Old Heck threw back his head and laughed scornfully.
"A thousand? I thought you were a sport, Dorsey!" he sneered. "Match this," he continued, reaching for his check-book and fountain pen and quickly filling out a check payable to "Cash" for ten thousand dollars, which he laid on the hardwood bar. "Match that, or admit you're a cheap, loud-howlin' bluffer!"
Dorsey paused just an instant as he noted the amount of the check.
"I'll match it!" he exclaimed, flushing angrily, drawing his own check-book from his pocket, and then, carried away by his passion added, throwing down the bars completely as Old Heck had hoped he would, "and go with you to the end of the trail!"
"Good!" Old Heck laughed, "now you are talking like a sport! Let's see," he added calculatingly, "how many Y-Bar cattle do you figure you've got running on the Vermejo range—five thousand?"
"There's that many," Dorsey started to say.
"Call it fifty-five hundred!" Old Heck flung at him. "Steer for steer, cow for cow, hoof for hoof—I'll put Quarter Circle KT critters against every brute you own that th' Ramblin' Kid lands his horse tinder the wire ahead of Thunderbolt!"
Dorsey paled, then a purple-red of fury spread over his neck and face, and with an oath he cried:
"I'll call you!"
Bills of sale were drawn and turned over to Judge Ivory, to be delivered, after the race, to the winner.