Where was I? Oh, yeah, Tijuana. Well, here we is without a buffalo between us. Broke as a skillet of scrambled eggs and up in the fifth the next day, the same which dawns bright and early and finds me and Jimmie nearly splitting a girth trying to trade that there bridle for a plate of buckwheat cakes, but everybody gives us the zero gaze until I begins to wonder if we is coming down with smallpox. So we hunts up a dopester by the name of Stew Hatcher and he stakes us to a meal after which we hangs around until he has got up his sheet and then we rides out to the track with him and his girl. We asks Stew, just kidding, who he is picking in the fifth and Stew says it is not us and he is not kidding. For his money, he says, it is High Jinks, Admirella and Sky Eagle. One, two, three.
I am up on Black Boy and Jimmie he is up on Peajacket, so we thumbs our noses at Stew and gives him the buzz and says as how we is pleased to have met this girl he is with—which is a lie because she is very snooty—and we goes on in.
We gets into our colors and sets around with the fellows dishing out a lot of bull about what we done in Tijuana and Jimmie gives me the wink and says he has got hold of a nifty bridle he is willing to take a loss on. And he gets this here bridle out of his locker and says if anybody will give him a fin for it they can have it, though they will be rooking him on the deal.
Boy, does he get the laugh. Moe says he will give him a fin for it if Jimmie will throw in Peajacket and shine his boots for a week, too. And Cry Baby Noolan says if it is such a hot bridle why don't he bridle Peajacket with it. And everybody starts gaffing Jimmie and I acts real indignant and I says what is it worth to them if he does bridle Peajacket with it, them being such sports. Jimmie, seeing the lay of the land, plays up to me and says, "No," and everybody chimes in giving him the merry ha-ha and when there is three bucks up he will not do it, why, then Jimmie says O.K., he will do it, see.
Does a holler go up when they catches on to how they has been taken! But Jimmie says a bet is a bet and he is game enough to live up to his end of the bargain if they is. "Of course, if they isn't—" he says, inferring that anybody who reneges is a horse's patoot, so, naturally, nobody reneges, though there is some grousing.
I used to say to Jimmie, I would say, "Jimmie, remember the day at Tijuana when we nicked Moe and them for three bucks?" And Jimmie, he would say, "Yeah," and kind of draw in his breath like he was thinking about it—hard. Remembering how Peajacket upset the bookies' apple cart.
You see, Stew Hatcher is wrong. It is Peajacket, High Jinks and Admirella. One, two, three. And the owner of Peajacket—I forget his name, big loose-mouthed chap with a face like a side of beef—is fair to be hobbled because he has not bet on his own entry on account of as how it is a cinch to lose. It is a two-year-old he has picked up for seven and a quarter at a public sale and he is just feeling him out and damn if Jimmie does not bring in a win.
Me? Oh, I comes in with the tailbearers. I could of got in a lame fourth, but I am so whooper-jawed watching Jimmie go down the stretch like a lighted fuse that I lets this here Black Boy I am up on bear out—he was death on bearing out—and, of course, that puts the quietus on us. There is not no percentage in whipping a horse over for fourth place. A horse has got sense enough to know when you is making a fool out of him.
No, I do not guess you will recollect Peajacket. He turns out to be a foozle, after all. He is entered a couple of more times, Saratoga, I thinks, and Empire City—Syl Patton up—but he does not do nothing but pick up a coupla pounds of mud.
But he sure is not no foozle that afternoon at Tijuana.