nd, by golly, he _is_ one. He
couldn't sell a twenty-dollar gold piece for a dime or make a sucker
put down a bet with the winning numbers already hanging on the board
in front of him. They all give him the once over and holler for the
police. And as for his riding, he's about as much help to a horse as
a fine case of the heaves. I'm darned if I know how he manages to
live!"

Little Calamity sometimes wondered about this himself. Of course
there were the rare occasions when he was able to persuade a
weak-minded owner to give him a mount on a hopeless outsider or a
horse entered only for the sake of the workout, but the five-dollar
jockey fees were few and far between. They could not be stretched to
cover the intervening periods, so Little Calamity did his best to be
a petty larcenist with indifferent success.

He infested the betting ring with a persistence almost pitiful, but
he had neither the appearance nor the manner which begets confidence
in unlikely tales, and in his mouth the truth itself sounded like a
fabrication. He was a willing but an unconvincing liar, and the few
who lingered long enough to listen to his clumsy attempts went away
smiling.

Little Calamity was nearer thirty than twenty, wrinkled and weazened
and bow-legged. Worse than everything else, he was cross-eyed. The
direct and compelling gaze is an absolute necessity in the touting
business because the average man believes that the liar will be
unable to look him in the eye. Little Calamity could not look any man
in the eye without first undergoing a surgical operation. He had few
acquaintances and no friends; he ate when he could slept where he
could, and life to him was just a continued hard-luck story.

Imagine, then, the incredulous amazement of the Bald-faced Kid when
Old Man Curry informed him that Jockey Gillis had secured steady
employment.

"That shrimp?" said the Kid. "Why, if he had the ice-water privilege
in hell he'd starve to death!"

"Frank," said the old man, "I wish you wouldn't be so blame keerless
with your figures of speech. There won't be any ice water for the
wicked, it says in the Book, and, anyway, it ain't a fit subject to
joke about. It don't sound pretty."

The Bald-faced Kid took this reproof with a sober countenance, for he
respected the old man's principles even if he did not understand
them.

"All right, old-timer. I'll take your word for it. Got a steady job,
has he? For Heaven's sake, what doing?"

"Ru