“Better rope and saddle you a mount,” Harshaw told his new man curtly. “Buck, you show him the ones he can choose from.”
Hawks led the way to a smaller corral. “Any one o’ these except the roan with the white stockings an’ the pinto,” he said.
Dillon walked through the gate of the enclosure and closed it. He adjusted the rope, selected the bronco that looked to him the meekest, and moved toward it. The ponies began to circle close to the fence. The one he wanted was racing behind the white-stockinged roan. For a moment it appeared in front. The rope snaked out and slid down its side. Bob gathered in the lariat, wound it, waited for a chance, and tried again. The meek bronco shook its head as the rope fell and caught on one ear. A second time the loop went down into the dust.
Some one laughed, an unpleasant, sarcastic cackle. Bob turned. Four or five of the punchers, mounted and ready for the day’s work, were sitting at ease in their saddles enjoying the performance.
Bob gave himself to the job in hand, though his ears burned. As a youngster he had practiced roping. It was a pastime of the boys among whom he grew up. But he had never been an expert, and now such skill as he had acquired deserted him. The loop sailed out half a dozen times before it dropped over the head of the sorrel.
The new rider for the Slash Lazy D saddled and cinched a bronco which no longer took an interest in the proceedings. Out of the corner of his eye, without once looking their way, Bob was aware of subdued hilarity among the bronzed wearers of chaps. He attended strictly to business.
Just before he pulled himself to the saddle Bob felt a momentary qualm at the solar plexus. He did not give this time to let it deter him. His feet settled into the stirrups. An instant violent earthquake disturbed his equilibrium. A shock jarred him from the base of the spine to the neck. Urgently he flew through space.
Details of the landscape gathered themselves together again. From a corner of the corral Bob looked out upon a world full of grinning faces. A sick dismay rose in him and began to submerge his heart. They were glad he had been thrown. The earth was inhabited by a race of brutal and truculent savages. What was the use of trying? He could never hold out against them.
Out of the mists of memory he heard a wheezy voice issuing from a great bulk of a man—“... yore red haid’s covered with glory. Snap it up!” The words came so clear that for an instant he was startled. He looked round half expecting to see Blister.
Stiffly he gathered himself out of the snow slush. A pain jumped in the left shoulder. He limped to the rope and coiled it. The first cast captured the sorrel.