The Happy Family, B. M. Bower [pride and prejudice read TXT] 📗

had thrown out the others—good riders all of them, or they would not have been there. Happy Jack proclaimed loudly in camp that Andy was still in because Andy had not had a real bad horse. "I seen Coleman looking over the blue roan and talkin' to them guys that runs things; they're goin' t' put Andy on him t-day, I betche—and we seen how he can ride him! Piled in a heap—"

"Not exactly," Pink interrupted. "I seem to remember Andy lighting on his feet; and he was smoking when he started, and smoking when he quit. It didn't strike me at the time, but that's kinda funny, don't yuh think?"

So Pink went back to his first faith, and the Happy Family straightway became loud and excited over the question of whether Andy did really light upon his feet, or jumped up immediately, and whether he kept his cigarette or made a new one. The discussion carried them to the fair grounds and remained just where it started, so far as any amicable decision was concerned.

Now this is a fair and true report of that last day's riding: There being but the three riders, and the excitement growing apace, the rough-riding was put first on the program and men struggled for the best places and the best view of the infield.

In the beginning, Andy drew the HS sorrel and Billy Roberts the blue roan. Gopher, the Yellowstone man, got a sulky little buckskin that refused to add one whit to the excitement, so that he was put back and another one brought. This other proved to be the wicked-eyed brown which Andy had ridden the first day. Only this day the brown was in different mood and pitched so viciously that Gopher lost control in the rapid-fire changes, and rode wild, being all over the horse and everywhere but on the ground. He did not pull leather, however though he was accused by some of riding on his spurs at the last. At any rate, Andy and Billy Roberts felt that the belt lay between themselves, and admitted as much privately.

"You've sure got to ride like a wild man if yuh beat me to it," grinned Billy.

"By gracious, I'm after it like a wolf myself," Andy retorted. "Yuh know how I'm fixed—I've just got to have it, Bill."

Billy, going out to ride, made no reply except a meaning head-shake. And Billy certainly rode, that day; for the blue roan did his worst and his best. To describe the performance, however, would be to invent many words to supply a dearth in the language. Billy rode the blue roan back to the corral, and he had broken none of the stringent rules of the contest—which is saying much for Billy.

When Andy went out—shot out, one might say—on the sorrel, the Happy Family considered him already beaten because of the remarkable riding of Billy. When the sorrel began pitching the gaping populace, grown wise overnight in these things, said that he was e-a-s-y—which he was not. He fought as some men fight; with brain as well as muscle, cunningly, malignantly. He would stop and stand perfectly still for a few seconds, and then spring viciously whichever way would seem to him most unexpected; for he was not bucking from fright as most horses do but because he hated men and would do them injury if he could.

When the crowd thought him worn out, so that he stood with head drooping all that Andy would permit, then it was that Andy grew most wary. It was as he had said. Of a sudden, straight into the air leaped the sorrel, reared and went backward in a flash of red. But as he went, his rider slipped to one side, and when he struck the ground Andy struck also—on his feet. "Get up, darn yuh," he muttered, and when the sorrel gathered himself together and jumped up, he was much surprised to find Andy in the saddle again.

Then it was that the HS sorrel went mad and pitched as he had never, even when building his record, pitched before. Then it was that Andy, his own temper a bit roughened by the murderous brute, rode as he had not ridden for many a day; down in the saddle, his quirt keeping time with the jumps. He was just settling himself to "drag it out of him proper," when one of the judges, on horseback in the field, threw up his hand.

"Get off!" he shouted, galloping closer. "That horse's got to be rode again to-day. You've done enough this time."

So Andy, watching his chance, jumped off when the sorrel stopped for a few seconds of breath, and left him unconquered and more murderous than ever. A man with a megaphone was announcing that the contest was yet undecided, and that Green and Roberts would ride again later in the afternoon.

Andy passed the Happy Family head in air, stopped a minute to exchange facetious threats with Billy Roberts, and went with Irish to roost upon the fence near the judge's stand to watch the races. The Happy Family kept sedulously away from the two and tried to grow interested in other things until the final test.

It came, when Billy Roberts, again first, mounted the HS sorrel, still in murderous mood and but little the worse for his previous battle. What he had done with Andy he repeated, and added much venom to the repetition. Again he threw himself backward, which Billy expected and so got clear and remounted as he scrambled up. After that, the sorrel simply pitched so hard and so fast that he loosened Billy a bit; not much, but enough to "show daylight" between rider and saddle for two or three high, crooked jumps. One stirrup he lost, rode a jump without it and by good luck regained it as it flew against his foot. It was great riding, and a gratifying roar of applause swept out to him when it was over.

Andy, saddling the blue roan, drew a long breath. This one ride would tell the tale, and he was human enough to feel a nervous strain such as had not before assailed him. It was so close, now! and it might soon be so far. A bit of bad luck such as may come to any man, however great his skill, and the belt would go to Billy. But not for long could doubt or questioning hold Andy Green. He led the Weaver out himself, and instinctively he felt that the horse remembered him and would try all that was in him. Also, he was somehow convinced that the blue roan held much in reserve, and that it would be a great fight between them for mastery.

When he gathered up the reins, the roan eyed him wickedly sidelong and tightened his muscles, as it were, for the struggle. Andy turned the stirrup, put in his toe, and went up in a flash, warned by something in the blue roan's watchful eye. Like a flash the blue roan also went up—but Andy had been a fraction of a second quicker. There was a squeal that carried to the grand stand as the Weaver, wild-eyed and with red flaring nostrils, pounded the wind-baked sod with high, bone-racking jumps; changed and took to "weaving" till one wondered how he kept his footing—more particularly, how Andy contrived to sit there, loose-reined, firm-seated, riding easily. The roan, tiring of that, began "swapping ends" furiously and so fast one could scarce follow his jumps. Andy, with a whoop of pure defiance, yanked off his hat and beat the roan over the head with it, yelling taunting words and contemptuous; and for every shout the Weaver bucked harder and higher, bawling like a new-weaned calf.

Men who knew good riding when they saw it went silly and yelled and yelled. Those who did not know anything about it caught the infection and roared. The judges galloped about, backing away from the living whirlwind and yelling with the rest. Came a lull when the roan stood still because he lacked breath to continue, and the judges shouted an uneven chorus.

"Get down—the belt's yours"—or words to that effect. It was unofficial, that verdict, but it was unanimous and voiced with enthusiasm.

Andy turned his head and smiled acknowledgment. "All right—but wait till I tame this hoss proper! Him and I've got a point to settle!" He dug in his spurs and again the battle raged, and again the crowd, not having heard the unofficial decision, howled and yelled approval of the spectacle.

Not till the roan gave up completely and owned obedience to rein and voiced command, did Andy take further thought of the reward. He satisfied himself beyond doubt that he was master and that the Weaver recognized him as such. He wheeled and turned, "cutting out" an imaginary animal from an imaginary herd; he loped and he walked, stopped dead still in two jumps and started in one. He leaned and ran his gloved hand forgivingly along the slatey blue neck, reached farther and pulled facetiously the roan's ears, and the roan meekly permitted the liberties. He half turned in the saddle and slapped the plump hips, and the Weaver never moved. "Why, you're an all-right little hoss!" praised Andy, slapping again and again.

The decision was being bellowed from the megaphone and Andy, hearing it thus officially, trotted over to where a man was holding out the belt that proclaimed him champion of the state. Andy reached out a hand for the belt, buckled it around his middle and saluted the grand stand as he used to do from the circus ring when one André de Grenó had performed his most difficult feat.

The Happy Family crowded up, shamefaced and manfully willing to own themselves wrong.

"We're down and ready to be walked on by the Champion," Weary announced quizzically. "Mama mine! but yuh sure can ride."

Andy looked at them, grinned and did an exceedingly foolish thing, just to humiliate Happy Jack, who, he afterwards said, still looked unconvinced. He coolly got upon his feet in the saddle, stood so while he saluted the Happy Family mockingly, lighted the cigarette he had just rolled, then, with another derisive salute, turned a double somersault in the air and lighted upon his feet—and the roan did nothing more belligerent than to turn his head and eye Andy suspiciously.

"By gracious, maybe you fellows'll some day own up yuh don't know it all!" he cried, and led the Weaver back into the corral and away from the whooping maniacs across the track.

ANDY, THE LIAR

Andy Green licked a cigarette into shape the while he watched with unfriendly eyes the shambling departure of their guest. "I believe the darned old reprobate was lyin' to us," he remarked, when the horseman disappeared into a coulee.

"You sure ought to be qualified to recognize the symptoms," grunted Cal Emmett, kicking his foot out of somebody's carelessly coiled rope on the ground. "That your rope, Happy? No wonder you're always on the bum for one. If you'd try tying it on your saddle—"

"Aw, g'wan. That there's Andy's rope—"

"If you look at my saddle, you'll find my rope right where it belongs," Andy retorted. "I ain't sheepherder enough to leave it kicking around under foot. That rope belongs to his nibs that just rode off. When he caught up his horse again after dinner, he throwed his rope down while he saddled up, and then went off and forgot it. He wasn't easy in his mind—that jasper wasn't. I don't go very high on that hard-luck tale he told. I know the boy he had wolfing with him last winter, and he wasn't the kind to pull out with all the stuff he could get his hands on. He was an all-right fellow, and if there's been any rusty work done down there in the breaks, this shifty-eyed mark done it. He was lying—"

Somebody laughed suddenly, and another chuckle helped to point the joke, until the whole outfit was in an uproar; for of all the men who had slept under Flying-U tents and eaten beside the mess-wagon, Andy Green was conceded to be the greatest, the most shameless and wholly incorrigible liar of the lot.

"Aw, yuh don't want to get jealous of an old stiff like that," Pink soothed musically. "There ain't one of us but what knows you could lie faster and farther and more of it in a minute, with your tongue half-hitched around your palate and the deaf-and-dumb language barred, than any three men in Chouteau County. Don't let it worry yuh, Andy."

"I ain't letting it worry me," said Andy, getting a bit red with trying not to show that the shot hit him. "When my imagination gets to soaring, I'm willing to bet all I got that it can fly higher than the rest of you, that have got brains about on a par with