pitched high in
the air, snapped its head and heels close together, and came down
stiff-legged. Marianne sympathetically felt that impact jar home in her
brain but the rider kept his seat. Worse was coming. For sixty seconds the
horse was in an ecstasy of furious and educated bucking, flinging itself
into odd positions and hitting the earth. Each whip-snap of that
stinging struggling body jarred the rider shrewdly. Yet he clung in his
place until the fight ended with startling suddenness. The grey dropped
out of the air in a last effort and then stood head-down, quivering,
beaten.

The victor jogged placidly back to the high-fenced corrals, with shouts
of applause going up about him.

"Hey, lady," called a voice behind and above Marianne. "Might be you
would like to sit up here with us?"

It was a high-bodied buckboard with two improvised seats behind the
driver's place and Marianne thanked him with a smile. A
fourteen-year-old stripling sprang down to help her but she managed the
step-up without his hand. She was taken at once, and almost literally,
into the bosom of the family, three boys, a withered father, a work-faded
mother, all with curious, kindly eyes. They felt she was not their order,
perhaps. The sun had darkened her skin but would never spoil it; into
their sweating noonday she carried a morning-freshness, so they propped
her in the angle of the driver's seat beside the mother and made her at
home. Their name was Corson; their family had been in the West "pretty
nigh onto always"; they had a place down the Taliaferro River; and they
had heard about the Jordan ranch. All of this was huddled into the first
two minutes. They brushed through the necessaries and got at the
excitement of the moment.

"I guess they ain't any doubt," said Corson. "Arizona Charley wins. He
won two years back, too. Minds me of Pete Langley, the way he rests in a
saddle. Now where's this Perris gent? D'you see him? My, ain't they
shouting for Arizona! Well, he's pretty bad busted up, but I guess he's
still good enough to hold this Perris they talk about. Where's Perris?"

The same name was being shouted here and there in the crowd. Corson
stood up and peered about him.

"Who is Perris?" asked Marianne.

"A gent that come out of the north, up Montana way, I hear. He's been
betting on himself to win this bucking contest, covering everybody's
money. A crazy man, he sure is!"

The voice drifted dimly to Marianne for she was fal