We had ridden to town one day, as we often did when the weather was fit. And for a pretense she had me ride out to the Fair Grounds to see a new colt in training. I suspect she had fixed it all before; for I had seen her practicing Satan on nearly every little ride, at jumps, stone walls, mainly, and old rail fences up to four feet.
"Oh, it's just to see if age and the campaigns of honorable war," she laughed, "have stiffened the old fellow's muscles or softened his heart"; and she would reach over and pat his great neck.
At the track the old bars stood across.
I sickened at the sight of them, remembering. But Eloise, pretending not to notice, glanced quickly at me.
"Who's put them back there?" I asked, paling with fear of my own suspicion. "I'll tear them down now and burn them," I said, dismounting quickly.
But Eloise was too quick for me. Even Satan knew her thought and at the sound of her bantering laugh and the old sideway flash of the whip above his ears, he flew like a winged horse at the bars.
I did not breathe, when, for one short, awful moment, I saw them mount straight up toward the sky. Then, realizing that age and service had hampered his driving power behind, the game horse threw his front easily over, and like a great see-saw swung across, bringing his rear limbs, not straight, to tap the bars and be tangled, but sidewise and parallel, barely saving his neck!
"Well, I did it!" She rode up laughing, Satan trembling so with excitement and the effort I could see his knees quivering, his flank fluttering wildly. And in Eloise's face there was the white flag of peril yet lingering before the red of victory.
She rode up close to me, her eyes lit with the tenderness of love's light, and bedewed with its tears: "Kiss me, Jack, dearest—for that is what I had sworn all the time I would do. If—if they had only let me break the world's record that first time."
THE END