For upon his clothes and person Bud Merkel bore unmistakable signs and evidences of having fallen not once but several times in the corral dust.
"Wow!" yelled Dick Shannon.
"He's on!" cried his brother Nort.
"And off ag'in!" roared Yellin' Kid.
Bud had made the leap from the fence, his hands, for a moment, had grasped the strap around the pony and then his fingers had slipped off. Likewise the one leg he managed to throw over the steed's back seemed to be about to slide off.
But just when it seemed that Bud would fall to the ground, his fingers, in a last, despairing grip, caught a fold of the blanket. By a supreme effort he pulled himself up, managed to get one leg over the ridge-like backbone of the pony and, a moment later, he was sitting upright on the saddle blanket, both hands under the strap, while his heels played a tattoo on the sides of the steed, urging him forward at even faster speed.
"By golly, he done it!" cried Old Billee.
"He sure enough did!" echoed Yellin' Kid, reaching for his cigarette papers and muslin bag of tobacco.
"That ought to get him something at Palmo," commented Snake Purdee, referring to a coming rodeo in a nearby town close to the Mexican border. "Can't do a much more hair-raisin' trick than that!"
"I didn't think he could do it!" commented Old Billee coming around from the far side of the corral to join his friends.