CRESCEUS, 2:02 1/4 



Eddie Alitchell, wore a sombrero, tasseled and tin- 

 seled, and worn, too, at the proper angle. He had 

 provided himself with a whoop that would have done 

 justice to a warpath Comanche. Mike The Tramp lays 

 no claim to being a handsome animal, and the cow- 

 boys rather made sport of his ungainliness. But they 

 did not know IMike The Tramp, and it was the cause 

 of the undoing of many of them. A few of the wise 

 ones were on, however, and they argued among them- 

 selves that if that horse could run fast enough to 

 set the pace for Cresceus, he certainly could negotiate 

 a half-mile track rapidly enough to pull down the 

 money against a lot of western plain horses, even if he 

 wasn't handsome. 



The money that was put up in about ten minutes 

 around those ''dobe" houses would have swamped the 

 book-makers on Suburban day at Brighton Beach. 

 The owners of the home product ponies were backing 

 their animals up to the last notch, and the few wise 

 ones, not of Ketcham's party, gathered up all the bets 

 against the strange horse with the long legs and little 

 rider. Quite a sum of money was put up by backers 

 of ]\Iike The Tramp, and the book-maker was hit 

 for a tidy sum at i to 4, although he smelled trouble 

 early in the game, and was smart enough to wipe Mike 

 The Tramp off the board. With the horses off, Eddie 

 Mitchell held Mike The Tramp well out in the center 

 of the track, second in the race, with a big raw-boned 

 frontiersman in a red shirt setting the pace with what 

 seemed a mustang in comparison with Mike The 



195 



