After having speculated in claims, diamonds, ostriches, and sheep, he had taken to the more congenial pursuit of putting his capital into thoroughbreds, and so far he had not done very badly in that somewhat risky investment.
About eighteen months before, he had bought The Muffin Man, a colonial-bred racer, with some money he had made in a lucky digging venture. As he rode and trained his horse himself he was not robbed as other owners were, and had won several races at Kimberley, Cradock, and Port Elizabeth. He had bought Kildare with the money made by the other, having commissioned an old brother officer in England to buy a useful racer that was better than anything in South Africa. Kildare was an Irish-bred horse, and had been sold rather cheaply after his former owner had been warned off the turf for having him pulled in a two-year-old race. It was a shame, so Jack’s friend said, to send such a good horse to South Africa, but he felt bound to do his best for Jack.
Jack Brereton was about thirty-five, and though he was as active as he ever was, and seemed to take life cheerily as he always did, his years had told on him more than men would at first think.
The last ten years of his life had been spent in the colonies, the five years before that at home in a light cavalry regiment, and very marked was the contrast between them, though the Jack Brereton of the latter days and the former was outwardly much the same man, a little harder perhaps and more able to take care of himself, but the same light-hearted, happy-go-lucky fellow. The colonies are full of men whose lives have gone all askew—misfits well made enough, one would have thought, but all wrong when they are tried on. Jack Brereton seemed to be fit for something better than the adventurer and gambler he had drifted into becoming. There was the making of a good soldier in him, only he had gone to grief somehow and had to sell out.
He was a good deal more shrewd in his knowledge of character and business than many a man who had succeeded on the Diamond Fields by sticking to his work instead of drifting from one thing to another as he had done. He was well liked and to a certain extent admired by almost every one, from the administrator of the province downwards, but he never got any appointment, though there were several billets he might very well have filled. Sometimes he had been very much down on his luck, sometimes he had experienced a run of good fortune, but he kept his bad or ill-luck to himself and was always in excellent spirits. Every one said he was a good fellow, and many half envied his light heart and good spirits. Of late he had lived a good deal out of Kimberley, looking after his horses, and the visits he paid to camp every now and then were the occasion of much revelry; very late hours being kept at the club, where men would sit up listening to his stories and bantering chaff till long past the usual hour for closing that establishment; but for all that men who knew him best thought they often saw a sad, wistful look in his eyes, and that in his laugh there was an after-sound of bitterness and melancholy. For all his cheeriness he was beginning to get very tired of the life he was leading, and to long to get home again, or to some new country where he could have a fresh start.
As he watched Kildare gallop he was full of hope and excitement, and he felt certain that he would win the Diggers’ Stakes with him.
“Yes, Captain, fit and well, the other horses won’t be very near him. But I wish the race were over and won; they seem to be doing a lot of betting on it at the Fields, laying two to one on Kildare, but there are lots of takers. The Pirate’s lot have backed their horse for a lot of money, and won’t lose it if they can help,” said a rough-looking man with a broken nose and scarred face, who was standing by the side of Jack Brereton.
“They will have to lose it whether they like it or not. It’s a pity you can’t come back to Kimberley with us, I know you would like to see the little horse win.”
“Yes, Captain, I’d like it dearly, but I shouldn’t be let see the race if I did come back; the man I hammered is so blamed vindictive that he would have me stuck in quod before I was in camp an hour. You see, his being a policeman makes it awkward. No, when you start I will just foot it in the other direction—Christiana way—wishing you good luck in the race.”
“There is twenty pound on for you, Tom, if he wins, remember,” said Brereton, as he followed the horses back to their stables.