Then it was on as before, but with accentuated fury. The horse, for his opening demonstration, bucked with his back curved like a steel bow. Haig was almost propelled into the air, but hung on desperately; and as the outlaw came down on stiffened legs Haig jabbed the spurs viciously into his flanks. For Sunnysides had been too calculating in his measures; it was desirable to 197 stir him up, to anger him, to torment him until he should wear himself out with his furious struggles.
The spurs did it. In an instant Sunnysides was a demon. All that he had done was like the antics of a colt compared with what followed. No eye in the corral could follow and record all his movements. He was in every part of the enclosure at once, it seemed. There were instants, too, when he appeared to have disassociated himself from the earth, and to have taken to the air as his element. And then the earth rang again with the clatter of his hoofs; his four legs became a hundred, and then were four again, pounding like piledrivers, like steel drills. He flung himself against the fence until it swayed and creaked, and Haig’s legs were bruised by the violent contact. Clouds of dust rose and hung above the enclosure, and settled on the outlaw’s wet shoulders, on Haig’s sweating face, in his eyes and nostrils, and in his throat until he was fairly choking. But though half-blinded, dizzy, and aching in all his body, Haig hung on, and dug the spurs ceaselessly into the horse’s flanks.
“God! He’s got him!” cried Farrish.
“Your game’s up!” yelled Curly tauntingly, dancing with joy in his corner of the corral.
But the game was not up. Curly’s words were barely out of his mouth when something went wrong with Haig. Just what happened none could be quite sure of, then or afterward; but in the midst of Sunnysides’ plungings, there came a windmill kind of movement, rather like the whirling of a dervish, out of which the horse lunged swiftly forward, and halted violently, with his head down, and his forelegs stiff before him. It was apparently 198 an elaboration of one of the commonest tricks of all; and if Haig could have stuck to the saddle then he probably would have won. But he was thrown. He went sprawling over the horse’s lowered head, and struck the ground on his head and shoulders, and lay still.
What followed was more marvelous even than the unseating of Haig with the shout of victory already rising to his lips. There came a snort that ended in a scream; and then a flash of yellow through the dust. Bill Craven, on his horse at one side of the corral, saw it coming straight toward him, and tried to whirl his noose. Too late. The outlaw was upon him; his own pony, rearing, was caught unbalanced; and Bill himself instinctively leaned backward in the saddle. There was a terrific impact; the pony was struck squarely on the left fore-quarter; and horse and rider went down together in a heap against the fence. Then over them went the outlaw, trampling them as he leaped and clambered, taking the top plank with him as he landed outside the corral on his head and knees. In an instant he was up; in another, or the same instant, he was off, with his head down, and belly to earth, with the speed of a race-horse and the frenzy of a wild thing set free.
Haig was only slightly stunned by the fall. He heard, though he did not see, the escape of Sunnysides; and for one black moment all in the present was blotted out. But that was only the dizziness, and the reeling pain in his head; and there was the sky filled with gray-black, contending clouds; and Pete was leaning over him.
“Hurt?” asked the Indian.
“No.”