of the circle. It was not the first time she had found that the way of
women is made easy in the West. Just as she reached her place a horse
scudded away from the far end of the field with a rider yelling; the
swaying head and shoulders back. He seemed to be shrinking from
such speed, but as a matter of fact he was poised and balanced nicely
for any chance whirl. When it had gained full speed the broncho
pitched high in the air, snapped its head and heels close together, and
came down stiff-legged. Marianne sympathetically felt that impact jar
home in her brain but the rider kept his seat. Worse was coming. For
sixty seconds the horse was in an ecstasy of furious and educated
bucking, flinging itself into odd positions and hitting the earth. Each
whip-snap of that stinging struggling body jarred the rider shrewdly.
Yet he clung in his place until the fight ended with startling suddenness.
The grey dropped out of the air in a last effort and then stood
head-down, quivering, beaten.
The victor jogged placidly back to the high-fenced corrals, with shouts
of applause going up about him.
"Hey, lady," called a voice behind and above Marianne. "Might be you
would like to sit up here with us?"
It was a high-bodied buckboard with two improvised seats behind the
driver's place and Marianne thanked him with a smile. A
fourteen-year-old stripling sprang down to help her but she managed
the step-up without his hand. She was taken at once, and almost
literally, into the bosom of the family, three boys, a withered father, a
work-faded mother, all with curious, kindly eyes. They felt she was not
their order, perhaps. The sun had darkened her skin but would never
spoil it; into their sweating noonday she carried a morning-freshness,
so they propped her in the angle of the driver's seat beside the mother
and made her at home. Their name was Corson; their family had been
in the West "pretty nigh onto always"; they had a place down the
Taliaferro River; and they had heard about the Jordan ranch. All of this
was huddled into the first two minutes. They brushed through the
necessaries and got at the excitement of the moment.
"I guess they ain't any doubt," said Corson. "Arizona Charley wins. He
won two years back, too. Minds me of Pete Langley, the way he rests
in a saddle. Now where's this Perris gent? D'you see him? My, ain't
they shouting for Arizona! Well, he's pretty bad busted up, but I guess
he's still good enough to hold this Perris they talk about. Where's
Perris?"
The same name was being shouted here and there in the crowd. Corson
stood up and peered about him.
"Who is Perris?" asked Marianne.
"A gent that come out of the north, up Montana way, I hear. He's been
betting on himself to win this bucking contest, covering everybody's
money. A crazy man, he sure is!"
The voice drifted dimly to Marianne for she was falling into a pleasant
haze, comfortably aware of eyes of admiration lifted to her more and
more frequently from the crowd. She envied the blue coolness of the
mountains, or breathed gingerly because the sting of alkali-dust was in
the air, or noted with impersonal attention the flash of sun on a horse
struggling in the far off corrals. The growing excitement of the crowd,
as though a crisis were approaching, merely lulled her more. So the
voice of Corson was half heard; the words were unconnotative sounds.
"Let the winner pick the worst outlaw in the lot. Then Perris will ride
that hoss first. If he gets throwed he loses. If he sticks, then the other
gent has just got to sit the same hoss--one that's already had the edge
took off his bucking. Well, ain't that a fool bet?"
"It sounds fair enough," said Marianne. "Perris, I suppose, hasn't ridden
yet. And Arizona Charley is tired from his work."
"Arizona tired? He ain't warmed up. Besides, he's got a hoss here that
Perris will break his heart trying to ride. You know what hoss they got
here today? They got Rickety! Yep, they sure enough got old Rickety!"
He pointed.
"There he comes out!"
Marianne looked lazily in the indicated direction and then sat up, wide
awake. She had never seen such cunning savagery as was in the head of
this horse, its ears going back and forth as it tested the strength of the
restraining ropes. Now and then it crouched and shuddered under the
detested burden of the saddle. It was a stout-legged piebald with the
tell-tale Roman nose obviously designed for hard and enduring battle.
He was a fighting horse as plainly as a terrier is
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