Page:Lynch Williams--The girl and the game.djvu/152

 have been proven by a letter in the inside pocket of Reddy's blue coat.

Then the well-known official, because he thought he had performed a clever stroke, extended the privileges of the club to Reddy out of gratitude, and said: "Always come in here and sit with us, and bring your friend too." None of which Reddy did, because he saw things. Also, because it made him angry, and his red face still redder, to have men of that stamp claim friendship with his father, and equality with the Armstrongs of Kentucky.

You see, he had been brought up to consider the horse, next to woman, God's best and noblest gift to man. His earliest recollections were of his father and uncles and other Kentuckians drinking mint-juleps and talking horse in the wide Southern hall. When he was a little, white-haired baby, the first word he said was horse. At least, his father thought it was. He had learned to ride before he could walk, and had spent all his boyhood with horses and gentlemen horse-raisers. The family had gone in