“Thank you,” the girl answered, struggling with her voice. “Yes, I must go, for Dixon will be terribly disappointed. I must go and put a brave face on, I suppose. It's all over, and it can't be helped. But you've won, and I congratulate you.”
“Poor old dad!” she muttered to herself, “to have fairly given away Diablo just when he was ready to win a big race.” With a tinge of bitterness the girl thought how much her mother's opposition was to blame for this narrow missing of a great victory. She was glad to get away from the cataract of voices that smothered her like great falling waters. There was little exultation. If it had been any solace to her, she had much companionship in her dashed hopes; for Diablo, the winner, had not been backed by the general public; the favorite, White Moth, had been beaten.
After the first outburst a sullen anger took possession of the race-goers. They had been wronged, deceived; another coup had been made by that trick manipulator, Langdon. How carefully he had kept the good thing bottled up. If the mob could have put into execution its half-muttered thoughts, every post about the Gravesend track would have been decorated with a fragment of Langdon's anatomy.
Even the bookmakers were less jubilant than usual over this winning of an outsider, for Crane, and Langdon, and Faust, and two or three others who had either received a hint or stumbled upon the good thing, had taken out of the ring a tidy amount of lawful currency.
XXV
Crane accompanied Allis to the paddock gate; and she continued on to the fatal number seven stall. Lucretia had just been brought in, looking very distressed after her hard race. For an instant the girl forgot her own trouble at sight of the gallant little mare's condition. Two boys were busy rubbing the white-crusted perspiration and dust from her sides; little dark rivulets of wet trickled down the lean head that hung wearily.
“Well, we lost!” It was Dixon's voice at Allis's elbow. “That'll do,” to the boys; “here, put this cooler on, and walk her about.”
Then he turned to Allis again. “She was well up with the leaders half way in the stretch; I tho't she was goin' to win.”
“Was it too far for her, Dixon?”