ink it wise to bet on that probability.

While three races were being run Bud rode with the Little Lost men, and
Smoky still limped a little. Jerry Myers, still self-appointed guardian
of Bud, herded him apart and called him a fool and implored him to call
the race off and keep his money in his own pocket.

Bud was thinking just then about a certain little woman who sat on the
creek bank with a wide-brimmed straw hat shading her wonderful eyes, and
a pair of little, high-arched feet tapping heels absently against the
bank wall. Honey sat beside her, and a couple of the valley women whom
Bud had met at the dance. He had ridden close and paused for a few
friendly sentences with the quartette, careful to give Honey the
attention she plainly expected. But it was not Honey who wore the wide
hat and owned the pretty little feet. Bud pulled his thoughts back from
a fruitless wish that he might in some way help that little woman whose
trouble looked from her eyes, and whose lips smiled so bravely. He did
not think of possession when he thought of her; it was the look in her
eyes, and the slighting tones in which Honey spoke of her.

"Say, come alive! What yuh going off in a trance for, when I'm talking
to yuh for your own good?" Jerry smiled whimsically, but his eyes were
worried.

Bud pulled himself together and reined closer.

"Don't bet anything on this race, Jerry," he advised "Or if you do,
don't bet on Skeeter. But--well, I'll just trade you a little advice for
all you've given me. Don't bet!"

"What the hell!" surprise jolted out of Jerry.

"It's my funeral," Bud laughed. "I'm a chancey kid, you see--but I'd
hate to see you bet on me." He pulled up to watch the next race--four
nervy little cow-horses of true range breeding, going down to the
quarter post.

"They 're going to make false starts aplenty," Bud remarked after the
first fluke. "Jeff and I have it out next. I'll just give Smoke another
treatment." He dismounted, looked at Jerry undecidedly and slapped him
on the knee. "I'm glad to have a friend like you," he said impulsively.
"There's a lot of two-faced sinners around here that would steal a man
blind. Don't think I'm altogether a fool."

Jerry looked at him queerly, opened his mouth and shut it again so
tightly that his jawbones stood out a little. He watched Bud bathing
Smoky's ankle. When Bud was through and handed Jerry the bottle to keep
for him, Jerry held him for an instant by the hand.

"Say