The horses trotted down the course. Connie’s was rearing and prancing, and it was with difficulty that she managed to get him to join the others. She leaned forward to whisper words of quieting in his twitching ears. Down the course they came. They were in nice alignment as they passed the judges’ stand.
“Go!”
Connie on her spotted cayuse showed as a bright splash of colour in the midst of her darker competitors.
Lafonte’s dark face lighted with a savage gleam as he swung his horse to the inside or “pole.”
Running neck and neck with him was his hated rival, Paul John, leaning low on his horse’s neck and shouting unintelligibly in Chinook. Connie was with the stragglers five lengths in the rear. This was new to Pegasus, and he was bewildered by the crowding horses about him. As they turned the corner of the course, Lafonte’s horse stumbled, and before he righted Paul John had slipped into the lead. Cursing wildly, Lafonte settled himself in the saddle, his horse’s head at the flank of his rival.
Hundreds of times Pegasus had travelled this field with Connie clinging to his back, slowing up for shrubs and trees and making sudden bursts of speed in the open. That had been vastly different to being surrounded by running horses and listening to the wild cries of their riders and the roaring of the excited crowd.
At the moment Lafonte lost the point of vantage to his rival, Connie leaned forward and emitted a peculiar clucking sound, at the same time striking her moccasined feet into the horse’s sides. Pegasus’s ears twitched back at the sound of the voice he loved. “Now I know what you want,” he seemed to say, as his beautiful neck stretched out and his hoofs spurned the ground. His graceful body lowered until it appeared to the spectators as though he were just skimming the earth. He moved with a springy stride, the muscles of his sinewy frame working with a sliding movement beneath the glossy skin. Gradually he drew away from the horses travelling with him. Foot by foot he crawled up on the leaders.
The party in the judges’ stand came to their feet to shout approval. The girls were cheering wildly for Connie as she crept nearer the front.
Donald was leaning forward with flushed face, his eyes glued to the spotted cayuse, a deep admiration in his heart for the intrepid little rider.
Little Andy jumped on the rail. “Strike me pink!” he yelled, “look at that ’oss run!” His eyes were bright with excitement. “A ’undred dollars on the spotted ’oss!” he shouted hysterically.