Young Tom was told off to be the special guardian and caretaker of Bucephalus, and the black stallion, who had in him the mighty blood of the Tennessee Patchens, quickly became the pride of the stables. He was in his nature a great ugly-tempered beast, as given to whims and notions as an opera star, and from the very first began to make trouble. Within a year no one but Harry Whitehead himself and the boy Tom dared go into his stall. The methods of the two people with the great horse were entirely different but equally effective. Once big Harry turned the stallion loose on the floor of the stable, closed all the doors, and with a cruel long whip in his hand, went in to conquer or to be conquered. He came out victorious and ever after the horse behaved when he was about. The boy’s method was different. He loved Bucephalus and the wicked animal loved him. Tom slept on a cot in the barn and day or night, even when there were mares about, walked into Bucephalus’ box-stall without fear. When the stallion was in a temper he sometimes turned at the boy’s entrance and with a snort sent his iron-shod heels banging against the sides of the stall, but Tom laughed and putting a simple rope halter over the horse’s head led him forth to be cleaned or hitched to a cart for his morning’s jog on our town’s half-mile race track. A sight it was to see the boy with the blood of Twn O’r Nant in his veins leading by the nose Bucephalus of the royal blood of the Patchens. When he was six years old the horse Bucephalus went forth to race and conquer at the great spring race meeting at Columbus, Ohio. He won two heats of the trotting free-for-all—the great race of the meeting—with heavy Harry in the sulky and then faltered. A gelding named “Light o’ the Orient” beat him in the next heat. Tom, then a lad of sixteen, was put into the sulky and the two of them, horse and boy, fought out a royal battle with the gelding and a little bay mare, that hadn’t been heard from before but that suddenly developed a whirlwind burst of speed. The big stallion and the slender boy won. From amid a mob of cursing, shouting, whip-slashing men a black horse shot out and a pale boy, leaning far forward, called and murmured to him. “Go on, boy! Go boy! Go boy!” the lad’s voice had called over and over all through the race. Bucephalus got a record of 2.06¼ and Tom Edwards became a newspaper hero. His picture was in the Cleveland _Leader_ and the Cincinnati _Enquirer_, and when he came back to Bidwell we other boys fairly wept in our envy of him.