"Now," Old Heck said with a hard laugh, "maybe you'd like to own the Quarter Circle KT ranch, Dorsey? It's worth twice as much as your Vermejo holdings but I'll just give you that percentage of odds and call it an even bet that your black stallion don't outrun the little animal th' Ramblin' Kid has entered in the sweepstakes!"
But Dorsey did not answer except with a muttered: "Hell, a man's crazy that—" He had gone his limit. He had suddenly come to his senses and grown suspicious.
Before Skinny and Old Heck left the pool-room the former managed to get a bet of five hundred dollars with Sabota.
The next afternoon the Ramblin' Kid rode into Eagle Butte on Captain Jack. By his side he led the Gold Dust maverick. The noise and confusion in the streets filled the mare with nervousness and she crowded closely against the little roan stallion. Before he got the outlaw filly to the stables a half dozen cowboys had recognized the Cimarron maverick. Within an hour Dorsey and Sabota knew the identity of the Ramblin' Kid's entry in the big race that was to be run Friday afternoon and which was the big and closing event of the Rodeo.
The Greek was furious.
Wednesday night he called "Gyp" Streetor, a carnival tout, who had one time been a jockey but was ruled off the track for crooked work and was now picking up "easies" at the Eagle Butte Rodeo, into a side room of the Amusement Parlor.
For half an hour the two talked earnestly and furtively.
"Nothin' doin'—absolutely nothin'!" the tout finally said in reply to some suggestion of Sabota's. "That Captain Jack horse would murder any man but th' Ramblin' Kid that tried to get in the stall—"
"Well, by hell!" the Greek exclaimed, clenching his hairy fists, while his mouth twitched with passion, "that filly's got to be kept out of the sweepstakes someway or other—"
"You can't get to her, I tell you," Gyp said sullenly, then with a look of cunning suddenly coming into his eyes: "They say she's a one-man brute like the stallion—nobody can ride her but th' Ramblin' Kid," significantly looking at Sabota. "If you could—but he don't drink!"