of the Free State (the P.R. is or was an institution on the Diamond Fields), he had much to do with getting them up, and sometimes would have much to do with settling their issue in a peaceable and humane manner before the men went into the ring. In fact there were few sporting frauds on the Diamond Fields but Saul Gideon had a finger in the pie. He probably only just could tell the difference between a dray-horse and a racer, but he was satisfied he was clever enough to hold his own and win money at racing, and perhaps with reason, for success such as he coveted requires rather a knowledge of men than of horses. The Claimholders’ Club was crowded with men who were talking about the races, and Mr Gideon had not to wait long before they began to discuss the event in which he was interested, the Diggers’ Stakes.

“Take moy tip, boys,” said Dr Buckeen, an Irish medical man much given to racing, who in his time had done a good deal to maintain in South Africa the character which some Irish sporting men have gained for themselves at home; “there is only one in it, that’s The Pirate; never mind about Our Boy and the race he won at Sandown. I know all about it, I was there and saw, and after the race Lord Swellington, who owned the horses that ran second and third, came up to me and said, ‘Buck, me boy’—all thim fellows call me Buck—‘Buck, me boy,’ me lord said, ‘be crimes, that wore the biggest robbery I ever wore in.’”

“But Lord Swellington wouldn’t say ‘be crimes;’ he is not an Irishman,” said one of the doctor’s audience.

“’Deed he did, though, to chaff me; the old divil is always chaffing me, we are like brothers.”

“But, doctor, you could not have seen Our Boy win that race at Sandown; you weren’t home that year,” said another objector.

“Not home that year?” said the doctor, taken rather aback. “That’s all you know about it. But never mind, what I say is that The Pirate will win the Diggers’ Stakes.”