all of it you’ll want to-night, Ormond—there’s the roan pony, then. He kin stand up ter it.”
“Where is he? Chuck along some gear, boys.”
To the steel jangle and the swift clatter of hoofs on the flags Conroy cast one injunction:
“Jes’ remember that pony’s worth fifty notes, Ormond. An’ the Lion won’t be wuth a rotten egg come mornin’.”
Ormond was into the street as the stable boys’s hands left the girth, and the roan pony raced with reefed rein for the bridge. Beside the abutment Ormond swung for the shingle, working up the creek and across, holding his bearings true to the foot. On the far side he struck the track that swerved ever away to the left, and gave the pony its head up the rain-battered lull.
A clear plan had shaped in his mind ere ever he crossed the leather. It gave the sense that snatched a short-handled chopper from a shelf in the mews, and that turned the pony’s head to Paddy’s Gully, some twelve miles below the penstock. Not Bert Kiliat nor any living man could help the race if Adams had not talked lies on the wire. Indubitably Ormond knew this. For the Lion race was of all things difficult to guard. It doubled on itself many times down the mountain; and should a slip come, the whole race must go out, swept before the torrent in the flumings be-
