en it from the first. She had seen
many cowboy breakers of wild horses; she knew the confident bearing of
them; the quickness with which they adjusted their muscles to the
eccentric movements of the horse under them, anticipating their every
action, so far as anyone was able to anticipate the actions of a
rage-maddened demon who has only one desire, to kill or maim its rider,
and she knew that Calumet was an expert. He was cool, first of all, in
spite of his grimness; he kept his temper, he was absolutely without
fear; he was implacable, inexorable in his determination to conquer.
Somehow the battle between horse and man, as it raged up and down
before her, sometimes shifting to the far end of the level, sometimes
coming so near that she could see the expression of Calumet's face
plainly, seemed to be a contest between kindred spirits. The analogy,
perhaps, might not have been perceived by anyone less intimately
acquainted with Calumet, or by anyone who understood a horse less, but
she saw it, and knowing Calumet's innate savagery, his primal
stubbornness, his passions, the naked soul of the man, she began to
feel that the black was waging a hopeless struggle. He could never win
unless some accident happened.

And they were very near her when it seemed that an accident did happen.

The black, his tongue now hanging out, the foam that issued from his
mouth flecked with blood; his sides in a lather; his flanks moist and
torn from the cruel spur-points: seemed to be losing his cunning and to
be trusting entirely to his strength and yielding to his rage. She
could hear his breath coming shrilly as he tore past her; the whites of
his eyes white no longer, but red with the murder lust. It seemed to
her that he must divine that defeat was imminent, and in a transport of
despair he was determined to stake all on a last reckless move.

As he flashed past her she looked at Calumet also. His face was pale;
there was a splotch of blood on his lips which told of an internal
hemorrhage brought on by the terrific jarring that he had received, but
in his eyes was an expression of unalterable resolve; the grim, cold,
immutable calm of purpose. Oh, he would win, she knew. Nothing but
death could defeat him. That was his nature--his character. There was
no alternative. He saw none, would admit none. He found time, as he
went past her, to grin at her, and the grin, though a trifle wan,
contained much of its old mockery and c