with two white
stockings and a blazed face, was gray with sweat and alkali dust and
shod like a plow horse. He wore cactus burrs in his tail and mane and
had evidently traveled far.

His rider claimed to have been on the road a week, and his soiled
clothing and unshaven face gave ample testimony of that fact. He was
arrayed in the traditional costume of the Mexican ranchero of means and
spoke nothing but Spanish, despite which handicap the racing secretary
gleaned that his name was Don Miguel Jose Maria Federico Noriaga
Farrelle. Following Don Miguel came Sancho Panza, Junior, a stringy
Indian youth of fourteen summers, mounted on an ancient flea-bitten
mule. The food and clothing of these two adventurers were carried
behind them on their saddles.

An interpreter informed the secretary that Don Miguel was desirous of
entering his horse, Panchito, in the Thanksgiving Handicap. The
horse's registration papers being in order, the entry was accepted, Don
Quixote and Sancho Panza, Junior, were each given a badge, and a stall
was assigned to Panchito. At the same time Don Quixote made
application for an apprentice license for young Sancho Panza, who
answers to the name of Allesandro Trujillo, when the _enchiladas_ are
ready.

Panchito, it appears, is a five-year-old, bred by Michael J. Farrel,
whose post-office address is El Toro, San Marcos County, California.
He is bred in the purple, being a descendant of Duke of Norfolk and,
according to his present owner, Don Quixote, he can run circles around
an antelope and has proved it in a number of scrub races at various
_fiestas_ and celebrations. According to Don Quixote, his horse has
never hitherto appeared on a public race-track. Panchito knows far
more about herding and roping steers than he does about professional
racing, and enters the list with no preparation other than the daily
exercise afforded in bearing his owner under a forty-pound stock saddle
and scrambling through the cactus after longhorns. Evidently Don
Quixote knows it all. He brushed aside with characteristic Castilian
grace some well-meant advice tendered him by his countrymen, who have
accumulated much racing wisdom since the bang-tails have come to Tia
Juana. He spent the entire day yesterday telling everybody who
understands Spanish what a speed marvel is his Panchito, while Sancho
Panza, Junior, galloped Panchito gently around the track and warmed him
in a few quarter-mile sprints. It was