“Thumb him! Thumb him!” the audience cried, referring to the cowboy trick of running the thumbs along a certain place in the shoulder to stir the anger of the bucker. But the rider slipped off with disgust. “Give me another horse,” he demanded, and after a minute’s consultation among the judges a second pony was driven out from the corral. This one proved to be a Tartar. It went off in a frenzy of pitching the moment its rider dropped into the saddle. “Y’u’ll go a long way before you see better ridin’ than his and Mac’s. Notice how he gives to its pitching,” said Bannister, as he watched his cousin’s perfect ease in the cyclone of which he was the center. “I expect it depends on the kind of a ‘hawss,’” she mocked. “He’s riding well, isn’t he?” “I don’t know any that ride better.” The horse put up a superb fight, trying everything it knew to unseat this demon clamped to its back. It possessed in combination all the worst vices, was a weaver, a sunfisher and a fence-rower, and never had it tried so desperately to maintain its record of never having been ridden. But the outlaw in the saddle was too much for the outlaw underneath. He was master, just as he was first among the ruffians whom he led, because there was in him a red-hot devil of wickedness that would brook no rival. The furious bronco surrendered without an instant’s warning, and its rider slipped at once to the ground. As he sauntered through the dust toward the grand stand, Helen could not fail to see how his vanity sunned itself in the applause that met his performance. His equipment was perfect to the least detail. The reflection from a lady’s looking-glass was no brighter than the silver spurs he jingled on his sprightly heels. Strikingly handsome in a dark, sinister way, one would say at first sight, and later would chafe at the justice of a verdict not to be denied. Ned Bannister rose from his seat beside Helen. “Wish me luck,” he said, with his gay smile. “I wish you all the luck you deserve,” she answered. “Oh, wish me more than that if y’u want me to win.” “I didn’t say I wanted you to win. You take the most unaccountable things for granted.” “I’ve a good mind to win, then, just to spite y’u,” he laughed. “As if you could,” she mocked; but her voice took a softer intonation as she called after him in a low murmur: “Be careful, please.” His white teeth flashed a smile of reassurance at her. “I’ve never been killed yet.” “Ned Bannister on Steamboat,” sang out the megaphone man. “I’m ce’tainly in luck. Steamboat’s the worst hawss on the range,” he told himself, as he strode down the grand stand to enter the arena.