CHAPTER XIV
THE TRIAL
Huey Gosper talked bravely to himself, but he was well aware that, however closely he might have gauged the capabilities of The Vengeance, he had as yet never seen the mare Bertha in proper form, and ridden with the order, “Go for it.”
This uncertainty might upset all his plans. The truth of the matter he must know, and know he would.
Then his imagination began to evolve scheme after scheme to accomplish his object. He knew where the horse was quartered, over at Wigway’s, near the Pitt Town Common—an old acquaintance of Alec, and well-known to himself too, for had he not as a boy often gone over there in the season to pick oranges and play cricket with the young Wigways?
Clearly he could not go himself, or at any rate in his present personality, poking about the place. They would know him in a minute, and be on their guard with the mare. Alec would hear of his visit at once, and smell a rat. But who could he trust? He knew no one fit, and to be confided in, and then he remembered one of Soft Sam’s sayings—
“A man who takes pals in a job takes witnesses against him. What you can’t do on your own hook don’t do at all.”
And the possibility of disguising himself occurred to him. Truly, he knew nothing of that kind of thing, but there were people that did, and it should not take much skill to deceive the “cockatoos” out at Nelson.
This was the motive that sent Huey to a theatrical costumier, well-known in the profession, who readily undertook to make such an entire change in his customer that he would not even recognize himself.
And Huey, as he surveyed the result of this promise in the mirror, was more than satisfied.
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