For several minutes the four-party pursuit pounded over the keep-off meadow, whose grass was being held in reserve against the hot waves of next summer, when it would be thrown open to furnish cool green couches for thousands of tenement swelterers. So unseemly was the interruption as to draw gapes of amazement from such onlookers as held the border walks and bellows of command from outraged policemen. The pinto’s full-speed-ahead was reminiscent in terms of motion of Hellroaring days and deeds. With full realization of what the man-master expected of him, he winged across intervening spaces like a compact tornado. Pape unlimbered his lariat for a throw calculated to bring down the red for hog-tying. While passing Jane, he shouted an order that she pull up and keep out of the scrimmage likely to attend the fight’s finish. A dozen rods farther on and almost within rope reach, he called to Harford. “Out of the way—I’m going to hang my string on him!” “What’s that?” The real-estater, who was showing superb riding form, turned in his saddle and leaned to listen, as though he had not heard. But he scarcely could have failed to see the noose over Pape’s head circling rounder and faster with his onward rush. His next move was unaccountable. As the Montanan’s rope slithered suddenly straight ahead from an aim calculated to pick up the steer’s hind hoof for a fall, the Gothamite spurred his mount and cut directly across it. The throw fell short, borne out of line by the body of Harford’s black thoroughbred. In the moment lost to free it from entanglement the steer took to the rocks with the agility of a mountain goat. At last Pape whipped his gun from its under-coat holster. Infuriated by this second exhibition of what was either extreme stupidity or deliberate malice, he was tempted to throw down on the human rather than the splendid Queer Question specimen, now well up the height, which he had wished to take alive. But he did not press the trigger. Although a steer more or less was incidental in his life and cruelty to animals was not to be weighed in the same scales with the catastrophes possible in a continuance of the stampede, second thought had advised the improbability of inflicting a vital wound in that huge body with a revolver shot from the rear. Anything short of a _coup de grace_ would serve only to increase potential dangers. Through the untangling and winding of his rope the Westerner voiced no complaint of Harford’s interference, but his face went chalk-white beneath its burn and his jaw set hard. His one direct glance read triumph in the New Yorker’s grin and decided him to finish the battle begun on the Sturgis front steps whenever and wherever he could spare the time. Just now—— “Wait for me here—all of you,” he commanded the three. Straightway he put Polkadot to the height.