' to
the best of 'em, if they hang to the game long enough. Some ain't
satisfied, even after two or three. I was. I got mine, clean and square,
and I ain't ashamed of it. I didn't raise any holler about a chance
shot, and I didn't go exhibitin' myself on the stage. I slid into a
quiet corner for a month or so, and then I dropped into the only thing I
knew how to do, trainin' comers to go against the champs. It ain't like
pullin' down your sixty per cent of the gate receipts, but there's worse
payin' jobs.

Course, there's times when I finds myself up against it. It was durin'
one of them squeezes, not so long ago, that I gets mixed up with
Leonidas Dodge, and all that foolishness. Ah, it wa'n't anything worth
wastin' breath over. You would? Honest? Well, it won't take long, I
guess.

You see, just as my wad looks like it had shrunk so that it would rattle
around in a napkin ring, someone passes me the word that Butterfly was
down to win the third race, at 15 to 1. Now as a general thing I don't
monkey with the ponies, but when I figured up what a few saw-bucks
would do for me at those odds, I makes for the track and takes the high
dive. After it was all over and I was comin' back in the train, with
only a ticket where my roll had been, me feelin' about as gay as a Zulu
on a cake of ice, along comes this Mr. Dodge, that I didn't know from
next Tuesday week.

"Is it as bad as that?" says he, sizin' up the woe on my face. "Because
if it is they ought to give you a pension. What was the horse?"

"Butterfly," says I. "Now laugh!"

"I've got a right to," says he. "I had the same dope."

Well, you see, that made us almost second cousins by marriage and we
started to get acquainted. I looked him over careful but I couldn't
place him within a mile. He had points enough, too. The silk hat was a
veteran, the Prince Albert dated back about four seasons, but the gray
gaiters were down to the minute. Being an easy talker, he might have
been a book agent or a green goods distributor. But somehow his eyes
didn't seem shifty enough for a crook, and no con. man would have lasted
long wearing the kind of hair that he did. It was a sort of lemon
yellow, and he had a lip decoration about two shades lighter, taggin'
him as plain as an "inspected" label on a tin trunk.

"I'm a mitt juggler," says I, "and they call me Shorty McCabe. What's
your line?"

"I've heard of you," he says. "Permit me," and he hands out a pasteboard
that rea