“He's a lovely horse,” commented Crane, knowing quite well to what Langdon referred.
“He's all that, but just look at the other devil.”
Diablo was throwing his nose fretfully up and down, up and down; grabbing at the bit; pirouetting from one side the course to the other; nearly pulling Westley over his neck one minute, as with lowered head he sought to break away, and the next dashing forward for a few yards with it stuck foolishly high, like a badmouthed Indian cayuse.
“But Westley'll manage him,” Langdon confided to Crane, after a period of silent observation; “he'll get his belly full of runnin' when he's gone a mile and a quarter with The Dutchman. Gad! that was neat; here they come;” for the two boys had whirled with sudden skill at the quarter post, and broke away, with Diablo slightly in the lead. “My God! he can move,” muttered Langdon, abstractedly, and quite to himself. The man at his side had floated into oblivion. He saw only a great striding black horse coming wide-mouthed up the stretch. At the Black's heels, with dogged lope, hung the Bay.
“Take him back, take him back, Westley!” yelled Langdon, leaning far out over the rail, as the horses raced by, Diablo well in front.
The Trainer's admonition seemed like a cry to a cyclone, as void of usefulness. What power could the tiny dot lying close hugged far up on the straining black neck have over the galloping fiend?
“Yes, that's the way,” Langdon said, nodding his head to Crane, and jerking a thumb out toward the first turn in the course, where the two horses were hugging close to the rail; “that's the way he's worked here.”
“Which one?” asked his companion.
“The Black, an' if he ever does that in a race—God help the others—they'll never catch him; they'll never catch him; they'll never catch him,” he kept repeating, dwelling lovingly on the thought, as he saw the confirmation of it being enacted before his eyes; for across the new green of the grass-sprouted course he could see two open lengths of daylight between Diablo and The Dutchman.
“Fifty-one and a half for the half-mile,” he imparted to Crane, looking at his watch. “Now The Dutchman is moving up; Colley doesn't mean to get left if he can help it. I'm afraid Diablo'll shut up when he's pinched; his kind are apt to do that. The Dutchman is game, an' if he ever gets to the Black's throat-latch he'll chuck it. But it takes some ridin'; it takes some ridin', sir.” He was becoming enthusiastic, exuberant. The silent man at his side noticed the childish repetition with inward amusement. He had thought that Langdon would have been overjoyed to see the bay horse smother his opponent. Was not the Trainer to have ten thousand dollars if The Dutchman won the Handicap? But here he was pinning his satisfaction to the good showing of Diablo. He didn't know of the compact between Langdon and the Bookmaker Faust, but he strongly suspected from the Trainer's demeanor that the gallop he was witnessing foretold some big coup the latter scented.