The wise ones averred that Paul John, of the Indian contingent, would give him a hard race. Paul John’s cayuse was young, but the previous year he had run the half-breed’s horse a close second. Money was being placed on all sides, particularly by the Indians, who are inveterate gamblers. Amid an excited babble in Chinook, nine Indian riders came laughing and shouting, with much waving of hats, to prance about and display their horsemanship before the admiring crowd.
Donald, with Andy, Gillis and Wainwright, stood leaning over the edge of the judges’ stand watching the animated scene below.
At this moment there was an agitation at the far end of the oval, where the crowd opened to admit a horse and rider that came tearing down the course like the wind.
“Look!” Donald shouted excitedly as he seized Wainwright’s arm. “It’s Connie!”
Down the course, riding like a spirit of the woods, came the girl, her golden hair blowing about her face, sitting astride her mettlesome horse and riding as if the wilderness belonged to her alone.
Pegasus was not used to crowds. With arched neck and quivering flanks he reared on his hindlegs to poise an instant, then leaped forward like a rabbit. Connie sat on the bare back of her adored cayuse as though a part of the animal, her slender body moving in gentle undulations in perfect co-ordination with the movements of the horse. She was hard set to keep from running over the other riders, who sat with mouths agape.
Connie was unknown to the greater part of the crowd. To them this child-like equestrienne, with her mass of shining hair, appeared as an apparition. Her firm little hands soon checked her turbulent mount, who stood trembling with nervousness. The crowd gave her a rousing welcome as soon as they had recovered from their astonishment.
“Who is she? Where does she come from?” they shouted.
Connie kept her eyes fixed on the ground. She was outwardly calm and serene; inwardly she was as nervous as her fretting cayuse, and did not dare raise her flushed face to meet the battery of eyes around her.
Donald turned to Wainwright. “Are you going to let her run? Is it safe for her to enter a race with all those men?”
“I couldn’t stop her now, and besides,” he added with a touch of pride, “she can hold her own with any of them.”