tlaw mare sprang back away
from the door when the car stopped.

"She's all right."

"Hadn't you ought to exercise her?" Skinny asked.

"She don't need it," the Ramblin' Kid replied with a note of weariness
in his voice. "She'll get enough exercise this afternoon!"

"You're all right, yourself, are you?" Old Heck asked a bit anxiously.

"Of course I'm all right," was the rather impatient reply. "Don't be
uneasy," he added with a laugh; "--th' filly'll be in th' race an' beat
old Thunderbolt!"

"Good luck!" Carolyn June cried, as Old Heck turned the car about and
started back toward the grandstand.

"Good luck!" the Ramblin' Kid muttered to himself, watching the car as
it whirled away. "Ign'rant, savage, stupid brute!" he repeated bitterly,
then with a queer smile in which was a world of tenderness he pulled the
pink satin elastic garter he had picked up at the circular corral, from
his pocket and looked at it long and wistfully. "Good luck?" he
exclaimed again questioningly. "Well, maybe that little jigger'll bring
it!" and he slipped the band back in his pocket.

"Th' Ramblin' Kid acts like he's got the blues this morning," Skinny
said as the Clagstone "Six" rolled away from the stables. "He looks to
me like a feller that's in just the right humor to get on a whale of a
drunk--"

"That's one thing about him you can depend on," Old Heck broke in, "--he
never poisons himself with liquor. That's why when he says he'll do
anything you can bet all you've got he'll do it!"

"Well, if he ever does break loose," Skinny retorted, "it'll be sudden
and wild!"

"Probably," Old Heck replied as though there wasn't the slightest danger
of such an eventuality.

That morning Gyp purposely avoided going as far, with his stock of
provisions, as the stall in which were Captain Jack and the Gold Dust
maverick. Nor did he come with his lunch tray and tin pot of coffee
until nearly one o'clock.

The Ramblin' Kid had no breakfast. To secure it he would have been
required to leave the horses. That he would not do. Of course he might
have told Old Heck or Skinny to bring or send him something, but he did
not feel inclined to mention, in the presence of Carolyn June and
Ophelia, that he was hungry. Anyhow, well, they were having a good time
and what was the use of bothering them?

When Gyp finally came with the lunch the Ramblin' Kid was outside the
stall and had walked a little way up the stable street. Captain Jack and
the fi