“She don’t look a cent worse,” said Ryan. “Same little red suit, same little smile, same throaty little voice. And she’s making good, too. Been all over the West, and packed up a nice parcel of the long green. Not that she’ll ever need it; that kid will marry a million some day. One of the guys that was following her round was big rich.”
All that day Teddy rode entirely without judgment, and his old daredevil dash was not in him. In fact, that was becoming his consistent experience. Every time he would set his teeth and let his engine out to the last notch to pass the man in front, a blind seemed to shut down in front of him, or a little red figure would appear stretched on the track ahead, and he would let the chance slip by.
Consequently, when he returned to give exhibitions at the Devil’s Soup-plate, he was no nearer the white southern garage of his dreams than he had been the previous season. And the life of a speed-man is short,--much shorter, as a rule, than that of a boxing champion.
That garage, gleaming in the sun, with a palm or two in front and lizards basking in its shadow, had been Teddy’s lodestar for years; but on the first day of their meeting, Sadie’s brisk little figure had slipped into the picture, and he could not imagine the place now without seeing her standing at the door in a white dress, with no hat, but with a bunch of crimson flowers at her waist.
“This is my finish,” he told Santoni; “I’m a has-been. I’ve started seein’ things. I won’t ride after this season.”
Then he learned, with a shock, that Sadie was to be his racing-companion once more. She had walked into Santoni’s office and offered to give exhibitions on the old terms; and Santoni, being too good a business man, and too stout withal to stand on his head for joy, had shaken her by both hands, and spent an afternoon in devising a poster more sensational than any he had previously compassed.
When he wrote “America’s Foremost Queen of the Track” it seemed to him weak and colorless; and he threw adjectives into it until Sadie had a title as long as her arm.
Teddy slipped away and hid himself when he saw her arrive, with a knot of admirers, to survey the track. An expensively tailored costume emphasized her recent prosperity, and her obvious gaiety of manner was like a snub. When she laughingly pointed out to her companions the precise spot on which she had struck the providential wire fence, Teddy shuddered and turned away.