The Jungle Circuit has always been peculiarly rich in catch-as-catch-can burglars and daylight highwaymen, but after they had studied Mr. Pitkin's system closely these gentlemen refused to enter into a protective alliance with him, for, as Grouchy O'Connor remarked, "the sucker hadn't never heard that there ought to be honour among thieves." Pitkin would shear a black sheep as close to the shivering hide as he would shear a white one, and the horses of the Pitkin stable performed according to price, according to investment, according to orders--according to everything in the world but agreement, racing form, and honest endeavour. In ways that are dark and tricks that are vain the heathen Chinee at the top of his heathenish bent would have been no match for Mr. Henry M. Pitkin, who could have taken the shirt away from a Chinese river pirate. The double-cross would have been an excellent racing trade-mark for the Pitkin stable, because Pitkin had double-crossed every one who ever trusted him, every one with whom he had come in contact. He had even double-crossed old Gabe Johnson, his negro trainer, and the history of that cross will furnish an accurate index on the smallness of Pitkin's soul. How such a decent old darky as Uncle Gabe ever came to be associated with white trash of the Pitkin variety is another and longer story. It is enough to say that Pitkin hired the old man when he was hungry and thereafter frequently reminded him of that fact. They had been together for three years when they came to the Jungle Circuit--Pitkin rat-eyed, furtive, mysterious as a crow, and scheming always for his own pocket; Uncle Gabe quiet, efficient, inclined to be religious, knowing his place and keeping it and attending strictly to business, namely, the conditioning of the Pitkin horses for the track. Uncle Gabe treated all white men with scrupulous respect, even touching his hat brim every time Pitkin spoke to him. He was a real trainer of a school fast passing away, and at rare intervals he spoke of the "quality folks down yondeh" for whom he had handled thoroughbreds, glimpses of his history which made his present occupation seem all the stranger by contrast. Some of the horsemen of the Jungle Circuit pretended to believe that Pitkin kept a negro trainer because he was too mean to get along with a white man, but this was only partly true. He kept Gabe because he had a keen appreciation of the old man's knowledge of horseflesh, and in addition to this Gabe was cheap at the price--fifty dollars a month and his board, and only part of that fifty paid, for it hurt Pitkin to part with money under any circumstances. It was by skipping pay days that he came to owe Uncle Gabe the not unimportant sum of five hundred dollars, and it was by trying to collect this amount that the aged trainer became also the owner of a race horse.