d fastened itself to its
horns. The man hung on for life. All his power and weight were centered
in an effort to twist the head of the bull sideways and back. Slowly,
inch by inch, by the steady, insistent pressure of muscles as well
packed as any in Texas, the man began to gain. The bull no longer tossed
and flung him at will. The big roan head went down, turned backward,
yielded to the pressure on the neck-muscles that never relaxed.

The man put at the decisive moment his last ounce of strength into one
last twist. The bull collapsed, went down heavily to its side.

A second cowboy rode up, roped the bull, and deftly hogtied it.

The bulldogger rose and limped forward to the girl leaning whitely
against a wall.

"Sorry, Miss Wadley. I hadn't ought to have brought the herd through
town. We was drivin' to water."

"Are you hurt?" Ramona heard her dry, faint voice ask.

"Me!" he said in surprise. "Why, no, ma'am."

He was a tall, lean youth, sunburned and tough, with a face that looked
sardonic. Ramona recognized him now as her father's new foreman, the man
she had been introduced to a few days before. Hard on that memory came
another. It was this same Jack Roberts who had taken her brother by
surprise and beaten him so cruelly only yesterday.

"It threw you around so," she murmured.

"Sho! I reckon I can curry a li'l ol' longhorn when I have it to do,
ma'am," he answered, a bit embarrassed.

"Are--are you hurt?" another voice quavered.

With a pang of pain Ramona remembered Arthur Ridley. Where had he been
when she so desperately needed help?

"No. Mr. Roberts saved me." She did not look at Ridley. A queer feeling
of shame for him made her keep her eyes averted.

"I--went to get help for you," the boy explained feebly.

"Thank you," she said.

The girl was miserably unhappy. For the boy to whom she had given the
largesse of her friendship had fled in panic; the one she hated for
bullying and mistreating her brother had flung himself in the path of
the furious bull to save her.

Captain Ellison came running up. He bristled at the trail foreman like a
bantam. "What do you mean by drivin' these wild critters through town?
Ain't you got a lick o' sense a-tall? If anything had happened to this
little girl--"

The Ranger left his threat suspended in midair. His arms were round
Ramona, who was sobbing into his coat.

The red-headed foreman shifted his weight from one foot to another. He
was acutely unco