CHAPTER XVI
THE WEIGHTS FOR THE SYDNEY CUP
WHEN the weights were published for the Sydney Cup, Alec Booth rushed with the paper at full tilt to Soft Sam—
“What do you think of it? Is it good enough? Look, she’s almost at the bottom of the list!”
Soft Sam was in no hurry to answer. He read over the names of the horses nominated carefully, paused awhile, and then said—
“It’s as good as you could hope. You must accept, of course, and you may send her for it when you know better what you have to run against.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Sam. She’s pounds better than anything on the list.”
“Of the horses you know, yes; but you don’t suppose you are the only owner who has nursed his mount? There may be half-a-dozen in that list as good as Bertha, and as lightly weighted. She’s no horse of a century, remember; only a second-rater, and only valuable while she is thought to be a third or fourth-rater. Take it easy, my lad, and don’t put the money in your pocket till the cheque is cashed.”
Alec’s enthusiasm was considerably damped by these reflections; but he was confident all the same, and anxiously waited to know the acceptances.
More leisurely in his movements, Huey also called on the old man for his opinion as to his own prospects, for it was a curious feature of the quarrel of these two young men, that both confided in Soft Sam, and to both he was equally impartial—keeping the secrets of each from the other, and declining to join either party in the feud.
“The Vengeance is well treated—the same weight as Bertha—and it should, bar accidents, be a match for the pair of them; and you are a couple of fools, I say so again, as I said before, to cut each other’s throats. You’ll end by making a mess of it, the pair of you. Why not save The Vengeance for another race—there are plenty of them—and not give him away on the off-chance of being first, when later on you might make a certainty of it? And I tell you what’s more, if she wasn’t a mare I’d back Bertha to beat your black horse any three times out of five. He is a good ’un, I allow; but, mark my words, she’s a fair demon if she takes the fancy to come in first. Don’t be a fool; think it over. Money’s the thing; damn sentiment!”
Huey said he would think it over, but after he had gone the old man shook his head.
“A lot of thinking he’ll do; he has made up his mind, I can see, and he means to run The Vengeance to spite Alec. Fool, fool! I thought he had a better head. But there, what can you expect when there is a woman in the case? Another pair of good men gone wrong. Really, there is no encouragement for a man of experience to teach these chaps; even when they hold the cards they throw the game away. Oh, if I could only find a young fellow without sentiment or this conscientious humbug, what I could make of him!”
* * * * *
When the acceptances were out, the problem as to who ought to win the Sydney Cup was much simplified to Alec. The names of a number of horses he was doubtful about were missing. The top weights he held safe; what they could do was well known. It was only amongst outsiders like his own horse that he feared dangerous opposition. One of these was The Vengeance, but he held that horse cheap by having seen it often run in races with Bertha, and never show any form worth speaking of. But there were two or three others he must inquire about before he gave the word Go!
He did inquire, and with pretty satisfactory result, but he could get no definite encouragement from Soft Sam. The old man had no doubt The Vengeance in his mind, and while he would not have dreamt of giving Huey away, he yet urged Alec not to make too sure, and at any rate to back Bertha for a place. But the young man was now full of confidence, and once he had got his money on, made no secret amongst his intimates that Bertha was to be “on the job.” Huey was quick to hear of it, and he smiled a bitter smile, like a man who tasted in advance his enemies’ discomfiture.
* * * * *
Jack Vandy’s stable at Randwick was not a fashionable stable. It did not turn out winners by the score, or make an occasional sweep of the board at a big meeting; but if an impartial critic had examined the material Old Jack had had to deal with in his time, and the results, the verdict would not have been unfavourable.
A small trainer cannot choose his horses, and if a lot of dunderheads like to buy scrubbers, and send them to him to train, he can hardly afford to send them away, yet the subsequent failure of these beasts to do any good for themselves or owners helps to spoil the reputation of the trainer. Yet, as we have said, when good fortune had given him a good thing he had made the best of it.
And no horse could be better wound up to time than when Jack Vandy turned the key. This was the man recommended by Soft Sam when Alec inquired for a Sydney trainer, and to him, after due arrangement, Bertha was transferred. He looked her over critically, had her cantered up and down to watch her stride, and then turned to Alec, rubbing his hands.
“She’ll do!”
“What for?”
“Anything you like if you give me the time. She’s a clinker, or I am getting blind. It’s a real pleasure to train a horse like that now, after the blessed lot of cab hacks I get brought here. You’d hardly believe it, but I have men come here and want me to train horses you would be ashamed to put in a hearse at a funeral. And then they wonder they don’t win, and take the horse away to another trainer till they are full up, and then say we are all a lot of sharks.”
“I want her ready for the Cup,” said Alec. “At the weight I think she may do.”
“The time is short, but I will do my best.”
“Do you think she will be fit?”
“Make your mind easy.”
This is how it came about that Huey read in the Referee that Alexander Booth’s filly Bertha was now under the care of the well-known trainer John Vandy, of Randwick.