"Wilder than a March hare," Don Mike commented.
"Not at all," Kay assured him. "He's merely risking his life in his
haste to reach El Toro and telegraph Dan Leighton to report
immediately."
CHAPTER XXXI
John Parker's boredom had been cured by a stop-watch. One week after
Panchito had given evidence of his royal breeding, Parker's old
trainer, Dan Leighton, arrived at the Palomar. Formerly a jockey, he
was now in his fiftieth year, a wistful little man with a puckered,
shrewd face, which puckered more than usual when Don Mike handed him
Panchito's pedigree.
"He's a marvelous horse, Danny," Parker assured the old trainer.
"No thanks to him. He ought to be," Leighton replied. His cool glance
measured Allesandro Trujillo, standing hard by. "I'll have that dusky
imp for an exercise boy," he announced. "He's built like an
aeroplane--all superstructure and no solids."
For a month the training of Panchito went on each morning. Pablo's
grandson, under Danny Leighton's tuition, proved an excellent exercise
boy. He learned to sit his horse in the approved jockey fashion; proud
beyond measure at the part he was playing, he paid strict attention to
Leighton's instructions and progressed admirably.
Watching the horse develop under skilled scientific training, it
occurred to Don Mike each time he held his father's old stop-watch on
Panchito that race-horses had, in a great measure, conduced to the ruin
of the Noriagas and Farrels, and something told him that Panchito was
likely to prove the instrument for the utter financial extinction of
the last survivor of that famous tribe.
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