HUEY GOSPER talked bravely to himself, but he was well aware that, however closely he might have gauged the capabilities of The Vengeance, he had as yet never seen the mare Bertha in proper form, and ridden with the order, “Go for it.”
This uncertainty might upset all his plans. The truth of the matter he must know, and know he would.
Then his imagination began to evolve scheme after scheme to accomplish his object. He knew where the horse was quartered, over at Wigway’s, near the Pitt Town Common—an old acquaintance of Alec, and well-known to himself too, for had he not as a boy often gone over there in the season to pick oranges and play cricket with the young Wigways?
Clearly he could not go himself, or at any rate in his present personality, poking about the place. They would know him in a minute, and be on their guard with the mare. Alec would hear of his visit at once, and smell a rat. But who could he trust? He knew no one fit, and to be confided in, and then he remembered one of Soft Sam’s sayings—
“A man who takes pals in a job takes witnesses against him. What you can’t do on your own hook don’t do at all.”
And the possibility of disguising himself occurred to him. Truly, he knew nothing of that kind of thing, but there were people that did, and it should not take much skill to deceive the “cockatoos” out at Nelson.
This was the motive that sent Huey to a theatrical costumier, well-known in the profession, who readily undertook to make such an entire change in his customer that he would not even recognize himself.
And Huey, as he surveyed the result of this promise in the mirror, was more than satisfied.
* * * * *
Near an old slab cottage adjacent to the Pitt Town Common, Farmer Wigway was drawing rails. His movements were deliberate—deliberate as though he had an assurance that eternity was before him, and he had to put in time. He was well seconded in this endeavour by his team of bullocks, who stopped to ruminate on the vanities of life or some cognate reflection at every step.
Farmer Wigway swore at the oxen in a fatherly way to wake them up occasionally to mundane affairs, and the procession moved on.
The noise of wheels made by a light trap could be heard coming along the ridge, and at once Farmer Wigway stopped to listen. Not that he was a very curious man, but buggies were rare in that part of the Common. None of the neighbours owned one, and the stopping to speculate as to who it might be “put in more time,” and so the end of life was served.
The sound of a trotting horse and light running wheels came nearer and nearer, along the ridge, through the ironbarks, then turned off down the spur into the box-tree flat that led to Farmer Wigway’s. On it came, and before Mr. Wigway had had half the necessary time to study the new development in all its bearings and possibilities, a buggy, driven by a middle-aged man with bushy whiskers, who had a lad seated by his side, pulled up before him.
“Is this the track to Catti Creek?”
“That depends,” answered Wigway, after giving the matter due consideration, “what part of the Creek you want.”
“I’m trying to hunt up some forfeited selections out that way. They tell me at the Lands Office there are several of them.”
“So there are, and much good may they do you! The country is very rough. I should leave that trap behind if I was you, and if you like, one of my boys shall go and show you the way.”
The stranger seemed to fall in with this proposal readily, for, leaving the lad and trap at the house, he soon set off under the guidance of young Mick Wigway. But, strange to say, though they had a map of the parish, and Mick knew every nook and corner of it, it was sundown before they got back, and the gentleman with the bushy whiskers had not seen half what he wanted to see.
He found no difficulty in arranging to stop the night, and that evening was given up to ’possum shooting, in which the stranger professed an almost childish delight.
“It appears to me,” said Farmer Wigway, as they trudged under the moonlit gum trees, “that I have seen you before, Mr. —?”
“Amos Clark;” interrupted the stranger.
“Well, Mr. Clark, somehow your face and voice are kind of familiar, yet I swear I never heard that name before. Yet, come to think of it, it takes heaps of people to make a world, and there’s lots of them must be like lots of others. Now, there’s that old cow of mine; old Jack Higgins, of Box Hill, has got the very spit of her, and if it wasn’t for the brand I’d swear the two beasts were the same animal!”
Mr. Amos Clark was up early the next morning, and seemed in no pressing hurry to start off on his land quest. Besides, Mick was not ready. He had to exercise a mare carefully locked up in a loose-box near the stable before he could start.
The old man and the bigger boys had gone off to work, so Mr. Clark and his young companion were alone in the yard with Mick while he saddled up. Nothing was more natural than that Mr. Clark should fall to criticizing the animal, and approach to pat it. But he was quickly warned by Mick to stand clear.
“She’s got the brute of a temper with strangers,” he said; “kicks all round. Father and I are the only ones in the place that dare come near her.”
“What’s the good of her, then? What do you keep her for—a vicious brute like that?”
“Oh, she’s not ours. A sporting cove down in Sydney owns her—Alec Booth, perhaps you’ve heard of him? He thinks a lot of her, and she can travel, my word!”
“Travel!” said Mr. Clark, with apparent contempt. “Travel! Why, my buggy horse would give her a length and a beating any day.”
“What will you bet?” cried young Mick, thoughtlessly.
“I’ll bet you a crown!” said Mr. Clark, who had carefully considered that that amount would be about the limit of the lad’s purse.
“Done!” cried Mick, forgetting, in the eagerness of sport and possible gain, the injunction of his father to secrecy, and, above all, as to over-riding the mare.
Quietly, and with dispatch, a fresh saddle was brought out, strapped on the black horse, and the lad who accompanied Mr. Clark put in the saddle. The two lads were so nearly of a weight that only a lucky chance or careful foresight could have paired them so equally.
The slip-rails were lowered, and at an easy pace the two riders, with Mr. Clark at their side, took their way to an open stretch of common ground.
Arrived there, Mick was for a race of once round the imaginary course. He feared now, even with that, he should sweat the mare and get into trouble. But the stranger insisted with scornful banter on three times round, which a critical observer might have noted would be as near as possible the distance of the Sydney Cup course.
But Mick knew nothing of this. He was easily over-persuaded. The chance of making a crown did not come every day, and he was sure of the race, so the horses stood in line. Mr. Clark was to be starter and judge, and an old dead stringy-bark the winning-post.
At the word Go, they went off to a level start, the black horse making the running. Clearly this was to be no cantering match, with a sprint at the finish. To the surprise of Mick, he had to send the mare along at a fast gallop to keep within a length of the black horse.
Once round, both horses sweating, the riders sitting quietly at their work, the black horse led by half a length; but Mr. Clark saw that the mare was only stopped from rushing to the front by the tight rein of young Mick, who evidently knew something of his business, and was not going to burst his mount thus early.
Twice round, the same order.
The third round was entered on; the pace, fast enough already, warmed up half-way home, and the lad on the black horse, as though following instructions, began to draw the whip, and his mount shot to the front like a bullet from a gun, leaving for a moment the mare by herself, but it was only for a moment. Mick gave her her head, and she came away like a bird. No whip for her! Mick knew full well that the only rider that had ever tried her with it had had his collar-bone broken.
The mare closed up rapidly. At the distance they were side by side again, the whip on the black horse going like a flail.
It was a touch-and-go, both horses were all out, there did not seem to be a pin to choose between them; and if the mare won by half a length, it might have been noted by a critical looker-on that the rider of the black horse had ceased work just as the post was neared.
Mick was proud of his victory, but overwhelmed with apprehension at the distressed and sweaty condition of the mare.
“I shall catch it if the old man sees her again to-day!” he exclaimed, as he pocketed his two half-crowns.
“You had best groom her down, and walk her about quietly,” said Amos Clark. “She’ll be as right as rain in an hour or two.”
Mr. Clark suddenly remembered that he had an engagement in Sydney that evening that must be kept, so that really he should not have time that day to go land-hunting and catch the down train. So retiring to the house he hastily took his leave of Mrs. Wigway and Mick, and jumping in the sulky, was quickly lost to sight on the track through the box flat.
* * * * *
Mr. Clark, as he drove quietly towards Richmond and the stable of his own horse, had much matter for reflection, so that he hardly said a word to his young companion all the way.
Clearly they were a match-pair for speed as nearly as one could choose. The mare was not in full training, it was true; neither was the black horse, and it was a fair inference that what would improve one would improve the other. His lad said he might have won by a head, and he believed he might, but what was that to stake fortune and the only girl in the world on? He might win, of course, always provided they had the same weight; and then, again, a mare was likely to get a better show with the handicapper. Still, he might win.
But then again he might lose; there was no kind of certainty. And he quite agreed with Soft Sam, that it was only mugs that trusted to chance at racing.
No, a chance it should not be. He swore to himself that by hook or by crook, when the great event arrived, the danger of The Vengeance being beaten should not come from the mare Bertha. But how to prevent it?
A dark thought crossed his mind, and not only crossed, but stopped and dwelt there till it had assumed a definite form and shape, and with an inward putting away of all the remonstrance of his better feeling, he resolved—
“I will do it; all’s fair with a scoundrel like him.”