besides a appetite, but I was wrong. You're plumb cultus, Mike."

"Don't get sore," he grinned. "I got my chance to beat the game and
I'm goin' to take it. I can't run foot-races, and win 'em, all my
life. Some day I'll step in my beard and sprain my ankle. Ambition's
a funny thing. I got the ambition to quit work. Besides, she--you
know--she's got a dimple you could lay your finger in. You'd ought to
hear her say 'Emmike'; it's certainly cute."

We bet everything we had--everything except that pinto pony and the
cream-colored mare. I held them two out, for I figgered we was goin'
to need 'em and need 'em bad, if my scheme worked out.

The course--it was a quarter-mile, straight-away--was laid out along
the bottom-land where the grass was thick and short. Me and the chief
and his girl set on a blanket among the little piles of silver, and
the rest of the merry villagers lined up close to the finish-line. We
white men had been the prime attraction up till now, but it didn't
take me long to see that we wasn't any more. Them people was all
wrapped up in the lad with the gold name-plate, and they was rootin'
for him frantic. Last thing he done was to give his eighteen-carat
squaw-catcher the once-over with his buckskin buffer, then he shined
it at the chief's girl and trotted down to the startin'-line. I
noticed that she glued her big-and-liquids on him and kept 'em there.

It was beautiful to watch those two men jockey for a start; the Injun
was lean and hungry and mighty smart--but Mike was smarter still. Of
course he got the jump.

It was a pretty start, and Mike held his lead for fifty yards or more.