The next rider suffered defeat irrevocably before he had been
thirty seconds in the saddle. His mount was one of the most
cunning of the outlaw ponies of the Northwest, and it brought him
to grief by jamming his leg hard against the fence. He tried in
vain to spur the bronco into the middle of the arena, but after
it drove at a post for the third time and ground his limb against
it, he gave up to the pain and slipped off.
"That isn't fair, is it?" Helen asked of the young man sitting
beside her.
He shrugged his lean, broad shoulders. "He should have known how
to keep the horse in the open. Mac would never have been caught
that way."
"Jack Holloway on Rocking Horse," the announcer shouted.
It took four men and two lariats to subdue this horse to a
condition sufficiently tame to permit of a saddle being slipped
on. Even then this could not be accomplished without throwing the
bronco first. The result was that all the spirit was taken out of
the animal by the preliminary ordeal, so that when the man from
the Shoshone country mounted, his steed was too jaded to attempt
resistance.
"Thumb him! Thumb him!" the audience cried, referring to the
cowboy trick of running the thumbs along a certain place in the
shoulder to stir the anger of the bucker.
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