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Finally the contractor accused the drover of being in collusion with his cowpuncher in order to win the wager by holding the bronchos back and a volley of words of not very mild character ensued, after which the six cowboys, three on either side of the team, stood off six feet.
The girls were not altogether reluctant to obey, much as they desired a closer look at the bronchos, for they realized that they were pretty hungry. The ranch house was one of those quaint old structures which had begun as a tiny, one-story frame cottage and had gradually been added to until now it seemed, Betty said, to "spread all over the landscape."
We might return together for mutual protection, unless you'd rather trust to your pony's heels." The girl looked him up and down with sharp appraisal. There was no hint of timidity in his smile. "Don't figure there's any joke about a bunch of bronchos," she said. "They like to kill just for pure devilment, and when they can make it without risk, their choice of game is a white man."
The authorities of the Carlisle School and the police of Harrisburg are hunting high and low for a young Indian known to the records of the Academy as Ralph Moreau, but borne on the payrolls of Buffalo Bill's Wild West aggregation as Eagle Wing a youth who is credited with having given the renowned scout-showman more trouble than all his braves, bronchos and "busters" thereof combined.
"Faith, man, 'tis the fate of genius to ride a fractious steed," said Father Holland, when the bronchos of priest and poet had come into violent collision with angry squeals for the third time in ten minutes. "And what are the capers of this, my beast, compared to the antics of fate, Sir Priest?" asked Pierre with grave dignity.
"He's driving the 'Clay-Banks," I called in great excitement. The Clay-Banks were famous throughout the county as the doctor's swiftest and wildest team, a span of bronchos whose savage spirits no journey could entirely subdue, a team he did not spare, a team that scorned petting and pity, bony, sinewy, big-headed. They never walked and had little care of mud or snow.
At the corral the animals wearily tossed their heads, low hung with exhaustion, seeking to shift the sticky clutch of head-stall or hackamore, while their riders dismounted and quickly removed saddle and riding gear. Freed from their burdens the bronchos dragged tired heels through the dust as they whirled and trotted unsteadily away to the pasture, eager to roll and relax their aching muscles.
Over them leans their driver, plying for the first time the hissing lash. Only fifty yards more. The miners begin to yell. But Baptiste, waving his lines high in one hand seizes his tuque with the other, whirls it about his head and flings it with a fiercer yell than ever at the bronchos.
He was cowboy for a Western cattle king, and there he learned to break wild bronchos without a saddle and split apples with a revolver bullet at a hundred yards. He was among the pioneers in the gold rush to Alaska and played faro in all the tough mining towns. Sworn in as sheriff, he one day apprehended single-handed, a gang of desperate outlaws, who attempted to hold up a train.
With what ease and courage and patience and perfect self-command he had handled those plunging bronchos!
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