thought the thousands watching the drama on the track before them.

Away over, next to the outside fence, on the far side of the track, open
now before him for the long outfield stretch, the Rambling Kid
straightened the Gold Dust maverick out. The other racers were still
bunched against the inner rail--lengths ahead of the filly.

Leaning low on the neck of the maverick, the Ramblin' Kid began talking,
for the first time, to the horse he rode.

"_Baby--Baby! Girl_!" he whispered incoherently almost. "_Go--go_--damn
'em! _'Ophelia'_"--he laughed thickly, reeling in the saddle.
"_Hell_--_no--'Little--Little--Pink Garter!--that's--that's--_what y'
are! Little--Pink--Garter_--" he repeated irrationally. "_That's
it--show 'em--damn 'em--show 'em what--what runnin'--what real runnin'
is!_" fumbling caressingly at the mare's neck with hands numb and stiff
and chuckling pitifully, insanely, while his face was drawn with agony
nearly unendurable.

Then the Gold Dust maverick ran!

Never had ground flowed with such swiftness under the belly of a horse
on a Texas track.

"Good God!" Skinny yelled, "looky yonder! He's passin' them! Th'
Ramblin' Kid is passin' 'em!"

No one answered him.

His voice was drowned in the mighty roar that surged from five thousand
throats and rolled in waves of echoing and re-echoing sound across the
field.

"He's ridin' round 'em!"

"Th' Ramblin' Kid is goin' around them!"

"Great heavens! Look at that horse go!"

"She's a-flyin'! _She's a-flyin_'!"

The Gold Dust maverick closed the gap--she caught Dash-Away--she
evened up with Prince John--she left the big sorrel behind--she passed
Say-So--nose to nose for a few rods she ran opposite the black
wonder--the Thunderbolt horse from the Vermejo.

Flip Williams, spurs raking the flanks of Dorsey's stallion, looked
around.

The Ramblin' Kid leaned toward him:

"Hell--why--don't you--_make that--thing run_!" he sneered at the Y-Bar
rider.

The next instant the Gold Dust maverick's neck and shoulders showed in
the lead of the Y-Bar stallion.

At the turn for the home stretch the outlaw filly shot ahead of the
wonderful black horse from the Vermejo, swung close to the inside rail,
and like a flash of gold-brown darted down the track toward the wire.

The grandstand was turned into a madhouse of seething humanity. The
immense crowd came to its feet roaring and shrieking with frenzy. Men
smashed their neighbors with clenched fists--not