Can I do anything for you, Mr. Connor?"

"I'll go a hundred on the roan, sir."

"Have I done it right?" asked Townsend fiercely, a little later. "I
wonder do you know?"

"Ask that after the race is over," smiled Connor. "After all, you have
only one horse to be afraid of."

"Sure; Lightnin'--but he's enough."

"Not Lightning, I tell you. The gray is the only horse to be afraid of
though the brown stallion might do if he has enough seasoning."

For a moment panic brightened the eyes of Townsend, and then he shook
the fear away.

"I've done it now," he said huskily, "and they's no use talking. Let's
get down to the finish."

The crowd was streaming away from the start, and headed toward the
finish half a mile down the street beyond the farther end of Lukin. Most
of this distance Townsend kept his companion close to a run; then he
suddenly appealed for a slower pace.

"It's my heart," he explained. "Nothin' else bothers it, but during a
hoss race it sure stands on end. I get to thinkin' of what my wife will
say if I lose; and that always plumb upsets me."

He was, in fact, spotted white and purple when they joined the mob which
packed both sides of the street at the finish posts; already the choice
positions were taken.

"We won't get a look," groaned Townsend.

But Connor chuckled: "You tie on to me and we'll get to the front in a
squeeze." And he ejected himself into the mob. How it was done Townsend
could never understand. They oozed through the thickest of the crowd,
and when roughly pressed men ahead of them turned around, ready to
fight, Connor was always looking back, apparently forced along by the
pressure from the rear. He seemed, indeed, to be struggling to keep his
footing, but in a few minutes Townsend found himself in the front rank.
He mopped his brow and smiled up into the cool face of Connor, but there
was no time for comments. Eight horses fretted in a ragged line far down
the street, and as they frisked here and there the brims of the
sombreros of the riders flapped up and down; only the Eden gray stood
with downward head, dreaming.

"No heart," said Townsend, "in that gray hoss. Look at him!"

"Plenty of head, though," replied Connor; "here they go!"

His voice was lost in a yell that went up wailing, shook into a roar,
and then died off, as though a gust of wind had cut the sounds away. A
murmur of voices followed, and then an almost womanish yell, for
Lightning, the favorite, was ou