The Greatest Works of B. M. Bower - 51 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). B. M. Bower
only Stardust's quieter in the line-up. If he crowds up on you, Walt, just rub his cheek and talk to him a little and he'll stand, all right. Stardust's human. You won't have any trouble with him. Well—wish me luck, boys!"
He rode out to the starting line and discovered there that all riders must wear cowboy hats; a senseless ruling, it seemed to him, as he rode back. He had lifted his hat from the post and was settling it firmly on his head when a voice directly above him gave a jeering laugh.
"Cowboy sheik—'s afraid he'll spoil that lovely marcel! Whyn't yuh wear a net?"
The Kid turned and glared toward the speaker, but straightway forgot the jibe. Just above him in one of the official boxes sat his father and mother, the Old Man and most of the Happy Family. As his startled gaze swept them swiftly it fell upon Dulcie Harlan, sitting with the Native Son in the front row of chairs. She gave him a supercilious little smile—at least he interpreted it so—and said something to her companion which brought the slow smile the Kid remembered so well. He waited for no more. With a vicious yank at his hat he rode furiously away, feeling like a bug under a microscope.
How in the world had that darned Harlan girl managed to hook up with his folks? What was it she said about him? Old J. G. was looking fine—he supposed his mother thought he had disgraced the whole family now for sure. Dad sure gave him a stony look—straight at him and never batted an eye! Oh, well, if that was the way they all felt about him!
The announcer's voice booming out of the amplifiers recalled the Kid to the urgency of the moment. More than ever he knew that he had to win this race. Something more than square meals for his boys and himself was at stake now, though that was urgent too. He simply couldn't make a flop of it now, before that bunch. They were sitting up there expecting it—he could feel their scornful expectation that he would come in tailing the field. Well, he was going to win. He had to win!
Horses danced back and forth across the line, thoroughbreds some of them, keyed up and quivering. Well, Stardust might not be thoroughbred, but he had good blood, and what was more, he had sense. The Kid turned him, backed him across the line and leaned and patted his neck, and the horse sent one knowing look back at his master and stood still. Keyed to go, though. The Kid could feel the beat of his heart, feel the tensed muscles.
A false start, which the Kid foresaw and declined to join. Stardust wasn't so sure, though. He was pulling at the bit, shaking his head impatiently. The Kid's hand reassured him and he quieted again. Then, his glance up and down the line warning him, he set his feet just so in the stirrups and felt an answering tremor of the horse as the whistle blew a shrill signal to go.
They got away smoothly, Stardust leaping into his full stride with the third jump, as was his way of running. In the first furlong he passed a brown and a gray and was creeping up on a lean-flanked black that was streaking it in long leaps like a greyhound. The Kid had studied that black in its stall, a little uneasy, a shade doubtful. It had the look of speed, but he selfishly prayed that it would blow up at the station, too nervous for a quick change. Certainly it was a horse to fear on the track.
Coming into the last turn down by the Indian camp the black's rider began using the whip, and the horse lengthened its stride and crept ahead a length. But Stardust laid back his ears and took the home stretch in a burst of speed that brought him nearly even when the black horse was being pulled in for the change at station Number Two. Just as the Kid had hoped, the black overran and had to be brought back—a circumstance that won a grin from the Kid's tightened lips.
Stardust surged up past five stations to where Bill stood out on the track waving his arms to point the Kid in, and the wise little sorrel turned and stopped with a stiff-legged jump as if he had used four-wheel brakes. In that jump the Kid was off and pulling the saddle, swinging it into place on Sunup's back. Another swift motion caught the cinch and tightened it, and he was on and gone from there as a little pinto streaked by. Others came tearing up behind him. The Kid leaned low and implored the horse to show his stuff, while the thunder of hoofbeats filled his ears and he rode in a smother of dust from the first lap they had run.
On that last sharp turn the pinto shortened his stride. But Sunup leaned to the curve and took it full speed, like the trained rope-horse he was, that could follow at the heels of a dodging animal and never slacken his pace. He shot by the pinto just as it was yanked back on its heels at the station.
Stardust, watching for him to turn in, was trembling like an aspen leaf with eagerness to go again. The Kid was on the ground with his saddle when Sunup stopped. He was on Stardust and gone two long jumps ahead of the black. He needed that extra space; every inch of it. He was leading the field, but inexorably the black horse was lessening the distance between them. He was taller than Stardust, longer, and his full stride covered more ground. The crowd was yelling for some one to "Go on! Go on!" The Kid thought they were beseeching the black horse, and his jaw set to the stubborn angle his parents would have recognized instantly—or the Happy Family, for that matter; they had seen him wear it upon occasion, years ago when he was being a "re'l ole cow-puncher" and wanted to do whatever his heroes did.
"Git outa here!" he hissed close to Stardust's flattened ears. "Want 'em to walk on yuh? Move!"
Stardust moved, but the tall black inched up until they were running neck and neck on the home stretch and the black was pulled down for his station.
This time the Kid landed running alongside Stardust, his fingers at the cinch. That gave him a second or so. He flung the saddle on Sunup, gave one yank at the latigo because that was the rule, that saddles must be cinched, and yelled to the horse. Sunup was running when the Kid leaped to the saddle and leaned low. He could hear the pinto coming close behind. That darned pinto! Stuck like a guilty conscience. What was the crowd hollering about? Did they think he was going to be a flop? The pinto and the black—he'd show 'em both! He'd show the folks!
"And you thought you'd make a doctor out of that Kid!" Weary turned whimsically to the Little Doctor who was relaxing into her seat as the Kid rode through the gate close by—winner by an inch or so of Sunup's nose.
"That boy shore can ride!" Andy Green paid tribute as he relighted a forgotten cigarette.
"That dog-gone committee's went and let 'em run in a racehorse on the Kid!" the Old Man heatedly accused. "That black horse's got no business in a cowboy relay race. Somebuddy oughta tell 'em about it."
"I notice Claude held his own," the Little Doctor pointed out crisply. "He's looking thin. I wonder—"
"Now, Dell, for the Lord's sake don't get weak-kneed and go honeying him up again," Chip warned her, so sternly that one suspected he was bolstering his own resolution.
"I'm not. I want Claude to get a thorough lesson, since it has come to a crisis between his parents and himself. But he does look thin. That doesn't mean I'm going to encourage him in this crazy idea of being a champion. I might have suspected it was in his mind." She bit her lip. "I do hope he isn't going to try and ride any bucking horses! If he does—"
"Why, Mrs. Bennett! Do you mean—is Montana Kid your son?" Miss Dulcie Harlan's eyes were extremely bright and wide open. She had been looking from one to the other, puzzled until the truth dawned suddenly.
"Montana Kid—what a name to call himself! Yes, he's our son Claude, behaving like a wild colt that has broken out of the pasture. I'd like to shake him!" She laughed unevenly and wiped her eyes as unobtrusively as was possible in so public a place. "To think my own son would look me squarely in the eye and never give a sign!"
"Let him alone awhile and he'll come around," Chip counselled. "Young cub—he'll come around fast enough when he runs out of money!" Which was of course a normal father's conventional reaction. "Or when he finds we aren't worrying a darned bit over his speaking to us," he amended more keenly. "He's too satisfied with himself right now, Dell. He'd only patronize us."
"I was hoping he'd be beaten," she told him half-heartedly. "He's altogether too sure of himself."
"They ain't goin' to beat him," her brother stated with grim boastfulness; "not if they pull that race horse outa there like they oughta. The Kid knows what he's doin'. Perty level-headed,