Gin was too stirred to sit quietly. She stood up in the seat as they drove slowly down the road, turning her head this way and that. “It’s so _thrilling_,” she said. She looked at Teddy and impatiently shoved his shoulder. “Isn’t it thrilling?” she repeated. “Let’s find something to eat,” he answered. There was a slight argument over this. Gin and Blake wanted to cook their own food, and Teddy was in too much of a hurry. In defence of himself, he developed a plan. He found out where the hotel was, and after making his companions promise not to say anything, he bargained with the proprietor for jobs for the lot of them. Gin, he protested, was a professional waitress and he and Blake were expert dishwashers. The man consented to take them on for the next two days, during the rush, at wages of ten dollars among the three of them, and meals included. Teddy tried to get rooms too, but this was no good. The proprietor compromised by selling them three blankets for fifty cents apiece. Afterwards they ate bowls of chili con carne and drank coffee and condensed milk, then drove out of town to make camp. Rolled up in her blanket, Gin was almost comfortable. It was romantic and satisfactory under the chilly stars. Once, towards morning, she woke with a jerk and noticed that the world seemed much too large and quiet. She sighed and tried to edge nearer to Blake. The air smelled of sage and horses: she wondered dreamily why she was there, and then she remembered and was happy before she went to sleep again. Breakfast and lunch next day merged in the kitchen into one long period of torture—aching arms and weary feet for Gin, and greasy, coolish water for Teddy and Blake. She carried trays back and forth from the dining-room and the flies followed everywhere. But the meals were good enough and they would need the money. After lunch, when they had rested and felt more cheerful, they brushed themselves off and went to see the most important part of the rodeo, the bronco-busting. All three of them had seen rodeos, the big famous ones that went even to New York and London, but this one was different and more fun. The horses were really wild, and lots of them were new to the game. The men were not professional riders, but cow-hands who spent most of the year working on ranches. Gin and Blake and Teddy had never seen anything like it. The riding was thrilling. They stood on tiptoe to watch over the heads of the people who were so unlike the sightseers at Vegas on the Fourth of July. Town people, the Mexicans who lived in Magdalena and Datil and Socorro and San Antonio, were mixed up with the ranchers’ families who cheered their own punchers or watched excitedly silent when they had bet on the length of time some man would stay on the back of his horse, watched eagerly while he was tossed and bounced and jerked by his bronco.