One of the judges rode out and waved a hand. Texas slipped to the ground disqualified, and made his dejected way back to his deriding comrades. Some of them had endured similar misfortunes earlier in the day. Therefore they found much pleasure in condoling with him. “If he’d only recollected to saw off the horn of his saddle, then he couldn’t ’a’ found it when he went to hunt leather,” mournfully commented one puncher in a shirt of robin’s egg blue. “’Twould have been most as good as to take the dust, wouldn’t it?” retorted Texas gently, and the laugh was on the gentleman in blue, because he had been thrown earlier in the day. “A fellow’s hands sure get in his way sometimes. I reckon if you’d tied your hands, Tex, you’d been riding that rocking-hawss yet,” suggested Denver amiably. “Sometimes it’s his foot he puts in it. There was onct a gent disqualified for riding on his spurs,” said Texas reminiscently. At which hit Denver retired, for not three hours before he had been detected digging his spurs into the cinch to help him stick to the saddle. “Jim McWilliams will ride Dead Easy,” came the announcement through the megaphone, and a burst of cheering passed along the grand stand, for the sunny smile of the foreman of the Lazy D made him a general favorite. Helen leaned forward and whispered something gaily to Nora, who sat in the seat in front of her. The Irish girl laughed and blushed, but when her mistress looked up it was her turn to feel the mounting color creep into her cheeks. For Ned Bannister, arrayed in all his riding finery, was making his way along the aisle to her. She had not seen him since he had ridden away from the Lazy D ten days before, quite sufficiently recovered from his wounds to take up the routine of life again. They had parted not the best of friends, for she had not yet forgiven him for his determination to leave with his cousin on the night that she had been forced to insist on his remaining. He had put her in a false position, and he had never explained to her why. Nor could she guess the reason—for he was not a man to harvest credit for himself by explaining his own chivalry. Since her heart told her how glad she was he had come to her box to see her, she greeted him with the coolest little nod in the world. “Good morning, Miss Messiter. May I sit beside y’u?” he asked. “Oh, certainly!” She swept her skirts aside carelessly and made room for him. “I thought you were going to ride soon.” “No, I ride last except for Sanford, the champion. My cousin rides just before me. He’s entered under the name of Jack Holloway.”