Worcester Democrat and the ledger-enterprise. (Pocomoke City, Md.) 1921-1953, 1939-11-03
"KnIGHT ERRAnT"
eSse BY Jack meDonoId g.

en- CLEAN on her young face and eyes
sparkling blue as the sky overhead.
Oddly incongruous Heather SEEM
ed in this vivid panorama, this slip
of a school girl with honey colored
hair that turned to flame in the sun.
She wore demure powderblue sports
suit selected for her by Miss Ather-
man. dean of the school Heather had
left the June before.
The horses were nearing the start
ing gate, Heather gave one last look
at old Dams tired gray figure hunch-
ed by the rail. ~
| She did not know that in Dams
thoughts was terrible apprehension
that something was wrong!
Heather only knew that Coronado
had arrived weeks before at Santa
Anita, sick with car fever, and that
old Dan had struggled desperately to
ready his horse for the big race.
But she did not know that few
hours before the race today, Dan had
collapsed in the tack room, and that
Charley Bassitt, another horseman,
had taken Coronado to the receiving
barn.
Nor did Heather know the dilem-
ma the future book operators were
were in, upping the future price on
Coronado to 8 to 1 in the daring belief
that Dan couldn't get his horse ready
for the big race. They had blundered.
Sharpshooters were saying it with
thousands from st. Louis, Chicago,
New York and San Francisco. No
chance for the bookies to lay it off
to each other. They were all loaded
with Coronado money. Any they
couldn't get out from under by dump
ing it back in the mutuels today at
6 to 81
No, Heather knew none of these
things. For her the moment held un-
diluted adventure and joy.
But to two men, moved by the pres
sure of the excited crowd up to the
back of Heather's box, this breathless
pause before the race was not sus-
tanned with anxiety.
They came from the unreserved
section, for Slim Maynard was, as he
would have put it in his pictures
que way, con the Oregon shorts"
With him was Snapper Elliott, his
devoted and often annoying satellite
of the race tracks, who followed Slim
in and out of hook. All the pair
could scrape together today was on
Coronado.
Slim Maynard was mystery to
the race tracks. He looked like a
collar ad and talked the language of
anyone to whom, at the moment, he
was talking. A race tracker to the
very fibre he knew horses from the
hoof up, tracks from coast to coast,
the mob who followed the geegees.
Slim hailed originally from Louis
vile, where his father had raced a
great string when Slim was young
ster.
A flood brought ruin to the May
nard stables and Slim was left high
and dry, with an eye and love for
thoroughbreds-strictly equine-de-
veloped through generations of hard
boots that had a genius for judging
horses and riders.
Slim could talk in two languages,
that of the track and that of the draw
ing room. AS Slim he was known
from Santa Anita to Saratoga, but in
spite of his easy familiarity with the
tracks, he never lost the innate, gen
tlemanly touch that came from having
been born Andrew Branson Maynard,
of the once famous clan of distinguish
ed Kentucky Maynards.
In his jaunty check suit, trifle
too loud perhaps, Slim leaned over the
back of the box where Heather sat
with her valiant blue eyes fixed .ador-
ingly on Coronado.
Snapper" Slim breather from a
corner of his mouth like ventrilo-
quist. "Take look at Bassitt there.
Did you see what window he just
come from?"
Snapper gaped at a man standing
there, clutching bale of tickets.
Paunchy, blue shirt open at the
collar and with the hard, cold eyes of
a gambler, Bassitt looked the part of
a case-hardened race tracker.
"That was the $50 window Bassitt
just left! He's got a wad of tickets
there that would choke Coronado y
observed Snanner