"Red hurtled himself into the ring with his dollar and saw that the price offered against his good thing, the old nag Hush, was 60 to 1. Donnelly needed a bundle of cigarettes and a few drinks pretty badly, but he was game when it came to sticking to his good things, and he slapped his twenty nickels down on Hush with a bookmaker he knew. He took good-naturedly the mocking hoot which the booky gave him for handing in twenty pieces of that kind of metal, and catapulted himself out to the rail just as the horses went away from the post. The race was really something silly for Hush, in the unwieldy field of nineteen horses. Hush led all the way, and pranced under the wire first in a big gallop, pulled double. The boy had Hush up in his lap all the way.
"Red had some difficulty in collecting his $61. The bookmaker knew him well, knew of his taste for rum, and knew also that few of Red’s rare dollars ever found their way to the humble shack of the man’s infirm old Irish mother.
"’I believe I’ll just pinch this out on you, Red,’ said the booky to him, ’and pass it along to the old lady when I go in to-night. It won’t do you any good.’
"’Come to taw,’ replied Red. ’I want to put thirty or forty cents down on the next race. I got another good thing in it.’
"The bookmaker reluctantly passed Donnelly the $61. Red carefully folded the dollar bill and tucked it into his waistcoat pocket. Then he invested the $60, in $10 clips, with six books, on Dorah Wood, in the next race, at 15 to 1. It was a canter for Dorah Wood, and Red knocked the bookmakers silly—they all knew him well from his working around the place—by socking it to six of them for $150 each. A committee of safety was immediately formed around Donnelly, but he couldn’t be held down. He tossed a quart of wine under his waist-line, purchased a package of cigarettes made in Turkey for forty cents, and looked over his dope-book carefully. Then he strolled into the ring and bet $900 on Minnie Cee in the last race. Minnie Cee was at 3 to 1, and it was something ridiculous for her. She won on the bit, and Red was $3,660 to the good on that nickel that he had salted away in his homespuns for the return trip to town.
"When Red turned up to collect, Barney Schreiber—he’s a big-hearted Barney—had him, as it were, by the scruff of the neck. Barney announced to all of us that he was going to collect for Donnelly, and what Barney said went with us, for we all knew Red’s propensities. Donnelly put up a weak growl, but he knew ’way down deep in him that Schreiber could and would take care of the cash better than he could or would. Barney pinched $3,500 of the wad, inserted it in a separate compartment of his wallet, and handed Red $150.