The Dude Wrangler | Page 8

declared, obstinately.
"I doubt if I could set one of them hen-skin saddles," observed Pinkey, changing the subject.
Wallie replied airily:
"Oh, it's very easy if you've been taught properly."
"Taught? You mean," wonderingly, "that somebody learnt you to ride horseback?"
Wallie smiled patronizingly:
"How else would I know?"
"I was jest throwed on a horse and told to stay there."
"Which accounts for the fact that you Western riders have no 'form,' if you'll excuse my frankness."
"Don't mention it," replied Pinkey, not to be outdone in politeness. "Maybe, before I go, you'll give me some p'inters?"
"I shall be most happy," Wallie responded, putting his foot in the stirrup.
He mounted creditably and settled himself in the saddle.
"Thumb him," said Miss Spenceley, "and we'll soon settle the argument."
"How--thumb him? The term is not familiar."
"Show him, Pinkey." Her eyes were sparkling, for Wallie's tone implied that the expression was slang and also rather vulgar.
"He'll unload his pack as shore as shootin'." Pinkey hesitated.
"No time like the present to learn a lesson," she replied, ambiguously.
"Certainly--if there's anything you can teach me," Wallie's smile said as plain as words that he doubted it. "Mr. Fripp--er--'thumb' him."
"You're the doctor," said Pinkey, grimly, and "thumbed" him.
The effect was instantaneous. The old horse ducked his head, arched his back, and went at it.
It was over in less time than it requires to tell and Wallie was convinced beyond the question of a doubt that the horse had not been bred in Kentucky. As he described an a?rial circle Wallie had a whimsical notion that his teeth had bitten into his brain and his spine was projected through the crown of his derby hat. Darkness and oblivion came upon him for a moment, and then he found himself being lifted tenderly from a bed of petunias and dusted off by the groom from the Riding Academy.
The ladies were screaming, but a swift glance showed Wallie not only Mr. Appel but Mr. Cone and Mr. Budlong with their hands over their mouths and their teeth gleaming between their spreading fingers.
"Coward!" he cried to Pinkey. "You don't dare get on him!"
"Can you ride him 'slick,' Pinkey?" asked Miss Spenceley.
"I'll do it er bust somethin'." Pinkey's mouth had a funny quirk at the corners. "Maybe it'll take the kinks out of me from travellin'."
He looked at Mr. Cone doubtfully: "I'm liable to rip up the sod in your front yard a little."
"Go to it!" cried Mr. Cone, whose sporting blood was up. "There's nothin' here that won't grow again. Ride him!"
Everybody was trembling, and when Miss Eyester looked at her lips they were white as alabaster, but she meant to see the riding, if she had one of her sinking spells immediately it was over.
When Pinkey swung into the saddle, the horse turned its head around slowly and looked at the leg that gripped him. Pinkey leaned down, unbuckled the throat-latch, and slipped off the bridle. Then, as he touched the horse in the flank with his heels, he took off his cap and slapped him over the head with it.
The horse recognized the familiar challenge and accepted it. What he had done to Wallie was only the gambolling of a frisky colt as compared with his efforts to rid his back of Pinkey.
Even Helene Spenceley sobered as she watched the battle that followed.
The horse sprang into the air, twisted, and came down stiff-legged--squealing. Now with his head between his forelegs he shot up his hind hoofs and at an angle to require all the grip in his rider's knees to stay in the saddle. Then he brought down his heels again, violently, to bite at Pinkey--who kicked him.
He "weaved," he "sunfished"--with every trick known to an old outlaw he tried to throw his rider, rearing finally to fall backward and mash to a pulp a bed of Mr. Cone's choicest tulips. But when the horse rose Pinkey was with him, while the spectators, choking with excitement, forgetting themselves and each other, yelled like Apaches.
With nostrils blood-red and distended, his eyes the eyes of a wild animal, now writhing, now crouching, now lying back on his haunches and springing forward with a violence to snap any ordinary vertebra, the horse pitched as if there was no limit to its ingenuity and endurance.
Pinkey's breath was coming in gasps and his colour had faded with the terrible jar of it all. Even the uninitiated could see that Pinkey was weakening, and the result was doubtful, when, suddenly, the horse gave up and stampeded. He crashed through the trellis over which Mr. Cone had carefully trained his crimson ramblers, tore through a neat border of mignonette and sweet alyssum that edged the driveway, jumped through "snowballs," lilacs, syringas, and rhododendrons to come to a halt finally conquered and chastened.
The "88" brand has produced a strain famous throughout Wyoming for its buckers, and