"I didn't know you wanted to sell," he said. "You know I want that animal."
"If he goes he sells himself," said Van. "If he doesn't, you're next, same terms."
"Let me have that pair of spurs," said the stranger, denoting a pair that hung upon a nail. "I guess they'll fit."
He adjusted the spurs as one accustomed to their use. Van merely glanced around. Nevertheless, he felt a sinking of the heart. Five hundred dollars, much as he needed money, would not have purchased his horse. And inasmuch as luck had been against him, he suddenly feared he might be on the point of losing Suvy now for a price he would have scorned.
"Boy," he said in a murmur to the broncho, "if I thought you'd let any bleached-out anthropoid like that remain on deck, I wouldn't want you anyway—savvy that?"
Suvy's ears were playing back and forth in excessive nervousness and questioning. He had turned his head to look at Van with evident joy at the thought of bearing him away to the hills—they two afar off together. Then came a disappointment.
"There you are," said Van, and swinging the bridle reins towards the waiting man, he walked to a feed-trough and leaned against it carelessly.
"Thanks," said the stranger. He threw away a cigarette, caught up the reins, adjusted them over Suvy's neck, rocked the saddle to test its firmness, and mounted with a certain dexterity that lessened Van's confidence again. After all, Suvy was thoroughly broken. He had quietly submitted to be ridden by Beth. His war-like spirit might be gone—and all would be lost.
Indeed, it appeared that Suvy was indifferent—that a cow would have shown a manner no less docile or resigned. He did look at Van with a certain expression of surprise and hurt, or so, at least, the horseman hoped. Then the man on his back shook up the reins, gave a prick with the spurs, and Suvy moved perhaps a yard.
The rider pricked again, impatiently. Instantly Suvy's old-time fulminate was jarred into violent response. He went up in the air prodigiously, a rigid, distorted thing of hardened muscles and engine-like activities. He came down like a new device for breaking rocks—and the bucking he had always loved was on, in a fury of resentment.