"I hope I ain't agoin' to git it," said Old Man Curry. "I aim to live so's to miss it." He lapsed into silence, and the straw began to twitch to the slow grinding motion of his lower jaw. A very stupid man might have seen at a glance that Curry did not wish to be disturbed, but for some reason or other Pitkin felt the need of conversation. "I've been thinking," said he, "that my racing colours are too plain--yellow jacket, white sleeves, white cap. There's so many yellows and whites that people get 'em mixed up. How would it do if I put a design on the back of the jacket--something that would tell people at a glance that the horse was from the Pitkin stable?" Old Man Curry closed his book. "You want 'em to know which is your hosses?" he asked. "Is that the idee?" "Sure," answered Pitkin. "I was trying to think up a design of some kind. Lucky Baldwin, used to have a Maltese cross. How would it do if I had a rooster or a rising sun or a crescent sewed on to the back of the jacket?" Old Man Curry pretended to give serious thought to the problem. "Roosters an' risin' suns don't mean anything," said he judicially. "An emblem ought to _mean_ something to the public--it ought to stand for something." "Yes," said Pitkin, "but what can I get that will sort of identify me and my horses?" "Well," said the old man, "mebbe I can suggest a dee-sign that'll fill the bill." He picked up a bit of shingle and drew a pencil from his pocket. "How would this do? Two straight marks this way, Pitkin, an' two straight marks _that_ way--and nobody'd ever mistake your hosses--nobody that's been watchin' the way they run." Pitkin craned his neck and snorted with wrath. Old Man Curry had drawn two crosses side by side, and the inference was plain. "That's your notion, is it?" said he, rising. "Well, one thing is a mortal cinch, Curry; you'll never catch me psalm singing round a race track, and any time I want to preach, I'll hire a church! Put that in your pipe and smoke it!" "I ain't smokin', thankee, I'm chewin' mostly," remarked the old gentleman to Pitkin's vanishing coat tails. "Well, now, looks like I made him sort of angry. What is it that Solomon wrote 'bout the anger of a fool?" They used to say that the meanest man in the world was the Mean Man from Maine, but this is a slander on the good old Pine Tree State, for Henry M. Pitkin never was east of the Mississippi River in his life. He claimed Iowa as his native soil, and all that Iowa could do about it was to issue a warrant for his arrest on a charge connected with the misappropriation of funds. Young Mr. Pitkin escaped over the State line westward, beating the said warrant a nose in a whipping finish, and after a devious career covering many years and many States he turned up on the Jungle Circuit, bringing with him a string of horses, a gentle, soft-spoken old negro trainer, an Irish jockey named Mulligan, and two stable hands, each as black as the ace of spades.