“Now why are you so keen about backing The Pirate this morning? Not because you have heard about Bill Bledshaw jumping Kildare?” said Crotty with a grin on his face; “but I think we shall sell you by getting him back from Bill.”
Mr Gideon could not help laughing to himself, the idea of Bill’s being persuaded to give up the horse or allowing it to leave him fit to run for the Stakes seemed too absurd.
Then the two had a long conversation, which ended in Mr Gideon laying the other three thousand to one thousand against Kildare, and stipulating that the money should be staked by that day, as he thought that he would win about as much from Gideon and his confederates as that division would think it worth while to pay.
There was a lot of excitement all over the camp when it was known how Jack Brereton had been robbed. Jack had nothing to say but that the story was true; he took his bad luck as he had taken bad luck before, wonderfully coolly, but to his friends—and most ‘white men’ in the camp were his friends—he imparted the advice not to be in a hurry to bet against Kildare. “The little horse will win for all that you have heard,” he said.
As a rule his friends thought that Jack did not speak without reason, and a good many of them took the odds which the Jews were eager to lay on their horse The Pirate. This state of things went on for some days, all sorts of stories going about as to the chances of the missing horse being recovered.
Mr Gideon laughed when he heard these stories. It amused him to think that people could be fools enough to believe that a horse could be got out of Bill Bledshaw’s clutches, and be fit to run in a few days.
One morning, a day or two before the races, most of the sporting element of the Diamond Fields were on the racecourse, watching the horses engaged in the races do their morning gallops.
Gideon and Nat Lane were standing a little way from the rest of the company, and had been having a very confidential talk.
“Altogether I stand about ten thousand to five thousand. Some of it I have laid on The Pirate, some against Kildare; Barney and Ike Sloeman have done half as much again between ’em! Where the money comes from I don’t know. S’help me, I can’t see what they are at—all backing a horse that Bill Bledshaw has jumped,” said Gideon.
“It’s just as well for us that there are some fools,” answered the trainer.