The judges, pick-up men, and others around would find themselves short about ten pairs of eyes as all tried to catch every crooked move that pony put into his work. All breaths seemed to be held up during that time, but never no time was them breaths held up for very long, cause, very soon, there'd be a scattering of a tall cowboy, who, from the chute had started on top, took a lot of wicked jars while setting there, and so high, and good rider as he'd have to be, soon come to conclude that it sure was no disgrace to be separated from his saddle and flung out a ways--not on that horse. Very seldom would the rider have to walk back very far, and sometimes only a few feet was between the rider who was picking himself up and the chute where he'd rode out from so fast and furious. As an all around outlaw and bucking horse The Cougar had no rival; there wasn't a horse in the state or any state neighboring that could compete with him in either fighting or bucking, and folks seeing or studying the horse often wondered; for anybody who knowed horses could see that that horse hadn't been born a natural outlaw like most of the rodeo's bucking horses generally are; that pony had brains, a big supply of 'em and which showed in the way he'd go about throwing his man. He wasn't like the average bucking horse, who'd often buck back under the man that was already loosened, and instead, when The Cougar felt a man lose an inch, that inch was never got back. The saddle kept a getting away from him from then on. But there was more and which was all proof as to the amount of brains that pony carried, there was his hate for the man, and which showed the same as the hate one human would have for another, only it was more dangerous. And then again, and as the cowboy who took care of him often remarked:-- "The way that horse packs a grudge, somebody sure must of dealt him a dirty deal some time or other. I know there's sure something on his mind besides that too, and like he's pining for something that's gone and hopeless; at them times he acts like he wants my company the same as tho he was craving for somebody, but them spells don't last long, and soon he seems to come back to earth and realizing things. Then's when I'm not within reaching distance no more--but by golly, I sure wish sometimes that horse would like me as well as he hates." The first two years he put in as The Cougar and bad horse was the most ferocious two years any horse went thru. It was wicked times, not only for the horse, but for all who handled and tried to ride him. There was so much poison in that pony's heart that the only way he could live was by hating and being hated; he fed on it, and the bars or poles that was between him and whoever he wanted to get at in his fits of wickedness showed signs a plenty of his hankering to murder,--the destroying ability of that pony's teeth and hoofs sure was visible, and convincing.