turn white under their tan.

"Mama!" breathed Weary, in a horrified half-whisper.

And Slim, goggle-eyed beside him, blurted, "Well, by _golly_!" in a
voice that carried across the corral.

For Andy Green, tamer of wild ones (forsooth!) broncho-twister with a
fame that not the boundary of Chouteau County held, nor yet the
counties beyond; Andy Green, erstwhile "Andre de Greno, champion
bare-back rider of the Western Hemisphere," who had jumped through
blazing hoops and over sagging bunting while he rode, turned
handsprings and done other public-drawing feats, was prosaically,
unequivocally "piled" at the fifth jump!

That he landed lightly on his feet, with the cigarette still between
his lips, the roosting twenty-five quite overlooked. They saw only the
first jump, where Andy, riding loose and unguardedly, went up on the
blue withers. The second, third and fourth jumps were not far enough
apart to be seen and judged separately; as well may one hope to decide
whether a whirling wheel had straight or crooked spokes. The fifth
jump, however, was a masterpiece of rapid-fire contortion, and it was
important because it left Andy on the ground, gazing, with an
extremely grieved expression, at the uninterrupted convolutions of the
"dandy little cow-hoss."

The blue roan never stopped so much as to look back. He was
busy--exceedingly busy. He was one of those perverted brutes which
buck and bawl and so keep themselves wrought up to a high
pitch--literally and figuratively. He set himself seriously to throw
Andy's saddle over his head, and he was not a horse which easily
accepts defeat. Andy walked around in the middle of the corral, quite
aimlessly, and watched the roan contort. He could not understand in
the least, and his amazement overshadowed, for the moment, the fact
that he had been thrown and that in public and before men of the
Diamond G.

Then it was that the men of the Diamond G yelled shrill words of
ironical sympathy. Then it was that the Happy Family looked at one
another in shamed silence, and to the taunts of the Diamond Gs made no
reply. It had never occurred to them that such a thing could happen.
Had they not seen Andy ride, easily and often? Had they not heard from
Pink how Andy had performed that difficult feat at the Rocking R--the
feat of throwing his horse flat in the middle of a jump? They waited
until the roan, leaving the big corral looking, in the fast deepening
twilight, like a fresh-ploughed