held firmly in his grasp.

"Slip off the blinder," he said to his friends, and Algy it was who
obeyed.

"Damn you, now you buck!" cried Van wildly, and his heels ignited the
volcano.

For five solid minutes the broncho redoubled his scheme of demoniac
fury. Then he poised, let out a shrill scream of challenge, and
abruptly raised to repeat the backward fall.

Up, up he went, an ungainly sight, and then--the heavens split in twain.

He was only well lifted from the earth when, with a thunderous,
terrible blow, Van crashed the bottle downward, fairly between his
ears, and burst it on his skull.

The weapon was shattered with a frightening thud. Red pieces of glass
and streaming water poured in a cataract down across the broncho's eyes
as if very doom itself had suddenly cracked. A cataclysm could not
have been more horrible. An indescribable fright and awe overwhelmed
the brutish mind as with a cloud of lead.

Down swiftly he dropped to his proper position, perhaps with a fear
that his crown was gaping open from impact with the sky. He was
stunned by the blow upon his brain, and weakened in every fiber. He
started to run, in terror of the thing, and the being still solid in
the saddle. Wildly he went around the cove, in the panic of utter
defeat.

The men began to cheer, their voices choked and hoarse. Van rode now
as fate might ride the very devil. He spurred the horse to furious,
exhausting speed, guiding him wildly around the mountain theater.
Again and again they circled the grassy arena, till foam and lather
whitened the broncho's flank, chest, and mouth, and his nostril burned
red as living flame.

When at last the animal, weary and undone, would have sobered down to a
trot or walk, Van forced him anew to crazy speed. At least five miles
he drove him thus, till the broncho's sides, like the rider's face,
were red with blood mingled with sweat.

Beth, at the climax, had gone down suddenly, leaning against the tree.
She had not fainted, but was far too weak to stand. Her eyes only
moved. She watched the two, that seemed welded into one, go racing
madly against fatigue.

At last she beheld the look of the conquered--the utter surrender of
the broken and subdued--gleam dully from the wilted pony's eyes. She
pitied the animal she had feared and hated but a few brief moments
before. She began to think that the man was perhaps the brute, after
all, to ride the exhausted creature thus without a