some two hundred miles away.
Circumstances which he had unsuccessfully endeavoured to control made
it a question of the overcoat or the old-fashioned silver stop watch.
The choice was not a difficult one. "I can get along without the
benny," reflected the Kid, "because I'm naturally warm-blooded, but
take away my old white kettle and I'm a soldier gone to war without
his gun."

In the language of the tack rooms, the Bald-faced Kid was a
hustler--a free lance of the turf, playing a lone hand against owner
and bookmaker, matching his wits against secret combinations and
operating upon the wheedled capital of the credulous. He was
sometimes called a tout, but this he resented bitterly, explaining
the difference between a tout and a hustler. "A tout will have six
suckers betting on six different horses in the same race. Five of
'em have to lose. A tout is guessing all the time, but a hustler is
likely to know something. One horse a race is my motto--sometimes
only one horse a day, but I've got to know something before I lead
the sucker into the betting ring.... What is a sucker? Huh! He's a
foolish party who bets money for a wise boy because the wise boy
never has any money to bet for himself!"

Picking winners was the serious business of the Kid's life, hence the
early morning hours and the careful scrutiny of the daybreak
workouts.

Bitter experience had taught the Kid the error of trusting men, but
up to a certain point he trusted horses. He depended upon his silver
stop watch to divide the thoroughbreds into two classes--those which
were short of work and those which were ready. The former he
eliminated as unfit; the latter he ceased to trust, for the horse
which is ready becomes a betting tool, at the mercy of the bookmaker,
the owner, and the strong-armed little jockey.

"Which one are they going to bet on to-day?" was the Kid's eternal
question. "Which one is going to carry the checks?"

Across the track, dim in the gray light, a horse broke swiftly from a
canter into the full racing stride. Something clicked in the Kid's
palm.

"Got you!" he muttered.

His eye followed the horse up the back stretch into the gloom of the
upper turn where the flying figure was lost in the deep shade of the
trees. One shadow detached itself from the others and appeared at the
head of the straightaway. The muffled thud of hoofs became audible,
rising in swift crescendo as the shadow resolved itself into a gaunt
bay horse wit