cles of the
Hexagon Club, it was like this:

"We saw a broncho busted this afternoon. Reddy busted it, and he was
splendid. Mercy! I shall never think anything my old Beauty does is bad
again. Beauty is a snail and a saint beside this jumping, plunging,
squealing creature that never by any chance was on his feet
properly--except when he came down hard on all four of them at once with
his back humped right up in the middle in a perfectly frightful
fashion--and I suppose that wasn't 'properly.' Anyhow, I shouldn't have
thought it was, if I had had to try to sit on that hump!

"But that wasn't the only thing that he did. Dear me, no! He danced, and
rolled, and seesawed up and down--'pitching,' Mr. Hartley called it. And
I'm sure it looked like it. First he'd try standing on his two fore
feet, then he'd give them a rest, and take the other two. And sometimes
he couldn't seem to make up his mind which he wanted to use, or which
way he wanted to turn, and he'd change about right up in the air so he'd
come down facing the other way. My, he was the most uncertain creature!

"It didn't seem to make a mite of difference where the horse was, or
what he did with his feet, though. Reddy was right there every time, and
all _ready_, too. (Yes, I know a pun is the lowest order of wit. But I
don't care. I couldn't help it, anyway--it was such a _ready_ one!)
There he sat, so loose and easy, too, with his quirt (that's a whip),
and it looked sometimes just as if he wasn't half trying--that he didn't
need to. But I'm sure he was trying. Anyhow, I know I couldn't have
stayed on that horse five minutes; and I don't believe even Genevieve
could. (I said that to Mr. Tim Nolan, and he laughed so hard I thought
I'd put it in here, and let somebody else laugh.)

"Of course every one of us was awfully excited, and the boys kept
shouting and cheering, and yelling 'Stay with him!' and telling him not
to 'go to leather'--whatever that may mean! And Reddy did stay. He
stayed till the little horse got tired out; then he got off, and led the
horse away, and some of the other boys went through a good deal the same
sort of thing with other horses, only these had all been partly broken
before, they told us. But, mercy, they were bad enough, anyhow, I
thought, to have been brand-new. Reddy did another one, too, and this
time he put silver half-dollars under his feet in the stirrups: And when
the little beast--the horse, I mean, not Reddy--got through hi