All the slumbering life in his body awoke from its sullen sleep. He blessed the splendid filly racing so true and so strong beneath him, and he sat down for the first time to help her with every ounce of his power and every trace of his skill.
He knew she could win. He knew she had been going well within herself, and still she was where she could strike. Now was the time to ride, and he rode as he had never ridden before, standing in the stirrups, crouched over the gallant filly's neck, rising and falling in perfect rhythm with her every stride. And, bless her! that stride had not begun to shorten yet.
Steadily she crept up on the older horses fighting their duel before her. Tim could see from the tail of his eye that both their riders were working for dear life—and he had only just begun to ride. His heart bounded again beneath his brilliant jacket, and again he urged the filly.
But what was that? Surely, surely his path was growing narrower. In six strides more he was sure of it. Carley, on the outside, was boring in under the drive, and Boston was pulling in to keep from fouling.
There's no time to pick daisies in the last furlong of the Suburban. All the months of Tim's purgatory called to him to pull up before they squeezed him against that deadly rail. He tried to do it, but his wrists had gone limp. The next instant the bay and the black were running stride for stride half a length before the filly—and closing in.
Then rose the Terror and gripped Tim by the throat. The moment had come. They had pinned him on the rail.
Under the gruelling drive Carley staggered again. He bumped Boston. Tim felt the big horse graze his boot as he wavered. Instantly that pungent smell of sweating horseflesh stung his nostrils, and with it flashed the memory of that awful day to smite him helpless.
Again he tried to pull up, and again he failed. His wrists were palsied. Why didn't he fall! Oh, why didn't he fall!
Under his quaking knees the withers of the gallant filly still rose and fell, mightily, rhythmically; her lean, beautiful neck stretched out as if to meet the goal, her nostrils wide and blood-red, through which the air came and went, roaring, like the escape of steam from a mighty valve, her eyeballs starting from their sockets.
Then sickening shame smote him on his quivering lips. He seemed to realise for the first time that the filly was waging her terrible fight alone.