of flank, slender of leg. With arched neck and flashing eyes, he walked
with the pride of one who was aware of the admiration he excited.

Vitriolo was black and powerful. His long neck fitted into well-placed
shoulders. He had great depth of girth, immense length from
shoulder-points to hips, big cannon-bones, and elastic pasterns. There
was neither amiability nor pride in his mien; rather a sullen sense of
brute power, such as may have belonged to the knights of the Middle
Ages. Now and again he curled his lips away from the bit and laid his
ears back as if he intended to eat of the elegant Beau Brummel stepping
so daintily beside him. Of the antagonistic crowd he took not the
slightest notice.

"The race begins! Holy heaven!" The murmur rose to a shout--a deep
hoarse shout strangely crossed and recrossed by long silver notes; a
thrilling volume of sound rising above a sea of flashing eyes and parted
lips and a vivid moving mass of colour.

Twice the horses scored, and were sent back. The third time they bounded
by the starting-post neck and neck, nose to nose. José Abrigo, treasurer
of Monterey, dashed his sombrero, heavy with silver eagles, to the
ground, and the race was begun.

Almost at once the black began to gain. Inch by inch he fought his way
to the front, and the roar with which the crowd had greeted the start
dropped into the silence of apprehension.

El Rayo was not easily to be shaken off. A third of the distance had
been covered, and his nose was abreast of Vitriolo's flank. The vaqueros
sat as if carved from sun-baked clay, as lightly as if hollowed,