His voice, which had risen to a bleat, sank to a sob and he wept unrestrainedly on the old judges shoulder. It looked as though these two old men were wrestling together, catch-as-catch-can.
The judge tried to shake his distressed friend off, but the sergeant clung fast. Over the bent shoulders of the other the judge saw the wheels flash by, going south, horses and drivers evened up. The Go! of the starting judge was instantly caught up by five hundred spectators and swallowed in a crackling yell. Oblivious of all these things the sergeant raised his sorrowing head and a melancholy satisfaction shone through his tears.
I lost her, he said; but, by gum, Judge, it took all four of em to git her away from me, didnt it?
None, perhaps, in all that crowd except old Judge Priest saw the two fleeting figures speeding north. All other eyes there were turned to the south, where the countys rival trotters swung round the first turn, traveling together like teammates. None marked Captain Buck Owings as, strangely cumbered, he scuttled across the track from the outer side to the inner and dived like a rabbit under the fence at the head of the homestretch, where a big oak tree with a three-foot bole cast its lengthening shadows across the course. None marked Judge Priests Jeff coiling down like a black-snake behind an unlatched wooden gate almost opposite where the tree stood.
None marked these things, because at this moment something direful happened. Minnie May, the favorite, was breaking badly on the back length. Almost up on her hindlegs she lunged out ahead of her with her forefeet, like a boxer. That far away it looked to the grandstand crowds as though Van Wallace had lost his head entirely. One instant he was savagely lashing the mare along the flanks, the next he was pulling her until he was stretched out flat on his back, with his head back between the painted sulky wheels. And Blandville Boy, steady as a clock, was drawing ahead and making a long gap between them.
Blandville Boy came on grandly far ahead at the half; still farther ahead nearing the three-quarters. All need for breaking her gait being now over, crafty Van Wallace had steadied the mare and again she trotted perfectly trotted fast too; but the mischief was done and
she was hopelessly out of it, being sure to be beaten and lucky if she saved being distanced.
The whole thing had worked beautifully, without a hitch. This thought was singing high in Jackson Berrys mind as he steered the stud-horse past the three-quarter post and saw just beyond the last turn the straightaway of the homestretch, opening up empty and white ahead of him. And then, seventy-five yards away, he beheld a most horrifying apparition!
Against a big oak at the inner-track fence, sheltered from the view of all behind, but in full sight of the turn, stood Captain Buck Owings, drawing down on him with a huge and hideous firearm. How was Jackson Berry, thus rudely jarred from pleasing prospects, to know that Sergeant Jimmy Bagbys old Springfield musket hadnt been fired since Appomattox that its lode was a solid mass of corroded metal, its stock worm-eaten walnut and its barrel choked up thick with forty years of rust! All Jackson Berry knew was that the fearsome muzzle of an awful weapon was following him as he moved down toward it and that behind the tall mules ear of a hammer and the brass guard of the trigger he saw the cold, forbidding gray of Captain Buck Owings face and the colder, more forbidding, even grayer eye of Captain Buck Owings a man known to be dangerous when irritated and tolerably easy to irritate!
Before that menacing aim and posture Jackson Berrys flesh turned to wine jelly and quivered on his bones. His eyes bulged out on his cheeks and his cheeks went white to match his eyes. Had it not been for the stallions stern between them, his knees would have knocked together. Involuntarily he drew back on the reins, hauling in desperately until Blandville Boys jaws were pulled apart like the red painted mouth of a hobby-horse and his forelegs sawed the air. The horse was fighting to keep on to the nearing finish, but the man could feel the slugs of lead in his flinching body.
And then and then fifty scant feet ahead of him and a scanter twenty above where the armed madman stood a wide gate flew open; and, as this gap of salvation broke into the line of the encompassing fence, the welcome clarion of Judge Priests Jeff rose in a shriek: This way out, boss this way out!
It was a time for quick thinking; and to persons as totally, wholly scared as Jackson Berry was, thinking comes wondrous easy. One despairing half-glance he threw upon the goal just ahead of him and the other half on that unwavering rifle-muzzle, now looming so dose that he could catch the glint of its sights. Throwing himself far back in his reeling sulky Jackson Berry gave a desperate yank on the lines that lifted the sorely pestered stallion clear out of his stride, then sawed on the right-hand rein until he swung the horses head through the opening, grazing one wheel against a gatepost and was gone past the whooping Jeff, lickety-split, down the dirt road, through the dust and out on the big road toward town.