"How's that?" inquired Haney, who hated to see his favorite "gig back" at a point where his courage could be tested. "I've busted all the bronchos for fun I'm going to," Mose replied. Dan called in a sneering tone: "Bring on your varmints. I'm not dodgin' mean cayuses to-day." Mose could not explain that for Mary's sake he was avoiding all danger. There was risk in the contest and he knew it, and he couldn't afford to take it. "That's all right!" he sullenly replied. "I'll be with you later in the game." A wall-eyed roan pony, looking dull and stupid, was led before the stand. Saddled and bridled he stood dozing while the crowd hooted with derision. "Don't make no mistake!" shouted Haney; "he's the meanest critter on the upper fork." A young lad named Jimmy Kincaid first tackled the job, and as he ran alongside and tried the cinch, the roan dropped an ear back--the ear toward Jimmy, and the knowing ones giggled with glee. "He's wakin'up! Look out, Jim!" The lad gathered the reins in his left hand, seized the pommel with his right, and then the roan disclosed his true nature. He was an old rebel. He did not waste his energies on common means. He plunged at once into the most complicated, furious, and effective bucking he could devise, almost without moving out of his tracks--and when the boy, stunned and bleeding at the nose, sprawled in the dust, the roan moved away a few steps and dozed, panting and tense, apparently neither angry nor frightened. One of the Reynolds gang tried him next and "stayed with him" till he threw himself. When he arose the rider failed to secure his stirrups and was thrown after having sat the beast superbly. The miners were warming to the old roan. Many of them had never seen a pitching broncho before, and their delight led to loud whoops and jovial outcries. "Bully boy, roan! Shake 'em off!" Denver Dan tried him next and sat him, haughtily contemptuous, till he stopped, quivering with fatigue and reeking with sweat. "Oh, well!" yelled a big miner, "that ain't a fair shake for the pony; you should have took him when he was fresh." And the crowd sustained him in it. "Here comes one that is fresh," called the marshal, and into the arena came a wicked-eyed, superbly-fashioned black roan horse, plainly wild and unbroken, led by two cowboys, one on either side. Joe Grassi shook a handfull of bills down at the crowd. "Here's a hundred dollars to the man who'll set that pony three minutes by the watch." "This is no place to tackle such a brute as that," said Reynolds. Mose was looking straight ahead with a musing look in his eyes. Denver Dan walked out. "I need that hundred dollars; nail it to a post for a few minutes, will ye?"