er!" barked Johnson. "Look at the colt!
He--he can't untrack himself: runs like he was all bound up somehow!
Something has gone wrong, sure!"

"You bet it has!" snarled McManus. "Quite a pile of dough has gone
wrong, and some of it was mine too!"

A comfortable ten lengths to the good at the upper turn, Little Mose
addressed a few vigorous remarks to his mount.

"This a nice place faw us to stay, 'Lijah! Them Irish boys all behin'
us! Nobody goin' bump you to-day! Nobody goin' slash you 'ith no
whip! Go on, big red hawss! Show 'em how we risin' up!"

"The nigger'll win in a romp!" announced McManus disgustedly.

"Oh, dry up! I want to know what's happened to Zanzibar!"

"I can tell you what's _going_ to happen to him," remarked the
unfeeling McManus. "He's going to finish last, and a damn bad last at
that. Why, he can't get up a gallop! Didn't you know any more than to
start a horse in that condition?"

"But how the devil did he get stiff all at once?" howled Johnson.

"That's what you'd better find out. How do we know you didn't cross
us, Johnson? It would be just like you!"

Old Man Curry, watching at the paddock gate, thrust his hands under
the tails of his rusty frock coat and smiled.

"'A just man falleth seven times and riseth up again!'" he quoted
softly. "And the wicked: well, they'll have a mighty lame hoss on
their hands, I reckon."

Mose began checking Elijah, several lengths in front of the wire.

"Don't go bustin' a lung, hawss," said he. "Might need it again. You
winnin' by a mile. A-a-a mile. Sol'mun was right, but maybe he
wouldn't have been if I hadn't done some risin' up myse'f this
mawnin'! Whoa, hawss! This where they pay off! We th'oo faw the day!"

Old Man Curry was striding down the track from the judges' stand when
he met a large man whose face was purple and his language purple
also.

"Man, don't talk like that!" said Curry reprovingly. "And ca'm down
or you'll bust an artery. You can't win _all_ the time: that's what
you told me."

Johnson sputtered like a damp Roman candle, but a portion of his
remarks were intelligible.

"Oh, Zanzibar?" said Old Man Curry. "He's a right nice colt. He ought
to be. He pretty nigh run the legs off my 'Lisha this mornin'."

"Wha--_what's that_?"

"Yes," continued Old Man Curry, "they had it back an' forth up that
road, hot an' heavy. I expect maybe Zanzibar got a chill from
sweatin' so hard."

Out of the whirl of Mr. Johnson's remarks and