bones. His front legs were flat, with
long, stringy-looking muscles under his unkempt buckskin hide. Even the
women laughed at Sunfish.

Beside them two men rode, the starter and another to see that the start
was fair. So they receded down the flat, yellow course and dwindled to
mere miniature figures against the sand, so that one could not tell one
horse from another.

The crowd bunched, still laughing at how the singin' kid was going to
feel when he rode again to meet them. It would cure him of racing, they
said. It would be a good lesson; serve him right for coming in there and
thinking, because he had cleaned up once or twice, that he could not be
beaten.

"Here they come," Jeff Hall announced satisfiedly, and spat into the
sand as a tiny blue puff of smoke showed beside one of the dots, and two
other dots began to grow perceptibly larger within a yellow cloud which
rolled along the earth.

Men reined this way and that, or stood on their toes if they were afoot,
the better to see the two rolling dots. In a moment one dot seemed
larger than the other. One could glimpse the upflinging of knees as two
horses leaped closer and closer.

"Well-l-he's keepin' Dave in sight--that's more than what I expected
he'd do," Jeff observed.

It was Pop who suddenly gave a whoop that cracked and shrilled into
falsetto.

"Shucks a'mighty! Dave, he's a-whippin' up to keep the KID in sight!" he
quavered. "Shucks--a'MIGHTY, he 's a-comin'!"

He was. Lying forward flattened along Sunfish's hard-muscled shoulders,
Bud was gaining and gaining--one length, then two lengths as he shot
under the wire, slowed and rode back to find a silent crowd watching
him.

He was clothed safely again in chaps, boots, spurs, hat--except that I
have named the articles backward; cowpuncher that he was, Bud put on his
hat before he even reached for his boots--and was collecting his wagers
relentlessly as Shylock ever took his toll, before he paid any attention
to the atmosphere around him. Then, because someone shouted a question
three inches from his ear, Bud turned and laughed as he faced them.

"Why, sure he's from running stock! I never said he wasn't--because none
of you make-believe horsemen had sense enough to see the speed in him
and get curious. You bush-racers never saw a real race-horse before, I
guess. They aren't always pretty to look at, you know. Sunfish has
all the earmarks of speed if you know how to look for them. He's
thoroughbr