acklock tried
hard to assume the manly attitude of nonchalance; tried and failed
utterly. Once for every five minutes of the waiting he had to jump up
and make a trip to the front of the commissary to ease off the excess
pressure; and at the eleventh return Ballard was knocking the ash out of
his pipe.

"Getting on your nerves, Jerry?" he asked. "All right: we'll go and bore
a couple of holes into the night, if that's what you're anxious to be
doing."

The start was made without advertisement. Fitzpatrick's horse-keeper was
smoking cigarettes on the little porch platform, and at a word from
Ballard he disappeared in the direction of the horse-rope. Giving him
the necessary saddling time, the two made their way around the
card-playing groups at the plaza fire, and at the back of the darkened
mess-tent found the man waiting with three saddled broncos, all with
rifle holsters under the stirrup leathers. Ballard asked a single
question at the mounting moment.

"You haven't seen young Carson in the last hour or so, have you, Patsy?"

"Niver a hair av him: 'tis all day long he's been gone, wid Misther
Bourke swearing thremenjous about the cayuse he took."

Ballard took the bridle of the led horse and the ride down the line of
the canal, with Fitzpatrick's "piece of a moon" to silver the darkness,
was begun as a part of the day's work by the engineer, but with some
little trepidation by the young collegian, whose saddle-strivings
hitherto had been confined to the well-behaved cobs in his father's
stables.

At the end of the first mile Blacklock found himself growing painfully
conscious of every start of the wiry little steed between his knees, and
was fain to seek comfort.

"Say, Mr. Ballard; what do you do when a horse bucks under you?" he
asked, wedging the inquiry between the jolts of the racking gallop.

"You don't do anything," replied Ballard, taking the pronoun in the
generic sense. "The bronco usually does it all."

"I--believe this brute's--getting ready to--buck," gasped the tyro.
"He's working--my knee-holds loose--with his confounded
sh--shoulder-blades."

"Freeze to him," laughed Ballard. Then he added the word of heartening:
"He can't buck while you keep him on the run. Here's a smooth bit of
prairie: let him out a few notches."

That was the beginning of a mad race that swept them down the canal
line, past Riley's camp and out to the sand-floored cleft in the
foothills far ahead of the planned mee