struck like a ruin, falling from the sky, went up again with
demon-like activity, once more descended--once more hurtled wildly
aloft--and repeated this maneuver with a swiftness utterly bewildering.

Had some diabolical wind, together with a huge, volcanic force, taken
insane possession of the animal, to fire him skyward, whirl him about,
thrash him down viciously and fling him up again, time after time, he
could not have churned with greater violence.

He never came down in the same place twice, but he always came down
stiff-legged. The jolt was sickening. All about, in a narrow,
earth-cut circle he bucked, beginning to grunt and warm to his work and
hence to increase the deviltry and malice of his actions.

Van had yelled but that once. He saw nothing, knew nothing, save a
dizzy world, abruptly gone crazy about him.

To Beth it seemed as if the horror would never have an end. One
glimpse she had of Van's white face, but nothing could it tell of his
strength or the lack thereof. She felt she must look and look till he
was killed. There could be no other issue, she was sure. And for
herself there could be no escape from the awful fascination of the
merciless brute, inflicting this torture on the man.

It did end, however, rather unexpectedly--that particular phase of the
conflict. The horse grew weary of the effort, made in vain, to
dislodge the stubborn torment on his back. He changed the program with
the deadliest of all a broncho's tricks.

Pausing for the briefest part of a second, while Van must certainly
have been reeling with hideous motion and jolt, the chestnut quickly
reared on high, to drop himself clean over backwards. It was thus that
once he had crushed the life from a rider.

"Oh!" screamed Both, and she sank beside the tree.

The men all yelled. They were furious and afraid.

With hoofs wildly flaying the air, while he loomed tall and unreal in
such an attitude, the broncho hung for a moment in mid-poise, then
dropped over sheer--as if to be shattered into fragments.

But a mass of the bronze-like group was detached, and fell to one side,
on its thigh. It was Van. He had seen what was coming in time.

Instantly up, as the brute rolled quickly to arise, he leaped in the
saddle, the horn of which had snapped, and he and the chestnut came
erect together, as if miraculously the equestrian group had been
restored.

"Yi! Yi!" he yelled, like the madman he was--mad with the heat of t