All morning the boy hung uneasily about the stable. He ate scarcely any dinner and roved restlessly about until it was time to take the filly to the paddock. He got her there just as the horses were going to the post for the third race. The Suburban was the fourth. Up and down under the great shed he walked his charge, blanketed and hooded, in the wake of towering, black Gladstone. Soon a shouting from the grandstand announced that the third race was over.
Then came a rush of hundreds to see the Suburban horses saddled. One by one, the candidates filed out to the track for their warming-up gallops—Boston, top-weight, favorite and winner of the Metropolitan, and second in the Brooklyn; Carley, winner of the Advance the season before; Catchall, the speedy Hastings mare; and all the rest—all save Kate Greenaway. Once, in a warming-up gallop, she had run away, and Faulkner would never take chances with her after that. So Tim walked her up and down by herself, thankful, yet ashamed, that somebody else was to ride her.
Suddenly the stable foreman ran up.
"Hi, you Tim," he shouted, "hustle over to the dressin' room an' git on yer duds. Skin along, now, no time to lose."
Tim stood gaping.
"Git a move on—git a move! My Gawd! You ain't got no time to lose. Ban's fell down an' sprained his ankle."
Tim trudged over to the jockey's house, his eyes on the ground. Over in the paddock, Faulkner listened stubbornly to the foreman.
"I tell you," the latter was saying, "the kid's lost his nerve. Ain't you seen it all along? He ain't took a chance sence his tumble. Why dontcher give the mount to Tyson or Biff Barry? They ain't neither of 'em got a mount."
"Nothin' doin'," rejoined the trainer. "The kid knows the filly—brought her up, almost. He can ride, too, if he don't get in a tight place, an' that ain't likely. Tyson can't make the weight. B'sides, I told the Colonel I'd give the kid a chance. An'," he concluded, "this is it."
"All right," said the foreman, "but you'll see. He's lost his nerve. Why, he got white eraoun' the gills when I tol' him."