The next instant the little filly laughed in the big pacer's face, who had quit in a tangled break, as much as to say: "You big braggart duffer, have you quit already?" and then, like a homing pigeon loosed for the first time, she sailed away from the field.
"Princewood—Princewood has broke the record—" shouted the farmer who hadn't caught on and was shouting for Princewood, but was looking at the champion pumpkin in the window of the Agricultural Hall.
And then the old General lost his head and what little religion he had left. For he jumped on a bench, his wooden leg rattling as he danced up and down, like a flock of goats in a barn loft, and this is what the town crier in the courthouse window, a mile away, heard him yelling:
"Damn Princewood! Damn the record! It's Little Sister—Little Sister—my own mare—old Betty's filly. I rode her fifteen years! I rode her dam—"
"Oh—" sang out mockingly a beautiful girl, sitting her horse beside him, with a laugh that sounded like a wood thrush's. "But I've won a saddle and a seal-skin cloak and the sweetest mare in the world! Say, Braggy," for Braxton Bragg just then drove in, the last of the whole procession—"that engagement is all off, isn't it?"
Then Uncle Jack, who had stopped and got out of the sulky, came up, his face aglow. And she, her eyes still fired to starry beauty, leaned from the saddle and kissed him.
"You darling Jack, how can I ever get even for this?"
"I said he'd be telling about it first," said Uncle Jack, wagging his head at the crowd, where the old General stood telling them that it was he who had bred the great little filly and that it was his old mare who was the dam of her!
"And the little old no-count thing did play off on you sure enough, didn't she, Grandpa?" came from the tear-eyed tot beside him, so naively in earnest and telling such a plain unvarnished truth that even the old General's partisans had to wink and nudge each other as they walked off. The old General laughed as he picked her up and said: "And here's the little girl that saved her, gentlemen, the smartest girl in Tennessee; and she's got more horse sense than her old granddaddy!"
There was one more heat, of course; but it was only a procession, and those behind—and that meant the field—cannot swear to this day which way Little Sister went....