ose, and every
soul determined to be there. Cora said quietly: "I know you'll win."

"Well, I don't expect to sweep the board, but I'll get a lunch while the
rest are getting a full meal," he replied, and returned to his duties.

The weather did not change for the tournament. Each morning the sun
arose flashing with white, undimmed fire. At ten o'clock great dazzling
white clouds developed from hidden places behind huge peaks, and as they
expanded each let fall a veil of shimmering white storms that were hail
on the heights and sleet on the paths in the valleys. These clouds
passed swiftly, the sun came out, the dandelions shone vividly through
their coverlet of snow, the eaves dripped, the air was like March, and
the sunsets like November.

Naturally, Sunday was the day fixed upon for the tournament, and early
on that day miners in clean check shirts and bright new blue overalls
began to stream away up the road which led to the race track, some two
miles away, on the only level ground for a hundred miles. Swift horses
hitched to light open buggies whirled along, loaded down with men.
Horsemen galloped down the slopes in squadrons--and such
horsemen!--cowboys from "Lost Park" and "the Animas." Prospectors like
Casey and Kelly who were quite as much at home on a horse as with a pick
in a ditch, and men like Marshal Haney and Grassi, who were all-round
plainsmen, and by that same token born horsemen. Haney and Kelly rode
with Reynolds and Mose, while Cora and Mrs. Reynolds followed in a rusty
buggy drawn by a fleabitten gray cow pony, sedate with age.

Kintuck was as alert as a four-year-old. His rest had filled him to
bursting with ambition to do and to serve. His muscles played under his
shining skin like those of a trained athlete. Obedient to the lightest
touch or word of his master, with ears in restless motion, he curvetted
like a racer under the wire.

"Wouldn't know that horse was twelve years old, would you, gentlemen?"
said Reynolds. "Well, so he is, and he has covered fifteen thousand
miles o' trail."

Mose was at his best. With vivid tie flowing from the collar of his blue
shirt, with a new hat properly crushed in on the crown in four places,
with shining revolver at his hip, and his rope coiled at his right knee,
he sat his splendid horse, haughty and impassive of countenance,
responding to the greetings of the crowd only with a slight nod or a
wave of the hand.

It seemed to him that the population o