For far from the left, rounding the pack, came a streak of gray. It caught the brown horse and passed him in two leaps; it shot by the laboring bay; and only the roan of Charlie Haig remained in front. That rider, confident of victory, had slipped his quirt over his wrist and was hand-riding his horse when a brief, deep yell of dismay from the crowd made him jerk a glance over his shoulder. He cut the quirt into the flank of the roan, but it was too late. Five lengths from the finish the little gray shoved his nose in front; and from that point, settling toward the earth, as he stretched into a longer and longer stride, every jump increased his margin. The nose of the roan was hardly on the rump of the gelding at the finish.
A bedlam roar came from the crowd. Townsend was cursing and beating time to his oaths with a fat fist. Townsend found so many companion losers that his feelings were readily salved, and he turned to Connor, smiling wryly.
"We can't win every day," he declared, "but I'll tell you this, partner; of all the men I ever seen, you get the medal for judgin' a hoss. You can pick my string any day."
"Eighteen years old," Connor was saying in the monotonous tone of one hypnotized.
"Hey, there," protested Townsend, perceiving that he was on the verge of being ignored.
"A hundred and eighty pounds," sighed the big man.
Townsend saw for the first time that a stop-watch was in the hand of his companion, and now, as Connor began to pace off the distance, the hotel proprietor tagged behind, curious. Twenty steps from the starting point the larger man stopped abruptly, shook his head, and then went on. When he came to the start he paused again, and Townsend found him staring with dull eyes at the face of the watch.
"What'd they make it in?" asked the little man.
The other did not hear.
"They ran from this line?" he queried in a husky voice.