Alfred Ollivant - Boy Woodburn

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BOY WOODBURN

By the same Author:

BOB, SON OF BATTLE
THE GENTLEMAN
REDCOAT CAPTAIN
THE ROYAL ROAD
THE BROWN MARE

[Illustration: FOUR-POUND-THE-SECOND

"Look at that head-piece. He's all the while a-thinkin', that hoss is.
That's the way he's bred."]

BOY
WOODBURN

A STORY OF THE
SUSSEX DOWNS

By
ALFRED OLLIVANT

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1918

Copyright, 1918, by

Doubleday, Page & Company

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages including the Scandinavian

TO
THE MOTHER
OF
LAUGHTER

CONTENTS

PART I
THE GIRL AND THE FOAL

BOOK I
OLD MAT

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Trainer 3

II. Boy Shows Her Metal 8

III. Goosey Gander 13

IV. The Gypsy's Mare 19

V. Across the Downs 23

VI. Putnam's 32

VII. Ally Sloper 39

VIII. The Great Beast 44

BOOK II
THE WATCHER

IX. Patience Longstaffe 55

X. Her Daughter 60

XI. Brazil Silver 69

XII. The Eton Man 76

XIII. Boy in Her Eyrie 81

XIV. Old Man Badger 90

XV. The Three J's 95

XVI. The Fat Man 100

XVII. Boy Sees a Vision 105

XVIII. Two on the Downs 114

XIX. Cannibal's National 120

XX. The Paddock Close 128

BOOK III
SILVER MUG

XXI. The Berserker Colt 137

XXII. Ragamuffin 147

XXIII. The Duke's Hounds 153

XXIV. The Man With the Gamp 160

XXV. The Black Bird 170

XXVI. Jim Silver Goes To War 179

XXVII. The Fire in the Dusk 185

XXVIII. The Fat Man Goes Under 191

Battle 193

PART II
THE WOMAN AND THE HORSE

BOOK IV
THE TRIAL

XXIX. Albert Edward 201

XXX. The Bible Class 208

XXXI. God Almighty's Mustang 221

XXXII. The Fat Man Emerges 229

XXXIII. The Gallop 234

XXXIV. The Lover's Quarrel 245

BOOK V
MONKEY BRAND

XXXV. The Dancer's Son 255

XXXVI. Monkey Sulks 262

XXXVII. The Early Bird 268

XXXVIII. Ikey's Own 272

XXXIX. The Queen of Kentucky 278

XL. Man and Woman 285

XLI. The Spider's Web 290

XLII. The Doper 294

XLIII. The Loose-box 299

XLIV. Monkey Brand Gets the Sack 306

BOOK VI
MOCASSIN

XLV. Aintree 313

XLVI. The Sefton Arms 317

XLVII. On the Course 324

XLVIII. The Star-spangled Jacket 336

XLIX. The Last Card 356

L. The Fat Man Takes His Ticket 365

LI. Old Mat on Heaven and Earth 374

LII. Putnam's Once More 376

PART I

THE GIRL AND THE FOAL

BOOK I

OLD MAT

CHAPTER I

The Trainer

The Spring Meeting at Polefax was always Old Mat's day out. And it was
part of the accepted order of things that he should come to the Meeting
driving in his American buggy behind the horse with which later in the
day he meant to win the Hunters' Steeplechase.

There were very few sporting men who remembered the day when Mat had not
been a leading figure in the racing world. For sixty years he had been
training jumpers, and he looked as if he would continue to train them
till the end of time. Once it may be supposed he had been Young Mat, but
he had been Old Mat now as long as most could recall. In all these
years, indeed, he had changed very little. He trained his horses to-day
at Putnam's, the farm in the village of Cuckmere, over the green billow
of the Downs, just as he had done in the beginning; and he trained the
same kind of horses in the same kind of way, which was entirely
different from that of other trainers.

Mat rarely had a good horse in his stable, and never a bad one. He kept
his horses in old barns and farm-stables, turning them out on to the
chalk Downs in all seasons of the year with little shelter but the lee
of a haystack or an occasional shed.

"I don't keep my hosses in no 'ot-house," he would say. "A hoss wants a
heart, not a hot-water bottle. He'll get it on the chalk, let him be."

But if his horses were rough, they stood up and they stayed.

And that was all he wanted: for Mat never trained anything but jumpers.

"Flat racin' for flats," was a favourite saying of his. "'Chasin' for
class."

And many of his wins have become historic; notably the Grand National in
the year of Sedan--when Merry Andrew, who had three legs and one lung,
so the story went, won for him by two lengths; and thirty years later
Cannibal's still more astounding victory in the same race, when Monkey
Brand out-jockeyed Chukkers Childers, the American crack, in one of the
most desperate set-to's in the annals of Aintree.

There is a famous caricature of Mat leading in the winner on the first
of these occasions. He looked then much as he does to-day--like
Humpty-Dumpty of the nursery ballad; but he grew always more
Humpty-Dumptyish with the years. His round red head, bald and shining,
sat like a poached egg between the enormous spread of his shoulders. His
neck, always short, grew shorter and finally disappeared; and his crisp,
pink face had the air of one who finds breathing a perpetually
increasing difficulty.

In build Mat was very short, and very broad; and his legs were so thin
that it was no wonder they were somewhat bowed beneath their load. Far
back in the Dark Ages, when his body was more on a par with his legs,
it was rumoured that Mat had himself won hunt-races.

"Then my body went on, or rayther spread out," he would tell his
intimates, "while me legs stayed where they was. So Mat become a trainer
'stead of a jockey."

And Mat's legs were not the only part of him that had stayed as they
were in those remote days. He wore the same clothes now as then; or if
not the identical clothes, as many averred, clothes of the identical
cut. Younger trainers, who were fond of having their joke with the old
man, would often inquire of him,

"Who's your tailor, Mat?"

To which the invariable answer in the familiar wheeze was,

"He died reign o' William the Fo'th, my son. Don't you wish he'd lived
to show _your_ Snips how to cut a coat?"

Mat indeed was distinctly early Victorian in his dress. He always wore a
stock instead of a tie, and the felt hat with a flat top and
broad-curled brim, which a rising young Radical statesman, for whom Mat
had once trained, had imitated. He walked with a curious and
characteristic lilt, as of a boy, rising on his toes as though reaching
after heaven. And his eye underlined, as it were, the mischievous gaiety
of his walk. It was a baffling eye: bright, blue, merry as a robin's and
very shrewd; "the eye of a cherubim," Mat once described it himself.
When it turned on you, grave yet twinkling, you knew that it summed you
up, saw through you, was aware of your wickedness, condoned it, pitied
you, comforted you, and bade you rejoice in the world and its crooked
ways. It was an innocent eye, a dewy eye, and yet a mighty knowing one.
Whether the owner of the eye was a saint or a sinner you could not
affirm. Therefore it bade you beware what you said, what you did, and
not least, what you thought, while its mild yet radiant beams were
turned upon you. One thing was quite certain: that blue eye had seen a
great deal. More, it had enjoyed the seeing. And its owner had a way of
wiping it as he ended some tale of rascality, successful or exposed,
with his habitual cliche--"I wep a tear. I did reelly," which made you
realize that the only tears it had in fact ever wept were in truth tears
of suppressed laughter over the foolishness of mortals. It had never
mourned over a lost sinner, though it had often winked over one. And it
had profound and impenetrable reserves.

And the trainer's ups and downs in life, if all the stories were true,
had been amazing. At one time it was said that he was worth a cool
L100,000, and at another a minus quantity. But rich or poor, he never
changed his life by an iota, jogging soberly along his appointed if
somewhat tortuous way.

Old Mat was nothing if not a character. And if he was by no means more
scrupulous than the rest of his profession, he had certain steadfast
virtues not always to be found in his brethren of the Turf. He never
drank, he never smoked, and, win or lose, he never swore. A great
raconteur, his stories were most amusing and never obscene. And when
late in life he married Patience Longstaffe, the daughter of the
well-known preacher of _God-First_ farm on the North of the Downs
between Lewes and Cuckmere, nobody was much surprised. As Mr. Haggard,
the Vicar of Cuckmere, said,

"Mat could always be expected to do the unexpected."

That Patience Longstaffe, the Puritan daughter of Preacher Joe, should
marry the old trainer was a matter of amazement to all. But she did; and
nobody had reason to think that she ever regretted it.

Patience Longstaffe became in time Ma Woodburn, though she remained
Patience Longstaffe still.

Mat and his Ma had one daughter between them, known to all and sundry in
the racing world as Boy Woodburn.

CHAPTER II

Boy Shows Her Metal

The Polefax Meeting was small and friendly; never taken very seriously
by the fraternity, and left almost entirely to local talent. Old Mat
described it always as reg'lar old-fashioned. The countryside made of it
an annual holiday and flocked to the fields under Polefax Beacon to see
the horses and to enjoy Old Mat, who was the accepted centre-piece.

The Grand Stand was formed of Sussex wains drawn up end to end; and the
Paddock was just roped off.

Outside the ropes, at the foot of the huge green wave of the Downs, were
the merry-go-rounds, the cocoanut-shies and wagons of the gypsies; while
under a group of elms the carts and carriages of the local farmers and
gentry were drawn up.

There, too, of course, was Mat's American buggy, a spidery concern, made
to the old man's design, seated like a double dog-cart, and looking
amongst the solid carts and carriages that flanked it like a ghost
amongst mortals. It was the most observed vehicle of them all, partly
because of its unusual make and shape, and partly because that was the
famous shay in which year after year Mat drove over the Downs from
Putnam's behind the horse with which he meant to win the Hunters'
Steeplechase.

That race, always the last item on the programme, and the most
looked-for, was about to begin.

The quality in the Paddock were climbing to their places in the wagons.
The voices of the bookies were raised vociferously. The crowd jostled
about them, eager to back Old Mat's old horse, Goosey Gander. They
believed in the old man's luck, they believed in the old man's horse,
they believed in the old man's jockey, Monkey Brand, almost as famous
locally as his master.

A boy slipped into the Paddock and began to bet surreptitiously behind
the dressing-tent.

He was fair, slight, and horsey. His stiff, tight choker, his horse-shoe
pin, the cut of his breeches, his alert and wary air of a man of the
world, all betrayed the racing-lad. From the corner of his mouth hung a
cigarette waggishly a-rake; and his billycock had just the correct and
knowing cock. He kept well under the lee of the tent; and if he was
brazen, it was clear that he was sinning and fearful of discovery: for
he had one eye always on the watch for the Avenging Angel who might
swoop down on him at any moment.

"What price, Goosey Gander?" he asked in a voice harsh and cracking.

"Give you threes," replied the bookie.

"Do it in dollars," replied the boy, with the magnificent sang-froid of
one who goes to ruin as a man of blood should go.

"And again?" asked the bookie.

The answer was never forth-coming; for the Avenging Angel, not
unexpected, swept down upon the sinner with flaming sword.

She was in the shape of a girl about the lad's own age and size, fair as
was he and slight, a flapper with a short thick straw-coloured plait.
She came round the tent swift and terrible as a rapier, her steel-gray
eyes flashing and fierce. Such determination on so young a face the
bookie thought he had never seen. For a moment he expected to see her
strike her victim. And the boy apparently expected the same, for he
cowered back, putting up his hands as though to ward off a blow.

"Got you, sonny," said the bookie, and bolted with a half-hearted grin.

The girl never hesitated. She leapt upon her victim, keen and direct as
a tigress.

"Give me that ticket!" she ordered in a deep bass voice whose
earnestness was almost awful.

The boy had recovered from his first shock.

"It were only----"

"Give me that ticket!"

Reluctantly the lad obeyed.

"Spit out that cigarette!"

Again he obeyed. The girl put her broad flat heel on the chewed remnant
and churned it into the mud.

"Any others?"

"No, Miss."

"You have!--I'll search you."

"Only a packet o' woodbines, Miss."

She pocketed them remorselessly.

"Leave the paddock!"

The boy went, slow and sullen. Then he became aware of people watching
beyond the ropes and recovered himself with a jerk.

"Yes, Miss. Very good, Miss," he cried cheerfully, touched his hat, and
began to run as on an errand.

It was a pretty piece of bluff. Boy Woodburn, in spite of her anger,
marked it down to the credit side of the lad's account. When he was
collared, Albert Edward kept his head. That would help him one day when
he was caught in a squeeze in a big race and had to jockey to get
through.

The roar from the crowd told her the race had started. She flashed back
to the ropes, a slight figure, in simple blue serge, the radiant plait
of her hair flapping as she ran.

Old Mat, standing a little behind the crowd at the ropes, had watched
the scene.

"One o' my lads," he said in his mysterious wheeze to the big young man
at his side. "'No smokin', swearin', or bettin' in _my_ stable!'--that's
Miss Boy's rule. Gets it from Mar." The girl passed them swiftly and the
old man hid his betting-book behind him. "Well, Boy, sossed him?" he
asked innocently.

"He's not the only one," retorted the girl.

"O, I'm not bettin', Boy," pleaded the old man in the whimsical whine
which he adopted when addressing his daughter. "Don't go and tell your
mother that now. It wouldn't be right. Reelly it wouldn't. I'm only
makin' a note or two for Mr. Silver here."

The girl was lost in the crowd by the ropes.

"She'd ha' come and sossed me, too, only you was with me," wheezed the
old man confidentially. "You stick close to me, there's a dear. You're
like a putection to an old man. She won't do me no 'arm while you're by,
de we."

The other smiled. He was an upstanding young man, with the shoulders and
the bearing of a soldier; and there was something large and slow and
elemental about him. He wore white riding-breeches and tan-coloured
boots. The blood polo-pony under the elms, with the little group of
coachmen and grooms gathered in an admiring circle round him, was his:
and those who had seen Mat drive on to the course in the morning knew
that the young man had ridden over the Downs from Putnam's with him.

Boy took her place at the ropes.

The young man found himself standing at her side. He did not watch the
race. That keen young face at his side, so self-contained and strong,
absorbed him.

Once the girl looked up swiftly, and he was aware of her gray eyes, that
flashed in his and were instantly withdrawn, to follow the bob of the
heads of the jockeys lifting over a fence on the far side of the course.

"Lul-like my glasses?" he asked, with a slight stutter.

"No," she said. "I can see."

Later she climbed on to the top of an upturned hamper. As the horses
made the turn for home, he heard her draw her breath.

"Is he down?" he asked.

"No," she said. "He's got 'em beat."

"How do you know?"

"He's begun to ride," replied the girl briefly.

Old Mat was nibbling his pencil in the rear.

"How's it going, Boy?" he wheezed.

"All right," replied the girl. "He's through now."

The dirty green of the Woodburn colours topped the last fence; and
Goosey Gander came lolloping down the straight, his jockey, head on
shoulder, wary to the end, easing him home.

"That's a little bit o' better," said Old Mat comfortably, totting up
his accounts.

"By Jove, he's a fine horseman!" cried the young man with boyish
enthusiasm.

"Monkey Brand!" said the girl, without emotion. "One of the has-beens, I
should say."

CHAPTER III

Goosey Gander

Boy Woodburn came leading the winner through the cheering crowd.

It was Old Mat's horse, Old Mat's race; and they had all got a bit on.
They were pleased with themselves, pleased with the horse, pleased with
the jockey, who, perched up aloft on the great sweating bay, his hands
still mechanically at work, his little dark face shining, chaffed his
chaffers in the voice of a Punchinello.

"Get off him, Monkey," called a joker; "get off quick afore he falls to
pieces. _Do!_"

"Same as you do when I get talkin' to ye!" retorted the little jockey.

There was a roar of laughter at the expense of the joker, who turned
suddenly nasty.

"Who said Chukkers?" he cried.

There was an instant of silence, and then some groans.

"Not me," replied the little jockey grimly.

A snigger rippled through the crowd.

"What you done with your old friend this time, Monkey?" somebody asked.
"Laid him out again lately?"

"No such luck," the other answered. "He's beat it."

"Where is he then?"

The little jockey tossed his head backward.

"Gone back to God's Own Country to find his birf certificate. No flowers
by request."

The reference was to the fact that Monkey's old-time enemy, the
vanquished of Cannibal's National fifteen years before, Chukkers, the
greatest of cross-country riders, was an American citizen of uncertain
origin.

The thrust was received with a fresh outburst from the hilarious crowd.
Monkey Brand's relations with his "old friend" were well known to all.

The little jockey prepared to dismount.

Amid a burst of jeers and cheers, he threw his leg over his horse's
withers, slipped to the ground, stripped off the saddle, and limped off
to the weighing machine.

Old Mat watched him go.

"On his hoss, on his day," he muttered confidentially to the young man,
"Monkey Brand can show his heels to most of 'em yet."

"How old is he?" asked the other.

The old trainer frowned and shook his head mysteriously.

"You must never ask a jockey his age, no more than a woman," he said.
"He come to me the year I was married, and that's twenty year since come
Michaelmas. And when he come he looked much just the very same as he do
now. Might ha' been any age atween ten and a hundred." He dropped his
voice. "Only way he shows his years--he ain't so fond of fallin' as he
was. And I don't blame him. Round about forty a man begins to get a bit
brittle like."

He lilted off after his jockey.

Goosey Gander stood stripped of everything but his bridle, with dark
flanks and lowered head reaching at his bit.

He was a typical Woodburn horse: a great upstanding bay, full of bone
and quality. But he showed wear. A tube was in his throat, a
leather-boot on each fore-leg, and he was bandaged to the hocks, both of
which showed the serrated lines of the firing iron.

The girl in front of him pulled his sweating ears. Jim Silver watched
with admiration not untinged with awe her stern young face. She was
entirely unconscious of his gaze, and unaware of the people thronging
her. Her whole spirit was concentrated on the dark and sweating head,
trying to rub against her knees. The crowd pressed in upon her
inconveniently.

"Give the lady a chance to breathe," cried the young man in his large
and lazy voice.

The crowd withdrew a little.

"Say, Guv'nor!--do they call you Tinee?" called one.

"No; his name's Silver," said another. "They calls you Silver Mug, don't
they, mister?"

"I believe so," replied the young man, unmoved.

He was fair game: for he was very big, clearly good-humoured, spick and
span to a fault, and a member of another class.

They gathered with glee to the baiting.

"That ain't because of his name, stoopid. That's because he's got a
silver linin' to his mug, ain't it, sir?"

"Silver!--gold, you mean. 'E breathes gold, that bloke do, and then it
settles on the roof of his jaw. Say, Blokey, open your mug and let's
'ave a peep. I'll put a penny in."

* * * * *

A little red ball was run up an improvised pole. Old Mat was waving.

"All right," he called.

The girl led Goosey Gander out of the Paddock into the field at the
back. Women in parti-coloured shawls selling oranges, labourers,
riff-raff, and children were gathered about the merry-go-rounds and
cocoanut-shies, listening apathetically to the hoarse exhortations of
the owners to come and try their luck.

Silver followed the girl thoughtfully.

She led the winner past the side-shows toward the group of stately elms
under which the carriages and carts were gathered.

The ejected stable-lad, Albert Edward, now in his shirt-sleeves, came
toward her, carrying a bucket. The girl rinsed out the old horse's
mouth. Then with swift, accustomed fingers she unlaced the
leather-boots, and set to work to unwind a bandage.

Jim Silver watched her attentively and then began clumsily on the other
bandage.

"No," she said. "Like so," and taking it from him unwound it in a trice.

The old horse shook himself.

"Go and fetch his rug from the buggy," ordered the girl, addressing
Albert.

The lad went off.

The young man took off his long-waisted gray coat and flung it over the
horse's loins, lining down.

Boy's gray eyes softened. Then she let go the horse's head, took the
coat off swiftly, and as swiftly replaced it, lining upward.

"Thank-you," she said.

She glanced over her shoulder.

"Will you lead him up and down, while I go and fetch his rug?" she said.
"That kid'll be all day."

"Rather!" replied the young man, with the fervour of a child to whom a
pony has been entrusted for the first time.

The girl's neat slight blue-serge figure made off for the elms and the
carriages. Her back turned to the young man, the sternness left her
face, and she smiled.

A blue-and-black sheep-dog, shaggy as a bear, and as big, leashed to the
wheel of the buggy, began to whimper and to whine with furious ecstasy.
The big dog's big soul seemed to burst within him as the Angel of the
Keys drew near. He had no tail to wag, so he wagged his whole body,
putting back his ears, and laughing with his heart as he lifted his
joyous face to his mistress.

She rested her hand a moment on his head.

"Billy Bluff," she said. "Steady, you ass!--How can I loose
you?--There!"

She eased the spring of his leash. He was off with a bound, gambolling
about her like a wave of the sea.

Albert was messing about the buggy in leisurely fashion.

"Hurry, Albert!" came the deep voice.

"Yes, Miss," replied the other, more leisurely than ever.

"Bring that clothes-brush along and brush Mr. Silver's coat when you've
finished fooling," she said.

Then she took the rug from the buggy and went back to Goosey Gander.

The young man in his pink shirt-sleeves, his baggy white breeches, and
polo boots, was walking the old horse gravely up and down, talking to
him.

His back was to the girl, and she watched him with kind eyes.

She was thinking how like he and Goosey Gander were: good big uns both,
as her father would say; clean-bred, large-boned, great-hearted,
quiet-mannered. But the man was just coming into his prime, while the
horse was well past his.

"Hullo, Bill, old boy," said the young man in his quiet voice.

Billy answered deeply.

Silver had only come to Putnam's the night before for the first time,
but he and Billy Bluff were friends already. Boy Woodburn noticed it
with swift appreciation. In her young and entirely fallacious judgment
there were few shrewder judges of character than Big Dog Billy.

She paused a moment, pretending to shift the rug on her arm.

The group of three before her held her eye and pleased her mind. Her
face was full of beauty as she watched, the spirit peeping shyly forth.

That horse, that man, that dog, so physically remote from each other,
yet spiritually akin, filled her young heart with the same sense of
satisfaction as did her familiar and well-beloved Downs. She felt the
goodness of them and rejoiced in it. All three were sound in body and in
spirit, honest, healthy, and therefore happy as the good red earth from
which they came.

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