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Updated: May 31, 2025
"'Him! says the jock. 'Enough to beat anybody's hoss! "I starts him the next week, 'n' he repeats, but it ain't till his third race that I know fur sure he's a great hoss, with a racin' heart. "Sweeney has the mount, 'n' he don't get him away good the colt's layin' a bad seventh at the quarter. Banjo's out in front, away off 'n' she's a real good mare.
Both sat silent a little while. Banjo's elbows were across his knees, his face lifted toward the window. The wind was falling, and there was a little breaking among the low clouds, baring a bit of blue sky here and there. Banjo viewed this brightening of the day with gladness.
"I made the boy who carried it put my banjo in a hollow of that tree out of the wet, and when I saw the old stick was going to crash down, I made a grab for the 'jo, and got it right enough. Well, I wasn't sufficiently nippy in jumping out of the way, it seems, and as the old banjo's busted for good, I shall have to trouble you for a funeral march on the accordion, Skipper."
"Yes; we march at nine o'clock." "You done right to come to the mission after me, for I'd ride to the gatepost of hell to turn a trick agin Saul Chadron!" Banjo's voice had a quaver of earnestness in it that needed no daylight to enforce. The pitchy night made a bobbing blur of him as he rode his quick-stepping little horse at Frances Landcraft's side. "Yes, you owe him one," Frances admitted.
Now and then a bush at the roadside flipped a stirrup, now and again Banjo's little horse snorted in short impatience, as if expressing its disapproval of this journey through the dark. Night was assertive in its heaviness, but communicative of its mysteries in its wild scents the silent music of its hour.
"I'm steadier this morning, I'll watch and wait," she said, pressing the liniment-soaked cloth to Banjo's bruised forehead. Banjo contracted his muscles under the application, shriveling up on himself like a snail in a fire, for it was hot and heroic liniment, and strong medicine for strong beasts and tougher men.
Frances gave him her benediction with her eyes, and farewell with a warm handclasp, and Banjo's beribboned horse frisked off on its long trip, quite refreshed from the labors of the past night. Frances was carrying Macdonald's cartridge belt and revolvers, the confiscation of which had been overlooked by Major King in the excitement of the shooting.
Banjo's face was a picture of patient suffering, but he said nothing, and had not spoken since Frances entered the room, for the treatment had been under way before her arrival and there was scarcely enough breath left in him to suffice for life, and none at all for words.
Chadron jerked it from him with something hard and sharp on her tongue like a curse. Banjo Gibson came into the circle of light, a bandage on his head. "I didn't even see 'em. They knocked me down, and when I come to she was gone!" Banjo's voice was full of self-censure, and his feet were weak upon the ground.
Himself incorruptible, he was no doubt well pleased at heart that Banjo's misconduct should throw up in high relief his own immaculate conduct. Lollypop was in fact a bit of a prig. Had he been a boy he would have been head of his school, a Scholar of Balliol, and President of the Union at his University.
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