The boy touched his cap and rode arrogantly on to join the other lads.

Monkey Brand saw the look upon his face.

“Once you knows you know nothin’, you may learn somethin’,” he said confidentially as the lad passed him.  Then he turned with a wink to Silver and said sotto-voce:  “They calls him Boysie when he’s crossed ’em.  See he apes Miss Boy.  He features her a bit, and he knows it.  She’s teaching him to ride, and he’s picked up some of her tricks.  Course he ain’t got her way with ’em.  But he might make a tidy little ’orseman one o’ these days, as I tells him, if so be he was to tumble on his head a nice few times and get the conceit knocked out of him.”

The lads continued their patrol.

Their knees were to their chins, and their hands thrust in front of them, a rein in each, almost as though they were about to pound a big drum with their fists.

Monkey nodded at them.

“She rides long, Miss Boy do—­old style, cavalry style, same as you yourself, sir.  They’ve all got the monkey-up-a-stick seat.”

“Don’t you believe in it?” asked the young man.

The other shook his head.  He was himself a beautiful horseman of the Tom Cannon school; too beautiful, his critics sometimes said, to be entirely effective.

“Not for ’chasin,” he said.  “You can’t lift a horse and squeeze him, unless you’ve got your legs curled right away round him.  They ain’t jockeys, as I tells ’em.  They rides like poodle-dogs at a circus.  There ought to be paper-’oops for em to jump through.  No, sir.  It may be Chukkers, as I says, but it ain’t ’orsemanship.”

The young man angled for the story that was waiting to be caught.

“Yet Chukkers wins,” he said.  “He’s headed the list for five seasons now.”

“He wins,” said Monkey grimly.  “Them as has rode against him knows ’ow.”

Silver edged his pony up along the other.

“You’ve ridden against him?” he inquired with cunning innocence.

The little jockey’s eyes became dreamy.

“My ole pal Chukkers,” he mused.  “Him and me.  Yes, I’ve rode agin’ him twenty year now.  He was twelve first time we met, and I was turned twenty.  The Mexican Kid they called him in them days.  Kid he was; but wise to the world?—­not ’alf!” ...

“Was that his first race?” asked Silver.

“It was so, sir—­this side.  Ikey’d just brought him across the Puddle to ride that Austrian mare, Laria Louisa.  Same old stunt it was then as now—­Down the Englishman, don’t matter how. Yes, it was my first smell of the star-spangled jacket.”

“Was that when you got your leg?”

“No, sir.  That was eight years later.  Boomerang’s year.  He was the first waler Ikey brought over this side to do the trick.  My! he were a proper great ’orse, too.  I was riding Chittabob—­like a pony alongside him.  At the Canal Turn Chukkers ran me onto the rails.”  He told the tale slowly, rolling it in the mouth, as it were.  “Chukkers went on by himself.  Nobody near him.  Thought he’d done it that time.  Only where it was Boomerang snap his leg at the last fence.  Yes, sir,” mystically, “there’s One above all right—­sometimes, ’tall events.”