The old trapper made his way to Donald’s side. His leathery old face, with its multitudinous wrinkles, wore a perturbed expression. “That feller Lafonte is cultus. He’s full of dirty tricks; ’tain’t safe for Connie to ride.”
Connie’s father shook his head. “I am afraid it is too late now.” Then in a lower voice he added: “You must know the reason for her entering this race.”
Donald looked puzzled for an instant. Suddenly it dawned on him. “The purse?”
Wainwright nodded. “It would break her heart if I forbade her to ride, now that she has gone this far. She must have decided suddenly, as she never mentioned it to me.”
The Rennie Company had put up a purse of two hundred and fifty dollars. There was to be a collection taken after the race to add to this purse.
The horses trotted down the course. Connie’s was rearing and prancing, and it was with difficulty that she managed to get him to join the others. She leaned forward to whisper words of quieting in his twitching ears. Down the course they came. They were in nice alignment as they passed the judges’ stand.
Connie on her spotted cayuse showed as a bright splash of colour in the midst of her darker competitors.
Lafonte’s dark face lighted with a savage gleam as he swung his horse to the inside or “pole.”
Running neck and neck with him was his hated rival, Paul John, leaning low on his horse’s neck and shouting unintelligibly in Chinook. Connie was with the stragglers five lengths in the rear. This was new to Pegasus, and he was bewildered by the crowding horses about him. As they turned the corner of the course, Lafonte’s horse stumbled, and before he righted Paul John had slipped into the lead. Cursing wildly, Lafonte settled himself in the saddle, his horse’s head at the flank of his rival.
Hundreds of times Pegasus had travelled this field with Connie clinging to his back, slowing up for shrubs and trees and making sudden bursts of speed in the open. That had been vastly different to being surrounded by running horses and listening to the wild cries of their riders and the roaring of the excited crowd.
At the moment Lafonte lost the point of vantage to his rival, Connie leaned forward and emitted a peculiar clucking sound, at the same time striking her moccasined feet into the horse’s sides. Pegasus’s ears twitched back at the sound of the voice he loved. “Now I know what you want,” he seemed to say, as his beautiful neck stretched out and his hoofs spurned the ground. His graceful body lowered until it appeared to the spectators as though he were just skimming the earth. He moved with a springy stride, the muscles of his sinewy frame working with a sliding movement beneath the glossy skin. Gradually he drew away from the horses travelling with him. Foot by foot he crawled up on the leaders.