“It’s against the prohibition law,” she says.
“So am I,” I said.
“They’s no danger,” says Daley. “They ain’t began to force prohibition yet. I only wished they had. It would save me a little worry about my boy.”
“Your boy!” said Katie, dropping her jaw a foot.
“Well, I call him my boy,” says Daley. “I mean little Sid Mercer, that rides for me. He’s the duke of them all when he lays off the liquor. He’s gave me his word that he won’t touch nothing as long as he’s under contract to me, and he’s kept straight so far, but I can’t help from worr’ing about him. He ought to be good, though, when I pay him $20,000 for first call, and leave him make all he can on the side. But he ain’t got much stren’th of character, you might say, and if something upsets him, he’s liable to bust things wide open.
“I remember once he was stuck on a gal down in Louisville and he was supposed to ride Great Scott for Bradley in the Derby. He was the only one that could handle Scott right, and with him up Scott would of win as far as from here to Dallas. But him and the gal had a brawl the day before the race and that night the kid got stiff. When it come time for the race he couldn’t of kept a seat on a saw horse. Bradley had to hustle round and dig up another boy and Carney was the only one left that could ride at all and him and Great Scott was strangers. So Bradley lose the race and canned Mercer.”
“Whisky’s a terrible thing,” says Ella. A woman’ll sometimes pretend for a long wile like she’s stupid and all of a sudden pull a wise crack that proves she’s a thinker.
“Well,” says Daley, “when Bradley give him the air, I took him, and he’s been all right. I guess maybe I know how to handle men.”
“Men only?” says Katie, smiling.
“Men and horses,” said Daley. “I ain’t never tried to handle the fair sex and I don’t know if I could or not. But I’ve just met one that I think could handle me.” And he give her a look that you could pour on a waffle.
Daley had a table saved for him in the clubhouse and we eat our lunch. The gals had clubhouse sandwiches, probably figuring they was caught fresh there. They was just one of Daley’s horses entered that day and he told us he wasn’t going to bet on it, as it hadn’t never showed nothing and this was just a tryout. He said, though, that they was other horses on the card that looked good and maybe he would play them after he’d been round and talked to the boys.
“Yes,” says Kate, “but the men you’ll talk to knows all about the different horses and they’ll tell you what horses to bet on and how can I win?”
“Why,” says Daley, “if I decide to make a little bet on So-and-So I’ll tell you about it and you can bet on the same horse.”
“But if I’m betting with you,” says Kate, “how can we bet on the same horse?”
“You’re betting with me, but you ain’t betting against me,” said Daley. “This ain’t a bet like you was betting with your sister on a football game or something. We place our bets with the bookmakers, that makes their living taking bets. Whatever horse we want to bet on, they take the bet.”
“They must be crazy!” says Katie. “Your friends tell you what horse is going to win and you bet on them and the bookbinders is stung.”
“My friends makes mistakes,” says Daley, “and besides, I ain’t the only guy out here that bets. Pretty near everybody at the track bets and the most of them don’t know a race horse from a corn plaster. A bookmaker that don’t finish ahead on the season’s a cuckoo. Now,” he says, “if you’ll excuse me for a few minutes, I’ll go down to the paddock and see what’s new.”
So wile he was gone we had a chance to look round and they was plenty to see. It was a Saturday and a big crowd out. Lots of them was gals that you’d have to have a pick to break through to their regular face. Since they had their last divorce, about the only excitement they could enjoy was playing a long shot. Which reminds me that they’s an old saying that nobody loves a fat man, but you go out to a race track or down to Atlantic City or any place where the former wifes hangs out and if you’ll notice the birds with them, the gents that broke up their home, you’ll find out that the most of them is guys with chins that runs into five and six figures and once round their waist is a sleeper jump.
Besides the Janes and the fat rascals with them, you seen a flock of ham actors that looked like they’d spent the night in a Chinese snowstorm, and maybe a half a dozen losers’-end boxers that’d used the bridge of their nose to block with and always got up in the morning just after the clock had struck ten, thinking they’d been counted out.
Pretty near everybody wore a pair of field glasses on a strap and when the race was going on they’d look through them and tell the world that the horse they’d bet on was three len’ths in front and just as good as in, but I never heard of a bookie paying off on that dope, and personally when
