Billie Warren heard the steady buzz of a saw and later the ringing
strokes of an axe. The men had departed three hours before to be gone
for a week on the horse round-up but she had not yet issued from her
own quarters. The music of axe and saw was ample evidence that her new
and undesired partner was making valuable use of his time. She went
outside and he struck the axe in a cross section of pine log as she
moved toward him.
"We'll have to get along the best we can," she announced abruptly. "Of
course you will have a say in the management of the Three Bar and draw
the same amount for yourself that I do."
He sat on a log and twisted a cigarette as he reflected upon this
statement.
"I'd rather not do that," he decided. "I don't want to be a drain on
the brand--but to help build it up. Suppose I just serve as an extra
hand and do whatever necessary turns up--in return for your letting me
advise with you on a few points that I happen to have worked out while
I was prowling through the country."
"Any way you like," she returned. "It's for you to decide. Any money
which you fail to draw now will revert to you in the end so it won't
matter in the least."
His reply was irrelevant, a deliberate refusal to notice her ungenerous
misinterpretation of his offer.
"Do you mind if I gather a few Three Bar colts round here close and
break out my own string before they get back?" he asked.
"Anything you like," she repeated. "I'm not going to quarrel. I've
made up my mind to that. I'll be gone the rest of the day."
Five minutes later he saw her riding down the lane. She was not
seeking companionship but rather solitude and for hours she drifted
aimlessly across the range, sometimes dismounting on some point that
afforded a good view and reclining in the warm spring sun. Dusk was
falling when she rode back to the Three Bar. As she turned her sorrel,
Papoose, into the corral she noticed several four-year-old colts in the
pasture lot. As she returned to the house Harris appeared in the door.
"Grub-pile," he announced.
They sat down to a meal of broiled steak, mashed potatoes, hot
biscuits, coffee and raspberry jam. She had deliberately absented
herself through the noon hour and well past the time for evening meal,
confidently expecting to find him impatiently waiting for her to return
and prepare food for him.
"You make good biscuits--better than those Waddles stirs up," she said.
"Though I'd never dare tell him so." It was the first time she had
conceded that there might be even a taint of good in him.
"Well, yes--they're some better than those I usually turn out," he
confessed. "Having a lady to feed I flaked the lard in cold instead of
just melting it and stirring her in like I most generally do. I'm
right glad that you consider them a success."
When the meal was finished she rose without a word and went into her
own quarters, convinced that this desertion would certainly call forth
a protest; but the man calmly went about the business of washing the
dishes as if he had expected nothing else, and presently she heard the
door close behind him and immediately afterwards a light appeared in
the bunk-house window.
The rattle of pots and pans roused her before daylight. Some thirty
minutes later he called to her.
"I've finished," he said. "You'd better eat yours before it gets
cold," and the closing of the door announced that he had gone without
waiting for an answer. She heard again the sound of saw and axe as he
worked up the dry logs into stove lengths. At least he was making good
his word to the cook. The sounds ceased when the sun was an hour high
and when she looked out to determine the reason she saw him working
with four colts in one of the smaller corrals.
He had fashioned a hackamore for each and they stood tied to the corral
bars. He left them there and repaired to the big gates of the main
corral. The two swinging halves sagged until their ends dragged on the
ground when opened or closed, necessitating the expenditure of
considerable energy in performing either operation. She watched him
tear down the old support wires and replace them with new ones,
stretching a double strand from the top of the tall pivot posts to the
free ends of the gates. Placing a short stick between the two strands
of heavy wire he twisted until the shortening process had cleared the
gate ends and they swung suspended, moving so freely that a rider could
lean from his saddle and throw them open with ease.
This completed to his satisfaction he fashioned heavy slabs of wood to
serve as extra brake-blocks for the chuck wagon. Between the
performance of each two self-appointed duties he spent some little time
with the colts, handling them and teaching them not to fear his
approach, cinching his saddle on first one and then the next, talking
to them and handling their heads.
For three days there was little communication between the two. It was
evident that he had no intention of forcing his society upon her, and
her failure to prepare his meals failed to elicit a single sign to show
that he had expected otherwise; the contrary was true, in fact, for he
invariably prepared enough for two. It was clear that he exercised the
same patience toward her that he showed in handling the green
four-year-olds; and she was inclined to be a little scornful of his
method of gentle-breaking them. She felt her own ability to handle any
horse on the range although old Cal Warren had gentled every animal she
had wanted for her own and flatly refused to let her mount any others.
Waddles was as insistent upon this point as her parent had been, but
never had she known a cowhand who took time and pains to gentle his own
string.
In the afternoon of the third day she saw him swing to the back of a
big bay, easing into the saddle without a jar, and the colt ambled
round the corral, rolling his eyes back toward the thing clamped upon
him but making no effort to pitch. He dismounted and stripped off the
saddle, cinched it on a second horse and let him stand, leading a third
out to a snubbing post near the door of the blacksmith shop where he
proceeded to put on his first set of shoes.
The girl went out and sat on the sill of the shop door and watched him.
The colt pulled back in an effort to release the forefoot that the man
held clamped between his leather-clad knees, then changed his tactics
and sagged his weight against Harris.
"You Babe!" the man ordered. "Don't you go leaning on me." He pared
down the hoof and fitted the shoe but before nailing it on he released
the colt's foot and addressed the girl. "If I'd fight him now while
he's spooky and half-scared it would spoil him maybe," he explained.
"I gentle-break mine, too," she said, and the man overlooked the
inflection which, as plainly as words, was intended to convey the
impression that his ways were effeminate. "If every man used up his
time gentling his string he'd never have a day off to work at anything
else."
"Why, it don't use up much time," he objected. "They halfway break
themselves, standing round with a saddle on and having a man handle
them a little between spells of regular work--like cutting firewood and
such. And it's a saving of time in the end. There's three hundred odd
days every year when a man consumes considerable time fighting every
horse he steps up on--if they're broke that way to start."
"So your only reason for not riding them out is to save time," she said.
"If you mean that I'm timid," he observed, "why, I don't know as I'd
bother to dispute it." He moved over and sat on his heels facing her,
twisting the ever handy cigarette. "Listen," he urged. "Let's you and
I try to get along. Now if you'll only make up your mind that I'm not
out to grab the Three Bar, not even the half of it that's supposed to
be mine--unless you get paid for it--why, we're liable to get to liking
each other real well in the end. I'll give you a contract to that
effect."
"Which you know would be worthless!" she returned. "The will
specifically states that any agreements between us prior to the time of
division are to be disregarded. A written contract would have no more
value than your unsupported promise and in view of what's happened you
don't expect me to place a value on that."
He pulled reflectively at his cigarette and she rather expected another
of the irrelevant remarks with which he so often replied to her pointed
thrusts.
"No," he said at last. "But it's a fact that I don't want the Three
Bar--or rather I do if you should ever decide to sell."
"I never will," she stated positively. "It's always been my home.
I've been away and had a good time; three winters in school and
enjoying every second; but there always comes a time when I'm sick to
get back, when I know I can't stay away from the Three Bar, when I want
to smell the sage and throw my leg across a horse--and ride!"
"I know, Billie," he said softly. "I was raised here, up until I was
eight. My feeling is likely less acute than yours but I've always
hankered to get back to where the sage and pine trees run together. I
mentioned a while back that I was tied up peculiar and stood to lose
considerable if I failed to put in two years out here--which wouldn't
have been of any particular consequence only that I found out that the
Three Bar was going under unless some one put a stop to what's going
on. I'll pull it out of the hole, maybe, and hand it back to you."
She was swayed into a momentary belief in his sincerity but steeled
herself against it, and in the effort to strengthen the crumbling walls
of her dislike she fell back on open ridicule.
"You!" she flared. "And what can you do against it--a man that was
raised in squatter country behind a barb-wire fence, who has to gentle
his horses before he can sit up on one, who has hitched a gun on his
belt because he thinks it's the thing to do, and has stowed it in a
place where he'd have to tie himself in a knot--or undress--to reach
it. And then you talk of pulling the Three Bar out of a hole! Why,
there are twenty men within fifty miles of here that would kill you the
first move you made."
"There's considerable sound truth in that," he said. He looked down at
his gun; it swung on his left side, in front, the butt pointing toward
the right. "It's easier to work with it sort of out of the way of my
hands," he explained and smiled.
She found herself liking him, even in the face of the treachery he had
practiced against her father and was correspondingly angry, both with
herself and at him. She left him without a word and returned to the
house.
He finished putting the shoes on the colt and as he turned him back
into the corral he observed a horseman jogging up the lane at a trail
trot. He knew the man for Slade, whose home ranch lay forty miles to
the south and a little west, the owner of the largest outfit in that
end of the State; a man feared by his competitors, quick to resent an
insinuation against his business methods and capable of backing his
resentment.
Slade dropped from his horse and accorded Harris only a casual nod as
he headed for the house. Slade's face was of a peculiar cast. The
black eyes were set very close together in a wide face; his cheek bones
were low and oddly protruding, sloping far out to a point below each
eye. His small ears were set so close to his skull that the
outcropping cheek bones extended almost an inch beyond them to either
side. Yet there was a certain fascination about his face and bearing
that appealed to the spark of the primitive in women; that last
lingering cell that harks fondly back to men in the raw. His age might
have been anywhere above twenty-six and under fifty-six.
He walked through the cookhouse and opened the door of the girl's
quarters without the formality of a knock, as if a frequent visitor and
sure of his privileges.
"How many times have I told you to knock?" she demanded. "The next
time you forget it I'll go out as you come in."
Slade dropped into a chair.
"I never have knocked--not in twelve years," he said.
"It was somewhat different when I was a small girl and you were only a
friend of my father," she pointed out. "But now----"
"But now that I've come to see you as a woman it's different?" he
inquired. "No reason for that."
She switched the channel of conversation and spoke of the coming
round-up, of the poor condition of range stock owing to the severity of
the winter; but it was a monologue. For a time the man sat and
listened, as if he enjoyed the sound of her voice, contributing nothing
to the conversation himself, then suddenly he stirred in his chair and
waved a hand to indicate the unimportance of the topics.
"Yes, yes; true enough," he interrupted. "But I didn't come to talk
about that. When are you coming home with me, Billie?"
"And you can't come if you insist on talking about that," she countered.
"I'll come," he stated. "Tell me when you're going to move over to the
Circle P."
"Not ever," she said. "I'd rather be a man's horse than his wife. Men
treat women like little tinsel queens before, and afterwards they
answer to save a cook's wages and drudge their lives out feeding a
hunch of half-starved hands--or else go to the other extreme. Wives
are either work horses or pets. I was raised like a boy and I want to
have a say in running things myself."
"You can go your own gait," he pledged.
"I'm doing that now," she returned. "And prefer going on as I am."
Slade rose and moved over to her, taking her hands and lifting her from
her chair.
The girl pushed him back with a hand braced against his chest.
"Stop it!" she said. "You're getting wilder every time you come, but
you've never pawed at me before. I won't have people's hands on me,"
and she made a grimace of distaste.
The man reached out again and drew her to him. She wrenched away and
faced Slade.
"That will be the last time you'll do that until I give the word," she
said. "I don't want the Circle P--or you. When I do I'll let you
know!"
He moved toward her again and she refused to back away from him but
stood with her hands at her sides.
"If you put a finger on me it's the last lime you'll visit the Three
Bar," she calmly announced.
He stood so close as almost to touch her but she failed to lift a hand
or move back an inch, and Slade knew that he faced one whose spirit
matched his own, perhaps the one person within a hundred miles who did
not fear him. He had tamed men and horses--and women; he raised his
arms slowly, deliberately, to see if she would flinch away or stand
fast and outgame him. She knew that he was harmless to her--and he
knew it. He might perpetrate almost any crime on the calendar and come
clear; but in this land where women were few they were honored. One
whisper from the Three Bar girl that Slade had raised his hand against
her and, powerful as he was, the hunt for him would be on, with every
man's hand against him.
His arms had half circled her when he whirled, catlike, every faculty
cool and alert, as a voice sounded from the door. Both had been too
engrossed to notice its noiseless opening.
"I've finished cleaning up round the shop and corrals," Harris said.
"Is there any rubbish round the house you'd like to have throwed out
and piled in a dry gulch somewheres out of sight?"
He stood in the door, half facing them, his left side quartering toward
Slade. To the girl it appeared that the strange pose was for the
purpose of enabling him to take a quick step to the right and spring
outside if Slade should make a move and she felt a tinge of scorn at
his precaution even though she knew that it would avail him nothing if
Slade's deadly temper were roused by the insult. Slade, who had killed
many, would add Harris to his list before he could move.
Slade's understanding of the quartering position and the odd sling of
Harris's gun was entirely different and as he shifted his feet until he
faced the man in the door, his movements were slow and deliberate,
nothing that could be misconstrued.
"Who summoned you in here?" he demanded.
Harris did not reply but stood waiting for some word from the girl.
She had a sudden sick dread that Slade would kill him and was surprised
at the sentiment, for no longer than an hour before she had wished him
dead. She made belated answer to his original question.
"No," she said. "Go on out, please."
He turned his back on Slade and went out.
"And you," she said to Slade, "you'd best be going too. We've been too
good neighbors to quarrel--unless you come over again with the same
idea you did to-day."
At sunset the girl called to Harris and he repaired to the house and
found her putting a hot meal for two on the end of the long pine table,
the first time she had deigned to eat with him since that first meal.
"There's no use of our going on like this," she said. "We've two years
of it to face; so it's best to get on some kind of a neutral footing."
For her own peace of mind she had tried to smother her dislike of him
and he was very careful to avoid any topic that would rekindle it.
They washed the dishes together, and from that hour their relations, to
all outward appearance, were friendly or at least devoid of open
hostility. They no longer ate separately; she did not avoid him during
the day, and the second evening she prepared two places at her own
table in the big living room before the fireplace.
"It's so empty out there," she explained.
"With only the two of us at a table built for twenty."
He lingered for an hour's chat before her fire and each evening
thereafter was the same. But he knew that she was merely struggling to
make the best of a matter that was distasteful, that her opinion of him
was unaltered. Her bitterness could not be entirely concealed, and she
frequently touched on some fresh point that added to her distrust of
his present motives and confirmed her belief in his double-dealing in
the past. There were so many of these points; his refusal to accept
her offer to give him his half-interest if he would stay off the place;
his weak insinuations that there was some reason why he must spend two
years on the Three Bar; his prowling the country for a year spying on
the methods she followed in running the outfit, half of which would
soon be his; his buying the school section and filing on a quarter of
land, the location blocking the lower end of the Three Bar valley.
Whenever she mentioned one of these he refused to take issue with her.
And one night she touched on still another point.
"What was the reason for your first idea--of coming here under another
name?" she demanded.
"I thought maybe others knew I'd been left a part interest," he said,
"and it might be embarrassing. The way it is, with only the two of us
knowing the inside, I can stay on as a regular hand until the time is
up."
"You're so plausible," she said. "You put it as a favor to me. Did it
ever strike you that if the truth were known it might also be
uncomfortable for you?"
He smiled across at her and once more she frowned as she discovered
that he was likeable for all his underhandedness.
"Worse than that--suicidal," he admitted.
"If you mentioned what you think of me, that I've framed to rob you by
law, you wouldn't be bothered with me for long." He laughed softly and
stretched his feet toward the fire. "Look at it any way you like and
I'm in bad shape to deal you any misery," he pointed out. "If you'd
drop a hint that I'm an unwelcome addition it would only be a matter of
days until I'd fail to show up for meals. If you view it from that
angle you can see I'm setting on the powder can."
She did see it, but had not so clearly realized it till he pointed it
out, and for the first time she wavered in her conviction that he had
come simply to deprive her of her rights. But the thought that her
father would not easily have willed away the home place to another
without being unduly influenced served to reinstate her distrust along
with a vague resentment for his having shaken it by throwing himself so
openly on her mercy.
"You probably thought to overcome that by reaching the point the whole
thing so patently aims for," she said. "And you calculated
well--arriving at a time when we'd be alone for a week. The whole
scheme was based on that idea and I've been patiently wondering why you
don't rush matters and invite me to marry you."
He rose and flicked the ash from his cigarette into the fireplace.
"I do invite you--right now," he said, and in her surprise she left her
chair and stood facing him. "I'd like real well to have you, Billie."
"That's the final proof," she said. "I'm surprised that you didn't
tell me the first day."
"So am I," he said.
She found no answer for this but stood silent, knowing that she had
suddenly become afraid of him.
"And that's the living truth," he affirmed. "Other men have loved you
the first day. You know men well enough to be certain that I wouldn't
be tied to one woman for the sake of owning a few head of cows--not if
I didn't want her for herself." He waved an arm toward the door.
"There's millions of miles of sage just outside," he said. "And
millions of cows--and girls."
He moved across to her and stood almost touching her, looking down into
her face. When Slade had stood so a few days past she had been coldly
indifferent except for a shiver of distaste at the thought of his
touching her. Before Harris she felt a weakening, a need of support,
and she leaned back from him and placed one hand behind her on the
table.
"You judge for yourself whether a man wouldn't be right foolish--with
all those things I mentioned being right outside to call him--to marry
a woman he didn't want for herself, because she had a few hundred head
of cows." He smiled down at her. "Don't pull back from me, Billie; I
won't lay a finger on you. But now do you think it's you I want--or
the little old Three Bar?"
"You can prove it," she said at last. "Prove it by going away for six
months--or three."
He shook his head.
"Not that," he said. "I've told you I was sewed up in a right peculiar
way myself--which wouldn't matter a damn if it wasn't for this. I'd
have tossed it off in a second if the girl on the Three Bar had turned
out to be any other than you. Now I'm going to see it through. The
Three Bar is going under--the brand both our folks helped to
found--unless some one pulls it out of the hole. Believe me if you can
and if you can't--why, you know that one remark about my being
unwelcome here will clear the road for you, like I mentioned a few
minutes back."
He turned away without touching her and she had not moved when the door
closed behind him.
An hour past noon on the following day a drove of horses appeared at
the lower extremity of the valley and swept on toward the ranch. As
Harris threw open the gates of the big corral he saw her standing in
the door of the cookhouse watching the oncoming drove. Riders flanked
the bunch well out to each side to steady it. There was a roar of
hoofs and a stifling cloud of dust as three hundred half-wild horses
clattered past and crowded through the gates, scattering swiftly across
the pasture lot back of the corral. A dozen sweat-streaked riders
swung from their saddles. There was no chance to distinguish color or
kind among them through the dust caked in the week-old growth of beard
that covered every face.
One man remained on his mount and followed the horses into the pasture
lot, cutting out fifty or more and heading them back into the corral;
for Waddles had decreed that they could have the rest of the afternoon
off for a jaunt to Brill's Store and they waited only to change mounts
before the start.
Calico stood drooping sleepily in one of the smaller corrals and Harris
moved toward him, intending to ride over with the rest of the men.
"The boss said for you to ride Blue," Morrow stated as Harris passed
the group at the gates of the corral. "He's clear gentle-broke, Blue
is."
The men looked up in surprise. Morrow had not been near the house to
receive instructions from the girl. The lie had been so apparent as to
constitute a direct challenge to the other man.
Harris stood looking at him, then shrugged his shoulders.
"Whatever the boss says goes with me," he returned evenly.
A rangy blue roan swept past with the fifty or so others. At least
once every round of the corral he laid back his ears and squealed as he
scored some other horse with his teeth, then lashed out with wicked
heels.
"I reckon that'll be Blue?" Harris asked of Evans and the lanky one
nodded. The men scattered round the corral and each watched his chance
to put his rope on some chosen horse. The roan kept others always
between himself and any man with a rope but at last he passed Harris
with but one horse between. Harris nipped his noose across the back of
the intervening horse and over the blue roan's head.
Blue stopped the instant the rope tightened on his neck.
"You've been busted and rope-burnt a time or two," Harris remarked, and
he led the horse out to saddle him. The big blue leaned back,
crouching on his haunches as the man put on the hackamore. His eyes
rolled wickedly as Harris smoothed the saddle blanket and he flinched
away with a whistling snort of fear, his nostrils flaring, as the heavy
saddle was thrown on his back.
Harris tightened the front cinch and the blue horse braced himself and
drew in a long, deep breath.
"That's right, Blue, you swell up and inflate yourself," Harris said.
"I'll have to squeeze it out of you." He fastened the hind cinch
loosely, then returned to the front and hauled on the latigo until the
pressure forced the horse to release the indrawn breath and it leaked
out of him with a groaning sigh.
"I wonder now why Morrow is whetting his tommyhawk for me," Harris
remarked as he inspected the big roan. "You're a hard one, Blue. I'll
let that saddle warm up on you before I top you off."
Every horse pitched a few jumps from force of habit when first mounted,
some of them indifferently, others viciously, then moved restlessly
around, anxious for the start.
"Well, step up on him and let's be going," Morrow ordered surlily.
Harris took a short hold on the rope reins of the hackamore with his
left hand, cramped the horse's head toward him and gripped the mane,
his right hand on the horn, and swung gently to the saddle, easing into
it without a jar.
"Easy, Blue!" he said, holding up the big roan's head. "Don't you hang
your head with me." He eased the horse to a jerky start and they were
off for Brill's at a shuffling trot. Three times in the first mile
Blue bunched himself nervously and made a few stiff jumps but each time
Harris held him steady. The pace was increased to a long, swinging
trot and he felt the play of powerful muscles under him as the blue
horse seemed to reach out for distance at every stride.
"You'd have made one good little horse, Blue," he said, "if some sport
hadn't spoiled you on the start."
"Don't speak loud or the blue horse might shy and spill his pack,"
Morrow remarked in a tone loud enough for Harris to overhear. Evans
turned in his saddle and eyed the dark man curiously.
"He won't upset his load to-day," he prophesied. "Harris is just past
the colt stage, round twenty-seven or eight somewheres, and has
out-growed his longing to show off. But he'll be able to sit up in the
middle of anything that starts to move out from under him."
They left the horses drooping at the several hitch rails before the
post and crowded in. A few paused along the counters of merchandise
that flanked the left side of the big room while the rest headed
straight for the long bar that extended the full length of the opposite
side. The Three Bar men had scarcely tossed off their first drink
before there sounded a clatter of hoofs outside and twelve men from the
Halfmoon D trooped in.
"Out of the way!" the foremost youth shouted. "Back off from the pine
slab, you Three Bar soaks, and give parched folks a chance. Two hours'
play and six months' work--so don't delay me."
The throng before the bar was a riot of color; Angora chaps ranging
from orange and lavender to black and silky white; smooth leather
chaps, and stamped, silver-ornamented and plain, with here and there an
individual design, showing that the owner had selected some queerly
spotted steer and tanned the pelt with the hair on to be fashioned into
gaudy vest and pants. 'Twas an improvident, carefree lot who lived
to-day with scarce a thought for to-morrow. The clatter of sardine and
salmon cans mingled with the clink of glassware at the bar as the men
who had missed the noon meal lunched out of cans between drinks.
Some few detached themselves from the group and occupied themselves
with writing. Several started a game of stud poker at one of the many
tables. Harris wrote a few letters before joining in the play, and as
he looked up from time to time he caught many curious glances leveled
upon him. Morrow had been busily spreading the tidings that a would-be
squatter was among them and they were curious to see the man who had
deliberately defied the unwritten law of the Coldriver Range. When he
had finished his writing he crossed over to the group, tossed a bill on
the bar and waved all hands to a drink.
Waddles had instructed Evans to start the men back before the spree had
progressed to a point where they would refuse to leave Brill's and so
leave the Three Bar short-handed. At the end of two hours he looked at
his watch and snapped it shut.
"Turn out!" he shouted. "On your horses!"
"That goes for my men, too," the Halfmoon D foreman seconded.
"Outside!"
Morrow had not neglected to inform the men from the Halfmoon D that
Harris gentled his horses.
"Handle the little roan horse gentle," he advised as they moved toward
the door. "Better hobble your stirrups before you crawl him." Several
men turned and grinned. In riding contests women were allowed to
hobble their stirrups while the same precaution disqualified a man.
Most of the men were young, scarcely more than boys, full of rough play
and youthful pride of accomplishment along with a desire to make a
presumably careless display of it. A Halfmoon D youth mounted a blocky
bay and as he threw his leg across it he loosed a shrill yip and
reached forward to rake the horse's shoulder. The bay dropped his head
and performed. A half-dozen others followed his example and their
horses pitched off in as many directions. All eyes were turned on
Harris as he neared the big roan.
"Oh, I might as well act up a little," he said to Evans. "They seem to
be looking for it."
"He's a hard citizen, that roan," Evans remarked. "I'll wrangle for
you, Cal."
Harris stepped over to the horse.
"I wonder what old Blue can do," he said. He hooked the roan in the
shoulder as he mounted and the horse plunged his head between his knees
and rose in the air. The big roan bawled and expelled a long-drawn
"wa-a-augh" each time he struck the ground, then savagely shook his
whole frame as he rose again. The first four jumps Harris swung both
feet forward and hooked his shoulders and the next two bounds reached
back and raked his flanks, in accordance with the regulation rules
prescribed for contest riding.
"He's riding for the judges," a megaphone voice announced. "Boy,
you've rode your horse!"
Blue varied his leaps, draping himself in fantastic curves, lighting on
a slant with his side arched out, sunfishing and swapping ends, then
threw himself over and smashed down on his back. Harris slipped
sidewise and cleared himself.
"Fourteen long jumps," one man testified. "One hell of a long time on
an eel like that!"
As Blue regained his feet Harris stepped into the saddle and rose with
him, the hackamore rope trailing loose under the horse's feet. A
chorus of approving yelps broke out.
"Rake him from ears to tail roots!" "Ri-ide 'im, rider!" "Hang 'em up
into that horse!" "Claw him!" "Scra-a-atch him!"
This wave of questionable advice ceased as Blue, after three short
jumps, somersaulted forward and his rider made a headlong side-dive for
safety.
Evans had flanked the roan's course and he now leaned from the saddle
and seized the hackamore rope; as Blue scrambled to his feet he took
two quick turns of the rope and snubbed his head short to the saddle
horn. The roan struggled and threw himself, his head still suspended
by the rope, rose and reared to strike savagely at the man who held
him, but Evans left his saddle and leaned far out, his right foot on
the ground, left still in the stirrup, and eased himself back into the
saddle as the fighting horse slid down. He had never once lost his
hold which snubbed Blue to the horn, a pretty bit of wrangling.
"He's on the fight now," Evans said. "I'll hold him solid till he
cools down--which won't be long, for Cal didn't cut him any; he was
swinging his feet free and never hooked him once." He jerked his thumb
at the roan's shoulder and flanks where not a drop of blood appeared;
his hide would have been tattered indeed if Harris had driven home his
rowels each time he swung his feet. "Nice ride."
Harris walked back to a small group that had not yet mounted, Morrow
among them. His left side was quartering toward Morrow and apparently
he was addressing the group as a whole instead of any one man.
"The next time some one frames me to put on a show like that," he said,
"why, he'd better make certain beforehand about what part he's willing
to play in the performance himself--for next time I won't take it out
of the horse."