Hardshell Gaines looked straight ahead, unseeing, unhearing, and as he walked past the furious gambler he hummed contentedly; and even Big Jim recognized the long metre doxology. “JAUNDICE’S” LAST RACE “JAUNDICE’S” LAST RACE There remains some of the Christ-spirit in the worst of us, perhaps, but the most optimistic of missionaries would hardly have assayed the soul of “Jaundice” O’Keefe with the hope of discovering even a trace of that quality. Jaundice was a product, or by-product, of the race-track. He had run away from his home in St. Louis at the age of eleven, to escape the beatings administered by a drinking father and a sodden mother, and had found refuge in a freight car loaded with horses which were being shipped to a race-meeting in New Orleans. Two hostlers were drinking from a bottle when not sleeping on a pile of hay. They welcomed the boy, gave him a drink, fed him, and allowed him to burrow into the hay for warmth. Perhaps it was kindness, perhaps they saw in him a means of escaping the work of feeding and watering horses during the long journey. Jaundice was happy. He loved horses. Perhaps that was the remaining trace of good after the rest had been bred or beaten out of him. He had loved the horses which drew the coal wagon his father drove when sober, and the sight of the trim thoroughbreds filled him with awed admiration. Arrived in New Orleans, he followed the horses to the race-track, found refuge in the stables, and was adopted into the army of those who follow the races. A year later he had acquired a master’s degree in profanity and obscenity and developed a ratlike viciousness in fighting when cornered. He was undersized and undernourished, with the remnants of a fighting spirit from generations of Irish sustaining him. Stable-boys learned to fear the savageness of his methods and left him alone. Occasionally a trainer or stable boss beat him with a whip and cursed him. Instinctively horses loved him. In one year he was an exercise boy. At fourteen, with all the wickedness and viciousness of the race-track and stable concentrated in him, he could ride and was awarded a jockey’s license and a suit of gay-colored silks. He rode winners. Winning, with Jaundice, was unselfish. He rode not for personal glory or for money, but for the honor of the horse on which he was mounted. When he was beaten he gulped dry sobs and went away with his mount to console it.