They started for the horse corral which was far out at one end of town. The supervisor seemed a little thoughtful and they walked a block in silence.
“Do you ride?” he asked suddenly as though following out his own train of thought.
“Farm horses,” Scott replied. “I have never tried any bucking bronchos.”
Again the supervisor was thoughtful. “They never expect an Eastern man to know how to ride,” he said. “They will have every bucking skate in the country down there this morning and the boys will all be out to see you thrown.”
Scott’s jaw squared perceptibly but he said nothing.
The supervisor misunderstood his silence and glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “Perhaps I can try them out for you and you can try one later when there are not so many spectators.”
“Thanks,” Scott said, “that is very kind of you, and I do need your judgment in picking a good one, for I do not know very much about a horse myself, but I think that I had better do the riding. They will probably throw me all right but I do not like the idea of side-stepping it.”
The supervisor looked relieved. “Oh, they don’t all buck. The bad ones are pretty well known and I can warn you off of them. The cowboys do not like a bucking horse any better than you do except to play with.”
They reached the corral and as the supervisor had predicted there was a good gallery to see the green-horn spilled. There was also in the corral the finest collection of outlaws that the supervisor had ever seen there. Jed Clark had attended to that personally.
They leaned on the fence and looked the bunch over. Some were old and broken-down plugs, worn out with long service; others were strong enough, but the most of them were Roman-nosed, spike-eared, wild-eyed fellows marked with the scars of many battles. They trotted restlessly about the corral and kept a wary eye on any movement which might indicate the throwing of a rope.