ise, and down the back of it, they swept, stirrup by
stirrup and neck by neck, while the roar of the hoofs reft the silence
of the prairie like the roll of musketry. Behind came the wagons,
lurching up the slope, and the blood surged to the brave young faces as
the night wind smote them and fanned into brightness the crimson smear
on the horizon. They were English lads of the stock that had furnished
their nation's fighting line, and not infrequently counted no sacrifice
too great that brought their colors home first on the racing turf.
Still, careless to the verge of irresponsibility as they were in most
affairs that did not touch their pride, the man who rode with red spurs
and Dane next behind him, a clear length before the first of them,
asked no better allies in what was to be done.

Then the line drew out as the pace began to tell, though the rearmost
rode grimly, knowing the risks the leaders ran, and that the chance of
being first to meet the fire might yet fall to them. There was not one
among them who would not have killed his best horse for that honor, and
for further incentive the Colonel's niece, in streaming habit, flitted
in front of them. She had come up from behind them, and passed them on
a rise, for Barrington disdained to breed horses for dollars alone, and
there was blood well known on the English turf in the beast she rode.

By and by, a straggling birch bluff rose blackly across their way, but
nobody swung wide. Swaying low while the branches smote them, they
went through, the twigs crackling under foot, and here and there the
red drops trickling down a flushed, scarred face, for the slanting rent
of a birch bough cuts like a knife. Dim trees whirled by them,
undergrowth went down, and they, were out on the dusty grass again,
while, like field guns wanted at the front, the bouncing wagons went
through behind. Then the fire rose higher in front of them, and when
they topped the last rise the pace grew faster still. The slope they
thundered down was undermined by gophers and seamed by badger-holes,
but they took their chances gleefully, sparing no effort of hand and
heel, for the sum of twenty dollars and the credit of being first man
in. Then the smoke rolled up to them, and when eager hands drew bridle
at last, a youthful voice rose breathlessly out of it:

"Stapleton a good first, but he'll go back on weight. It used to be
black and orange when he was at home."

There was a ripple of