"Can you ride him 'slick,' Pinkey?" asked Miss Spenceley.
"I'll do it er bust somethin'." Pinkey's mouth had a funny quirk at the corners. "Maybe it'll take the kinks out of me from travellin'."
He looked at Mr. Cone doubtfully: "I'm liable to rip up the sod in your front yard a little."
"Go to it!" cried Mr. Cone, whose sporting blood was up. "There's nothin' here that won't grow again. Ride him!"
Everybody was trembling, and when Miss Eyester looked at her lips they were white as alabaster, but she meant to see the riding, if she had one of her sinking spells immediately it was over.
When Pinkey swung into the saddle, the horse turned its head around slowly and looked at the leg that gripped him. Pinkey leaned down, unbuckled the throat-latch, and slipped off the bridle. Then, as he touched the horse in the flank with his heels, he took off his cap and slapped him over the head with it.
The horse recognized the familiar challenge and accepted it. What he had done to Wallie was only the gambolling of a frisky colt as compared with his efforts to rid his back of Pinkey.
Even Helene Spenceley sobered as she watched the battle that followed.
The horse sprang into the air, twisted, and came down stiff-legged—squealing. Now with his head between his forelegs he shot up his hind hoofs and at an angle to require all the grip in his rider's knees to stay in the saddle. Then he brought down his heels again, violently, to bite at Pinkey—who kicked him.
He "weaved," he "sunfished"—with every trick known to an old outlaw he tried to throw his rider, rearing finally to fall backward and mash to a pulp a bed of Mr. Cone's choicest tulips. But when the horse rose Pinkey was with him, while the spectators, choking with excitement, forgetting themselves and each other, yelled like Apaches.