He laughed again: "Jes' scolded you, Jack, but see here. See how the old feelin' has come over me at sight of this bragging, blow-hard challenge. It makes my blood bile. "Race horse?--Why, Richard Travis wouldn't know a real race horse if he had one by the tail. It's disgustin'--these silk-hat fellers gettin' up a three-cornered race, an' then openin' it up to the valley--knowin' they've put the entrance fee of fifty dollars so high that no po' devil in the County can get in, even if he had a horse equal to theirs. "Three thousan' dollars!--think of it! An' then Richard Travis rubs it in. He's havin' fun over it--he always would do that. Read the last line ag'in--in them big letters: "'_Open to anything raised in the Tennessee Valley._' "Fine fun an' kinder sarcastic, but, Jack, Ben Butler cu'd make them blooded trotters look like steers led to slaughter." Jack sat looking silently in the fire. "If I had the entrance fee I'd do it once--jes' once mo' befo' I die? Once mo' to feel the old thrill of victory! An' for Cap'n Tom an' Shiloh. God'll provide, Jack--God'll provide!" CHAPTER XXIV BONAPARTE'S WATERLOO Bonaparte lay on the little front porch--the loafing place which opened into Billy Buch's bar-room. Apparently, he was asleep and basking in the warm Autumn sunshine. In reality he was doing his star trick and one which could have originated only in the brains of a born genius. Feigning sleep, he thus enticed within striking distance all the timid country dogs visiting Cottontown for the first time, and viewing its wonders with a palpitating heart. Then, like a bolt from the sky, he would fall on them, appalled and paralyzed--a demon with flashing teeth and abbreviated tail. When finally released, with lacerated hides and wounded feelings, they went rapidly homeward, and they told it in dog language, from Dan to Beersheba, that Cottontown was full of the terrible and the unexpected. And a great morning he had had of it--for already three humble and unsuspecting curs, following three humble and unsuspecting countrymen who had walked in to get their morning's dram, had fallen victims to his guile. Each successful raid of Bonaparte brought forth shouts of laughter from within, in which Billy Buch, the Dutch proprietor, joined. It always ended in Bonaparte being invited in and treated to a cuspidor of beer--the drinking, with the cuspidor as his drinking horn, being part of his repertoire. After each one Billy Buch would proudly exclaim: "Mine Gott, but dat Ponyparte ees one greet dog!" Then Bonaparte would reel around in a half drunken swagger and go back to watch for other dogs.