How they lay down to it! How they came up!
Stretch and gather! Stretch and gather, the game and gallant foursome held to it. Now, for the first time, the Heathflower thing showed all that was in her. Even those who stood to lose fortunes felt that her whirlwind rush deserved to win.
A hundred yards from the wire, whips still flying, rowels plowing furrows in satin coats, Aramis staggered, half stumbled, then fell back an open length.
Tim flung away his whip, and leaned far over, lying almost flat upon the Flower’s neck to shout in her ear: “You see dat dar Mister Aldergown! Dee calls him bulldawg! Tote yosef, gal! Show ’im you’s bulldawg, too.” Perhaps the Flower resented the caution. Certainly, she hung a bit in the next stride. Tay Ho and Aldegonde, running either side of her, almost let in daylight between.
The cheers, the roars, mounted in deafening volume. The Heathflower thing answered them by going down, down, till it seemed she lay quite flat on earth. And then she came up, up, with a leap so long, so lancelike, it recovered all she had lost. Again she thrust herself forward—the horses either side of her thrust as far.
Twenty yards from home not one of the three was an inch to the good or the bad. Aldegonde’s jockey slashed his mount savagely—somehow, one blow of the whip fell on the Flower’s quarter—fell and won the race. With a sweep as of the wind she went away from it, and got her nose across the finish line three inches in front!
A near thing. Anybody must admit that. So near the tumult died to a breathless hush. Hilary half turned about. “I’m going to the judges’ stand to see what won,” he said. “I saw Aldegonde first.”
“I don’t know about that—but I reckon you won’t go,” Billy said, laying his hand upon Hilary’s arm.
Hilary was furious. “Why not?” he demanded. He was no weakling, but somehow he could not get free of that impertinent young cub’s grip.
“Oh, because you are—your father’s son,” Billy said, nonchalantly, then steadfastly, the lightness dying from face and voice: “I mean no disrespect, Mr. Hilary, but all of us have got to take account of human nature. We may think we know what won—you and me—but it’s the judges’ business to say so—and ours to be satisfied with the sayin’. That’s only fair——”