Page:Pacific Monthly volumes 9 and 10.djvu/141

Rh queerest look, for 'twas nearer a grin than a look of hate and jealousy.

Flossie didn't take much interest in the comin' race; but don't you think that high-strung, keen-eyed cousin of hers didn't! She watched Ed train La Costa, and her quick wit suggested more to improve the mare than all his knowledge of horses. She fussed over the mare, and when they trotted round the track for a warmin' up, before the race, I wouldn't give much for Palmetto's chances! La Costa was fit as a fiddle, and went as though she was able and willin' to fly. And in the little wait while Tex fixed a strap on Palmetto's rig, my lady flutters down to the sulky where Ed is waitin', an' pets an' smooths the trotter's face as though it had been a baby. The mare didn't seem to like it, though, for she snorted and reared back till Ed had to touch her with the whip. And for the ten or fifteen minutes before they lined up she stood there talkin' with Helver, lookin' like one of them South American birds that's all color and life and motion.

Well, they finally started, and La Costa, who'd been fearfully restless, shot ahead like an arrow. Lord, how she went down the first quarter I Trot? Well, I never want to see such trottin' ag;ain! She was all over the track, her fore feet straight in the air half the time. She'd spurt and trot twice her length, maybe ; but her regulation gait was reg'lar jack rabbit leaps. Palmetto trotted home, and when Ed, who was fair wild, come in, he started to use the whip and take revenge on the mare. Tex steps up an' says he, "She's my property now. Don't you lay a hand on her." And he led her away, for he'd won her all right.

There wasn't any use to kick. Helver told me himself he'd had the mare watched night and day so there could nothin' be given her. Besides, she never trotted better than ten minutes before the race.

'Trad," said he, "she was hoodooed; as sure as cattle, she was hoodooed."

I know he thought his girl would be the first to offer sympathy; but she had disappeared, and wouldn't see anyone. Had a headache, she sent word to him. He just says low to me, "Little Flossie would never have left a fellow when he was on a muddy track."

But next day he gets a note from his lady, sayin' that she'd gone, body an' bones.

"I'm done with you forever," she writes. "Our engagement is ended. You know how easy engagements are broken. At least Flossie does."

That was all, only his diamond was in the note. He gives a hard laugh, an' says he, "Hoodooed again. She's hoo- dooed the mare, just as she did me; though I don't know how in thunder she done it."

Tex was leaving the state with his whole string, but I stayed on and worked for another man. When Tex and Flossie had gone, a boy comes an' tells Helver that Tex had concluded he'd taken enough out of him, and so had left him La Costa. "That's because she's done for," says Ed, and I own I thought so too. But she was right as a saddle-tree, and many a race did she win for him after, trottin' steady as a spinnin' top. That was how him an' me happened to be to- gether at a race track in the South, a couple of years later. We'd just got there and was watchin' the crowd, when we see Miss Flossie a-drivin' slow, with a young off-on-leave naval officer; and the look of happiness and love on her pretty face was something deeper and stronger than Ed Helver had ever stamped there. A little farther on we see one o' them old Southern Colonels a-talkin' with Tex, and yes, — I knew that dazzling bit of bloom and flesh by his side, even before Ed claps his hand to his breast with a sort of groan. "Nile," says he. And when the old Colonel comes along, very politely we asks him who is the couple he just left. The ol' boy seemed willin' enough to talk, and it didn't take much pumpin' to get the hull story out'n him.

"That's Tex Bahdwell, my best friend, gennelmen," he says, answerin' our question. "Knows a boss, suh. The lady's his wife; been married five yeah's, an' he's coh'tin heh yet. She moah than worships Tex. He went Nawth with his hosses one time an'