.

"Sure thing! What's the use of living if you never take a chance?
Besides, you've got a reg'lar rocking-horse yourself, huh?" he scoffed.

"That's all right, I was born ridin'," Ted made light of it.

It was now time for the bay bull. As a saddle swings around on anything
but a horse, it is easier to ride bulls and mules with a surcingle. It
took three men to get the bull into the saddling pen, two with lassos and
one with a pole, but the strap was finally adjusted around his chest, and
the mount made.

One Shorty Somebody was the rider. And Shorty rode him,--stuck clear
across the corral. But there the bull torpedoed the middle log of the
fence and went straight through, scraping Shorty off.

Straight into a startled ring of spectators plowed the enraged beast,
sending horses whirling and pedestrians dodging for their lives. The
petite Rosa's mount got to dancing, and finally staged a petite runaway
on his own account, but Rosa kept her head and a tight rein. A small boy
scrambled into a low-branching tree. But three lassos and a dozen mounted
men finally headed off the bull and got him into a smaller corral.

Ted looked inquiringly at Ace, but the Senator's son evidently had his
blood up. The white-faced bull, meantime, was again trying to thrust his
massive shoulders beneath the lower bar.

Two mules came next on the program, one rider bringing his mount to terms
so quickly that people were laying bets it was just a pack-mule, while
the other stuck when his jumped the fence.

Ranger Radcliffe, galloping back beside Rosa's now docile mount, waved a
hand to the boys. Then a murmur rippled through the loungers that
encircled the corral, as the white-faced bull was called for. Ace's
nerves began to tingle.

This bull had been kept in close confinement for several days past, and
it had not improved his temper. They had to throw him to put on the
straps.

"Hold him!--Hold him!" at intervals percolated through the hum of voices,
as the great brute lay panting in the saddling pen, his eyes ringed with
infuriated white, his snorting breath--audible thirty feet away--sending
spirals of dust scudding before his nose.

"Well, what do you say? Say it quick! I'm betting on the bull," King was
challenging the Ranger, little dreaming who the rider was to be.

This bull was to be ridden with a saddle and one hand hold. The gate of
the saddling pen cracked as its occupant tried to rise.

"You folks around the fence,