Tales of the turf

by Hugh S. Fullerton

In New York, Kirtin waited, watching the expansion of the bubble and timing almost to the hour when the crash must come. In his safe nearly fifty per cent of the money received, changed into bills of large denominations, was packed in cases, and in his desk were reservations of staterooms on every vessel departing for Europe in the next fortnight. The bubble had endured longer than he expected. There was more than a million dollars packed in the cases, and more than that amount already had been transferred and deposited in various European banks. He hesitated, undecided as to whether to risk another week of delay—and decided that the time had come to reap the last harvest and permit the gleanings to remain.

On the race-tracks Big Jim Long swaggered and continued his rôle as head of the company spending thousands and talking millions. He was a huge man, with a huge laugh, a round, ruddy face pink from much massage. He wore clothing of striking cut and colors, and his diamonds dazzled the eyes of jockeys and touts. He maintained an air of condescending familiarity with some and patronizing good fellowship with others, and he treated money as dross. Judges, stewards, and club officials watched Long closely and with some disappointment. Rumors that he had bribed jockeys, had influenced owners, that he had fixed races and engineered great killings, were whispered around the tracks, yet the officials could not discover any evidences of his guilt. Big Jim made no denials of the whispered accusations, but blatantly defied the officials to “get anything on him.” Moreover, the bookmakers, who watched his movements even more closely than the racing officials did, knew that he never had bet any large sums at the track, and Big Jim had sarcastically inquired if they thought him a fool to make bets for the company at the tracks, where the odds were made, when the company system was to scatter the bets over a score of cities and get better odds. Such bets as he made at the tracks were for his own account, and generally he lost, so that the small bettors who spied upon him, hoping to learn which horses the company were backing, suspected that he bet to blind them to the real identity of the horses the “killings” were made on. They believed that the Long Investment Company was winning vast sums. As a matter of fact, the Long Investment Company did not bet at all. Kirtin did not believe in gambling. Yet, oddly enough, Big Jim Long believed firmly and unshakably that, if he had complete control of the finances of the company, he could beat the races. He was convinced that with the capital of the Long Investment Company he could corrupt enough jockeys and owners to pay dividends legitimately and make a fortune for himself. Long would have been an easy victim of the game which he was helping perpetrate upon the public. Kirtin had no such illusions. Long had once argued the point with Kirtin in the privacy of the back room in New York, and Kirtin had called him a fool, with variations, prefix and addenda. And, as Kirtin sent him five thousand dollars a week with which to keep up the front of the Long Investment Company, Long had not pressed the point. Neither had he been convinced.

It was against Big Jim Long that Hardshell Gaines cherished the one hatred of his life. It had started when Long sought to amuse himself and his friends by ridiculing Gaines and his stable. He had joked at the old man’s clothes, at his stable, his colors, and his jockey—and then had made the fatal blunder of ridiculing Sword of Gideon, calling him a “hound.”

Perhaps nothing else would have aroused vengeful hate in the bosom of Hardshell, but to speak scornfully of Sword of Gideon was the unbearable insult. The Sword was Hardshell’s weakness, the consummation of his life’s ambition gone wrong. It was as if he had reared a strong, handsome son and seen him crippled and then laughed at.

Hardshell had bred and reared the colt and named him, as he did all his other colts, from the Bible. As a two-year-old, racing against the best of the baby thoroughbreds of the West, the Sword had shown stamina, gameness, a racing instinct, and a dazzling burst of speed. He was royally sired, and even the millionaire owners agreed that Hardshell had at last produced a great colt. In mid-season he was rated as one of the two best two-year-olds of the year, and offers of large sums were made for him. He was eligible to race in all the big three-year-old stake races the next season, and Hardshell had refused to listen to any offer or set any price. He had set out to develop a champion racer down there on the little farm in the Big Bend of the Tennessee, a champion which would outrun and outgame the best of the country and win the American derby—then the greatest of all turf prizes.

Late in August the thing happened. The colt was at the starting post in a six-furlong dash on the Hawthorne track when the barrier, a band of elastic, was broken by the lunging of another colt. The elastic band struck Sword of Gideon in the eye and maddened him with fright and pain. The accident seemed trivial, but the effect was the destruction of Hardshell’s life dream. Never thereafter would Sword of Gideon face the barrier without a fight. The memory of the stinging agony of that flying elastic was not to be effaced. A dozen times exasperated starters ordered him out of races and sent him back for further schooling at the barrier. Schooling was useless. He refused to face the thing which had hurt him. The only way in which he could be handled at the start of a race was for the jockey to turn his head away from the barrier, wait until the other horses started, then throw him around and send him after the flying field. Occasionally when the jockey swung him at the right second he had a chance to win. The majority of times he was handicapped five or six lengths on every start, and not infrequently when he heard the swish of the barrier he bolted the wrong way of the track. Look in the guide and after his name in many races you will find the brief record of a tragedy in the words, “Left at post.”

The champion was ruined. But in the heart of Hardshell Gaines Sword of Gideon still was the champion. He worked over him as tenderly as a mother over a crippled child, and for him he sang his favorite hymns, as if striving to comfort the horse when he had behaved badly at the post. The newspapers, on account of his bad acting at the start, wrote of him as “Swored at Gideon.”

Big Jim Long had called the Sword a “hound,” and thereafter Hardshell never spoke to him but passed him unseeing. At the bar one day Big Jim had noisily invited everyone to drink with him, and Hardshell had thrown away his beer and spat before walking away—and the open insult stung even Big Jim Long.

All this was three years prior to the day when the affairs of the Long Investment Company reached their climax. In his New York offices, Kirtin realized that the finish was at hand. The bags filled with money had been removed from the safe in the luxurious offices of the Long Investment Company, carried through the door connecting them with the little office of Thos. J. Kirtin, Investments, and the door locked on both sides. Then Kirtin did the one decent thing of his career. He sent a code telegram to Long and to every agent of the company over the ganglia of leased wires, warning them that the jig was up and it was time to disappear.

Probably it was not until he read that message that Big Jim Long understood the full significance of the situation. He never had stopped to ask himself why Kirtin had bestowed rank and titles upon him, why he had elected him president, and why all the ornate stationery and the many messages bore his name, or even why he had been paid five thousand dollars a week. Perhaps he thought he earned it by virtue of his influence among racing people. He understood now that he, Jim Long, would be held accountable to the law, that he would be fugitive or prisoner while Kirtin, with the millions of dollars looted from the public, could not be connected with the swindle and would be safe in Europe.