THE ROUND-UP 



the old timers — and well it might for H. W. Smith's 

 outfit is running away. 



On the back stretch a wheel horse stumbles and falls, 

 the pole breaks, and with a smash heard over the entire 

 audience, you see driver, lash-plier, and passenger cata- 

 pulted from the coach headlong into the melee of 

 struggling horses. Ordinary folk would have been 

 killed, but, being merely dare-devil cowboys, they 

 spring for control of their horses, and cuss a blue 

 streak at their luck. 



Who would ever think of continuing to drive a 

 horse in a team of four after one of its forefeet 

 had been caught up in the trace of the horse 

 ahead of it? 



"Pull out of the race, driver?" — Not on your life, 

 or on his, either. So driver and horse hang to the 

 game and around they go — once — twice — the plucky 

 little horse galloping the whole distance on three legs 

 and helping to pull in a close second to the winning 

 coach, driven by Clarence Plant of Long Creek. 



A yell, there is a dull, scraping sound — the crowd 

 springs to its feet. At the most dangerous turn of all 

 — the one before the homestretch, a brake has acciden- 

 tally jammed on one of the age-worn vehicles, and 

 the momentum and swing has caused the whole body 

 of the coach with hind wheels spinning, to be thrown 

 absolutely vertically in the air, where it travels like a 

 moving watch tower with a shuddering sound. 



Crash! it careens onto its side and though buried 

 from sight in a cyclone of dust its course can be traced 

 by the crackling, splintering sounds in its wide smoky 

 trail. See! it suddenly rights as unexpectedly as it 

 has capsized, and one of the most exciting runaways 

 ever witnessed full-tilts by the grandstand. 



™ 145 



