LITMIR.BIZ

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about the harness events, which was only natural, this being an end of the state where they raised the standard breds as distinguished from the section whence came the thoroughbreds. A running race might do for an appetizer, like a toddy before dinner; but the big interest would focus in the two-twenty pace and the free-for-all consolation, and finally would culminate in the County Trot—open only to horses bred and owned in the county and carrying with it a purse of two thousand dollars—big money for that country—and a dented and tarnished silver trophy that was nearly fifty years old, and valued accordingly.

      After the half-mile dash and before the first heat of the two-twenty pace there was a balloon ascension and parachute drop. Judge Priest's Jeff was everywhere that things were happening. He did two men's part in holding the bulging bag down to earth until the spangled aeronaut yelled out for everybody to let go. When the man dropped, away over by the back fence, Jeff was first on the spot to brush him off and to inquire in a voice of respectful solicitude how he was feeling, now that he'd come down. Up in the grandstand, Mrs. Major Joe Sam Covington, who was stout and wore a cameo breastpin as big as a coffee saucer at her throat, expressed to nobody in particular a desire for a glass of cool water; and almost instantly, it seemed, Judge Priest's Jeff was at her side bowing low and ceremoniously with a brimming dipper in one hand and an itch for the coming tip in the other. When the veterans adjourned back behind Floral Hall for a watermelon cutting, Jeff, grinning and obsequious, arrived at exactly the properly timed moment to receive a whole butt-end of red-hearted, green-rinded lusciousness for his own. Taking the opportunity of a crowded minute about Uncle Isom Woolfolk's barbecued meat stand he bought extensively, and paid for what he bought with a lead half dollar that he had been saving for months against just such a golden chance—a half dollar so palpably leaden that Uncle Isom, discovering it half an hour later, was thrown into a state of intense rage, followed by a period of settled melancholy, coupled with general suspicion of all mankind. Most especially, though, Judge Priest's Jeff concerned himself with the running of the County Trot, being minded to turn his earlier winnings over and over again.

      From the outset Jeff, like most of the fair crowd, had favored Van Wallace's black mare, Minnie May, against the only other entry for the race, Jackson Berry's big roan trotting stallion, Blandville Boy. The judgment of the multitude stood up, too, for the first two heats of the County Trot, alternating in between heats of the two-twenty pace and the free-for-all, were won handily by the smooth-gaited mare. Blandville Boy was feeling his oats and his grooming, and he broke badly each time, for all the hobble harness of leather that was buckled over and under him. Nearly everybody was now betting on Minnie May to take the third and the decisive heat.

      Waiting for it, the crowd spread over the grounds, leaving wide patches of the grandstand empty. The sideshows and the medicine venders enjoyed heavy patronage, and once more the stalled ox and the fatted pig were surrounded by admiring groups. There was a thick jam about the crowning artistic gem of Floral Hall—a crazy quilt with eight thousand different pieces of silk in it, mainly of acutely jarring shades, so that the whole was a thing calculated to blind the eye and benumb the mind.

      The city marshal forcibly calmed down certain exhilarated young bucks from the country—they would be sure to fire off their pistols and yell into every dooryard as they tore home that night, careening in their dusty buggies; but now they were made to restrain themselves. Bananas and cocoanuts advanced steadily in price as the visible supply shrank. There is a type of Southern countryman who, coming to town for a circus day or a fair, first eats extensively of bananas—red bananas preferred; and then, when the raw edge of his hunger is abated, he buys a cocoanut and, after punching out one of its eyes and drinking the sweet milky whey, cracks the shell apart and gorges on the white meat. By now the grass was cumbered with many shattered cocoanut shells, like broken shards; and banana peels, both red and yellow, lay wilted and limp everywhere in the litter underfoot.

      The steam Flyin' Jinny—it would be a carousel farther North—ground unendingly, loaded to its gunwales with family groups. Crap games started in remote spots and fights broke out. In a far shadow of the fence behind the stables one darky with brass knuckles felled another, then broke and ran. He scuttled over the fence like a fox squirrel, with a bullet from a constable's big blue-barreled revolver spatting into the paling six indies below him as he scaled the top and lit flying on the other side. Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, dragging his Springfield by the barrel, began a long story touching on what he once heard General Buckner say to General Breckinridge, went to sleep in the middle of it, enjoyed a refreshing nap of twenty minutes, woke up with a start and resumed the anecdote at the exact point where he left off—“An' 'en General Breckinridge he says to General Buckner, he says, 'General—'”

      But Judge Priest's Jeff disentangled himself from the center of things, and took a quiet walk up toward the stables to see what might be seen and to hear what might be heard, as befitting one who was speculating heavily and needed all available information to guide him. What he saw was Van Wallace, owner of the mare, and Jackson Berry, owner of the studhorse, slipping furtively into an empty feed-shed. As they vanished within Van Wallace looked about him cautiously, but Jeff had already dived to shelter alongside the shed and was squatting on a pile of stable scrapings, where a swarm of flies flickered above an empty pint flask and watermelon rinds were curling up and drying in the sun like old shoesoles. Jeff had seen something. Now he applied his ear to a crack between the planks of the feedshed and heard something.

      For two minutes the supposed rivals confabbed busily in the shelter of a broken hay-'rack. Then, suddenly taking alarm without cause, they both poked their heads out at the door and looked about them searchingly—right and left. There wasn't time for Jeff to get away. He only had a second's or two seconds' warning; but all the conspirators saw as they issued forth from the scene of their intrigue was a small darky in clothes much too large for him lying alongside the shed in a sprawled huddle, with one loose sleeve over his face and one black forefinger shoved like a snake's head down the neck of a flat pocket-flask. Above this figure the flies were buzzing in a greedy cloud.

      “Just some nigger full of gin that fell down there to sleep it off,” said Van Wallace. And he would have gone on; but Berry, who was a tall red-faced, horsy man—a blusterer on the surface and a born coward inside—booted the sleeper in the ribs with his toe.

      “Here, boy!” he commanded. “Wake up here!” And he nudged him again hard.

      The negro only flinched from the kicks, then rolled farther over on his side and mumbled through a snore.

      “Couldn't hear it thunder,” said Berry reassured. “Well, let's get away from here.”

      “You bet!” said Van Wallace fervently. “No use takin' chances by bein' caught talkin' together. Anyhow, they'll be ringing the startin' bell in a minute or two.”

      “Don't forget, now!” counseled Berry as Wallace started off, making by a roundabout and devious way for his own stable, where Minnie May, hitched to her sulky and with her legs bandaged, was being walked back and forth by a stable boy.

      “Don't you worry; I won't!” said Wallace; and Berry grinned joyously and vanished in the opposite direction, behind the handy feedshed.

      On the instant that both of them disappeared Judge Priest's Jeff rose to his feet, magically changing from a drunken darky to an alert and flying black Mercury. His feet hardly hit the high places as he streaked it for the grandstand—looking for Judge Priest as hard as he could look.

      Nearly there he ran into Captain Buck Owings. Captain Buck Owings was a quiet, grayish man, who from time to time in the course of a busy life as a steamboat pilot and master had had occasion to shoot at or into divers persons. Captain Buck Owings had a magnificent capacity for attending strictly to his own business and not allowing anybody else to attend to it. He was commonly classified as dangerous when irritated—and tolerably easy to irritate.

      “Cap'n Buck! Cap'n Buck!” sputtered

      Jeff, so excited that he stuttered. “P-please, suh, is you seen my boss—Jedge Priest? I suttinly must see him right away. This here next heat is goin' to be thro wed.”

      It was rarely that Captain Buck Owings raised his voice above a low, deliberate drawl. He raised it a trifle

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