"He'll keep to the road when once started," said the Colonel, laughing: "and he'll show you some of the tallest running you ever saw in your life."
Away they went. At first the pig, seeming not exactly to comprehend the programme, cantered off at a leisurely pace, though he held his own. Soon, however, he cast an eye behind him—halted a moment to collect his thoughts and reconnoitre—and then, lowering his head and elevating his tail, put forth all his speed. And such speed! Talk of a deer, the wind, or a steam-engine—they are not to be compared with it. Nothing in nature I ever saw run—except, it may be, a Southern tornado, or a Sixth Ward politician—could hope to distance that pig. He gained on the horse at every step, and it was soon evident that my dollar was gone!
"'In for a shilling, in for a pound,' is the adage, so, turning to the Colonel, I said, as intelligibly as my horse's rapid pace and my excited risibilities would allow:
"I see I've lost, but I'll go you another dollar that you can't beat the pig!"
"No—sir!" the Colonel got out in the breaks of his laughing explosions; "you can't hedge on me in that manner. I'll go a dollar that you can't do it, and your mare is the fastest on the road. She won me a thousand not a month ago."
"Well, I'll do it—Sandy to have the stakes."
"Agreed," said the Colonel, and away we went.
The swinish racer was about a hundred yards ahead when I gave the mare the reins, and told her to go. And she did go. She flew against the wind with a motion so rapid that my face, as it clove the air, felt as if cutting its way through a solid body, and the trees, as we passed, seemed struck with panic, and running for dear life in the opposite direction.
For a few moments I thought the mare was gaining, and I turned to the Colonel with an exultant look.
"Don't shout till you win, my boy," he called out from the distance where I was fast leaving him and Sandy.