Again there was no doubt that the mare had been born in a yellow-pine shack in the Cumberlands, on an old homestead--made familiar to millions in both continents by the picture papers--known as Blue Mounds, and owned by a Quaker farmer who was himself the great-grandson of a pioneer Friend, who in the last years of the eighteenth century had crossed the mountains with his family and flocks, like Abraham of old, and had won for himself this clearing from the primeval forest, driving farther west its ancient denizens. So much, not even the arrogant English dared to dispute. But the rest was mystery. It was said that Jaggers himself did not know who was Mocassin's sire; and that Ikey and Chukkers, the only two who did, were so close that they never let on even to each other. True the English, with characteristic bluff, when they discovered that they had found their mistress in the mare, took it for granted that her sire was an imported English horse and even named him. But Ikey and Chukkers both denied the importation with emphasis. Then there were those who traced her origin to a horse from the Bombay Arab stables. These swore they could detect the Prophet's Thumb on the mare's auburn neck. The Waler School had many backers; and there were even a few cranks who suggested for the place of honour a curly-eared Kathiawar horse. But the All-American School, dominant in the States and Southern Republic, maintained with truculence that a Spanish stallion from the Pampas was the only sire for God Almighty's Mustang. The wild horse theory, as it was called, appealed to popular sentiment, however remote from the fact, and helped to build the legend of the mare. And in support of the theory, it must be said that Mocassin, in spite of her lovableness, had in her more of the jaguar than of the domestic cat, grown indolent, selfish, and fat through centuries of security and sleep. "Wild as the wildman and sweet as the briar-rose," was the saying they had about her in the homestead where she was bred. * * * * * Ikey got into his car and rolled away through the dust toward Brighton. The other three men strolled back to the yard. "Bar accidents, there's only one you've got to fear," said Joses. "And that's the Putnam horse," put in Jaggers. "How's he comin' along?" asked the jockey. "Great guns," the fat man replied. "Think he's a Berserk?" asked Jaggers. "I know it," said Joses. "Stolen jump. The stable-lads let him out on that old man for a lark. He's the spit of the old horse, only bigger." "He must be a big un then," said Jaggers. "He is," Chukkers answered. "And he's in at ten stun. The mare's givin' him a ton o' weight. And weight is weight at Liverpool." "She'll do it," said Jaggers confidently. "I'll back my Iroquois against their Berserk--if Berserk he is."