# The Popular Magazine/Volume 24/Number 5/The Law of the Lightning

The Law of the Lightning
By Damon Runyon Author of “A Marathon of Mercy,” Etc.
Mr. “Laughing Lou” Bray, promoter of foot races, mostly of the “fake” variety, discovers a way to disprove the old saying that lightning never strikes twice in the same place
Great oaks of effort from little acorns of argument grow.
This cabalistic comment is inspired by the results of a small difference of opinion among a party of dishonest gentlemen, gathered for shelter beneath the portico of the Green Palace Hotel, in the city of Denver, one rainy afternoon.
It was a rain with pyrotechnical attachments.
Lightning laced the gloomy sky with brilliant fabric; sharp volleys of thunder came banging out of the black canopy of clouds at frequent intervals.
Mr. “Laughing Lou” Bray, well luncheoned and unperturbed, beamed good-naturedly at the dripping world; Mr. Lathrop Golding, immaculate in tweeds, and talking volubly, found interest in occasional flashes of feminine hosiery at the near-by street crossing; Captain Eben S. Light solemn and silent, listened as austerely as a tomb.
Behind them, close to the revolving doors, cowered the slight figure of Mr. Malcolm Cornet, known to his intimates as “The Cuckoo,” for Mr. Cornet feared the lightning as befitted one who felt, inwardly, just cause for a visitation of Providential wrath.
Besides that, Mr. Cornet was “in bad” with his chief, Laughing Lou Bray. The Cuckoo had been behaving, or, rather, misbehaving, with great indiscretion since he had received his share of a “fake” foot race at Excelsior Springs—a race promoted by Mr. Bray; and he had recently come in for a scathing admonition from Laughing Lou. When needs be, the tongue of Mr. Bray could sting like the tip of a quirt, and the Cuckoo feared it almost as much as he did the lightning.
Removed from what he considered the range of both, Cornet eyed the splashing rain distrustfully, shrinking farther back into his corner at every fiery stroke of electricity across the somber canvas of sky. Occasionally he shot a glance of vindictiveness at the portly form of the contented Bray, who stood smoothing a particularly well-filled waistcoat of virulent pattern with one chubby, beringed hand.
“That's quite a storm,” remarked Mr. Bray, breaking in upon a steady stream of irrelevancy which flowed from the lips of Mr. Golding. “The lightning is playing down close.”
“It struck this building a couple of years back, and caused a fire,” replied Golding, glancing upward, with assumed apprehension, and then slanting an amused look at the quivering Cornet.
“In that case, we're safe,” came the voice of the foot racer in relieved accents. “Lightning don't strike twice in the same place.”
The fat hand of Laughing Lou, slipping up and down and across his abdominal expanse, paused at the middle button of the garish waistcoat. He appeared to be weighing Cornet's observation.
“It don't, eh?” he remarked slowly. “It don't strike twice in the same place?”
A new channel of thought seemed to have opened in the mind of the man who was credited with being the leader of the greatest organization of “sure-thing” operators that ever attracted the attention of the Western police. The fat, smiling face became mobile with seriousness. Captain Light eyed him with profound solemnity.
“Cap, do you know who was the toughest bird we ever picked on a foot race?” inquired Bray, lowering his voice.
The captain considered. “They was all tough,” he finally answered succinctly.
“The name was Deetz,” said Mr. Bray impressively, his voice still lowered. “John R. Deetz, a loan shark, right here in this State. He was the toughest of them all, bar none. You wasn't here then; neither was Golding—all the better. The Cuckoo, there, was. Still better. John R. Deetz, of Vanceburg—one tough fellow to take money away from.”
“Well?” demanded the captain.
“Jack Wolf is in Portland, isn't he?” asked Bray. “Come here, Cuckoo. You've got nerve, if you haven't got any sense.”
Two successive impulses tugged nervously at the mind of Mr. John R. Deetz, of Vanceburg, when there suddenly appeared in the doorway of the office of the Moon Salary Loan Company—which was Mr. John R. Deetz—the sharp-cut features of Malcolm Cornet.
The first impulse was to lock the safe; the second to seize a chair and brain the Cuckoo with blows therefrom. Mr. Deetz was not given to extemporaneous violence, however, and the Cuckoo seemed of peaceful intent. We find them closeted later in Mr. Deetz's private room, the searching eyes of the money lender staring at the runner, and endeavoring to probe the inmost soul of that young man.
The Cuckoo was slight of frame, as stated, but built compactly, and close to the ground. His eyes were a shallow blue, set against a narrow nose. His head carried a shock of wiry white hair, which he brushed straight back from the roots so that he looked as if he wore a cotton turban. The Cuckoo's voice was soft, emphatic, and convincing.
“Here's the proposition,” said Cornet: “Bray, the leader of the bunch that trimmed you at Colorado City four years ago”—Mr. Deetz winced—“is down East. I'm the only one of the crowd that was in on your trimming”—Mr. Deetz winced again—“that's left in this part of the country. A fellow named Golding is running things out here for Bray; and he's the chestiest guy you ever saw in your life. He never heard of you, see? He doesn't know I'm sore on him and this game, and that I want to break away and try something honest. Neither does any of the rest of the mob. They think I'm still with them body and soul. Supposing I go to Golding, and tell him I've got a soft old bird—which will be you”—Mr. Deetz winced some more—“hooked to back me in a foot race. Naturally, I'll plan with him to throw you; but I don't do anything of the kind. I'll go on and win, and you split the money with me.”
Again Mr. Deetz repressed a desire to lay that cotton turban flat with a chair.
The mind of the president of the Moon Salary Loan Company—branches throughout Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming—drifted back to that frosty morning of four years ago at Colorado City, and to an event which he esteemed the only error of a long money-collecting career. Regarded as infallible in all his financial undertakings by those who knew him, Mr. Deetz had to admit to himself that the foot race was a mistake.
Mr. Deetz was spending the heated months of 1908, and some of the interest on salary loans, at a fashionable hotel in Colorado Springs. His physician had recommended rest. While there, Mr. Deetz became acquainted with a number of well-dressed, prosperous gentlemen, who came from Pittsburg, according to the hotel register, and who were out West, according to themselves, for the purpose of looking after their mining investments.
Such a crowd of immaculate, cultured, and refined gentlemen Mr. Deetz never hoped to see again. They took him to their bosoms, figuratively speaking, and made so much of him that Mr. Deetz, remembering the cold nods of his fellow townsmen of Vanceburg, where he was the most unpopular man in the community—and knew, and resented it—was convinced more than ever of the prophet being without honor on his local preserves.
The Pittsburgers spent money like water. Occasionally Mr. Deetz attempted to reciprocate—or, at least, to judiciously expend some of the interest on salary loans like spray, if not exactly like water—but his overtures were rejected with a scorn that abased even his conservative soul.
One day Mr. Deetz overheard the Pittsburg millionaires—they couldn't have been anything else—laughingly discussing a plot to have some fun with a crowd of Colorado City gamblers—in those days the Goddess of Chance still had a more or less uncertain throne in the little neighbor to Colorado Springs.
It seemed that the gamblers had a foot racer whose prowess they esteemed. They had been winning barrels of money on him during the summer. The Pittsburgers had quietly sent East and secured a college sprinter, who, they said, held the record for one hundred yards, or close to it. They had matched this man against the gamblers' favorite for thirty thousand dollars' real money. To make their victory over the gamblers a sure thing, they had, moreover, bought off the gamblers' foot racer; and that unworthy athlete had agreed to “throw” the race to the collegian.
So it was a “cinch,” anyway you looked at it.
The freedom with which Mr. Deetz's friends discussed the matter before him, gave that gentleman to understand that he had their complete confidence. Never had he felt so intimate with men before. They were making up the thirty thousand dollars. They were laughing and joking over the coming discomfiture of the gamblers; and Mr. Deetz laughed, too, because he did not approve of gamblers or gambling. Many a man to whom he had loaned good money at ten per cent had caused him much delay and court costs by gambling.
“We've got twenty thousand dollars now,” said Mr. Soandso—names make no difference now. “Come on in with that ten thou, Carnegie”—or Frick, or Schwab, or whatever it was. They had the money, too; big bunches of green paper in a derby hat; they counted it right before the interested eyes of Mr. Deetz.
“I'll give you my check,” said the gentleman addressed, pulling out a book for that purpose. “I haven't got that much cash with me, or in the bank here, either.”
“No checks,” was the ultimatum. “Those gamblers want to see the color of the dough.”
“Well, I haven't got it, and I surely want in,” remonstrated the unfortunate—but why continue?
Mr. Deetz had the cash, or, at least, could get it in a hurry. His friends said “No, no,” of course; they didn't want him to risk his money. Still, they didn't want him to think they were arbitrarily shoving him away from a good thing. Whereupon, Mr. Deetz, with the idea of the “cinch” in his mind, begged them to accept his money. The gambling element must surely be taught a lesson.
So they let him in.
As he sat contemplating the Cuckoo, there arose in the mind's eye of Mr. Deetz the picture of that young man shivering, bare-legged, beneath a black blanket on that crisp morning at Colorado City—a picture particularly impressed upon Mr. Deetz because the Cuckoo was carrying ten thousand dollars of his money. Vividly he recalled the strangely subdued group of gamblers, contrasting with the lively, chattering party of which he was a member. So, too, he remembered the hand satchel crammed with money—and then the race—ah, yes, the race! The race that the Cuckoo did not win!
Likewise there came to Mr. Deetz the memory of those years of apprehension that his fellow townspeople might find out how he had been victimized by that trained organization of “sure-thing” men known as the “Big Store.” Again he repressed, with difficulty, an impulse of extreme violence.
“You can beat their man, of course?” he finally suggested. “I mean you can beat him if you should both run to win?”
“I can beat almost any hundred-yard man in the United States, unless he can do better than nine and three-fifths seconds,” said Cornet loftily—and that was a fact, by the way. “It's a cinch I can beat any man they'll dig up, because no runner as good as I am is mixed up in crooked races in this country. Another thing, they won't try to get a fast man, thinking I'm going to lay down, anyway, will they? A dub will do them.”
Mr. Deetz had to admit that this was a reasonable supposition.
“How do I know you aren't as crooked now as you were before?” he asked, looking Cornet over with great care. “I really ought to hand you over to the chief of police for coming to me with such a proposition.”
Cornet did not appear vastly alarmed. He was a keen student of human nature in his way.
“I'll tell you what I'll do,” he said patiently. “I'll put in five hundred dollars of my own money. That means a lot to me, too, because it's all I've got; but I'll put it in to show you that I'm on the square with you. I'm sick of that whole gang, and I'd like to take enough money away from them to give me a start at something honest.”
The Cuckoo tried to muster a tear as further evidence of sincerity; but lachrymose efforts were not in his line. Mr. Deetz seemed half convinced.
“Come to-morrow,” he whispered. “Come and see me to-morrow.”
Long after the departure of the runner, the money lender sat pondering, a crafty smile playing over his lean features. Then he arose, put on his hat, and joined the crowd in the main street of Vanceburg. He carried himself with the confident step of one who appreciated that every fourth or fifth man who passed owed him money, did John R. Deetz; but there was no cordiality in his nods, or the returns thereto. John R. Deetz was a cold, hard man. Vanceburg knew it, and John R. Deetz knew that Vanceburg knew it.
There had been no ostentation in the movements of the Cuckoo after leaving Mr. Deetz. He had repaired by a devious route to the single telegraph office. Of course, he could not have known that the telegraph operator owed Mr. Deetz money—that Mr. Deetz at that moment held an assignment of wages from Henderson, the key pounder, which would have cost Henderson his situation had it been presented to the main office of the company. Mr. Deetz's course to the office was direct.
“A young fellow with bushy white hair may have sent a telegram from here this afternoon,” he suggested mildly to Henderson. “A glance at that now——”
Henderson understood. He had given Mr. Deetz other “glances” in times gone by. He fished around in a wadding of yellow “flimsy” on his file hook, and extracted a copy of a message addressed to “L. J. Bray, Green Palace Hotel, Denver,” and reading laconically: “Looks good—Cornet.”
Back to his office went John R. Deetz, dropping chilly greetings right and left. He entered his private room, closed the door carefully, and then stepped in front of a wall mirror. Long he inspected the reflection of his features.
“I guess I do look green,” he finally muttered. “And I guess I am. Almost I bit again.”
He moved to the window whence he could survey the street, and the crowd. Something in the very appearance of the people seemed to arouse the ire of the money lender. He gazed at the moving scene with a scowl, and then gradually a mammoth scheme evolved itself in his mind. He lifted a clenched fist and shook it at the crowd.
“You don't like me,” he hissed, after the fashion of the stage villain, “and you never have. I'll sting you all, and get my revenge at the same time.”
After which surprising performance, Mr. Deetz sat down and indited a long letter, which he addressed to Provo, Utah.
“He'll only bet three thousand dollars,” said the Cuckoo. “He says that's all the ready cash he's got on hand right now. But he says he wants to do the people of the town a favor, and that he don't mind having it get rumored around that he's backing me—without it coming direct from him, see? He don't want to figure in anything that looks like gambling. But he says that the people there think his judgment of anything involving money is a cinch, and that they're always trying to nose into his deals to sort o' follow his play, so they'll take all the money you can lug down there. I don't get his slant——”
“I do,” replied Laughing Lou quickly. “He wants to make himself out a philanthropist without it costing him anything. He's the softest thing I ever heard of, because he'll get all the blame for losing his friends' dough, don't you see? He'll be the goat. We'll nail him, and we'll nail them, too. Their money's as good as anybody else's. It lets us out of any trouble, seems to me.”
Despite this optimistic view, Bray called Captain Light aside after the departure of the Cuckoo.
“You're going to do the betting down there,” he said. “If they are a lot of boobs, go ahead and take all they offer; but you'd better hold back to the last minute and feel 'em out. If you think they'll cause trouble, we'll just take old Deetz's three thousand dollars, and let it go at that, without monkeying with outsiders. We don't want to get any one shot, or strung up.”
The announcement in Vanceburg that there was to be a foot race caused some excitement. The rumor, coming from no one knew where, that John R. Deetz was backing one of the runners, created commotion. The people refused to believe it at first. They asked John R. Deetz outright, but he only smiled, and warily shook his head. The idea of John R. Deetz risking his money on a foot race seemed preposterous. Then some one whispered that possibly Deetz had it fixed for his man to win. The whisper arose to the voice of belief.
The local paper confirmed the rumor of the race, at all events, announcing that it was to be between Malcolm Cornet, a well-known Eastern athlete, and Jack Wolf, a runner from the Northwest; the place, Cyril's Grove, the distance, one hundred yards, and the consideration, a thirty-five-hundred-dollar side bet. Further than that, the paper said nothing, because the editor knew nothing further.
Any morning the Cuckoo might have been seen dashing wildly over the roads around the town in such scant attire as to bring protests from maidenly residents of the outskirts. Wise ones consulted the sporting manuals; and found Malcom Cornet's name therein with excellent marks of deportment upon athletic fields entered against it. How could they know the care and perseverance with which Laughing Lou Bray worked his ends? How could they know that he had maintained the Cuckoo, at much expense, in New York for two years, during which time the runner was attached, as a simon-pure amateur, to a famous athletic club, gaining experience and training and those very marks, against just some such contingency as this?
Of Jack Wolf there was no book record whatsoever.
It became known that Henry Jordan, proprietor of the Tivoli gambling house, and the local sporting oracle, had been made the stakeholder of seven thousand dollars cash, which was the side bet on the race; and it was whispered that he understood thirty-five hundred dollars belonged to Mr. Deetz. The astute Jordan remained silent to all approaches, however. As a matter of fact, he did, somehow, understand that part of the money belonged to Deetz; but it had been placed in his hands by the Cuckoo, and a beautifully immaculate young man who gave his name as Golding, so Henry Jordan could not have made oath that Deetz was interested in any portion of the stake.
Mr. Lathrop Golding arrived in Vanceburg unattended, and was headquartered at the Commercial Hotel. Incidentally, he was bored beyond measure by the unattractiveness of his surroundings. On business bent, Mr. Golding had to content himself with standing posed, and poised, in the lobby of the Commercial, or adjacent thereto, saying nothing. The hardship of his part was mostly the silence. Mr. Golding had nothing to do with the Cuckoo, of course; and that was eminently satisfactory on both sides. The Cuckoo did not like Mr. Golding, and Mr. Golding returned the runner's regard in full measure.
Vanceburg found the Cuckoo a most diverting young man. It liked him, and told him so. The runner made friends rapidly; that was part of his business. He rarely retained them, for obvious reasons. He saw little of John R. Deetz.
Coincident with the arrival in the town of Captain Light, with Jack Wolf, the runner—and that was a couple of days before the race—there came to Vanceburg, and registered at the Commercial Hotel, a wise-looking little man of around sixty; a man with an unusually large, silvered head, and a disproportionately small body; a man who kept his coat buttoned around his meager frame, and who appeared to view the world, from a pair of keen gray eyes, with the most profound wisdom; who, in addition to these things, scrawled his name across the Commercial book as Jabez True, of some town not determinable from any analysis of the True penmanship. He appeared to have no definite business of the moment; but he was always around gazing upon men and affairs with the same expression of inordinate wisdom, which became rather disconcerting.
When Vanceburg got a look at Jack Wolf, a clamor for Wolf money arose. He was a frail, emaciated lad, with a pigeon breast, who could really cover a hundred yards with considerable dispatch, if necessary. His appearance was one of his assets. There was no Wolf money. Captain Light held the Bray roll; and he was not betting any part of it, despite the earnest entreaties of Mr. Lathrop Golding.
“These boobs around here are crazy about the Cuckoo,” argued Golding. “He's got them hypnotized. I don't believe they're going to care much even when he loses. You'd better take their money while the taking's good.”
But the captain stuck to the Bray instructions, and kept “looking around.”
“We've got Deetz's three thousand dollars cinched, and the rest won't run away, he replied. “I'll wait until the race.”
John R. Deetz had held himself sternly aloof from any discussion of the event which was exciting all Vanceburg. His acquaintances gathered the impression that the subject of the race was distasteful to him because of the insistent, persistent, rumor of his connection therewith. And yet his failure to openly deny that connection caused many a heated debate in speculative centers.
His early appearance at Cyril's Grove on the morning of the race, however, was considered a public admission of his interest. It also occasioned some public resentment.
“He knows something,” summed up Chief of Police Tom Holliday briefly. “Pretty lucky old bird getting his money down, and leaving nothing for the rest of us. He knows something; and any proposition John Deetz thinks worth a three-thousand-dollar bet is good enough for Thomas P. Holliday, if I can get on.”
Mr. Deetz came in a buggy.
“Just out of curiosity,” he remonstrated, when some one, who did not owe him money, passed a jocular remark on his presence. “The town's so worked up over this thing, I thought I'd see what was going on.”
While flouting this statement, the people collected in Cyril's Grove expressed the fervent hope that the backers of Jack Wolf would bring some more money with them. Most of the crowd had reached the grove on foot, but some had come in wagons, and a few on horseback. It was a dull, drab morning. Occasional murmurings of thunder arose from the far horizon, and intermittent gusts of wind rode noisily across the sky. Rain threatened.
A course had been laid out and hastily cindered in the heart of the grove; and this was soon a lane of humanity. One of the late comers to the track was Jabez True, who arrived looking wiser than ever, his coat still buttoned tightly around his thin body. He attracted no attention.
The Cuckoo came alone. He was chewing gum, and trying to appear nonchalant. He nodded briefly to various acquaintances, shot a brief glance at John R. Deetz, sitting in his buggy, and quickly stripped off a few outer garments, showing himself in a set of flashy running trunks. Mr. Deetz found himself wondering, as he looked the runner over, if the Cuckoo had that little bladder filled with beef blood; and, if so, where he had it concealed. A shadow of pain darkened the face of the money lender as he again recalled that morning at Colorado City, when the Cuckoo, leading his opponent by a yard, suddenly reeled, and fell, with a scarlet stream trickling from his mouth.
At the instant of Mr. Deetz's mental speculation, the Cuckoo had that essential to the Bray mode of “faking” a foot race in the pocket of the overcoat. The bladder was to be placed between the teeth at the start of the race, and bitten into whenever necessary.
Mingling with the chattering crowd, surrounded by admiring, friendly faces, hearing friendly words, and feeling the grasp of warm hands, a weird thought crossed the mind of the Cuckoo.
“Why shouldn't all that bunk I told Deetz be true?” he mused hazily. “Why shouldn't I cross Bray, and win the race? These are good people, and they can't stand to lose what they're going to get down on me. The best Lou'll give me will be a couple of hundred bucks after what I did with the Excelsior Springs dough—Deetz is bound to cut that thirty-five hundred dollars with me; and that gives me a decent stake. I've got to get honest pretty soon if I'm ever going to, and this looks like a chance. Lou's always right at my hip with a bawl-out. He's always giving that guy Golding the best of everything.”
For a moment, the Cuckoo's bosom swelled with a feeling of righteousness; then his spirits as quickly drooped again.
“Lou'd hunt me up and shoot me sure,” he argued sadly. “I ain't afraid of that fresh Golding, or old Light; but Lou'd pot me some time. Still”—elation again came foremost—“still, he ain't here, and I could stick in the town until it's all blowed over. Deetz'd see that I wasn't bothered—and so would these people.”
Strangely enough, no fear of consequences at the hands of “these people,” should be lose the race, came to the Cuckoo. He had nerve, as Bray said. A struggle was going on in his mind when Mr. Lathrop Golding and Jack Wolf arrived. Immediately the crowd surged about them making eager inquiries; but Golding only shook his head. During the confusion, Captain Light came almost unnoticed. In the captain's pockets was money—much money; and he looked about him reflectively, as if deliberating just where to begin. Mr. Golding and Wolf retired behind a tree, and the thin runner peeled his clothing.
Officer Mulrooney, of the local police force, had been selected as starter of the race, chiefly because he had his big, blue-nosed revolver with him. The Cuckoo tossed his overcoat aside and followed him to the starting point—slim, sinewy, girl-waisted; a much finer figure of an athlete stripped than when he had on his street attire.
Then came Wolf, with a light coat still tossed over his shoulders, and followed by Lathrop Golding, who little relished his task of caretaker of the skinny athlete. Wolf's legs were pitifully frail. His kneecaps were as large as saucers. His face was white and drawn, and he seemed quite nervous. The crowd tittered audibly, and passed jocular remarks. Some looked at John R. Deetz, who sat hunched up in the seat of his buggy, his eyes following the runners with a curious glint in their depths.
Cries arose from the crowd. Men with money in their wildly waving hands pushed hither and thither through the jam shrieking. “A hundred on Cornet!” “Two hundred on Cornet!” Their voices were appealing, beseeching.
Meantime, the murmurings of thunder had gradually moved in from the horizon until they were just overhead; little spats of lightning went twitching across the sky, and the Cuckoo stepped about uneasily, like a fretted colt, glancing upward with nervous apprehension.
Captain Eben S. Light thrust a hand into his pocket and hauled forth a tremendous bundle of bills. He stepped forward and opened his mouth, as if about to utter words; but no words issued forth, for Captain Light suddenly saw, through a break in the trees, a portly man approaching in the distance; a man who moved with laborious speed. Almost at the same moment, Captain Light became cognizant of a voice; a high, thin, whiny voice; and he was aware that Jabez True was speaking. Meantime, there bore down upon the scene, unnoticed by all save Captain Light, Laughing Lou Bray.
“Gentlemen,” shrilled Jabez True, “I have been in your city but a short time, and I have not the pleasure of acquaintance with any of you; but I have here with me what speaks for me. Gentlemen, I have become interested in this foot race, and I believe the runner, Wolf, will win. I have here twenty thousand dollars in greenbacks, which I am willing to wager in greater or less amounts at even money. Let Mr. Henry Jordan be the stakeholder.”
He began reaching both hands into his pockets. The man fairly leaked money. He had it in every crevice and corner of his garments. The crowd did not realize the purport of his speech immediately. It hung silent and suspended for a full moment. Then the rush closed in, just as Captain Light, standing with his fists swelled large by the bills beneath his fingers, caught another glimpse of Laughing Lou signaling him frantically from the near background.
Headed by Chief of Police Tom Holliday in person, his gold star gleaming from his bosom, the betting public of Vanceburg moved against the little, old man, who seemed to suddenly melt away in size, and grow more shrunken than ever as he divested himself of bills, while Henry Jordan, standing at his right, grew visibly larger, and visibly more embarrassed, as he endeavored to keep mental tally on wagers.
While this was going on, Captain Light sidled silently over to the excited and perspiring Bray, attracting only the attention of John R. Deetz, who, from the vantage point of his buggy, trailed the captain with his eyes until some trees shut off his gaze. Deetz could not see Laughing Lou; and, of course, could not hear what he said.
“Couldn't keep away from the excitement, cap,” panted Bray. “Am I in time? How much you got down, and do you need any more money?”
The captain solemnly raised his two money-stuffed hands.
“Somebody's beat us to it,” he said dismally. “There's a man over here named Jabez True, betting all the money in the world on Wolf to win——”
“True?” roared Bray. “Lemme see him! Bettin' on Wolf, hey?”
He crowded past the captain to a point where he could see the group surrounding Jabez True. A rift in the mass of humanity gave him a fleeting glance at the little man.
“Git over there, cap!” bawled Laughing Lou. “Git over, quick, and bet him all the money you've got on Cornet—then git word to the Cuckoo to win—understand—to win!”
The runners had paused at the head of the cinder pathway, where there was also quite a crowd; and Mr. Lathrop Golding removed the coat from the shoulders of Jack Wolf. He was cognizant of considerable excitement down near the finish line, but could not tell the nature, or the cause of it. Officer Mulrooney was taking his place behind the runners as they stepped to the starting point, when suddenly a little boy dashed up to Golding with a note, hastily scribbled on the torn margin of a newspaper. Golding read:
Scheme switched. Tell Cuckoo to win.
Light.
Golding was not vastly surprised. Sudden changes in plans were frequently necessary in their business. He was a trifle puzzled, and he turned to the Cuckoo just as the stentorian voice of Officer Mulrooney shook the very leaves in the trees.
“On yer marks!”
The runners moved forward.
“Git set!”
The white-skinned lads postured simultaneously, and in the same fashion; their bodies bent forward until their finger tips scratched the ground ahead of them. Mulrooney raised the blue nose of his revolver upward.
An instant later it spouted a thin flame, and the dull report of the exploding shell reached the crowd. Forward leaped the runners with the same motion. The people craned their necks out over the course.
John R. Deetz was standing up on the seat of his buggy. Vaguely he remembered seeing Captain Light rush up to Jabez True and thrust a handful of bills at him; vaguely he recalled seeing a stout man, whose face and form seemed strangely familiar, in the captain's wake; but these things did not strike him as significant at the moment.
A thin rain was now falling, and the lightning tipped the treetops. There was a wild hum of voices as the two runners legged it down the path, cinders flying beneath their feet. The hum paused a brief instant as they neared the finish. Then came a yell of joy. Elbow to elbow the sprinters moved to within fifty feet of the line; then one man inched ahead. One stride—two strides—three strides—he gained, although the other was slashing distance like a shadow—three strides represented the relative difference in their positions as they whirled across the tape; and at that same instant came a mighty smash of thunder as a blade of lightning sabered through the grove.
Standing on the seat of his buggy, John R. Deetz watched that struggle. His eyes could not separate the twain as they neared the end. The stretch of crowd shuttered the runners from his view for the last few yards of the race, despite his elevated position. There was a momentary hush as the race ended—a brief lull before the storm of enthusiasm, as well as one contributed by nature. A man standing by the buggy claims he heard John R. Deetz cry:
“Did he fall? Did he have the hemorrhage?”
An instant later, as the crowd roared the victor's name, which was the name of Malcolm Cornet, John R. Deetz shrieked wildly, and then fell from his buggy to the ground, crying: “The wrong man! The wrong man!”
At least, that same man by the buggy claimed afterward he heard these words; but most people put it down to imagination, because, they point out, John R. Deetz won thirty-five hundred dollars on the race.
In any event, it is true, he fell to the ground; but he lay unnoticed for the moment, while the crowd stood watching in deep amazement the figure of the Cuckoo flying on, and on, past the finish line, on through the grove of trees, and on out toward the open ground. They could not understand that Malcolm Cornet had caught a brief glimpse of Laughing Lou Bray, as he sped past, winner of the race.
Nobody paid any attention whatever to a smaller figure that went tearing in wild terror through the leafy vales in an opposite direction on through the city streets on down to the railroad station. Later, the station master mentioned the departure in much apparent excitement of one Jabez True; but the people of Vanceburg held that he had just cause for agitation.
In deep bewilderment, Mr. Lathrop Golding and Jack Wolf sought out Captain Light and Laughing Lou.
“Cap got down seven thousand dollars with that bird True, and so we win just about three thousand dollars,” remarked Bray contentedly. “It's mighty lucky I got here when I did. That flash o' lightning must have scart Cuckoo into the next county. I can't find him nowhere.”
“Win?” said Mr. Golding wonderingly. “Win? How win?”
“Offen Deetz,” explained Laughing Lou. “He's the goat. He loses everything that was lost. He wins thirty-five hundred dollars offen us on Cornet, of course—or four thousand dollars, to be exact, considering that five hundred dollars of his stakes was our own money; but we win seven thousand dollars right back, which leaves us the shade, don't it? But he nearly grabbed all his fellow citizens of Vanceburg, son—he nearly did. I'd tell 'em so, too, if I didn't think he was punished enough. We win better than expenses; but we'd have taken some real money away with us if old True'd had more'n seven thousand dollars when cap got to him. We're philanthropists, son. We've plucked old Deetz for the benefit of Vanceburg, and I reckon the town's got it coming from him, too.”
Golding mopped his brow.
“I don't get you,” he said wearily.
“Why,” said Bray, “Deetz evidently had our number from the start. He wasn't no sucker. He never believed the Cuckoo was to win for him at all. He bet us three thousand dollars of his own money on the Cuckoo—then he had a young fortune at the track to bet on Wolf, figuring to get it placed at the last minute, when we wouldn't have time to switch. In other words, he was willing to lose his three thousand dollars, but figured to win about ten times that much at the same minute—mostly off his Vanceburg friends, see? He figured they'd follow the hint that he was backing the Cuckoo, and he wanted to stick 'em.”
He grinned widely.
“Say,” he continued. “Supposin' I hadn't got here. Supposin' the Cuckoo had gone ahead and done his funny fall; you'd have won Deetz's three thousand dollars, all right, while he was taking about twenty thousand dollars from his Vanceburg friends—what would have happened to you fellows? Zam! I've been around here about four hours, and I've got a better line on Vanceburg than you did in a week. These folks are loaded.”
“Old True looked funny when you poked that dough at him, cap,” laughed Bray. “He couldn't think fast enough to hesitate.”
“True?” queried Golding. “Then he——”
“Was betting Deetz's money,” said Laughing Lou. “I recognized him as the manager of Deetz's Provo office, see? And that's when I had Cap Light get you word to have the Cuckoo go on and win, and we hedged off our bet.”
The most popular resort, by all odds, in Vanceburg is The Cuckoo's Nest, a rather pretentious pool and billiard parlor at the corner of Main and Hector Streets, and the most popular citizen in the town is a young business man named Malcolm Cornet. He is spoken of, and to, by many of the women, most of the children, and every man in Vanceburg, save and excepting one. The people marvel at this exception, because it is common knowledge that a check done in the hand of John R. Deetz, the exception noted, set Mr. Cornet up in business. They do not know, of course, how unwillingly that check was promulgated.
Mr. Cornet esteems himself an honest man, who expiated any small indiscretions of youth by a single burst of speed. He is thinking of getting married and raising children. He is still afraid of lightning, and he is inordinately fond of Vanceburg. He has made it a point never to leave the limits of that city since his arrival there.
He believes that certain pretensions to friendship, conveyed in occasional letters from one L. J. Bray, are nothing less than sly ruses to get him within convenient shooting distance of the writer. As a matter of fact, the Cuckoo is still held in kindly regard back in his old world, for just one man knows that he did not get the message to go on and win that foot race—and Mr. Lathrop Golding is hereby nominated for membership in the Humane Society.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1946, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 78 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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