Mullins sat composedly in the saddle, but he was riding as never before. He whipped the sorrel at every jump and raked him down the body from shoulder to loins with the ripping spurs. The brute gave no signs of letting up. Through Mullins’ tan of copper hue showed a slight pallor. He was exhausted. If Corazón did not give in soon, the man would be beaten. Just then the horse stopped, feet a-sprawl. “Mullins,”--the range boss got down from the fence,--“you’ll kill that hoss. Between the cinches belongs to you; the head and hind quarters is the company’s.” For a long minute Mullins stared at the beast’s ears without replying. “I reckon that’s the rule,” he acquiesced heavily. “Do you want that somebody else should ride him?” “No-o-o. Go ahead. But, remember, between the cinches you go at him as you like--nowhere else.” [Illustration: “_Leaping, with legs stiff, straight off the ground_”] The buster slapped the quirt down on Corazón’s shoulder, but the broncho did not budge; then harder. With the first oath he had used, he jabbed in the spurs and lay back on the hackamore rope. Instead of bucking, Corazón reared straight up, his feet pawing like the hands of a drowning man. Before Mullins could move to step off, the sorrel flung his head round and toppled backward. “No, he’s not dead.” The range boss leaned over the buster and his hands fumbled inside the shirt. “The horn got him here, but he ain’t dead. Claude, saddle Streak and hit for Agua Prieta for the doctor.” When we had carried the injured man to the bunk-house, Reb spoke from troubled meditation: “Pete, I don’t believe Corazón is as bad as he acts with Mullins. I’ve been watching him. Mullins, he didn’t--” “You take him, then; he’s yours,” snapped the boss, his conscience pricking because of the reproof he had administered. If the buster had ridden him his own way, this might not have happened. That is how the sorrel came into Reb’s possession. Only one man of the outfit witnessed the taming, and he would not talk; but when Reb came to dinner from the first saddle on Corazón, his hands were torn and the nail of one finger hung loose. “I had to take to the horn and hang on some,” he admitted. Ay, he had clung there desperately while the broncho pitched about the river-bed, whither Reb had retired for safety and to escape spectators. But at the next saddle Corazón was less violent; at the third, recovering from the stunning shocks and bruisings of the first day, he was a fiend; and then, on the following morning, he did not pitch at all. Reb rode him every day to sap the superfluous vigor in Corazón’s iron frame and he taught him as well as he could the first duties of a cowhorse. Finding that his new master never punished him unless he undertook to dispute his authority, the sorrel grew tractable and began to take an interest in his tasks.