He snapped his lantern jaws, and grinned in Nal’s face.  The selfishness which rated its sordid interest paramount to any consideration for others appalled the young man.  How could he stem this tide of avarice, this torrent of egoism?

“So love don’t go?” said Nal shortly.

“No, sonny, love don’t go—­leastways not with me.”

“Mebbe you think I’m after the grease,” remarked Nal with deliberation, “but I ain’t.  Folks say ye’re rich, Mr. Bobo, but I don’t keer for that.  I’m after Mandy, an’ I’ll take her in her chimmy.”

“I’ll be damned if ye will, Nal!  Ye won’t take Mandy at all, an’ that’s all there is about it.”

“Say,” said Mr. Roberts, his fine eyes aglow with inspiration, “say, I’ll make ye a cold business proposition, fair an’ square betwixt man an’ man.  I’ll buy Mandy from ye, at the market price—­there!”

From beneath his penthouse brows Mr. Bobo peered curiously at this singular youth.

“Buy her!” he repeated scornfully.  “With what?  Ye’ve got nothin’, Nal Roberts—­that is, nothin’ but yer sorrel filly and a measly two, or three mebbe, hundred dollars.  I vally Mandy at twenty dollars a month.  At one per cent.—­I allus git one per cent. a month—­that makes two thousand dollars.  Have ye got the cold cash, Nal?”

Honest Nal hung his head.

“Not the half of it, but I earn a hundred a month at the track.”

“Bring me two thousand dollars, gold coin o’ the United States, no foolin’, an’ I’ll give ye Mandy.”

“Ye mean that, Mr. Bobo?”

The old man hesitated.

“I was kind o’ bluffin’,” he admitted reluctantly, “but I’ll stand by my words.  Bring me the cash, an’ I’ll give ye Mandy.”

“I’ll guess I’ll go,” said Mr. Roberts.

“Yes, Nal, ye’d better go, an’ sonny, ye needn’t to come back; I like ye first rate, but ye needn’t to come back!”

Rinaldo walked home to the race track, and as he walked, cursed old man Bobo, cursed him heartily, in copious Western vernacular, from the peaky crown of his bald head to the tip of his ill-shaped, sockless toe.  When, however, he had fed the filly and bedded her down in cool, fresh straw, he felt easier in his mind.  Running his hand down her iron forelegs, he reflected hopefully that a few hundred dollars were easily picked up on a race track.  Bijou was a well-bred beast, with a marvellous turn of speed.  For half-a-mile she was a wonder, a record breaker—­so Nal thought.  Presently he pulled a list of entries from his pocket and scanned it closely.  Old man Bobo had a bay gelding in training for the half-mile race, Comet, out of Shooting Star, by Meteor.  Nal had taken the measure of the other horses and feared none of them; but Comet, he admitted ruefully to be a dangerous colt.  He was stabled at home, and the small boy that exercised him was both deaf and dumb.

“If I could hold my watch on him,” said Nal to himself, “I’d give a hundred dollars.”