everything to that horse but knock him over the fence!"

"And the judges didn't see a thing!" chuckled Johnson.

"Say, let's get down to business!" said Porter. "What I want to know
is this, Johnson: when are you going to cut loose with Zanzibar? You
said we'd all be in with that; there'll be a sweet price on him, and
we ought to clean up."

"Zanzibar is about ready," answered Johnson. "You'll know in plenty
of time, and he's a cinch."

"And nobody knows a thing about him," said McManus.

"Good reason why," laughed Porter. "That's a pretty smart trick:
working him away from the track."

"It's the only thing to do," said Johnson. "Zanzibar is a nervous
colt, and if I worked him on the track with the other horses he'd go
all to pieces. That's why I have Dutchy take him out on a country
road and canter him. It keeps him from fretting before a race."

"How fast can he step the three-quarters?" asked Wilson.

"Fast enough to run shoes off of anything around here," said Johnson.
"You needn't worry about that. We won't have to put him up against
the best, though. Zanzibar didn't do anything last season, and he's
bound to get a price in almost any kind of a race."

"You're sure he's under cover?"

"If he ain't under cover, a horse never was. He gets his work before
sunrise, and at that most of it is just cantering. I've set him down,
though, and I know what he can do."

"It sounds all right," admitted McManus.

"Where do we bet this money?" demanded Porter.

Johnson laughed. "That's a fool question! The less he's played at the
track the better. We'll unload in the pool rooms on the Coast, same
as we did before. Wilson here can enter Blitzen in the same race, and
they can't get away from making Blitzen the favourite: on form they'd
have to pick him to win easy. I'll let it leak out that I'm only
sending Zanzibar for a workout and to see whether he's improved any
over last season. The pool rooms won't know what hit 'em."

"Hold on!" said McManus suddenly. "Suppose Curry gets into the race."

"Bonehead!" growled Wilson. "You've got Curry on the brain. Outside
of Elisha there's no class to his string of beetles, and Elisha is a
distance horse. Three-quarters is too short for him."

"He can't get going under half a mile!" supplemented Porter.

"Well," apologised McManus, "I like to figure all the angles."...

Old Man Curry also liked to figure all the angles. He had the
utmost confidence in Solomon's statement c