still heading for home like the devil beating
tan-bark . . . well, if she breaks him down she's going to be out the
grandest saddle animal in the state of California. That's all I have
to say. . . . Kay, Kay, girl, what's the matter with you? Pull him up
. . . by the blood of the devil, she can't pull him up. She's broken a
rein and he's making a run of it on his own."

"Man, look at that horse go."

"Man, look at him come!"

Panchito had swung into the home-stretch, his white face and white
front legs rising and falling with the strong, steady rhythm of the
horse whose stout heart refuses to acknowledge defeat, the horse who
still has something left for a supreme effort at the finish.

"There is a true race-horse," Parker cried exultantly. "I once won a
ten-thousand-dollar purse with a dog that wasn't fit to appear on the
same track with that Panchito."

The big chestnut thudded by below them, stretched to the limit of his
endurance, passed what would have been the finish had the race been a
mile and a sixteenth, and galloped up the track with the broken
bridle-rein dangling. He slowed down as he came to the other horses in
the race, now jogging back to the judge's stand, and one of the _cholo_
youths spurred alongside of him, caught the dangling rein and led him
back to the judge's stand.

Kay's face was a little bit white as she smiled up at her father and
Farrel. "The old darling ran away with me," she called.

Farrel was instantly at her side and had lifted her out of the saddle.
She clung to him for the barest moment, trembling with fear and
excitement, before turning to examine Panchito, from whom Pablo had
already stripped the saddle. He was badly blown, as trembly as the
girl herself, and dripping with sweat, but when Pablo slipped the
headstall on him and commenced to walk him up and down to "cool him
out," Don Mike's critical eye failed to observe any evil effects from
the long and unaccustomed race.

John Parker came down out of the grand stand, his thumb still tightly
pressing the stem of his stop-watch, which he thrust under Farrel's
nose.

"Look, you star-spangled ignoramus, look," he yelled. "You own a horse
that's fit to win the Melbourne Cup or the American Derby, and you
don't know it. What do you want for him? Give you ten thousand for
him this minute--and I am not so certain that race hasn't hurt him."

"Oh, I don't want to sell Panchito. I can make this ranch pay ten
thous