re she tackles it."

And Billikens, very angry, very disgusted, very embarrassed, obeyed,
putting his arms around his wife and kissing her neither too
perfunctorily nor very long. She was a pretty young thing of a woman,
perhaps twenty years old, with an exceedingly childish, girlish face and
a slender-waisted, generously moulded body of fully a hundred and forty
pounds.

The embrace and kiss of her husband put courage into her. She stiffened
and steeled herself, and with compressed lips, as he stepped clear of
her, muttered, "Ready."

"Go!" Collins commanded.

The four horses, under the urge of the drivers, pressed lazily into their
collars and began pulling.

"Give 'em the whip!" Collins barked, his eyes on the girl and noting that
the pull of the apparatus was straight across her.

The lashes fell on the horses' rumps, and they leaped, and surged, and
plunged, with their huge steel-shod hoofs, the size of soup-plates,
tearing up the sawdust into smoke.

And Billikens forgot himself. The terribleness of the sight painted the
honest anxiety for the woman on his face. And her face was a
kaleidoscope. At the first, tense and fearful, it was like that of a
Christian martyr meeting the lions, or of a felon falling through the
trap. Next, and quickly, came surprise and relief in that there was no
hurt. And, finally, her face was proudly happy with a smile of triumph.
She even smiled to Billikens her pride at making good her love to him.
And Billikens relaxed and looked love and pride back, until, on the spur
of the second, Harris Collins broke in:

"This ain't a smiling act! Get that smile off your face. The audience
has got to think you're carrying the pull. Show that you are. Make your
face stiff till it cracks. Show determination, will-power. Show great
muscular effort. Spread your legs more. Bring up the muscles through
your skirt just as if you was really working. Let 'em pull you this way
a bit and that way a bit. Give 'em to. Spread your legs more. Make a
noise on your face as if you was being pulled to pieces an' that all that
holds you is will-power.--That's the idea! That's the stuff! It's a
winner, Bill! It's a winner!--Throw the leather into 'em! Make 'm jump!
Make 'm get right down and pull the daylights out of each other!"

The whips fell on the horses, and the horses struggled in all their
hugeness and might to pull away from the pain of the punishment. It was
a spectacle to