"Going up against the rough ones?" he queried with careful carelessness, in the hope of concealing that he had heard the tale of Andy's disgrace.
"I sure am," Andy returned laconically, with no attempt to conceal anything.
Billy Roberts opened his eyes wide, and his mouth a little before he recovered from his surprise. "Well, good luck to yuh," he managed to say, "only so yuh don't beat me to it. I was kinda hoping yuh was too bashful to get out and ride before all the ladies."
Andy, remembering his days in the sawdust ring, smiled queerly; but his heart warmed to Billy Roberts amazingly.
They were leaning elbows on the fence below the grand stand, watching desultorily the endless preparatory manoeuvres of three men astride the hind legs of three pacers in sulkies. "This side-wheeling business gives me a pain," Billy remarked, as the pacers ambled by for the fourth or fifth time. "I like caballos that don't take all day to wind 'em up before they go. I been looking over our bunch. They's horses in that corral that are sure going to do things to us twenty peelers!"
"By gracious, yes!" Andy was beginning to feel himself again. "That blue hoss—uh course yuh heard how he got me, and heard it with trimmings—yuh may think he's a man-eater; but while he's a bad hoss, all right, he ain't the one that'll get yuh. Yuh want t' watch out, Billy, for that HS sorrel. He's plumb wicked. He's got a habit uh throwing himself backwards. They're keeping it quiet, maybe—but I've seen him do it three times in one summer."
"All right—thanks. I didn't know that. But the blue roan—"
"The blue roan'll pitch and bawl and swap ends on yuh and raise hell all around, but he can be rode. That festive bunch up in the reserve seats'll think it's awful, and that the HS sorrel is a lady's hoss alongside him, but a real rider can wear him out. But that sorrel—when yuh think yuh got him beat, Billy, is when yuh want to watch out!"
Billy turned his face away from a rolling dustcloud that came down the home stretch with the pacers, and looked curiously at Andy. Twice he started to speak and did not finish. Then: "A man can be a sure-enough rider, and get careless and let a horse pile him off him when he ain't looking, just because he knows he can ride that horse," he said with a certain diffidence.
"By gracious, yes!" Andy assented emphatically. And that was the nearest they came to discussing a delicate matter which was in the minds of both.