Both sides of the track were patrolled by mounted cowboys with drawn revolvers. The rolling ball in red understood the meaning,—his eyes bulged out in awful effort.
At the end of twenty-five yards Lynn was leading Mounce by about seven feet—at fifty yards their relative positions were unchanged. The muscles of the blacksmith’s legs, below the knees, were knotted in terrible tension, and his teeth were clinched in desperation. At the end of seventy-five yards he was running nearly abreast with the figure in red. Both men were puffing like hedgehogs. Then the people shouted, each to his favorite, “Lay to,” “Lay to,” “Get there,”—and so they did—with a last mighty effort; but the horse-shoer “laid to” the better and won the race.
Lynn went madly on—nor looked back. Fifty shots were fired in the air. Visions of pepper-boxes floated before him. He was headed into the herd of cattle. Presendy he stopped and whirled about like magic. A bull, maddened by his fiery red attire, accepted the challenge like a Spanish bovine, and rushed toward him with fire in his eyes. The judge yelled in terror, and bounded away in awful fright, running as he had never run before. The bull was not a half dozen feet behind him, lunging in mad leaps, and bellowing a hoarse murderous roar, while his sharp horns were almost scraping the earth.
The people trembled with fear. The cowboys plunged their spurs deep into their ponies’ sides and galloped frantically to the rescue. They came alongside of the maddened bull and, quick as a flash, a score of bullets were buried in the bull’s heart, and he fell to the earth in the throes of sudden death.
It was all over in an instant, and then Lynn, seeing the danger was past, shouted, “Say, maybe you fellers think I was throwin’ that race with the bull, but I wasn’t. No, sirree. I was jist doing my level best and don’t you forget it.”
So ended the much talked of foot-race,—a contest that forever silenced Judge Lynn from talking of great sprinting exploits on the banks of the Wabash—or anywhere else.
CHAPTER XXII.—THE ELECTION
THE Tuesday following the incident of the foot-race was election day. The Patriot prophesied that, out of the three thousand probable votes cast in the county, fully sixteen hundred would be for the Populist ticket.