Boy Woodburn Part 7

"Don't 'alf s.h.i.+ne neever!" he gasped. "I reck'n our Mary couldn't 'old 'em."

At the end of the week the Joes returned to Tiger Bay without their coachman.

"Where's my Monkey then?" cried his mother.

"Stayed along o' the 'orses," young Joe answered, unharnessing.

Indeed there was but one walk in life for which the boy was fitted; and the fates had guided him into it young.

It was when he was nineteen that Mat Woodburn found him out.

Monkey had been left at the post in a steeplechase. Old Mat didn't follow the race. Instead he watched the struggle between the lad and the young horse he was riding. Monkey gave a masterly exhibition of patience and tact; and Mat, then in his prime and always on the look-out for riding talent, watched it with grunts of pleasure. Monkey won the battle and went sailing after the field he could not hope to catch, cantering in long after the other horses had got home and gone to bed, as his indignant owner expressed it.

"Fancy turn!" he said. "Very pretty at Islington. You don't ride for me no more."

"Very good, sir," said Monkey, quite unperturbed.

As he left the dressing-room Mat met him.

"Lost your job, ain't you?" he said. "Care to come to me? I'm Mat Woodburn."

Monkey grinned.

"I know you, sir," he said. "Yes, sir. Thank you. I'm there."

Thus began that curious partners.h.i.+p between the two men which had endured twenty-five years.

Always master and man, the two had been singularly intimate from the start, and increasingly so. Both had that elemental quality, somewhat remote from civilization and its standards, which you find amongst those who consort greatly with horses and cattle. Both were simple and astonis.h.i.+ngly shrewd. They loved a horse and understood him as did few: they loved a rogue and were the match for most.

Both had a wide knowledge of human nature, especially on its seamy side, based on a profound experience of life.

Monkey Brand had never been quite in the front rank of cross-country riders. At no time had he emerged from the position of head-lad, nor apparently had he wished to do so. It may be that he lacked ambition, or was aware of his limitations. For his critics said that, consummate horseman though he was, he lacked the strength to hold his own consistently in the first flight. Moreover, just at the one period of his career when it had seemed to the knowing that he might soar, the brilliant Chukkers, then but a lad, had crossed the Atlantic in the train of Ikey Aaronsohnn--to aid the cosmopolitan banker to achieve the end which was to become his consuming life-pa.s.sion; and in a brief while had eclipsed absolutely and forever all his professional rivals.

CHAPTER VII

Ally Sloper

Silver opened the gate into the Paddock Close. Boy pa.s.sed through, leading the old mare.

"Shall I take her?" asked the young man.

"No, thank you," she answered.

In the depths of her eyes there lurked a fugitive twinkle. So far the intercourse between herself and Mr. Silver had consisted in his offering to do things for her and in her refusing his offers.

The Paddock Close stretched away before the girl in the evening light.

On the hill half-a-dozen young horses stampeded in the dusk.

An early swift screeched and swept above her. A great white owl swooped out of the wood and waved away up the hillside, hovering over the gorse.

Under the hedge a scattered troop of children were coming down the slope along the path that led past the little old church among the sycamores.

Boy led the mare up the hillside, her eyes on the flowing green of the hill. The young man followed in her wake, lazy almost as the old mare, who trailed reluctantly behind with clicking shoes. The dreams seemed to have possessed him, too. He did not speak; his eyes were downward; but he was aware all the time of that slight, slow-moving figure walking just in front of him.

Then something seemed to disturb the stillness and ruffle his brooding mind. It was a vague disease as of a coming sickness, and little more.

He emerged from the land of quiet and looked about him, like a stag disturbed by a stalker while grazing.

A man was blundering down the hillside toward them, an easel on his shoulder.

As he came closer his face seemed strangely familiar to the young man.

Where had he seen it? Then he recollected in a flash. It was the face Albert had drawn in caricature on the stable-door--the face of Ally Sloper.

Silver found himself wondering whether the owner of the face was aware of his likeness, crude indeed though real, of his great protagonist.

The fellow was incredibly slovenly. His hair was reddish and bushy about the jaw, and but for his eyes you might have mistaken him for a commonplace tramp. Those eyes held you. They were sensitive, suffering, terrible with the terror of a baffled spirit seeking escape and finding none. In that coa.r.s.e and bloated face they seemed pitifully out of place and crying continually to be released. Indeed, there was something volcanic about the man, as of lava on the boil and ready at any moment to pour forth in destructive torrents. And surely there had been eruptions in the past with fatal consequences.

Now he waddled toward them with an unsavoury grin.

"What luck?" he called, in a somewhat honied voice.

"We won," replied Boy briefly.

She slipped the halter over the head of the old mare, who, too lazy to remove herself, began to graze where she stood.

The artist stood above the girl, showing his broken and dirty teeth, his eyes devouring her.

Silver resented the familiarity of his gaze.

"Mr. Silver, this is Mr. Joses," said the girl.

The difference between the two men amused her: the one clean, keen, beautifully appointed, like a horse got up for a show, the other s.h.a.ggy and sloppy as a farmyard beast.

"Very pleased to make your acquaintance, sir, I'm sure," grinned the artist, bowing elaborately.

The other responded coldly.

Joses had not made a favourable impression on the young man. Boy saw that at once; and it was not difficult to see. For Silver showed his likes and dislikes much as Billy Bluff did.

The girl wished with all her heart that she was standing behind him that she might see if the hair on the back of his neck had risen.

A spirit of mischief overcame her.

"Mr. Joses'll paint your horses for you," she said demurely.