Page:Patches (1928).pdf/237

 Patches were at the tail end of this procession for he was remembering what his uncle had said and was saying his horse.

As Patches passed under the wire at the end of the first mile, however, a new spirit seemed to animate him. For there was born in his heart and brain a new idea. It was not his own but was an inheritance; it came to him through generations of racing ancestors. It was the heritage of his great-grandfather who had broken the world's record at Churchill Downs, and it even ante-dated that for it was the soul of his Arabian forbears, horses fleet as the wind, who had carried Arabian shieks over the desert in record-breaking time. It was this heritage that came surging into Patches' veins causing his heart beat to quicken and his muscles and sinews to receive new life. In this race, at the very second that he passed under the wires at the end of the first mile, Prince Patches, the American race horse was born.

With the beginning of the second mile Larry began feeling out his horse by shoving him forward. His uncle had shouted to him as he Passed the grand stand. He had not made out what he said amid the cheers of the crowd but he knew it was an admonishment to settle down to business and to begin the long hard fight ahead.

At the end of the eighth Larry found himself seem-