a chance of curing a horse's
temper by kind treatment. I've noticed that a squealing pig generally
runs like the devil when he takes it into his head."

"Diablo's a squealing pig if there ever was one," growled Dixon.

They reached the track stable, and, as if by a mutual instinct, the two
men walked on till they stood in front of Lauzanne's stall.

"He's a good enough looker, ain't he?" commented Dixon, as he dipped
under the door bar, went into the stall, and turned the horse about.
"He's the picture of his old sire, Lazzarone," he continued, looking the
horse over critically; "an' a damned sight bigger rogue, though the
old one was bad enough. Lazzarone won the Suburban with blinkers on his
head, bandages on his legs, an' God knows what in his stomach. He was
second in the Brooklyn that same year. I've always heard he was a mule,
an' I guess this one got it all, an' none of the gallopin'."

"How does he work with the others?" queried Porter.

"Runs a bit, an' then cuts it--won't try a yard. Of course he's sick
from the dope, an' the others are a bit fast for him. If we put him in a
sellin' race, cheap, he'd have a light weight, an' might do better."

Porter walked on to Lucretia's stall, and the trainer continued in a
monologue to Lauzanne: "You big slob! you're a counterfeit, if there
ever was one. But I'll stand you a drink just to get rid of you; I'll
put a bottle of whisky inside of your vest day after to-morrow, an' if
you win p'raps somebody'll buy you."

Lauzanne did not answer-it's a way horses have. It is doubtful if his
mind quite grasped the situation, even. That neither Dixon, nor
Langdon, nor the jockey boys understood him he knew--not clearly,
but approximately enough to increase his stubbornness, to rouse his
resentment. They had not even studied out the pathology of his descent
sufficiently well to give him a fair show, to train him intelligently.
They remembered that his sire, Lazzarone, had a bad temper; but they
forgot that he was a stayer, not 'given to sprinting. Even Lauzanne's
dam, Bric-a-brac, was fond of a long route, was better at a
mile-and-a-half than five furlongs.

Lauzanne knew what had come to him of genealogy, not in his mind so
much as in his muscles. They were strong but sluggish, not active but
non-tiring. Langdon had raced Lauzanne with sprinting colts, and when
they ran away from him at the start he had been unequal to the task of
overhauling them in the short two-year-o