Splashes of Red
By J. Frank Davis
Author of “Unwritten Law,” “Whoso Diggeth a Pit,” Etc.
West comes East—and proves that its own methods for crime detection work as well in the big city as they do in the God’s country.
That star rodeo performer, but as bad an egg as ever moonlit a bronc, the “Oklahoma Kid,” wrestled his steer to a quick fall, and the voice of “Foghorn” McNamara, holding his horse quiet to face the crowded grand stand at Speedway Park, came booming across the field to where Millie Wayne, in her cowgirl clothes, stood waiting to participate in the next event on the program.
“That bulldogger was Jack Marling, the Oklahoma Kid. Time, seventeen seconds flat. Next and last contestant in today’s bulldogging is ‘Curly’ Bratton.”
Preston Campbell, the rodeo judge, gray-mustached Texan of the old school, raised a hand toward the chute where the next steer waited, and the red beast plunged wildly across the arena, desperate to leave behind him the lithe youngster with the blazing neckerchief who galloped on his flank.
Opposite the middle of the grand stand the horse overtook the steer, swerved in, and Curly leaped and got the horns with not one lost motion. Feet braced, he slid backward for two seconds, then man and steer came to a struggling stop. For one more second they might have been a statue.
The animal’s head, then, twisted slowly, grotesquely, as though it cocked its startled eyes to squint sidewise at the sky. Its feet went out from under it. Down together to the ground crashed bulldogger and bulldogged, and the youth’s right hand shot upward in signal to the judge.