"HE SAT ON THE EDGE OF HIS COT, WITH THE BLANKET OVER HIS SHOULDERS, UNTIL DAYBREAK"
Tim had grown like a weed since he first saw Sheepshead Bay, but it was a slender, fragile figure that the trainer tossed into the chestnut filly's saddle when the bugle blew.
"Now, kid," said Faulkner quietly, throwing one arm over the crupper, "you're third from the rail. You know the filly as well as I do. She's fit to the minute. She'll run in 2.03, if she ain't rushed in the first half. Hold yer place an' let the sprinters do their sprintin'. They'll come back. Keep her goin' her pace for a mile, an' if you have to ride her the last quarter, make her sweat for it. She's game fer a drive. They don't make 'em no gamer."
The lad heard scarcely a word. He wasn't frightened. He was sullen, rebellious against—against everything. It was one more race to him—commonplace, perfunctory, tiresome. He was going to get through with it in the easiest way he could. He thought with relief of the wide spaces and easy turns of the great track.
"Keep up yer nerve, kid," said Bud Noble, turning in his saddle and looking back at Tim as the field filed through the paddock gate.
Tim grinned scornfully. What a notion! Why should anybody need nerve to gallop a horse around a track? He had only one idea—to keep out of trouble. So, perfectly calm and very much bored, he danced to the starting-gate on the chestnut filly. He paid little attention to the fretful doings there. He was haunted by no fear that he might be left. It was a nuisance to have to keep an eye on the vicious heels of Baldy, the swayback gelding at his left—that was all.
But Kate Greenaway had no intention of being left. She kept her dainty nose on the webbing from the instant she got it there, for hadn't Tim taught her that? And when, at last, all the fussing and fuming was over, and the whips of the starter's assistants had ceased their hissing, and the pleadings and threats of the starter himself were done, and the gate swished up before the fourteen racers, the filly's first bound beat the gate by half a length.
Tim was a trifle disgusted. "Blast the filly, anyhow!" he thought. It was no part of his plan to lead that roaring field. He took a double wrap on the reins, and his mount came back till two lithe, lean forms slid up abreast her on the rail, and a third on the outside. That was better, thought Tim, and the sprinters drew out ahead of him. Contentedly he fell in on the rail behind them.
A storm of dirt clods smote the filly in the face. Another pelted Tim on the forehead. He took a tighter hold on Kate Greenaway, and the sprinters drew away another length. It would have been an easy thing for him to choke her back still further, but somehow a surge of generous feeling for the game creature beat down his sullen selfishness, and he hadn't the heart to strangle her.