"I will put that up twenty-five dollars to nothing," and Hartigan held up the twenty-five dollars he had received as hire for his horse. Again the Indian shook his head. "I'll give you that if you'll ride." Jim held up a ten, "and double it if you win." With a gesture, the Indian consented, received the bill, and put it with the rest. They rode to the starting post, were unceremoniously started, and Hartigan showed how much a man could do for a horse. In spite of his rider's great weight that splendid beast responded to every word, and when on the home run Hartigan used the quirt, Blazing Star seemed to know it was merely a signal, not an insulting urge, and let himself go. The Indian pony, too, was doing his utmost, but Blazing Star swept past his opponent and led at the finish by more than a length; the race was won; and Hartigan wakened up as a man out of a dream to face the awful fact that he, a minister of the gospel, had not only ridden in a horse race, but had gambled on the same. CHAPTER XV Pat Bylow's Spree At the time of the incidents at Fort Ryan, Belle was away on a visit to Deadwood. Otherwise, Hartigan would surely have consulted her and profited by her calmer judgment in the matter of the race. As it was, his torturing sense of moral iniquity led him to preach a sermon in which he poured forth all the intensity of his nature. Quietly to drop the subject was not his way; he knew that every one was talking about it, so nothing would do but a public denunciation of himself, and all that followed the race track. The text he chose was: "My wounds stink, and are corrupt, because of my foolishness" (Psalms XXXVIII:5). Jim's thought was that once the sinner is saved, all his sins become peculiarly and especially repugnant to him. They acquire nothing less than a stench in his nostrils, and henceforth are as repellent as once they were attractive, no matter what they may be; and he enumerated drunkenness, swearing, gambling, and horse-racing. At mention of the last a smile spread over the faces of the congregation. He noted it at once, and said: "Yes, I know what you are thinking. You are wondering how I came to ride my horse in a race at Fort Ryan. Well, it was the devil laid a snare for me, and I fell in. But this I will say: I promise you I will never do the like again, and if each of you will stand up now and give me the same promise about your own particular besetting sin, then I'll feel that we have made a great gain, and I will be glad I rode that race after all." In this land of the horse no one was long inclined to take the matter seriously. A nature so buoyant as his could not long be downcast, and Hartigan's sense of sin for his part in the race was soon put behind him. Then happened an incident that gave him a chance to score a triumph.