"Too far to go, you see? Long ride and a hard trail. Besides, they"s plenty of good hoss-flesh right around Lukin, here."
"Of course," nodded Connor genially. "Of course there is."
"Besides, them grays is too small. Personally, I don"t hanker after a runt of a hoss. I look like a fool on one of em."
The voice of Connor was full of hearty agreement.
"So do I. Yes, they"re small, if they"re all like that one. Too small.
Much too small."
He looked narrowly at Townsend from the corner of his eyes to make sure that the hotel proprietor suspected nothing.
"This deaf-mute sells some, now and then?"
"Yep. He comes down once in a while and sells a hoss to the first gent he meets--and then walks back to the garden. Always geldings that he sells, I understand. Stand up under work pretty well, those little hosses. Harry Macklin has got one. Harry lives at Fort Andrew. There"s a funny yarn out about how Harry--"
"What price does the mute ask?"
"Thinking of getting one of "em?"
"Me? Of course not! What do I want with a runt of a horse like that? But I was wondering what they pay around here for little horses."
"I dunno."
"What"s that story you were going to tell me about Harry Macklin?"
"You see, it was this way--"
And he poured forth the stale anecdote while they strolled back to the hotel. Connor smiled and nodded at appropriate places, but his absent eyes were seeing, once more, the low-running form of the little gray gelding coming away from the rest of the pack.
_CHAPTER SIX_
When he arrived at the hotel Ben Connor found the following telegram awaiting him:
Lady Fay in with ninety-eight Trickster did mile and furlong in one fifty-four with one hundred twenty Caledonian stale mile in one thirty-nine Billy Jones looks good track fast.
HARRY SLOc.u.m.
That message blotted all other thoughts from the mind of Connor. From his traveling bag he brought out a portfolio full of wrinkled papers and pamphlets crowded with lists of names and figures; there followed a time of close work. Page after page of calculations scribbled with a soft pencil and in a large, sprawling hand, were torn from a pad, fluttered through the air and lay where they fell. When the hour was ended he pushed away the pamphlets of "dope" and picked up his notes. After that he sat in deep thought and drove puff after puff of cigarette-smoke at the ceiling.
As his brown study progressed, he began crumpling the slips in his moist fingers until only two remained. These he balanced on his finger-tips as though their weight might speak to his finely attuned nerves. At length, one hand closed slowly over the paper it held and crushed it to a ball.
He flicked this away with his thumb and rose. On the remaining paper was written "Trickster." Connor had made his choice.
That done, his expression softened as men relax after a day of mental strain and he loitered down the stairs and into the street. Pa.s.sing through the lobby he heard the voice of Jack Townsend raised obviously to attract his attention.
"There he goes now. And nothing but the weight kept him from bettin" on the gray."
Connor heard sounds, not words, for his mind was already far away in a club house, waiting for the "ponies" to file past. On the way to the telegraph office he saw neither street nor building nor face, until he had written on one of the yellow blanks, "A thousand on Trickster," and addressed it to Harry Sloc.u.m. Not until he shoved the telegram across the counter did he see Ruth Manning.
She was half-turned from the key, but her head was canted toward the chattering sounder with a blank, inward look.
"Do you hear?" she cried happily. "Bjornsen is back!"
"Who?" asked Connor.
"Sveynrod Bjornsen. Lost three men out of eight, but he got within a hundred and fifty miles of the pole. Found new land, too."
"Lucky devil, eh?"
But the girl frowned at him.
"Lucky, nothing! Bjornsen is a fighter; he lost his father and his older brother up there three years ago and then he went back to make up for their deaths. Luck?"
Connor, wondering, nodded. "Slipped my mind, that story of Bjornsen. Any other news?"
She made a little gesture, palms up, as though she gathered something from the air.
"News? The old wire has been pouring it at me all morning. Henry Levateur went up thirty-two thousand feet yesterday and the Admiral Barr was launched."
Connor kept fairly abreast of the times, but now he was at sea.
"That"s the new liner, isn"t it?"
"Thirty thousand tons of liner at that. She took the water like a duck.
Well, that"s the stuff for Uncle Sam to give them; a few more like the Admiral Barr and we"ll have the old colors in every port that calls itself a town. Europe will have to wake up."
She counted the telegram with a sweep of her pencil and flipped the change to Connor out of the coin-box. The rattle of the sounder meant new things to Connor; the edges of the world crowded close, for when the noise stopped, in the thick silence he watched her features relax and the light go out of her eyes. It enabled him to glance into her life in Lukin, with only the chattering wire for a companion. A moment before she had been radiant--now she was a tired girl with purple shadows beneath her eyes making them look ghostly large.
"Oh, Bobby," she called. A tall youth came out of an inner room. "Take the key, please; I"m going out for lunch."
"Come to the hotel with me," suggested Connor.
"Lunch at Townsend"s?" She laughed with a touch of excitement. "That"s a treat."
Already she gained color and her eyes brightened. She was like a motor, Connor decided, nothing in itself, but responding to every electric current.
"This lunch is on me, by the way," she added.
"Why is that?"
"Because I like to pay on my winning days. I cashed in on the Indian"s horse this morning."
In Connor"s own parlance--it brought him up standing.
"_You_ bet on it? You know horse-flesh, then. I like the little fellow, but the weight stopped me."