Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1909-12-05

and he took right after the flying cara
van.
HE caught the rest OF the outfit In the
last sixteenth. and was just beaten py
the leader a kittens whfsker on the wire.
The next Jump he was in front.
"9is running second didn't spoil the
frame-up. though. for. you see. he was
to 6 shot to win. And his going after
thing for the fixers of the game. for 1t
enabled them to say, mournfully-witn
the big money that they'd bet on the
real winner in their kicks-that their
horse would have copied by the length
of the Grand Canyon Of Colorado had he
got off.
But this particular brewer of any-kind-
you-need tonics at length ran into snag,
as all of us do when we get so Dlamed
good that there doesn't appear to be any
way of beating US.
You see. all of his brands looked alike
They were as coloress as water. and they
were contained in phials OF the same 1den-
teal size and shape. He had Gladstone
bag for dope kit, and each bottle was
strapped into Its numbered place, with
the number In gilt-stamped letters above
each bottle.
"One day the dope doctor carelessly
left his dope Kit In a trainers office while
he went to make a little visit to another
coon stable hand slipped into the office,
and when he saw that do7s kit he. of
course, wanted to take a peek at 1t. He
did.
HE saw the long array of bottles
strapped along the two sides of the bag,
and he took a lot of them out of the
straps and smelt of their contents. Then
he put the bottles back but not under
their right numbers. That was. as they
say in the, yaller-kivered books. the be-
4 ~ fN- hn
mixer that ever handled a hypo or cata-
pulled a capsule into a horses throat
ION the same day of the mix-up OF the
bottles in his kit q trainer wanted a few
drops out of the bottle that made the
horse carrying it curl UP like hot feather
In the stretch. The proprietor OF the
large dope line gave him instead. not
knowing how his kit had been tempered
with, some of the No. IA, the kind that
caused horse to get left at the post.
The horse did get left at the post. The
dope man had already got his bit from
the owner, and he had to turn 1t back. He
couldn't understand it. of course.
But that first bad break hurt his repu-
tation with the trainers. They got off In
corners of the stables after the races that
day and talked. Some declared their
belief that the dope man had aligned him
self with the bookie crowd and was pre-
pairing to give the owners ana trainers
the double cross.
ION the following day an owner with
a 30-to-1 killing on hand wanted some
of the No. 8 straight the kind that sent
horse off in front of small field at the
drop of the ribbon and kept him there
thinking there would be no chance OF his
going wrong again, gave the owner IN
stead some OF the swerve juice.
THE owners nag got off in front all
right. but he did the sidestep at the top
of the drive home and wriggled over to
the outside fence like Lake Superior
compass that's funnied by an eighteen
mile stretch of magnetiZed iron rocks.
That hurt the dope man heap, too. Not
so much because he had to turn in the
advance money, but because it made him
lose a heap of confidence in his kit.
That night the trainers sent deputa-
ton to him, advising him to get out into
the country and sleep right hard for
about a week, and then come back. He
was too chesty and hurt to take their adj
vice, but two days later he did business
with a man who wanted some OF the half
slow dope, the kind that got a horse off
pretty fairly in the middle of the bunch
and caused him to keep his berth In the
middle all the way to the finish.
1.-The dope artist gave him instead some
of the dead-quick record-breaking kind so
tHdI lH6 OWlitI pug SoI away Will
about nine lengths the best Of the start
and ran like a stampeded jack rabbit to
| the finish. winning. pulled up, at 80 to 1,
and the owner, who was saving him for a
still longer price. with not even a shirt
button down.
THAT settled II.
THE owners and trainers got their
conks together. and then they got their
hands good and moist, picked up ak han
dies. fence pickets and plain gnarled
clubs. and when the dope man with the
busted system showed up around the
barns that evening with some kind of an
explanation all ready, they chased him to
the other side of the Ohio river bluffs.
HE never came back. There are stories
out that way yet Of a wild man. who lives
on roots and wild berries in a cave near
the place where this dope man was
chased. and who gibbers and squeaks in
numbers from one to twenty, and I've
got more than half notion that that
gibberer is the dope man gone bughouse
from chagrfn over his bad loseout.
Anyhow, I always thought 1t a shame
that a mans flourishing business should
have been hivved by the inquisitiveness Of
dinge, what?''