“Go it, kid. You run your packhorse, and I'll rive yuh five to one on him!” a friend of Jeff Hall's yelled derisively.
“I'll just take you up on that, and I'll make it one hundred dollars,” Bud shouted back. “I'd run a turtle for a quarter, at those odds!”
The crowd was having hysterics when Bud straddled a Little Lost horse and, loudly declaring that he would bring back Sunfish, led Smoky limping back to the pasture. He returned soon, leading the buckskin. The crowd surged closer, gave Sunfish a glance and whooped again. Bud's face was red with apparent anger, his eyes snapped. He faced them defiantly, his hand on Sunfish's thin, straggling mane.
“You're such good sports, you'll surely appreciate my feelings when I say that this horse is mine, and I'm going to run him and back him to win!” he cried. “I may be a darn fool, but I'm no piker. I know what this horse can do when I try to catch him up on a frosty morning—and I'm going to see if he can't go just as fast and just as long when I'm on him as he can when I'm after him.”
“We'll go yuh, kid! I'll bet yuh five to one,” a man shouted. “You name the amount yourself.”
“Fifty,” said Bud, and the man nodded and jotted down the amount.
“Bud, you're a damn fool. I'll bet you a hundred and make it ten to one,” drawled Dave, stroking Boise's face affectionately while he looked superciliously at Sunfish standing half asleep in the clamor, with his head sagging at the end of his long, ewe neck. “But if you'll take my advice, go turn that fool horse back in the pasture and run the bay if you must run something.”
“The bay's a rope horse. I don't want to spoil him by running him. That little horse saved my life, down in the Sinks. No, Sunfish has run times enough from me—now he 's got to run for me, by thunder. I'll bet on him, too!”
Jeff pushed his way through to Bud. He was smiling with that crafty look in his eyes which should have warned a child that the smile went no deeper than his lips.
“Bud, doggone it, I like yore nerve. Besides, you owe me something for the way you trimmed me last Sunday. I'll just give you fifteen to one, and you put up Skeeter at seventy-five, and as much money as yo're a mind to. A pile of it come out of my pocket, so-”