Fiddlefoot by Luke; Short Page B

climbed into the saddle of the near horse of the swing team. Johnny Samuels, on the near horse of the lead team, kept looking back impatiently now, talking with Ray Shields who was mounted on a free horse and who would be outrider.
    When Frank had finished harnessing the team he had borrowed from the McGarritys, he looped up their tugs and tied them to the endgate of the buckboard.
    Mounting his own horse now, he glanced down at the handful of the Saber crew which had been helping. Jess Irby’s expression was one of skepticism; he shook his head and saw Frank watching him. “That’s five thousand dollars on one rope, Frank; take care of it.”
    It was an hour short of noon when Frank rode past Johnny and said briefly, “Get ’em movin’.”
    By the time the long string was out of the meadows headed toward Rifle, both Johnny and Red had learned to keep the tugs tight, and Frank relaxed a little. His gamble might succeed, althought the success of it hinged on his beating Rhino’s bunch to Crawford; and they were some seventeen hours ahead of him. The advantage, however, lay with him, for Rhino’s crew did not know they were in a race, and they would loiter, grazing their horses at every opportunity.
    Two miles short of the grade into Rifle at the turnoff to O-Bar, Frank reined up and waited for the string. Once they caught up with him, he untied the McGarritys’ team, and gave directions for skirting town so as not to arouse Rhino’s curiosity. They were to pick up the river road below town, through O-Bar’s range, and keep traveling until an hour after dark.
    He watched them go, afterward hazing the loose team ahead of him down the road, and he was presently above town. It was not until he was off the grade and on the edge of Rifle that he really made up his mind to see Carrie. To explain to her that his plan was conceived in anger and planned in defiance and was to be carried out with some risk would only baffle her, and he had no intention of telling her where he was going. She would ask why he wanted to antagonize Rhino, and where was there an answer to that? Nevertheless, he wanted to see her.
    He hazed his two horses into the side street, and presently approached Tavister’s house, dark and cool in its lawn under the big trees.
    The two loose horses, seing the lush grass of the Tavisters lawn between the brickwall and the road, moved over and started to graze it.
    Frank, some distance behind them, saw Carrie kneeling along a bed of flowers in front of the house, pointing out something to their handyman beside her. When she saw the horses stop, she rose and ran swiftly to the iron fence.
    â€œGet away!” she scolded. “You get away!”
    Frank reined up in the road and grinned. Carrie saw him and called, “Can’t you keep—” and then, recognizing him, left the rest unspoken. Frank rode up now and Carrie cried in exasperation, “Frank, they’re tramping our lawn!”
    â€œBoys, quit it,” Frank said mildly to the horses. They went on grazing, and now Carrie had to laugh. Frank stepped out of the saddle and moved across the walk to the iron fence. Carrie looked cool and small, and her face was alive and still lovely from her laughter.
    â€œShall I ask them in?” she asked.
    â€œNo, they’re shy,” Frank said solemnly.
    Carrie raised up on tiptoe to kiss him, and then she folded her arms along the top of the fence’s blunt-end iron pickets.
    She said, “Stay for supper?”
    â€œI’m horse-trading,” Frank said. “I’ll be gone for a few days.”
    â€œNot through Saturday,” Carrie protested. “Oh, Frank, there’s a dance Saturday night at the Masonic Hall.”
    Frank thought a moment. “I don’t think I’ll be back.”
    Carrie accepted this with a sigh of resignation. “Who’re you trading for? Rhino?”
    â€œFor Chess and Company,