"It's all very well fer you Britishers to go assin' about the country
tryin' to strike the trail o' the mines you've salted down yer loose
carpital in," said Colonel Jackhigh, setting his empty glass on the
counter and wiping his lips with his coat sleeve; "but w'en it comes to
hoss racin', w'y I've got a cayuse ken lay over all the thurrerbreds yer
little mantel-ornyment of a island ever panned out--bet yer britches I
have! Talk about yer Durby winners--w'y this pisen little beast o'
mine'll take the bit in her teeth and show 'em the way to the horizon
like she was takin' her mornin' stroll and they was tryin' to keep an
eye on her to see she didn't do herself an injury--that's w'at she
would! And she haint never run a race with anything spryer'n an Injun in
all her life; she's a green amatoor, _she_ is!"
"Oh, very well," said the Englishman with a quiet smile; "it is easy
enough to settle the matter. My animal is in tolerably good condition,
and if yours is in town we can have the race to-morrow for any stake you
like, up to a hundred dollars.
"That's jest the figger," said the colonel; "dot it down, barkeep. But
it's like slarterin' the innocents," he added, half-remorsefully, as he
turned to leave; "it's bettin' on a dead sure thing--that's what it is!
If my cayuse knew wa't I was about she'd go and break a laig to make the
race a fair one."
So it was arranged that the race was to come off at three o'clock the
next day, on the _mesa_, some distance from town. As soon as the news
got abroad, the whole population of Left Bower and vicinity knocked off
work and assembled in the various bars to discuss it. The Englishman and
his horse were general favorites, and aside from the unpopularity of the
colonel, nobody had ever seen his "cayuse." Still the element of
patriotism came in, making the betting very nearly even.
A race-course was marked off on the _mesa_ and at the appointed hour
every one was there except the colonel. It was arranged that each man
should ride his own horse, and the Englishman, who had acquired
something of the free-and-easy bearing that distinguishes the "mining
sharp," was already atop of his magnificent animal, with one leg thrown
carelessly across the pommel of his Mexican saddle, as he puffed his
cigar with calm confidence in the result of the race. He was conscious,
too, that he possessed the secret sympathy of all, even of those who had
felt it their duty to bet against him. The judge, watch in hand, was
growing impatient, when the colonel appeared about a half-mile away, and
bore down upon the crowd. Everyone was eager to inspect his mount; and
such a mount as it proved to be was never before seen, even in Left
Bower!
You have seen "perfect skeletons" of horses often enough, no doubt, but
this animal was not even a perfect skeleton; there were bones missing
here and there which you would not have believed the beast could have
spared. "Little" the colonel had called her! She was not an inch less
than eighteen hands high, and long out of all reasonable proportion. She
was so hollow in the back that she seemed to have been bent in a
machine. She had neither tail nor mane, and her neck, as long as a man,
stuck straight up into the air, supporting a head without ears. Her eyes
had an expression in them of downright insanity, and the muscles of her
face were afflicted with periodical convulsions that drew back the
corners of the mouth and wrinkled the upper lip so as to produce a
ghastly grin every two or three seconds. In color she was "claybank,"
with great blotches of white, as if she had been pelted with small bags
of flour. The crookedness of her legs was beyond all comparison, and as
to her gait it was that of a blind camel walking diagonally across
innumerable deep ditches. Altogether she looked like the crude result of
Nature's first experiment in equifaction.
As this libel on all horses shambled up to the starting post there was a
general shout; the sympathies of the crowd changed in the twinkling of
an eye! Everyone wanted to bet on her, and the Englishman himself was
only restrained from doing so by a sense of honor. It was growing late,
however, and the judge insisted on starting them. They got off very well
together, and seeing the mare was unconscionably slow the Englishman
soon pulled his animal in and permitted the ugly thing to pass him, so
as to enjoy a back view of her. That sealed his fate. The course had
been marked off in a circle of two miles in circumference and some
twenty feet wide, the limits plainly defined by little furrows. Before
the animals had gone a half mile both had been permitted to settle down
into a comfortable walk, in which they continued three-fourths of the
way round the ring. Then the Englishman thought it time to whip up and
canter in.
But he didn't. As he came up alongside the "Lightning Express," as the
crowd had begun to call her, that creature turned her head diagonally
backward and let fall a smile. The encroaching beast stopped as if he
had been shot! His rider plied whip, and forced him again forward upon
the track of the equine hag, but with the same result.
The Englishman was now alarmed; he struggled manfully with rein and whip
and shout, amidst the tremendous cheering and inextinguishable laughter
of the crowd, to force his animal past, now on this side, now on that,
but it would not do. Prompted by the fiend in the concavity of her back,
the unthinkable quadruped dropped her grins right and left with such
seasonable accuracy that again and again the competing beast was struck
"all of a heap" just at the moment of seeming success. And, finally,
when by a tremendous spurt his rider endeavored to thrust him by, within
half a dozen lengths of the winning post, the incarnate nightmare turned
squarely about and fixed upon him a portentous stare--delivering at the
same time a grimace of such prodigious ghastliness that the poor
thoroughbred, with an almost human scream of terror, wheeled about, and
tore away to the rear with the speed of the wind, leaving the colonel an
easy winner in twenty minutes and ten seconds.