But he had won the heat! What did he care? He could scarcely stop his mare. She seemed like a bird and as fresh. He pulled her double to make her turn and come back after winning, and as she came she still fought the bit.
As he turned, he almost ran into the old pacer jogging, broken-hearted behind. The mare's mouth was wide open, and the Bishop's trained eye fell on the long tusk-like lower teeth, flashing in the sun.
Startled, he quivered from head to foot. He would not believe his own eyes. He looked closely again. There was no doubt of it—she was eight years old!
In an instant he knew—his heart sank, “We're robbed, Cap'n Tom—Shiloh—my God!”
Travis drove smilingly back, amid hisses and cheers and the fluttering of ladies' handkerchiefs in the boxes.
“How about the gloves and candy now?” he called to them with his cap in his hand.
Above the judges had hung out:
6th Heat: Lizzette, 1st; Ben Butler, 2nd. Time, 2:14.
When Flecker of Tennessee saw the time hung out, he jumped from his seat exclaiming: “Six heats and the last heat the fastest? Who ever heard of a tired mare cutting ten seconds off that way? By the eternal, but something's wrong there.”
“Six heats an' the last one the fastest—By gad, sah,” said Col. Troup. “It is strange. That mare Lizzette is a wonder, an' by gad, sah, didn't the old pacer come? By gad, but if he'd begun that drive jus' fifty yards sooner—our money”—