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Updated: May 12, 2025
"Nor ain't I," replied Mat, with faint irony. "Not altogether somersaulted with surprise, as you might say. We knows Chukkers, and Chukkers knows us de we." He dropped his voice. "Monkey Brand'll tell you a tale or two about his ole friend. You arst him one day when you gets him on the go." He raised his voice and began to thump the air with his fist. "Rogues and rasqueals, Mr.
If Chukkers was little more than an animal-riding animal, and Jaggers an artistic fraud, Ikey was a rascal of a highly differentiated and engaging type. A man of admirable tenacity he had clung for twenty-five years to the ideal which Chukkers's discovery of Mocassin two years since had brought within his grasp.
As he drove the mare down the run home, foaming and bloody, he was flaying her. The Americans had all lost money, some of them fortunes: that didn't matter so much. Their idol had been beaten fair and square: that mattered a great deal. But she was still their idol, and Chukkers had butchered her before their eyes. And he was Chukkers! the greaser!
Only Chukkers must be a bit too clever o' course, and let her down by the dirty." The old man pursed his lips and nodded confidentially. "Only one thing. My little Fo'-Pound's the daddy o' her." He sat down and began to draw on his elastic-sided boots with groans. "Who's going to ride him?" asked Silver. "That's where it is, sir," panted the old man. "Who is goin' to ride him.
It was not surprising then that among the fraternity he was known as His Reverence, because his bearing gave the impression of a Nonconformist Minister about to conduct a teetotal campaign. Chukkers, who was wearing the familiar jodhpores which he always affected, was quite a different type. A big man for a jockey, he rarely rode under eleven stone, though he carried never an ounce of flesh.
Mocassin was being led into the Paddock. Nothing could be seen of her. Ikey's Own had formed a close-linked phalanx about her. No Englishman might penetrate that jealous barrier or help to form it. Within its sacred circle the mare was being stripped and saddled. Then there came another roar. Chukkers was up in the star-spangled jacket.
Made in the mould, Of Old Iroquois bold, Mocassin, the Queen of Kentucky. Ikey indeed had found his horse at last; and she was American Old Kentucky to the core. It was said that Chukkers had discovered her on one of his trips home.
As the horses made for the water, the mare on the rails, and the outsider wide on the right, Chukkers began to nibble at her. The action was faint, yet most significant. "He ain't ridin'," muttered Old Mat, watching closely through his glasses "not yet. I won't say that. But he's spinnin' her." Indeed it was so.
"Oh, come, come!" cried the Duke, delighted, as he hurried after his party. "Where's Mrs. Woodburn?" Chukkers joined the two J's, who were hobnobbing with some of Ikey's Own under the Grand Stand. Monkey Brand and Joses stood together on the outskirts of the group. Jaggers, austere as the Mogul Emperor, approached the tout. "You're a monkey down, Joses," he said, cold and quiet.
Men were fighting, women fainting. The Americans were screaming to Chukkers to press; the English yelling to the nipper to ride for the Almighty's sake. The brown horse and his jockey came past the Open Ditch and down the straight in a hurricane that might not have been, so little did either heed it. The little jockey was far away, riding as in a death-swoon, his face silvery beneath his cap.
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