“Dear God—my Father—I thank Thee. Not for me—not for Ben Butler—but for life—life—for Shiloh—and Cap'n Tom. Help us—old and blind—help us! O God—”
Col. Troup grasped his hand. The Tennesseans, followers of Flecker, flocked around him. Flecker, too, was there—chagrined, maddened—he too had joined his forces with the old Bishop.
“Great Scott, old man, how you do drive! We've hedged on you—me and the Colonel—we've put up a thousand each that you'll win. We've cooked ourselves good and hard. Now drive from hell to breakfast next heat, and Travis is yo' meat! Fools that we were! We've cut each other to pieces like a pair of cats tied by the tails. Travis is at your mercy.”
“Yes, sah, Flecker is right. Travis is yo' meat, sah,” said the Colonel, solemnly.
The old man walked around with his lips moving silently, and a great pulsing, bursting, gripping pain in his heart—a pain which was half a hope and half despair.
The crowd was on tip-toe. Never before had such a race been paced in the Tennessee Valley. Could he take the next heat from Lizzette? If he could, he had her at his mercy.
Grimly they scored down. Travis sullen that he had to fight the old pacer, but confident of shutting him out this time. Confident and maddened. The old man, as was his wont in great emergencies, had put a bullet in his mouth to clinch his teeth on. He had learned it from Col. Jeremiah Travis, who said Jackson did it when he killed Dickinson, and at Tallapoosa, and at New Orleans.
“GO!”
And he heard Travis whirl away with a bitter curse that floated back. Then the old man shot out in the long, stealing, time-eating stride the old pacer had, and coming up just behind Lizzette's sulky he hung there in a death struggle.
One quarter, half, three-quarters, and still they swung around—locked—Travis bitter with hot oaths and the old man pale with prayer. He could see Travis's eyes flashing lightning hatred across the narrow space between them—hatred, curses, but the old man prayed on.