I don't know," said Corson. "But you seem to have guessed something.
See the way he stands there with his chin on his fist and studies
Rickety! Maybe Perris is one of these here geniuses and us ordinary
folks can only understand a genius by using a book on him."

She nodded, very serious.

"There _is_ a use for fighting men, isn't there?" she brooded.

"Use for 'em?" laughed Corson. "Why, lady, how come we to be sitting
here? Because gents have fought to put us here! How come this is part of
God's country? Because a lot of folks buckled on guns to make it that!
Use for a fighter? Well, Miss Jordan, I've done a little fighting of one
kind and another in my day and I don't blush to think about it. Look at
my kid there. What do you think I'm proudest of: because he was head of
his class at school last winter or because he could lick every other boy
his own size? First time he come home with a black eye I gave him a
dollar to go back and try to give the other fellow _two_ black eyes. And
he done it! All good fighters ain't good men; I sure know that. But they
never was a man that was good to begin with and was turned bad by
fighting. They's a pile of bad men around these parts that fight like
lions; but that part of 'em is good. Yes sirree, they's plenty of use
for a fighting man! Don't you never doubt that!"

She smiled at this vehemence, but it reinforced a growing respect for
Perris.

Then, rather absurdly, it irritated her to find that she was taking him
so seriously. She remembered the ridiculous song:

"Oh, father, father William, I've seen your daughter dear.
Will you trade her for the brindled cow and the yellow steer?"

Marianne frowned.

The shout of the crowd called her away from herself. Far from broken by
the last ride, the outlaw horse now seemed all the stronger for the
exercise. Discarding fanciful tricks, he at once set about sun-fishing,
that most terrible of all forms of bucking.

The name in itself is a description. Literally Rickety hurled himself at
the sun and landed alternately on one stiffened foreleg and then the
other. At each shock the chin of Arizona Charley was flung down against
his chest and at the same time his head snapped sideways with the uneven
lurch of the horse. An ordinary pony would have broken his leg at the
first or second of these jumps; but Rickety was untiring. He jarred to
the earth; he vaulted up again as from springs--over and over the same
thing.

It would ev