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Updated: May 26, 2025
Occasionally one bawled an angry protest; but those in front were being forced on by the rear ranks, which in turn were being harassed by the punchers in charge. Suddenly, a bald-faced steer shot out of the ruck of the herd, darting at right angles to the course. For a little way a steer can run as fast as a race-horse. That's why the creatures are so very hard to manage on occasion.
In the language of the tack rooms, the Bald-faced Kid was a hustler a free lance of the turf, playing a lone hand against owner and bookmaker, matching his wits against secret combinations and operating upon the wheedled capital of the credulous. He was sometimes called a tout, but this he resented bitterly, explaining the difference between a tout and a hustler.
"Come and see for yourself," said Old Man Curry, taking his lantern from the peg. After an interval they returned to the tack-room, the Bald-faced Kid shaking his head commiseratingly. "That would have been rotten luck if it had happened to a dog!" said he. "And the Handicap coming on and all." "There'll be a better opening price than 3 to 1 now, I reckon," said Old Man Curry grimly.
And the time Cowslip calved, the darling choosing the one night old Burton was away and Jim down with flu. She had to hold the lantern. Straw littered in the half-lighted shed. Cowslip swinging her bald-faced head round to you, her humble, sorrowful eyes imploring, between her groans and the convulsive heavings of her flanks. A noise between a groan and a bellow, a supreme convulsion.
They used to come and see him and hold a lodge of sorrow and set on the ground and talk and talk whole chapters of talk and the windiest one of 'em all " "I get you!" chuckled the Bald-faced Kid. "That was Eliphaz!" Old Man Curry nodded. "'Knowledge is easy unto him that understandeth," he quoted. "Yes, but an inside tip now and then never hurt anybody," said the Bald-faced Kid.
When Old Man Curry's racing string arrived at the second stop on the Jungle Circuit the Bald-faced Kid met the horse car in the railroad yards and watched the thoroughbreds come down the chute into the corral. One by one he checked them off: Elisha, the pride of the stable; Elijah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Esther, Nehemiah, Ruth, and Jeremiah.
"I've heard that couldn't be done." The Bald-faced Kid chuckled. "A smart owner can do anything," said he, "and Weaver's smart. At these other tracks, stealing weight off a horse is the king of indoor sports, and they mostly work it through a stand-in with the clerk of the scales; but you're right about this fellow Parker. He's on the level, and they can't get at him.
The Bald-faced Kid had never entertained any doubts upon this subject. He remained silent, the thin edge of a grin playing about his lips. "I hope you ain't been trying to show any tinhorn gamblers the error of their ways by ruining 'em financially," said the old man, one drowsy eye upon the Kid's face. "That's one of the things what just naturally can't be done.
The muffled thud of hoofs became audible, rising in swift crescendo as the shadow resolved itself into a gaunt bay horse with a tiny negro boy crouched motionless in the saddle. A rush, a flurry, a spatter of clods, a low-flying drift of yellow dust and the vision passed, but the Bald-faced Kid had seen enough to compensate him for the early hours and the lack of breakfast.
Sure enough, Fairfax was gnawing at the pine board; the grating rasp of his teeth became audible in the silence. After a time the horse dropped his head and gulped heavily. "Suffering mackerel!" ejaculated the Kid. "He ain't really swallowing those splinters, is he?" The time came when the Bald-faced Kid recalled that Old Man Curry's next remark was not a direct reply to his question.
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