ught to have a year on this job,' says he; 'but
these here is urgent times.'

"I should say they was urgent. The time for the county fair at Socorro
was comin' right clost.

"At last we takes the old Hasenberg Pinto over to Socorro to the fair,
and there we enters him in everything from the front to the back of the
racin' book. My friends, you would 'a' shed tears of pity to see them
folks fall down over theirselves tryin' to hand us their money against
old Pinto. There was horses there from Montanny to Arizony, all kinds
of fancy riders, and money--oh, law! Us Bar T fellers, we took
everything offered--put up everything we had, down to our spurs. Then
we'd go off by ourselves and look at each other solemn. We was gettin'
rich so quick we felt almost scared.

"There come nigh to bein' a little shootin' just before the horses was
gettin' ready for the first race, which was for a mile and a half. We
led old Pinto out, and some feller standin' by, he says, sarcastic
like, 'What's that I see comin'; a snow-plough?' Him alludin' to the
single blinder on Pinto's nose.

"'I reckon you'll think it's been snowin' when we get through,' says
Tom Redmond to him, scornful. 'The best thing you can do is to shut
up, unless you've got a little money you want to contribute to the Bar
T festerval.' But about then they hollered for the horses to go to the
post, and there wasn't no more talk.

"Pinto he acted meek and humble, just like a glass-eyed angel, and the
starter didn't have no trouble with him at all. At last he got them
all off, so clost together one saddle blanket would have done for the
whole bunch. Say, man, that was a fine start.

"Along with oats and ostypathy, old Pinto he'd come out on the track
that day just standin' on the edges of his feet, he was feelin' that
fine. We put Jose Santa Maria Trujillo, one of our lightest boys, up
on Pinto for to ride him. Now a Greaser ain't got no sense. It was
that fool boy Jose that busted up modern science on the Bar T.

"I was tellin' you that there horse was ostypathed, so to speak, plumb
to a razor edge, and I was sayin' that he went off on a even start.
Then what did he do? Run? No, he didn't _run_. He just sort of
passed _away_ from the place where he started at. Our Greaser, he
sees the race is all over, and like any fool cow puncher, he must get
frisky. Comin' down the homestretch, only needin' about one more
jump--for it ain't above a quarter of a m