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treasury?"
    "Undoubtedly, my friend. As you would do had you but the opportunity."
    As they shook hands on the bet, my father gave me a wink and so did Don César. They were good friends, but both of them liked to win. My father had advice for me as I drew up to the hitching rack and waited for the
alcalde
to drop his handkerchief for the start of the race.
    "Hold back and let them all lead across the mesa. I will approach Don César again while you are riding last, and increase the bet. That way we may double our winnings."
    "The gelding doesn't like to run last," I said. "He'll sulk and I won't able to handle him."
    "Run in the pack, then," my father said, "but do not run first or second or even third."
    "In the middle," I said.
    The
alcalde's
red handkerchief fell to the ground. I spurred the gelding into a gallop, but as soon as he was underway I pulled in on the reins and fell back. Don Roberto passed me and said something that I didn't catch. He rode the fastest horse in the race, a black gelding his father had bought him as a wedding present. It was a five-year-old that had won many races around the pueblo of Los Angeles. Don Roberto was a good rider, but it was the horse I had to beat.
    The mesa was flat, with short-cropped grass, and sloped a little to the south. I was toward the last when we reached the trail that led steeply down into the river marsh.
    I had been through the marsh when I had gone to the Blue Beach with my father. The shortest way across it was not through the center of the marsh, which was deep, but along the north edge, where the water was shallow. None of the riders knew this but me.
    As we came to the marsh we were now out of sight of Don César and my father and everyone else. I touched the gelding with a spur, left the pack that was wading through the tules into deep water, and followed the north edge of the marsh.
    Don Roberto perhaps thought that I was having trouble and was about to abandon the race. He raised a gloved hand toward me and shouted, "
Hola,
this way."
    "
Hola,
" I shouted back, thinking that it was nice of him to be so considerate of me.
    I reached the far side of the marsh before he did, before any of the other riders, including Don Palomares, who had been the King's soldier and was accustomed to marshes.
    Don Roberto and the rest were now a hundred
varas
behind, too far away for me to shout "
Hola.
"
    Halfway up the rise was a
zanja,
a ditch filled with water that came from the river and that we used to irrigate our garden of corn, frijoles, and chili. I could have jumped it with ease on Tiburón, but the gelding I was not sure of, so I waded through the ditch. This cost me time, for all the other riders jumped it except a boy I had never seen before, who landed on his back in the middle of the ditch.
    At the top of the rise I was in the lead by more than a hundred
varas.
The gelding was running well and I was sure he had strength for the race across the mesa. He would not be so fast as Don Roberto's horse—no other horse in California del Sur was—so I needed a good lead to win.

8
    When we entered the chaparral I slowed Sixto to a
pasotrote,
the best gait for threading your way through the dense thicket of manzanita, ribbon-wood, and mountain mahogany. When I came near to the last of the chaparral, I used spurs on the gelding and he responded, raising his head and snorting.
    Tiburón would have spied the coyote hole. He would have shied away from it and reared on his hind legs, as he sometimes did when he saw a tumbleweed coming toward him. Or when he came suddenly upon a coiled rattlesnake.
    Sixto did not see the hole. Nor did I. I was glancing back at that instant to see where the other riders were. Sixto went into the hole with his left forefoot and lurched sidewise and came to a halt. I went over his head, and the next thing I knew I was lying in a thorny tangle.
    Much of my breath had been knocked out of me, but somehow I managed to get on my feet.