“Who is she? Where does she come from?” they shouted.
Connie kept her eyes fixed on the ground. She was outwardly calm and serene; inwardly she was as nervous as her fretting cayuse, and did not dare raise her flushed face to meet the battery of eyes around her.
Donald turned to Wainwright. “Are you going to let her run? Is it safe for her to enter a race with all those men?”
“I couldn’t stop her now, and besides,” he added with a touch of pride, “she can hold her own with any of them.”
The old trapper made his way to Donald’s side. His leathery old face, with its multitudinous wrinkles, wore a perturbed expression. “That feller Lafonte is cultus. He’s full of dirty tricks; ’tain’t safe for Connie to ride.”
Donald turned anxiously to Wainwright.
Connie’s father shook his head. “I am afraid it is too late now.” Then in a lower voice he added: “You must know the reason for her entering this race.”
Donald looked puzzled for an instant. Suddenly it dawned on him. “The purse?”
Wainwright nodded. “It would break her heart if I forbade her to ride, now that she has gone this far. She must have decided suddenly, as she never mentioned it to me.”
The Rennie Company had put up a purse of two hundred and fifty dollars. There was to be a collection taken after the race to add to this purse.