things once with Laramie, didn't you? And you didn't
get him, did you?" continued Doubleday, choking off Van Horn's words:
"Now we've got him here, let me run this thing."

"I can tell you right now you won't line him up," blurted out Van Horn,
very angry.

Doubleday had a way of raising his chin to override objection; and his
voice grew huskier with stubbornness: "Just let me run this thing, will
you?"

"Do as you please," retorted Van Horn, but with a stiff expletive that
irritated Barb still further. Then swinging on his heel, Van Horn
marched off. Barb was so incensed he could only keep his raised finger
pointed after Van Horn; and as his eyes blazed he shouted through a
very fog of throat-scraping: "I will."

CHAPTER XIII

AGAINST HIS RECORD

On the level stretch between the ranch-house and the creek the cowboys
staged, after dinner, a Frontier Day show and a Fourth of July
celebration combined. The fun began mildly with the three-legged races
and the business of the greased pig. From these diversions it
proceeded to foot races, in which Indians shone, and to keenly
contested pony races between cowboys, Reservation bucks and sports from
Sleepy Cat. Money was stacked with freedom and differences of opinion
were intensified by victory and defeat.

While the spirit ran high, rodeo riding began with the master artists
of the range and the pink of American horsemanship in the saddle. In
each succeeding contest the Sleepy Cat visitors headed by Sawdy and
Lefever with big loose bunches of currency backed their favorites
freely, and men that counted nothing of caution in their make-up took
the other end of every exciting event. Flushed faces and loud voices
added to the rapidly shifting excitement as one event followed another,
and the betting fever keenly roused called, after every possible wager
had been laid, for fresh material to work on.

It was at this juncture that the shooting matches began. In a line and
in a country in which many excelled in perhaps the most important
regard, rivalry ran high and critics were naturally fastidious. The
temptation to belittle even excellent work with rifle and revolver was,
in Sawdy and especially in Carpy, partly due to temperament. Both men
were bad gamesters because they bet on feeling rather than judgment.
They would back a man, or the horse of a man they liked, against a man
they did not like and sometimes thereby knew what it was to close the
day