"Hadn't you ought to exercise her?" Skinny asked.
"She don't need it," the Ramblin' Kid replied with a note of weariness in his voice. "She'll get enough exercise this afternoon!"
"You're all right, yourself, are you?" Old Heck asked a bit anxiously.
"Of course I'm all right," was the rather impatient reply. "Don't be uneasy," he added with a laugh; "—th' filly'll be in th' race an' beat old Thunderbolt!"
"Good luck!" Carolyn June cried, as Old Heck turned the car about and started back toward the grandstand.
"Good luck!" the Ramblin' Kid muttered to himself, watching the car as it whirled away. "Ign'rant, savage, stupid brute!" he repeated bitterly, then with a queer smile in which was a world of tenderness he pulled the pink satin elastic garter he had picked up at the circular corral, from his pocket and looked at it long and wistfully. "Good luck?" he exclaimed again questioningly. "Well, maybe that little jigger'll bring it!" and he slipped the band back in his pocket.
"Th' Ramblin' Kid acts like he's got the blues this morning," Skinny said as the Clagstone "Six" rolled away from the stables. "He looks to me like a feller that's in just the right humor to get on a whale of a drunk—"
"That's one thing about him you can depend on," Old Heck broke in, "—he never poisons himself with liquor. That's why when he says he'll do anything you can bet all you've got he'll do it!"
"Well, if he ever does break loose," Skinny retorted, "it'll be sudden and wild!"
"Probably," Old Heck replied as though there wasn't the slightest danger of such an eventuality.