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Updated: June 29, 2025
He was more than waist under, loosely clinging to his seat and giving the pony the reins. Suvy was powerful, he swam doggedly, but the current was tremendous in its sheer liquid mass and momentum. Van slipped off and swam by the broncho's side. Together the two breasted the surge of the tide, and now made more rapid progress.
But the man in the saddle was a rider. He sat in the loose security of men who knew the game. He gave himself over to becoming part of the broncho's very self. He accepted Suvy's momentum, spine-disturbing jolts, and sudden gyrations with the calmness and art of a master. All this Van beheld, as the pony bucked with warming enthusiasm, and again his heart descended to the depths.
The elder of the two, a boy about thirteen years old, went into the shack and returned in a moment bringing out two rifles. I turned the broncho's head up the trail, but Tom interposed. "'I 'low, he said, 'that ye'll hev ter leave yer horse-critter right hyar; thar ain't much of er trail up the mount'n.
He placed the sprig of everlasting in her hand. "You can count me on the firing line." Then he had thrown the reins over his broncho's neck, headed the horse back up the Ridge and was slithering down the steep slope giving her hand-hold as of steel-springs. So short was the interval, it could not be measured in time. Yet it had rivetted eternity.
He leaped his broncho clean against the wall, then spurred him straight for Barger. The shot that split the air again was splattered on the rocks. Before the convict could make ready to avoid the charge, Suvy was almost upon him. He partially fell and partially leaped a little from the broncho's path, but was struck as the pony bounded by.
Sultry, parching, enervating, sure precursor, if she had thought to remember, if she had been less engrossed in the bitterness of her questionings, of a storm. Soon, aroused by the intensity of this heat, which burned like the blast from an oven, she whirled about and turned her broncho's head the other way. It was time, for that way lay her home and danger threatened it.
She was once more standing rigidly by her tree, unable to move or speak. She wished to run to Van as the men had run, but not to slay the broncho only to beg the horseman not to mount again. She saw him push the men away and stand like the broncho's guard. His face was streaked with blood his blood jolted alike from his mouth and nose by the shocks to which he had been subjected.
Van had lost all sense save that of worry, love for his horse, and desire to see him win this vital struggle. A wild passion for Suvy's response to himself for a proving love in the broncho's being possessed his nature. He leaned far forward, awkwardly, following Suvy about. "I'm ashamed of you, Suvy!" he began to cry. "Suvy! Suvy, where's your pride? Why don't you do him, boy?
He spurred the horse to furious, exhausting speed, guiding him wildly around the mountain theater. Again and again they circled the grassy arena, till foam and lather whitened the broncho's flank, chest, and mouth, and his nostril burned red as living flame. When at last the animal, weary and undone, would have sobered down to a trot or walk, Van forced him anew to crazy speed.
The pony shook its head and rattled the bits in its mouth. "All right, old chap, try it." A cluck and a gentle slap on the broncho's flanks sent him straight for the steep bank. At first his feet slipped under him; he stumbled, righted himself and digging in the slender hoofs fairly lifted himself up and up. In the meantime Mr. Bruin was making better progress.
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