“Don’t you slanderize Skipper now!” Whiffle warned him. “Dat hoss b’longs to my maw.”
“He’s a good hoss all right,” Skeeter said propitiatingly. “But of co’se he ain’t whut you mought call a race-hoss.”
“Oh, _ain’t_ he?” Whiffle sniffed. “He wus a race-hoss when we bought him, an’ I bet I knows mo’ about race-hossin’ dan you do!”
There was a loud whoop from the crowd and Skeeter Butts raised himself on tiptoe and looked with popping eyeballs.
“Bless _gracious_, whut a git-off!” Whiffle exclaimed.
It was indeed a very bad start. In a few moments the three horses were strung over a distance of a hundred yards, but well to the front and all alone a big gray named Skipper was skimming the rail and running like a wild fox, while Skeeter’s favorite bet, Peedee, was the last in the line.
“O Lawdy!” Skeeter sighed, his heart bumping against the base of his tongue. “Dis is awful, puffeckly awful!”
Whiffle Boone stood without a tremor of excitement watching her horse.
“Run, you gray houn’ dawg, run!” she whooped in a clear, bugle call.
At the head of the stretch Skipper was far ahead, running like a high-powered automobile.
He passed under the wire and started around the track again. In spite of the frantic efforts of his jockey to stop him Skipper made the second mile in record time.
As he passed the grandstand the negro who operated the big bass drum brought down the drumstick on the stretched pigskin with a loud “Boom!”
Skipper promptly jumped the fence, ran far over in the field, bucked his jockey off, ran splashing through the little artificial pond in the middle of the green, and finally lay down in the water and rolled over and over like a muskrat, kicking and squealing and splashing the water and making waves like Pharaoh’s army drowning in the sea!
“Lawdymussy!” Whiffle whined, watching the antics of the crazed horse and wringing her hands in nervous distress. “I knowed Skipper was a hop-hoss, but I didn’t ax nobody how much tea to gib him. I figger dat I doped Skipper too high!”
The crowd was on its way home a long time before they rescued Skipper from the pond and persuaded the mud-begrimed winner to return to his stall and be cleaned off.
At the head of the homeward-bound procession walked Skeeter Butts and Shin Bone. Words cannot describe their distress.