The fifteen horses trotted down toward the starter’s stand in a pretty fair alignment. Vinegar Atts, the starter, was tired of his week’s work and easy to please.
“Go!” he whooped.
Rattlesnake broke into an awkward gallop. Then Shin Bone reached back and pulled a string in the rear of his saddle.
Four noisy celluloid baby rattles, each suspended from a strong string, dropped down around the legs of Rattlesnake.
The horse heard that deadly, venomous rattle, and felt something touch his flanks and drop further and tap him on the legs; right behind his ears he heard a dreadful whirring sound, as if a snake were entwined in his mane!
He uttered a scream so shrill, so horrible, that every negro in the grandstand shuddered.
Then he leaped forward, and the pop-eyed negroes had never seen such running in their lives!
Rattlesnake’s body lay out in a level line, nose, shoulder, back, and his flying legs were a yellow blur beneath his straining body. But not all the thunder of his going could deaden the sound of that fearful rattle, which whirred like the wind in his ears, stirring the remembrance of suffering and sickness and the agony of the cauterizing iron!
Faster, faster, faster Rattlesnake ran, his feet spurning the brown carpet of turf beneath him, his crippled hind leg limbering up for the last time in his life and shooting his body forward like the piston rod of an engine.
The race was won in an incredible time.