awing could not ease
the cruel strain upon either of them.

A few terrible seconds, and then Jack overtook them, eaught the horse
by the bridle, and stopped him; and the blood which the cruel bit had
brought when the spade cut deep, stained Jack's white clothes red where
it fell.

"Slack, Surry! Come on!" he cried, his voice harsh with the stress of
that moment. And when the rawhide hung loose between the two horses he
freed Jose of the deadly noose, and saw where it had burnt raw the skin
of his neck on the side where it touched. A snaky, six-strand riata can
be a rather terrible weapon, he decided, while he loosed it and flung it
from him.

Jose, for the first time getting breath enough to gasp, tried to
straighten himself in the saddle; lurched, and would have gone off on
his head if Jack had not put up a hand to steady him. So he led him, a
shaken, gasping, disarmed antagonist, across the little space that
separated them from where Don Andres and four other Spanish gentlemen
sat before the middle gate of the corral.

"Bravo!" cried a sweet, girl voice; and a rose, blood-red and heavy with
perfume, fell at Jack's feet. He gave it one cold glance and let it lie.
In another moment the black horse crushed it heedlessly beneath his
hoof, as Jack turned to the judges.

"Senors, I bring you Don Jose Pacheco."

So suddenly had the contest ended that those riders who helped to form
the riata fence stood still in their places, as if another round had yet
to be fought. Beyond the pistol shot and the girl voice crying well
done, the audience was quiet, waiting.

Then Jose, sitting spent upon his horse, lifted a hand that shook
weakly. His fingers fumbled at his breast, and he held out the shining
medal of gold--the medal with diamonds prisoning the sunlight so that
the trinket flashed in his hand.

"Senor," he said huskily, "the medalla--it is yours."

Jack looked at him; looked at the bent faces of the frowning judges;
looked up at Teresita, watching the two with red lips parted and breath
coming quickly; looked again queerly at Jose, gasping still, and holding
out to him the medalla oro. Jack did a good deal of thinking in a very
short space of time.

"I don't want your medal," he said. "Let some Californian fight you for
it, if he likes. That is not for a gringo."

Perhaps there was a shade of the theatrical element in his speech and
his manner, but he was perfectly innocent of any such intention; and the
peop