And so it goes. One act after another, each one showing agility, daring, and skill; while the old jester and ring master entertain the crowd and rest the performers.
"Miss Nannie Florenstein, ladies and gentlemen, will now have the honor of appearing before you in her wonderful bareback act—riding a wild, untamed horse without either bridle, saddle or surcingle. An act never before accomplished—although often attempted—by any lady in the world! Miss Nannie Florenstein!"
A lithe, pretty little lady, with an anxious, careworn face, stepped into the ring, and, acknowledging the applause of the audience, vaulted lightly on the back of her black horse, and quicker than a flash of lightning was off. Around and around the forty-two-foot circle she goes, pirouetting, posturing, and doing a really graceful and wonderful act.
She is what all the papers had claimed she would be. There is a spirit of reckless daring flashing from her dark eyes as she jumps "the banners," and even the old and stoical ring master watches her anxiously as she attempts one act more daring than the rest—that of standing on her tip-toes on the horse's hindquarters and slowly pirouetting as the animal continues his mad career.
Suddenly she reels. She has lost her balance. Over she goes. Her head has struck the ring board. A shriek of a thousand anxious voices rends the air, and all is confusion.
She is bleeding, bleeding profusely from a cut in her forehead. A hundred hands are ready to convey her to the dressing-tent.
A rough-hewn specimen of a man suddenly appears in their midst. Where he came from or what moved him no one knows.
"Stand back! stand back, I say, and give the gal air! Do ye hear?"
Instinctively every one obeys him.
"Yere's a doctor. Doctor, this gal I know. 'Tend ter her, an' look ter me for the perkisites."