“Two to one.”
“What's second favorite?”
“Lauzanne—five to two.”
“Porter tells me Lucretia is good business,” said Danby, in a tentative tone.
“Langdon thinks it's all over bar the shouting; he says Lauzanne outclasses his field,” retorted Lewis.
“Langdon's a betting man; Porter's an owner, and a good judge,” objected Danby; “and he's got a good boy up, too, McKay,” he added, slowly focusing his field glasses on the jockey board opposite the Stand.
“Crooked as a dog's hind legs,” snarled Lewis, biting viciously at his cigar.
“Bob, it's damned hard to find a straight-legged dog,” laughed Danby. “And when John Porter starts a horse, there's never anything doing. Here's six hundred; put' it on the mare—straight.”
As Lewis pushed his way into the shoving, seething, elbowing crowd in the betting ring, he was suddenly struck in the chest by something which apparently had the momentum of an eight-inch shell; but it was only John Porter, who, in breaking through the outer crust of the living mass, had been ejected with more speed than was of his own volition.
Bob smothered the expletive that had risen to his lip when he saw who the unwitting offender was, and asked, “What are they doin' to the mare in the ring?”