The wicked little black steer was almost upon the gangling Eastern horse ere Frances stretched forward and let the loop go.
Then she pulled back on Molly’s bridle reins. The cow-pony began to slide, haunches down and forelegs stiffened. The loop dropped over the head of the black steer.
Had Blackwater been a heavier animal, he would have overborne Frances and her mount at the moment the rope became taut. For it was not a good job at all–that particular roping Frances was afterward ashamed of.
To catch a big steer in full flight around the neck only is to court almost certain disaster; but Blackwater did not weigh more than nine hundred pounds.
Nor was Molly directly behind him when Frances threw the lariat. The rope tautened from the side–and at the very instant the mad steer collided with Sue Latrop’s mount.
The wicked head of the steer banged against the horse’s body, which gave forth a hollow sound; the horse himself squealed, stumbled, and went over with a crash.
Fortunately Sue had known enough to loosen her foot from the stirrup. As Frances lay back in her own saddle, and she and Molly held the black steer on his knees, Pratt drove his mount past the stumbling horse, and seized the Boston girl as she fell.
She cleared her rolling mount with Pratt’s help. Otherwise she would have fallen under the heavy carcase of the horse and been seriously hurt.
Blackwater had crashed to the ground so hard that he could not immediately recover his footing. He kicked with a hind foot, and Frances caught the foot expertly in a loop, and so got the better of him right then and there. She held the brute helpless until Sam and his assistants reached the spot.
It was Pratt who had really done the spectacular thing. It looked as though Sue Latrop owed her salvation to the young man.