Running his hand down her
iron forelegs, he reflected hopefully that a few hundred dollars were
easily picked up on a race track. Bijou was a well-bred beast, with a
marvellous turn of speed. For half-a-mile she was a wonder, a record
breaker--so Nal thought. Presently he pulled a list of entries from
his pocket and scanned it closely. Old man Bobo had a bay gelding in
training for the half-mile race, Comet, out of Shooting Star, by
Meteor. Nal had taken the measure of the other horses and feared none
of them; but Comet, he admitted ruefully to be a dangerous colt. He
was stabled at home, and the small boy that exercised him was both
deaf and dumb.
"If I could hold my watch on him," said Nal to himself, "I'd give a
hundred dollars."
A smile illumined his pleasant features as he remembered that Mr.
Bobo, like himself, was sitting upon the anxious seat. That same
afternoon he had tried, in vain, to extract from Nal some information
about the filly's speed. The old man's weakness, if he had one, was
betting heavily upon a certainty.
"By Jimminy," mused Mr. Roberts, patting affectionately the satin neck
of Bijou, "it would be a nice howdy-do to win a thousand off the old
son of a gun! Gosh, Mandy! how ye startled me.
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