table. He felt no particular resentment toward
Brayley. The man had treated him fairly enough since that first night
in the bunk-house. He looked upon the matter calmly, almost
impersonally, as a duty to which he must attend. And he was not going
to wait for an excuse. An opportunity would do.

It was half-past ten, and very late for cow-puncher land, when Greek
strode away through the darkness to the bunk-house.

When morning came it happened that Brayley rose fifteen minutes early,
Conniston fifteen minutes late. The foreman left immediately for a far
corner of the range, and Conniston, having made a quick breakfast,
went about his own work. In the corral he selected a horse which
heretofore he had carefully left alone, knowing the brute's half-tamed
spirit and not caring to trust to it. But now it was different. He
waited his opportunity before throwing his rope. Then, as the horse,
seeming to know that he had been singled out, shot by him, he cast his
lasso. And there was a grim light, but at the same time a light of
deep satisfaction in Conniston's eyes as he saw that his whirling
noose had gone unerringly, settling as Toothy's rope would have done.

He blindfolded the big, belligerent horse to mount him. When his feet
were securely thrust into his stirrups he leaned forward and with a
swift jerk snapped the handkerchief from the horse's eyes. For a
moment the animal's sides between his knees trembled and throbbed like
an overtaxed engine. Then there was the sudden jerk which told of a
mighty bunching of muscles, a gathering of force. And as Conniston
shot his spurs home, with the reins gripped tight in his left hand so
that the horse could not get his head down, the forelegs were lifted
high in air as the animal reared. A quick blow of the quirt and the
forelegs sought earth again, and Conniston began to realize what it
was to ride a bucking bronco.

A series of short jumps, every one threatening to unseat him, every
one jerking him so that his body was whipped this way and that, so
that he had much ado to keep his feet from flying out of the stirrups,
and could hardly hold his right hand back from going to the horn, from
"pulling leather." The bucks came so close together that it seemed to
him that he did not rest a second in the saddle; that each time the
big brute struck the ground with his four feet bunched together, to
pause for a breathless moment, gathering every ounce of strength to
wrench, leaping sid