The crowd answered with a cheer, and the current of interest was again turned toward the race track, down which Whirlwind, ridden by Bill Will, was now returning from a gentle preliminary canter. Bill Will had been at the other side of the course when the sisters had arrived, and now, as he rode up to the starting-point, his eyes rested on these strange figures for the first time.
As they did so, he turned deadly white, and his body swayed in the light saddle, so that he almost lost his balance—a fact noticed, perhaps, by but one being in all that crowd, for, to the miners, a man amounted to little, beside a horse, on this day, and they were all gazing eagerly at Whirlwind to see if he looked in condition.
The person who saw only the man, and who had no consciousness of the horse, was the younger of the two sisters. Her face had turned as white as his, and now, while the attention of all the rest was fixed upon the horse, her glance met that of the rider, with a gaze of mutual consciousness.
She saw him struggle to right himself, and to regain his self control, and she heard him say faintly that his throat was dry. A dozen flasks were hurriedly jerked from pockets, and held out to him.
“No,” he said, “water!” and, at the sound of his voice, the little sister turned from white to burning red.
A man ran quickly and brought him some water in a tin cup. Before he took it, he removed his cap, and as he bent to drink, he looked again into the little sister’s eyes, as if he pledged her thus, in silence.
Then, with a powerful rallying of his forces, he drew in Whirlwind’s reins, and settled himself in his saddle, and with a low bow that might have graced a knight at a tournament, but which no one here noticed, or would have comprehended, he took his place with the other horses at the starting-point.
There was mad riding that day. The camp had hitherto seen nothing like it. The men from neighboring camps, who had entered fine horses upon which they had staked all their earthly possessions, had gone in to win, and were resolved that Whirlwind should not have this race, if grit in man and beast could prevent it. Every horse was strained to its extremest powers, and every rider rode with a conscious risk of neck and limb, but if the others did the utmost possible, it seemed as though Whirlwind and his rider did the impossible.
Every eye was so strained upon that break-neck rush around the course, that a spectator was very sure of escaping observation; so no one saw the little sister’s face. Even the motherly old creature at her side was peering eagerly through her steel-rimmed spectacles, not in any absorption in the race, but in dire anxiety for the life and limbs of those reckless men.
One man, in truth, was thrown and stunned, one noble horse out-strained himself and broke a blood-vessel, but Whirlwind’s rider, who had been the boldest there, came in unscathed, and Whirlwind won the race.