However, it seemed that the Carter Handicap and the winning by his very good friend and neighbor, Colonel Desha, had stuck firmly in Major Calvert’s craw.  He promised to faithfully follow his trainer’s directions and leave for the nonce the preparatory training entirely in his hands.

It was decided now that Garrison should try out the fast black filly Dixie, just beginning training for the Carter.  She had a hundred and twenty-five pounds of grossness to boil down before making track weight, but the opening spring handicap was five months off, and Crimmins believed in the “slow and sure” adage.  Major Calvert, his old weather-beaten duster fluttering in the wind, took his accustomed perch on the rail, while Garrison prepared to get into racing-togs.

The blood was pounding in Garrison’s heart as he lightly swung up on the sleek black filly.  The old, nameless longing, the insistent thought that he had done all this before—­to the roar of thousands of voices—­possessed him.

Instinctively he understood his mount; her defects, her virtues.  Instinctively he sensed that she was not a “whip horse.”  A touch of the whalebone and she would balk—­stop dead in her stride.  He had known such horses before, generally fillies.

As soon as Garrison’s feet touched stirrups all the condensed, colossal knowledge of track and horse-flesh, gleaned by the sweating labor of years, came tingling to his finger-tips.  Judgment, instinct, daring, nerve, were all his; at his beck and call; serving their master.  He felt every inch the veteran he was—­though he knew it not.  It was not a freak of nature.  He had worked, worked hard for knowledge, and it would not be denied.  He felt as he used to feel before he had “gone back.”

Garrison took Dixie over the seven furlongs twice, and in a manner, despite her grossness, the mare had never been taken before.  She ran as easily, as relentlessly, without a hitch or break, as fine-spun silk slips through a shuttle.  She was high-strung, sensitive to a degree, but Garrison understood her, and she answered his knowledge loyally.

It was impressive riding to those who knew the filly’s irritability, uncertainty.  Clean-cut veteran horsemanship, with horse and rider as one; a mechanically precise pace, heart-breaking for a following field.  The major slowly climbed off the rail, mechanically eyeing his watch.  He was unusually quiet, but there was a light in his eyes that forecasted disaster for his very good friend and neighbor, Colonel Desha, and The Rogue.  It is even greater satisfaction, did we but acknowledge it, to turn the tables on a friend than on a foe.

“Boy,” he said impressively, laying a hand on Garrison’s shoulder and another on Dixie’s flank, “I’ve been looking for some one to ride Dixie in the Carter—­some one who could ride; ride and understand.  I’ve found that some one in my nephew.  You’ll ride her—­ride as no one else can.  God knows how you learned the game—­I don’t.  But know it you do.  Nor do I pretend to know how you understand the filly.  I don’t understand it at all.  It must be a freak of nature.”