"How's that?" inquired Haney, who hated to see his favorite "gig back" at a point where his courage could be tested.
"I've busted all the bronchos for fun I'm going to," Mose replied.
Dan called in a sneering tone: "Bring on your varmints. I'm not dodgin' mean cayuses to-day."
Mose could not explain that for Mary's sake he was avoiding all danger. There was risk in the contest and he knew it, and he couldn't afford to take it.
"That's all right!" he sullenly replied. "I'll be with you later in the game."
A wall-eyed roan pony, looking dull and stupid, was led before the stand. Saddled and bridled he stood dozing while the crowd hooted with derision.
"Don't make no mistake!" shouted Haney; "he's the meanest critter on the upper fork."
A young lad named Jimmy Kincaid first tackled the job, and as he ran alongside and tried the cinch, the roan dropped an ear back—the ear toward Jimmy, and the knowing ones giggled with glee. "He's wakin'up! Look out, Jim!"
The lad gathered the reins in his left hand, seized the pommel with his right, and then the roan disclosed his true nature. He was an old rebel. He did not waste his energies on common means. He plunged at once into the most complicated, furious, and effective bucking he could devise, almost without moving out of his tracks—and when the boy, stunned and bleeding at the nose, sprawled in the dust, the roan moved away a few steps and dozed, panting and tense, apparently neither angry nor frightened.