The girl turned swiftly, and her little gauntlet caught Waterbury full across the mouth.
“You lie!” she whispered, very softly, her face white and quivering, her eyes black with passion.
And then Lethe saw her opportunity. Sensed it in the momentary relaxing of the bridle-rein. She whipped the bit into her fierce, even, white teeth, and with a snort shot down the pike.
And then Waterbury's better self gained supremacy; contrition, self-hatred rushing in like a fierce tidal wave and swamping the last vestige of animalism. He spurred blindly after the fast-disappearing filly.
Garrison rode one of the best races of his life that night. It was a trial of stamina and nerve. Lethe was primarily a sprinter, and the gelding, raised to his greatest effort by the genius of his rider, outfought her, outstayed her. As he flew down the moon-swept road, bright as at any noontime, Garrison knew success would be his, providing Sue kept her seat, her nerve, and the saddle from twisting.
Inch by inch the white, shadow-flecked space between the gelding and the filly was eaten up. On, on, with only the tempest of their speed and the flying hoofs for audience. On, on, until now the gelding had poked his nose past the filly's flying hocks.
Garrison knew horses. He called on the gelding for a supreme effort, and the gelding answered impressively. He hunched himself, shot past the filly. Twenty yards' gain, twenty yards to the fore, and then Garrison turned easily in the saddle. “All right, Miss Desha, let her come,” he sang out cheerfully.
And the filly came, came hard; came with all the bitterness of being outstripped by a clumsy gelding whom she had beaten time and again. As she caught the latter's slowed pace, as her wicked nose drew alongside of the other's withers, Garrison shot out a hand, clamped an iron clutch on the spume-smeared bit, swung the gelding across the filly's right of way; then, with his right hand, choked the fight from her widespread nostrils.
And then, womanlike, Sue fainted, and Garrison was just in time to ease her through his arms to the ground. The two horses, thoroughly blown, placidly settled down to nibble the grass by the wayside.