Away rushes the field, the flying Truxton in the lead! Around they whirl, the little jockeys plying hand and heel! They sweep by the three-quarters post! The great Truxton, eye afire, nostrils wide, comes down the stretch with the swiftness of the thrown lance! Behind, ten generous lengths, trail the beaten ruck! The red mounts to the cheek of the blooming Rachel; her black eyes shine with excitement! She applauds the invincible Truxton with her little hands.
“He is running away with them!” she cries.
Dead-shot Dickinson turns to the friend who is conveniently by his side. The chance he waited for has come.
“Running away with them!” he sneers, repeating the phrase of the blooming Rachel. “To be sure! He takes after his master, who ran away with another man's wife.”
CHAPTER VII—HOW THE GENERAL FOUGHT
THE General seeks the taciturn Over-ton—that wordless one of the uneasy hair triggers.
“It is a plot,” says the General. “And yet this man shall die.”
Hair-trigger Overton bears a challenge to dead-shot Dickinson, and is referred to that marksman's second, Hanson Catlet. Hair-trigger Overton and Mr. Catlet agree on Harrison's Mills, a long Day's ride away in Kentucky. There are laws against dueling in Tennessee; wherefore her citizens, when bent on blood, repair to Kentucky. To make all equal, and owning similar laws, the Kentuckians, when blood hungry, take one another to Tennessee. The arrangement is both perfect and polite, not to say urbane, and does much to induce friendly relations between these sister commonwealths.