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"I'll ride her" as he jerked the saddle from Captain Jack, turned the stallion into the corral, then started toward the bunk-house, while Carolyn June moved away in the direction of the back-yard gate "I'll ride her," he repeated, emphasizing strongly the last ten words, "to beat that Thunderbolt horse from over on th' Vermejo". Old Heck and Parker returned from Eagle Butte before noon.
Even if he was, Dorsey and his crowd would be shy of the betting. This was one reason Old Heck had so played the conversation that Dorsey definitely threw down the challenge and which was so coldly accepted. The Vermejo cow-man would have to come in heavy on the betting or be placed in the role of a bluffer. By the time they reached the ranch Old Heck's good humor was restored.
"Th' Ramblin' Kid don't need to back the filly with his money, Dorsey," Old Heck said slowly and in a voice audible in every part of the room; "I'm here to back her with mine! You've done a lot of talking now, damn you, cover your chatter with coin or shut up!" the end of the sentence coming like the crack of a whip. With a nervous laugh the Vermejo cattleman jerked a wallet from his pocket.
One was driven to the bay of Santa Cruz, another to the river of Guajaval, and the third was stranded on the coast near Xalisco, whence the crew went overland to Mexico. After waiting a long while for his other two ships, Cortes made sail, and entered into the gulf of California, otherwise called Mar Vermejo, or the Vermilion Sea, and by some, the sea of Cortes.
A ripple of applause ran over the crowd in the grandstand as Dorsey, at the head of the Vermejo cowboys, rode by the judges' box. He lifted his sombrero and waved it in pleased acknowledgment. The Ramblin' Kid was in line a little distance behind Carolyn June, Skinny and the Quarter Circle KT cowboys. He rode alone just back of a quartette of Indians from down on the Chickasaw.
At the turn for the home stretch the outlaw filly shot ahead of the wonderful black horse from the Vermejo, swung close to the inside rail, and like a flash of gold-brown darted down the track toward the wire. The grandstand was turned into a madhouse of seething humanity. The immense crowd came to its feet roaring and shrieking with frenzy.
The bull-like guffaw of Mike Sabota, the gorilla-built, half-Greek proprietor of the Amusement Parlor roared out above the ripple of laughter from the others. The racing feud between the Y-Bar and the Quarter Circle KT was well known to all and Sabota himself had cleaned up a neat sum when the black horse from the Vermejo had outstepped the runner from the Quarter Circle KT.
Friday evening Old Heck had met Dorsey in the pool-room. Judge Ivory handed over to the owner of the Quarter Circle KT the Y-Bar cattleman's check for ten thousand dollars and the bill of sale he had recklessly given and which transferred to Old Heck all the cattle the Vermejo rancher owned. Dorsey was game.
A week later Dorsey sent Flip Williams to the Quarter Circle KT. The Vermejo cowboy led the beautiful black stallion that had mastered Quicksilver and had in turn been whipped by the Gold Dust maverick. "Dorsey said, Tell Old Heck Thunderbolt's a pretty good saddle horse," Flip explained, "'and he'd do to change off with Quicksilver once in a while! So he sent him over as a sort of keepsake!"
The two men stared insolently at the occupants of the car and as it passed Sabota made some remark, evidently vulgar, that caused Dorsey to burst into another round of coarse laughter. Old Heck was moody during the drive home. For nearly two years Dorsey had been crowing because of the defeat of Quicksilver by the black racer from the Vermejo. It was becoming more than idle jesting.
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