But the rider slipped off with disgust. "Give me another horse,"
he demanded, and after a minute's consultation among the judges a
second pony was driven out from the corral. This one proved to be
a Tartar. It went off in a frenzy of pitching the moment its
rider dropped into the saddle.
"Y'u'll go a long way before you see better ridin' than his and
Mac's. Notice how he gives to its pitching," said Bannister, as
he watched his cousin's perfect ease in the cyclone of which he
was the center.
"I expect it depends on the kind of a 'hawss,'" she mocked. "He's
riding well, isn't he?"
"I don't know any that ride better."
The horse put up a superb fight, trying everything it knew to
unseat this demon clamped to its back. It possessed in
combination all the worst vices, was a weaver, a sunfisher and a
fence-rower, and never had it tried so desperately to maintain
its record of never having been ridden. But the outlaw in the
saddle was too much for the outlaw underneath. He was master,
just as he was first among the ruffians whom he led, because
there was in him a red-hot devil of wickedness that would brook
no rival.
The furious bronco surrendered without an instant's warning, and
its rider slipped at once to the ground.
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