DENVER CITY. 97 



answered Chieftain's starter and old Double S. Before the 

 squire said Yes, I noticed him give a quick look clown the 

 course ; I did so too. The mare was standing almost in it 

 broadside on, a hundred yards in advance. The boy's coat 

 and boots were off. He was in full racing rig. As the 

 judge called Go ! and Chieftain started, the mare's head was 

 turned down the course, and away she went. The colt, 

 liberated by the squire, rushed after his mother, and galloped 

 past the judges at the outcome a winner, with a gap of 

 daylight between him and the Chieftain ; and Simon S. 

 claimed and received the stakes. 



It is known to those who have hunted wild horses, but 

 may not be to all readers of this book, that so soon as a 

 foal gets the full use of its limbs it can always gallop as 

 fast as its darn for short distances ; as I knew that fact, 

 seeing running-plates on the mare gave me "the straight 

 tip." 



When I next saw "the Colt" he was owned by a racing 

 man at Denver City, and was the best horse there. 



Denver City is associated in my mind with many a 

 striking episode, and was, when I first knew it, the greatest 

 possible contrast to the well-ordered, prospering railway 

 centre it now is. Then, to use a localism, " we was not two 

 boards nailed together of a town." It was a lawless, 

 straggling encampment of pioneer adventurers, and a heter- 

 ogeneous mob of the "scoundrels that live upon the credulity 

 and industry of "the honest miner." As they themselves 

 said, but in far stronger language, it was a camp wherein 

 the shadow of every bank was a drinking saloon, each tree a 

 gambling-house, and all the bushes man-traps. And the 



