Panchito had swung into the home-stretch, his white face and white front legs rising and falling with the strong, steady rhythm of the horse whose stout heart refuses to acknowledge defeat, the horse who still has something left for a supreme effort at the finish.
"There is a true race-horse," Parker cried exultantly. "I once won a ten-thousand-dollar purse with a dog that wasn't fit to appear on the same track with that Panchito."
The big chestnut thudded by below them, stretched to the limit of his endurance, passed what would have been the finish had the race been a mile and a sixteenth, and galloped up the track with the broken bridle-rein dangling. He slowed down as he came to the other horses in the race, now jogging back to the judge's stand, and one of the cholo youths spurred alongside of him, caught the dangling rein and led him back to the judge's stand.
Kay's face was a little bit white as she smiled up at her father and Farrel. "The old darling ran away with me," she called.
Farrel was instantly at her side and had lifted her out of the saddle. She clung to him for the barest moment, trembling with fear and excitement, before turning to examine Panchito, from whom Pablo had already stripped the saddle. He was badly blown, as trembly as the girl herself, and dripping with sweat, but when Pablo slipped the headstall on him and commenced to walk him up and down to "cool him out," Don Mike's critical eye failed to observe any evil effects from the long and unaccustomed race.
John Parker came down out of the grand stand, his thumb still tightly pressing the stem of his stop-watch, which he thrust under Farrel's nose.
"Look, you star-spangled ignoramus, look," he yelled. "You own a horse that's fit to win the Melbourne Cup or the American Derby, and you don't know it. What do you want for him? Give you ten thousand for him this minute—and I am not so certain that race hasn't hurt him."
"Oh, I don't want to sell Panchito. I can make this ranch pay ten thousand dollars, but I cannot breed another Panchito on it."
"Farrel, if you refuse to sell me that horse I'm going to sit right down here and weep. Son, I don't know a soul on earth who can use twelve—yes, fifteen—thousand dollars handier than you can."
Don Mike smiled his lazy, tantalizing smile. "I might as well be broke as the way I am," he protested. "What's a paltry fifteen thousand dollars to a man who needs half a million? Mr. Parker, my horse is not for sale at any price."