aw the bay head
before he saw the black. "_Jee-roozalum, my happy home!_" said he.
"That was an awful tight fit, but the Curry horse won--by a whisker.
Hang up the numbers. Lord! But that Elisha is a better horse than I
gave him credit for being!"

"Yeh," said the associate judge, "and the nigger outrode Grogan, if
anybody should ask you. He had a chance--if he hadn't let that
horse's head flop to go the bat!"

"It wasn't that," said the other quickly. "The horse flinched when he
hit him."

"I been photographed and interviewed till I'm black in the face,"
complained Old Man Curry, "and now you come along. You're worse than
them confounded reporters!"

"You bet I am," was the calm response of the Bald-faced Kid, "because
I know more. And yet I don't know enough to satisfy me. Somebody
played Elisha, and it wasn't me. You never went near the betting
ring. I watched you."

"My money did. Quite a gob of it."

"And you--you thought he'd win?"

"Didn't I tell you to bet on him?"

"Hell!" wailed the Bald-faced Kid. "He was _lame_--he couldn't walk
the night before! Bet on him? How could I after I'd seen him in that
fix?"

"Frank," said the old man, "you believe everything you see, don't
you?"

The Bald-faced Kid sat down and took his head in his hands.

"Tell it to me, old-timer," said he humbly. "I'm such a wise guy that
it hurts me; but something has come off here that's a mile over my
head. Tell me; I'm no mind reader."

Old Man Curry combed his beard reflectively and gazed through the
tack-room door into the dusk of the summer evening.

"Son," said he at length, "you never swapped hosses much, did you?"

"Never owned any to swap," was the muffled response.

"Too bad. You would have learned things. For instance, there's a
trick that can be worked when you want to buy a hoss cheap and can
get at him for a minute. It's done with a needle and thread and a
hair from the hoss's tail. There's a spot in the leg where the
tendons come together, and the trick is to pass that hosshair in
between the tendons and trim off the ends just long enough so's you
can find 'em again. Best part of the trick is it don't hurt the hoss
none, but he knows it's there and he won't hardly rest his foot on
the ground till it's pulled out. Then he's as good as new again."

"Lovely!" groaned the Kid. "What makes you so close-mouthed,
old-timer?"

"Experience, son, experience. 'He that hath knowledge spareth his
words.' I spared q