Old Man Curry

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!