Then he was riding at a walk down the course to the farthest post, and the crowd was laughing at the contrast between the two horses. Boise stepped springily, tossing his head, his eyes ablaze with ardor for the race. Beside him Sunfish walked steadily as if he were carrying a pack. He was not a pretty horse to look at. His neck was long and thin, his mane and tail scanty and uneven, a nondescript sorrel. His head looked large, set on the end of that neck, his nose was dished in and his eyes had a certain veiled look, as if he were hiding a bad disposition under those droopy lids. Without a saddle he betrayed his high, thin withers, the sway in his back, his high hip bones. His front legs were flat, with long, stringy-looking muscles under his unkempt buckskin hide. Even the women laughed at Sunfish. Beside them two men rode, the starter and another to see that the start was fair. So they receded down the flat, yellow course and dwindled to mere miniature figures against the sand, so that one could not tell one horse from another. The crowd bunched, still laughing at how the singin' kid was going to feel when he rode again to meet them. It would cure him of racing, they said. It would be a good lesson; serve him right for coming in there and thinking, because he had cleaned up once or twice, that he could not be beaten. “Here they come,” Jeff Hall announced satisfiedly, and spat into the sand as a tiny blue puff of smoke showed beside one of the dots, and two other dots began to grow perceptibly larger within a yellow cloud which rolled along the earth. Men reined this way and that, or stood on their toes if they were afoot, the better to see the two rolling dots. In a moment one dot seemed larger than the other. One could glimpse the upflinging of knees as two horses leaped closer and closer. “Well-l-he's keepin' Dave in sight--that's more than what I expected he'd do,” Jeff observed. It was Pop who suddenly gave a whoop that cracked and shrilled into falsetto. “Shucks a'mighty! Dave, he's a-whippin' up to keep the KID in sight!” he quavered. “Shucks--a'MIGHTY, he 's a-comin'!” He was. Lying forward flattened along Sunfish's hard-muscled shoulders, Bud was gaining and gaining--one length, then two lengths as he shot under the wire, slowed and rode back to find a silent crowd watching him. He was clothed safely again in chaps, boots, spurs, hat--except that I have named the articles backward; cowpuncher that he was, Bud put on his hat before he even reached for his boots--and was collecting his wagers relentlessly as Shylock ever took his toll, before he paid any attention to the atmosphere around him. Then, because someone shouted a question three inches from his ear, Bud turned and laughed as he faced them.