“Suit yourself. I’ve done sent a couple men down to the hotel to set on that safe, where yuh keep the money. Oasis and Alkali towns crave that horse race; so it’s shore up to you.”
They go stompin’ out, while the crowd out in front makes all kinds of noise. I sabes them people, and if we don’t give ’em what they want, they’ll take the hall apart.
“Are you loyal to San Pablo, Hozie?” asks Zeke.
“Look at me and answer yore own question.”
“You’re a good rider. Hozie: ride for the honor of San Pablo. Never let Oasis say that we didn’t make good. Yo’re the man of the hour—the best rider in the San Pablo range. Think of poor old Judgment Jones and the starvin’ cannibals he aims to help with that money. Will yuh, Hozie?”
I said I wouldn’t—and swooned. When I woke up. I’ve got on Hank’s jockey clothes, and they’re helpin’ me on Tequila, that big, cold-jawed, leg-crossin’ sorrel. The horse is blindfolded, and it takes three men to hold his head down. The boards are crackin’ under his feet, and the blamed brute is scared stiff.
To the right of me is a thing like a big window, and in that window is Susie, Zeke, Zibe, Mrs. Noon, Oscar Tubbs, Burlap Benson and Fetlock Feeney, and they’re all yelpin’ their heads off, as though they’re lookin’ at a race, yellin’, “C’mon, Thunderbolt! Come on, Thunderbolt!”
“Let go!” yelps somebody, and they turned Tequila loose.
“Spur him straight ahead, Hozie!” snorts somebody else.
Spur nothin’. The next thing I knowed I was back on his rump, and he was climbin’ through that window affair, and the next thing I knowed I was out on his head, with both legs wrapped around his neck, and we’re on the edge of the stage, facin’ the stampede. The air is full of sombreros, all sailin’ at us, men are yelpin’, “Whoa! Whoa!”