The Hunt

wonderful!” He said enthusiastically. “She can win, can’t she?” Keegan asked with some confidence.

“Que sera,” he said with a shrug, then winked.

They walked back to the stables and watched Al Jack, who was wearing a white linen suit, wash the filly down and brush her out. He did so without getting a spot on the suit.

“You luck out on this l’il ma’mselle,” Al jack chuckled. “Yes suh, you reached in the jar an’ you come up with a gold marble.”

“You reached in the jar, Al jack,” said Keegan. “We’ll know how golden the l’il old marble is after the third race.”

Al jack looked up and smiled.

“Ma’mselle will give it all, Kee, you can deposit that in the bank. If she don’t win, it just isn’t in the cards. This lady puts her heart in the pot when she enters the gate.”

Jenny softly stroked the filly’s long nose. “Like velvet,” she said with a look of wonderment.

“Tell you what, Al Jack. If she wins today, she’s yours,” Keegan said.

“What you say, Mistah Kee!”

“She’s yours. I never saw anybody love a horse as much as you love that one.”

“No, no way, suh,” Al Jack, shaking his head. He wasn’t chuckling. “Why, hell, ami, I couldn’t pay her feed bill.”

“I’ll cover you for the season, you pay me back with your purses. You can winter her on the farm in Kentucky and I’ll take her first foal when she retires.”

Al jack broke down, laughing, tears bursting out of his eyes. “Why, I don’t rightly know what to say.”

Keegan smiled at him. “You’ve already said it, friend,” he said, patting the trainer on the shoulder. Al jack turned to the horse.

“Hear that, ma’mselle? You must win today. If you never won a race before or since, you got to go straight today. You hear what I say, lady?”

“That was one helluva thing to do, Kee,” Rudman said as they headed back toward the parking area.

“Yes,” Jenny said. “It was beautiful.”

“I wouldn’t own the horse if it wasn’t for him,” Keegan said, waving off their praise and opening the morning paper. “He picked her. He made her a winner. You got to be involved if you’re in the racing game and Al Jack lives for it. It’s just a hobby with me. Anyway, I wanted to share my luck.”

“What luck?” Jenny asked.

“Being here with you,” Keegan said with a broad grin, then he saw Rudman’s photograph in the paper. “Hey, you made page two with a photo,” Keegan said, showing them the story announcing Rudman’s appointment as Berlin bureau chief.

It was a perfectly adequate sketch, recounting the usual biographical data, most of which Keegan already knew. Rudman was from Middleton, Ohio. His father owned a clothing store and had for thirty years, his mother was a housewife. No brothers or sisters. He had a journalism degree from Columbia University and was in Europe on a graduation trip when America entered the war. Keegan learned two new things about Rudman from the article; he had written his first dispatch for the Herald Tribune on speculation, having hitched a ride into combat with the Rainbow Division of the U.S. Army and covering their first encounter with the Germans during the Aisne-Marne drive, coverage that was good enough to earn him a correspondent’s job at the age of twenty-three. He had also done some wrestling in college.

Keegan looked Rudman up and down. “You don’t look like a wrestler to me,” he said.

“Oh? And just what’s a wrestler supposed to look like?”

“You know, thick neck, a chest like Mae West, shoulders like an elephant, that kind of thing.”

Rudman nodded slowly. “Uh huh. With a dumb look on his face? You left that out.”

“Yeah, that too. I mean, you’re no skin and bones but you don’t look like any wrestler.”

“That’s a very prejudiced attitude,” Rudman said rather loftily.”

“What do you mean, prejudiced?”

“To you all wrestlers are the same.. They all have thick necks, their chests are popping through their shirts and they have a collective IQ of four. That’s a prejudice. Not an important one but a prejudice just the same.”

“You’re a real trick,” said Keegan. “I don’t know anybody else who could turn a discussion of wrestling into a lecture on bigotry.”

“Also they left out that I play a mean ukulele.”

“Thanks for warning us.”

“Well, anyway, it’s great, Bert,” Keegan said. “Think about it, here we are at the big social event of the Paris season. It’s almost mandatory to show up if you have any social standing at all and here we are with a famous person.”

“Right,” Rudman said, half embarrassed. He tapped Jenny’s arm. “Now that gent over there in the double- breasted tweed suit and the thick mustache studying the form? He’s famous. That’s H. G. Wells, a very important writer.”

“I know who H. G. Wells is, silly. We do read in Germany, you know. Look at those two SS in their uniforms. That makes me sick.”