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PAGE 9

The Man Who Could Not Lose
by [?]

The good-natured crowd began to sway, to grumble and murmur, then to shout in sharp staccato.

“Can you see him?” begged Dolly.

“No,” said Carter. “You don’t see him until they reach the stretch.”

One could hear their hoofs, could see the crimson jockey draw his whip. At the sight, for he rode the favorite, the crowd gave a great gasp of concern.

“Oh, you Gold Heels!” it implored.

Under the whip, Gold Heels drew even with the yellow jacket; stride by stride, they fought it out alone.

“Gold Heels!” cried the crowd.

Behind them, in a curtain of dust, pounded the field. It charged in a flying wedge, like a troop of cavalry. Dolly, searching for a green jacket, saw, instead, a rainbow wave of color that, as it rose and fell, sprang toward her in great leaps, swallowing the track.

“Gold Heels!” yelled the crowd.

The field swept into the stretch. Without moving his eyes, Carter caught Dolly by the wrist and pointed. As though giving a signal, he shot his free hand into the air.

“Now!” he shouted.

From the curtain of dust, as lightning strikes through a cloud, darted a great, raw-boned, ugly chestnut. Like the Empire Express, he came rocking, thundering, spurning the ground. At his coming, Gold Heels, to the eyes of the crowd, seemed to falter, to slacken, to stand still. The crowd gave a great cry of amazement, a yell of disgust. The chestnut drew even with Gold Heels, passed him, and swept under the wire. Clinging to his neck was a little jockey in a green cap, green jacket, and hoops of green and white.

Dolly’s hand was at her side, clutching the bench. Carter’s hand still clasped it. Neither spoke or looked at the other. For an instant, while the crowd, no longer so good-natured, mocked and jeered at itself, the two young people sat quite still, staring at the green field, at the white clouds rolling from the ocean. Dolly drew a long breath.

“Let’s go!” she gasped. “Let’s thank him first, and then take me home!”

They found Dromedary in the paddock, and thanked him, and Carter left Dolly with him, while he ran to collect his winnings. When he returned, he showed her a sheaf of yellow bills, and as they ran down the covered board walk to the gate, they skipped and danced.

Dolly turned toward the train drawn up at the entrance.

“Not with me!” shouted Carter. “We’re going home in the reddest, most expensive, fastest automobile I can hire!”

In the “hack” line of motor-cars was one that answered those requirements, and they fell into it as though it were their own.

“To the Night and Day Bank!” commanded Carter.

With the genial democracy of the race-track, the chauffeur lifted his head to grin appreciatively. “That listens good to me!” he said.

“I like him!” whispered Dolly. “Let’s buy him and the car.”

On the way home, they bought many cars; every car they saw, that they liked, they bought. They bought, also, several houses, and a yacht that they saw from the ferry-boat. And as soon as they had deposited the most of their money in the bank, they went to a pawnshop in Sixth Avenue and bought back many possessions that they had feared they never would see again.

When they entered the flat, the thing they first beheld was Dolly’s two-dollar bill.

“What,” demanded Carter, with repugnance, “is that strange piece of paper?”

Dolly examined it carefully. “I think it is a kind of money,” she said, used by the lower classes.”

They dined on the roof at Delmonico’s. Dolly wore the largest of the five hats still unsold, and Carter selected the dishes entirely according to which was the most expensive. Every now and again they would look anxiously down across the street at the bank that held their money. They were nervous lest it should take fire.

“We can be extravagant to-night,” said Dolly, “because we owe it to Dromedary to celebrate. But from to-night on we must save. We’ve had an awful lesson. What happened to us last month must never happen again. We were down to a two-dollar bill. Now we have twenty-five hundred across the street, and you have several hundreds in your pocket. On that we can live easily for a year. Meanwhile, you can write ‘the’ great American novel without having to worry about money, or to look for a steady job. And then your book will come out, and you will be famous, and rich, and—-“