"Great Scott, old man, how you do drive! We've hedged on you--me and the Colonel--we've put up a thousand each that you'll win. We've cooked ourselves good and hard. Now drive from hell to breakfast next heat, and Travis is yo' meat! Fools that we were! We've cut each other to pieces like a pair of cats tied by the tails. Travis is at your mercy." "Yes, sah, Flecker is right. Travis is yo' meat, sah," said the Colonel, solemnly. The old man walked around with his lips moving silently, and a great pulsing, bursting, gripping pain in his heart--a pain which was half a hope and half despair. The crowd was on tip-toe. Never before had such a race been paced in the Tennessee Valley. Could he take the next heat from Lizzette? If he could, he had her at his mercy. Grimly they scored down. Travis sullen that he had to fight the old pacer, but confident of shutting him out this time. Confident and maddened. The old man, as was his wont in great emergencies, had put a bullet in his mouth to clinch his teeth on. He had learned it from Col. Jeremiah Travis, who said Jackson did it when he killed Dickinson, and at Tallapoosa, and at New Orleans. "GO!" And he heard Travis whirl away with a bitter curse that floated back. Then the old man shot out in the long, stealing, time-eating stride the old pacer had, and coming up just behind Lizzette's sulky he hung there in a death struggle. One quarter, half, three-quarters, and still they swung around--locked--Travis bitter with hot oaths and the old man pale with prayer. He could see Travis's eyes flashing lightning hatred across the narrow space between them--hatred, curses, but the old man prayed on. "The flag--now--ole hoss--for Jesus' sake!--" He reached out in the old way, lifted his horse by sheer great force and fairly flung him ahead!-- "Flu-r-r-r!" it was Lizzette's breath as he went by her. He shot his eyes quickly sideways as she flailed the air with her forefeet within a foot of his head. Her eyes glowed, sunken,--beat--in their sockets; with mouth wide open, collapsed, frantic, in heart-broken dismay, she wabbled, staggered and quit! "Oh, God bless you, Ben Butler!--" But that instant in the air with her mouth wide open within a foot of the old man's head her lower teeth exposed, the old driver saw she was only four years old. Why had he noticed it? What mental telepathy in great crises cause us to see the trifles on which often the destiny of our life hangs? Ben Butler, stubborn, flying, was shaking his game old head in a bull-dog way as he went under the wire. It maddened him to be pulled up. "So, softly, softly old fellow! We've got 'em licked, you've got religin' in yo' heels, too. Ain't been goin' to church for ten years for nothin'!"