The Little Adventuress (1938)

Two circus acrobats hurtle to their death when a wire snaps and their daughter, "Pinky" Horton, has to face the future as an orphan. Unwilling to live with her stern Aunt Hattie, she and Handy, a circus performer, load up Counto the Wonder Horse into a trailer and head to the California racing stable owned by her cousin, Dick. But the latter has lost everything, and refuses to accept a position in the soap factory owned by Herkimer Gould, the father of Dick's fiancée, Helen. "Pinky" is convinced that Counto is a horse filled with racing blood, and she spends the grocery money and sells their jalopy to get the funds needed to enter Counto in a claiming race.