“It is all we have had to use so far to beat any of your trotters, Tom,” he retorted. “Perhaps I shall see something different to-day, though. Is your horse going to win?” he asked, addressing the girl.
“It isn’t my horse,” she replied. “It is my uncle’s.”
“I know. I’ve heard a lot about your uncle. Perhaps you’ve heard as much about my grandfather,” he added, with a laugh.
She did not understand. “I don’t know who your grandfather is,” she said. “What do you mean?”
Cahoon’s laugh was loud. “I told you she wouldn’t know, Bob,” he declared. “You’ve heard about the Cook and Townsend lawsuit, haven’t you, Esther? I shouldn’t be surprised if you had. Well, Elisha Cook is Bob’s grandfather. There! Now aren’t you sorry you shook hands with him? Oh, ho! Now she’s scared. Look at her look around for her uncle, Frank.”
Esther had looked, involuntarily, but it ruffled her to know that the look had been noticed. She had heard many times of the great lawsuit, of course—every one had—but she knew almost no particulars concerning it. That Elisha Cook and Foster Townsend had once been partners in business, that they had quarreled, separated and that the suit was the result—so much she knew. And she remembered Millard’s description of a meeting he had witnessed between the litigants. “You ought to have seen the glower old Cook give him,” said Millard. “Looked as if he’d like to stick a knife into him, I declare if he didn’t. And Cap’n Foster never paid any more attention to it than he would to a stick of wood glowerin’. Just brushed past him as if he was wood. Foster was all dressed up and prosperous, same as he always is, but old ’Lisha looked pretty shabby. Don’t blame him much for glowerin’. He knows as well as anybody else that Foster’s got the courts in his pocket.”
Esther remembered this now although she had paid little attention to it at the time. And, at the mention of the Cook name her first thought had been of her uncle and what he might think if he saw her in company with the grandson of his deadly enemy. Before she could answer Bob Griffin spoke.
“I don’t see why we shouldn’t shake hands, Esther,” he said. “We aren’t running any lawsuits of our own, and if you’re as sick of hearing about courts and decisions and lawyers as I am you never will run one. Grandfather doesn’t talk about anything else.... Come on, let’s forget it, I say. Tell me who is going to win this race.”
Just then the preliminary whistle sounded from the track below them. Frank Cahoon shouted in excitement.
“They’re going to start,” he cried. “We can’t see a thing from here. I say, Esther, let us climb up there with you, will you? Cap’n Townsend won’t mind and he isn’t here, anyway. Come on, boys!”