BY A HAIR 68 THE LAST CHANCE 99 SANGUINARY JEREMIAH 128 ELIPHAZ, LATE FAIRFAX 150 THE REDEMPTION HANDICAP 175 A MORNING WORKOUT 198 EGYPTIAN CORN 223 THE MODERN JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON 247 OLD MAN CURRY LEVELLING WITH ELISHA The Bald-faced Kid shivered as he roosted on the paddock fence, for the dawn was raw and cold and his overcoat was hanging in the back room of a pawnbroker's establishment some two hundred miles away. Circumstances which he had unsuccessfully endeavoured to control made it a question of the overcoat or the old-fashioned silver stop watch. The choice was not a difficult one. "I can get along without the benny," reflected the Kid, "because I'm naturally warm-blooded, but take away my old white kettle and I'm a soldier gone to war without his gun." In the language of the tack rooms, the Bald-faced Kid was a hustler--a free lance of the turf, playing a lone hand against owner and bookmaker, matching his wits against secret combinations and operating upon the wheedled capital of the credulous. He was sometimes called a tout, but this he resented bitterly, explaining the difference between a tout and a hustler. "A tout will have six suckers betting on six different horses in the same race. Five of 'em have to lose. A tout is guessing all the time, but a hustler is likely to know something. One horse a race is my motto--sometimes only one horse a day, but I've got to know something before I lead the sucker into the betting ring.... What is a sucker? Huh! He's a foolish party who bets money for a wise boy because the wise boy never has any money to bet for himself!" Picking winners was the serious business of the Kid's life, hence the early morning hours and the careful scrutiny of the daybreak workouts. Bitter experience had taught the Kid the error of trusting men, but up to a certain point he trusted horses. He depended upon his silver stop watch to divide the thoroughbreds into two classes--those which were short of work and those which were ready. The former he eliminated as unfit; the latter he ceased to trust, for the horse which is ready becomes a betting tool, at the mercy of the bookmaker, the owner, and the strong-armed little jockey. "Which one are they going to bet on to-day?" was the Kid's eternal question. "Which one is going to carry the checks?" Across the track, dim in the gray light, a horse broke swiftly from a canter into the full racing stride. Something clicked in the Kid's palm. "Got you!" he muttered.