The play's action covers one week, and concerns a Yale man with no athletic ability roped into running a footrace for the honor of New Mexico ranch hands and the affection of a Smith College girl.

Lead Supporting Featured Bit player Act I (The Flying Heart Ranch in New Mexico, on a Monday.)

Jeane and Stover tell Helen how the Flying Heart lost its prize phonograph to the Centipede Ranch in a footrace.

Stover wakes the sleeping cowboys, and tells Willie to mount guard over Speed again today.

Fresno says it will help Speed's training to take an ice shower and eat raw meat, eggs, and onion.

Helen drops in, but she and Speed are unable to talk due to the hovering presence of Willie: Girls interfere with training.

[fn 6]) A threeway confusion of couples comes to a head; when sorted out, everyone but Speed departs the bunkhouse.

(Curtain) Armstrong had previously written Salomy Jane (1907) which George C. Tyler had successfully produced for Liebler & Company.

[1] Tyler later wrote that Armstrong and Beach quarrelled and stopped speaking; they kept cutting each other's lines out of the script and inserting their own.

[2] Nevertheless, Liebler & Company bought a part interest in the play,[3] and gave it a few tryouts at small theaters in Connecticut during March 1908, with staging by George F.

[15] In early April 1909, Lee Shubert quit the Managers' Association, known as the Theatrical Syndicate, that was led by Klaw and Erlanger and Charles Frohman.

Lee Shubert's choice of Belasco's theater for this production, and their joint trip to New Haven for the tryout, was weighed as part of the coming campaign.

[20] The reviewer for The Brooklyn Daily Eagle said the audience laughed from start to finish, and praised Walter Jones as the trainer, Lawrence Wheat as the "bogus athlete", and Herbert Corthell as the "fat tenor".

[20] The New York Times critic said: "...the play has merriment enough to ensure it popular success", and also praised Walter Jones as "most amusing".

[18] The reviewer for The Brooklyn Citizen thought Escamilio Fernandez the best actor, and had praise for Herbert Corthell's tenor and Crosby Little as the silent flirt, but slighted lead Lawrence Wheat and said: "the other women in the cast had not much to do and didn't do that over well".

[24] The Sun reported that Paul Armstrong came from Virginia and Rex Beach from Chicago to attend the re-opening.

[25] The engagement was to continue all summer, but a sudden announcement by the Shuberts came on June 26, that the production would "temporarily" end that night for four weeks vacation at request of the leading players.

[26] Supposed to re-open on August 2, 1909, at Maxine Elliott's Theatre,[27] instead the Shuberts presented a new play there, The Ringmaster, with Oza Waldrop, the female lead of Going Some in the cast.