Garrison's Finish Part 11

"Don't try to deny it. You are, are, are! I know it. You took that name because you didn't wish your relatives to know who you were. Why don't you 'fess up? What is the use of concealing it? You've nothing to be ashamed of. You should be proud of your record. I'm proud of it.

Proud--that--that--well, that I rode a race with you to-day. You're hiding your ident.i.ty; afraid of what your uncle and aunt might say--afraid of that Carter Handicap affair. As if we didn't know you always rode as straight as a string." Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng.

Garrison eyed her steadily. His face was white, his breath coming hot and hard. Something was beating--beating in his brain as if striving to jam through. Finally he shook his head.

"No, you're wrong. It's a case of mistaken ident.i.ty. I am not Garrison."

Her gray eyes bored into his. "You really mean that--Billy?"

"I do."

"On your word of honor? By everything you hold most sacred? Take your time in answering."

"It wouldn't matter if I waited till the resurrection. I can't change myself. I'm not Garrison. Faith of a gentleman, I'm not. Honestly, Sue."

He laughed a little nervously.

Again her gray eyes searched his. She sighed. "Of course I take your word."

She fumbled in her bosom and brought forth a piece of paper, carefully smoothing out its crumpled surface. Without a word she handed it to Garrison, and he spread it out on his filly's mane. It was a photograph of a jockey--Billy Garrison. The face was more youthful, care-free.

Otherwise it was a fair likeness.

"You'll admit it looks somewhat like you," said Sue, with great dryness.

Garrison studied it long and carefully. "Yes--I do," he murmured, in a perplexed tone. "A double. Funny, isn't it? Where did you get it?" She laughed a little, flus.h.i.+ng.

"I was silly enough to think you were one and the same, and that you wished to conceal your ident.i.ty from your relatives. So I made occasion to steal it from the book your aunt was about to read. Remember? It was the leaf she thought the major had abstracted."

"I must thank you for your kindness, even though it went astray. May I have it?"

"Ye-es. And you are sure you are not the original?"

"I haven't the slightest recollection of being Billy Garrison,"

reiterated Billy Garrison, wearily and truthfully.

The ride home was mostly one of silence. Both were thinking. As they came within sight of Calvert House the girl turned to him:

"There is one thing you can do--ride. Like glory. Where did you more than learn?"

"Must have been born with me."

"What's bred in the bone will come out in the blood," she quoted enigmatically. She was smiling in a way that made Garrison vaguely uncomfortable.

CHAPTER VII.

SNARK SHOWS HIS FANGS.

Alone in his room that night Garrison endeavored to focus the stray thoughts, suspicions that the day's events had set running through his brain. All Sue Desha had said, and had meant without saying, had been photographed on the sensitized plate of his memory--that plate on which the negatives of the past were but filmy shadows. Now, of them all, the same Garrison was on the sky-line of his imagination.

Could it be possible that Billy Garrison and he were one and the same?

And then that incident of the train. Surely he had heard it before, somewhere in the misty long ago. It seemed, too, as if it had occurred coincidently with the moment he had first looked into those gray eyes.

He laughed nervously to himself.

"If I was Garrison, whoever he was, I wonder what kind of a person I was! They speak of him as if he had been some one--And then Mrs. Calvert said he had disappeared. Perhaps I am Garrison."

Nervously he brought forth the page from the race-track annual Sue had given him, and studied it intently. "Yes, it does look like me. But it may be only a double; a coincidence." He racked his brain for a stray gleam of retrospect, but it was not forthcoming. "It's no use," he sighed wearily, "my life began when I left the hospital. And if I was Garrison, surely I would have been recognized by some one in New York.

"Hold on," he added eagerly, "I remember the first day I was out a man caught me by the arm on Broadway and said: 'h.e.l.lo, Billy!' Let me think.

This Garrison's name was Billy. The initials on my underwear were W.

G.--might be William Garrison instead of the William Good I took. But if so, how did I come to be in the hospital without a friend in the world?

The doctors knew nothing of me. Haven't I any parents or relatives--real relatives, not the ones I am imposing on?"

He sat on the bed endeavoring to recall some of his past life; even the faintest gleam. Then absently he turned over the photograph he held. On the reserve side of the leaf was the record of Billy Garrison. Garrison studied it eagerly.

"Born in eighty-two. Just my age, I guess--though I can't swear how old I am, for I don't know. Stable-boy for James R. Keene. Contract bought by Henry Waterbury. Highest price ever paid for bought-up contract.

H'm! Garrison was worth something. First win on the Gravesend track when seventeen. A native of New York City. H'm! Rode two Suburban winners; two Brooklyn Handicaps; Carter Handicap; the Grand Prix, France; the Metropolitan Handicap; the English Derby--Oh, shucks! I never did all those things; never in G.o.d's world," he grunted wearily. "I wouldn't be here if I had. It's all a mistake. I knew it was. Sue was kidding me.

And yet--they say the real Billy Garrison has disappeared. That's funny, too."

He took a few restless paces about the room. "I'll go down and pump the major," he decided finally. "Maybe unconsciously he'll help me to remember. I'm in a fog. He ought to know Garrison. If I am Billy Garrison--then by my present rank deception I've queered a good record.

But I know I'm not. I'm a n.o.body. A dishonest n.o.body to boot."

Major Calvert was seated by his desk in the great old-fas.h.i.+oned library, intently scanning various racing-sheets and the mult.i.tudinous data of the track. A greater part of his time went to the cultivation of his one hobby--the track and horses--for by reason of his financial standing, having large cotton and real-estate holdings in the State, he could afford to use business as a pastime.

He spent his mornings and afternoons either in his stables or at the extensive training-quarters of his stud, where he was as indefatigable a rail-bird as any pristine stable-boy.

A friendly rivalry had long existed between his neighbor and friend, Colonel Desha, and himself in the matter of horse-flesh. The colonel was from Kentucky--Kentucky origin--and his boast was that his native State could not be surpa.s.sed either in regard to the quality of its horses or women. And, though chivalrous, the colonel always mentioned "women"

last.

"Just look at Rogue and my daughter, Sue, suh," he was wont to say with pardonable pride. "Thoroughbreds both, suh."

It was a matter of record that the colonel, though less financially able, was a better judge of horses than his friend and rival, the major, and at the various county meets it was Major Calvert who always ran second to Colonel Desha's first.

The colonel's faith in Rogue had been vindicated at the last Carter Handicap, and his owner was now stimulating his ambition for higher flights. And thus far, the major, despite all his expenditures and lavish care, could only show one county win for his stable. His friend's success had aroused him, and deep down in his secret heart he vowed he would carry off the next prize Colonel Desha entered for, even if it was one of the cla.s.sic handicaps itself.

Dixie, a three-year-old filly whom he had recently purchased, showed unmistakable evidences of winning cla.s.s in her try-outs, and her owner watched her like a hawk, satisfaction in his heart, biding the time when he might at last show Kentucky that her sister State, Virginia, could breed a horse or two.

"I'll keep Dixie's cla.s.s a secret," he was wont to chuckle to himself, as, perched on the rail in all sorts of weather, he clicked off her time. "I think it is the Carter my learned friend will endeavor to capture again. I'm sure Dixie can give Rogue five seconds in seven furlongs--and a beating. That is, of course," he always concluded, with good-humored vexation, "providing the colonel doesn't pick up in New York an animal that can give Dixie ten seconds. He has a knack of going from better to best."

Now Major Calvert glanced up with a smile as Garrison entered.

"I thought you were in bed, boy. Leave late hours to age. You're looking better these days. I think Doctor Blandly's open-air physic is first-rate, eh? By the way, Crimmins tells me you were out on Midge to-day, and that you ride--well, like Billy Garrison himself. Of course he always exaggerates, but you didn't say you could ride at all. Midge is a hard animal." He eyed Garrison with some curiosity. "Where did you learn to ride? I thought you had had no time nor means for it."

"Oh, I merely know a horse's tail from his head," laughed Garrison indifferently. "Speaking of Garrison, did you ever see him ride, major?"

"How many times have I asked you to say uncle, not major?" reproved Major Calvert. "Don't you feel as if you were my nephew, eh? If there's anything I've left undone--"

"You've been more than kind," blurted out Garrison uncomfortably. "More than good--uncle." He was hating himself. He could not meet the major's kindly eyes.

"Tut, tut, my boy, no fine speeches. Apropos of this Garrison, why are you so interested in him? Wish to emulate him, eh? Yes, I've seen him ride, but only once, when he was a bit of a lad. I fancy Colonel Desha is the one to give you his merits. You know Garrison's old owner, Mr.