The horse sprang into the air, twisted, and came down stiff-legged--squealing. Now with his head between his forelegs he shot up his hind hoofs and at an angle to require all the grip in his rider's knees to stay in the saddle. Then he brought down his heels again, violently, to bite at Pinkey--who kicked him.
He "weaved," he "sunfished"--with every trick known to an old outlaw he tried to throw his rider, rearing finally to fall backward and mash to a pulp a bed of Mr. Cone's choicest tulips. But when the horse rose Pinkey was with him, while the spectators, choking with excitement, forgetting themselves and each other, yelled like Apaches.
With nostrils blood-red and distended, his eyes the eyes of a wild animal, now writhing, now crouching, now lying back on his haunches and springing forward with a violence to snap any ordinary vertebra, the horse pitched as if there was no limit to its ingenuity and endurance.
Pinkey's breath was coming in gasps and his colour had faded with the terrible jar of it all. Even the uninitiated could see that Pinkey was weakening, and the result was doubtful, when, suddenly, the horse gave up and stampeded. He crashed through the trellis over which Mr. Cone had carefully trained his crimson ramblers, tore through a neat border of mignonette and sweet alyssum that edged the driveway, jumped through "snowballs," lilacs, syringas, and rhododendrons to come to a halt finally conquered and chastened.
The "88" brand has produced a strain famous throughout Wyoming for its buckers, and this venerable outlaw lived up to every tradition of his youth and breeding.
There never was worse bucking nor better riding in a Wild West Show or out of it, and Mr. Appel declared that he had not been so stirred since the occasion when walking in the woods at Harvey's Lake in the early '90's he had acted upon the unsound presumption that all are kittens that look like kittens and disputed the path with a black-and-white animal which proved not to be.
Mrs. C. D. Budlong was shedding tears like a crocodile, without moving a feature. Mr. Budlong put the lighted end of a cigar in his mouth and burned his tongue to a blister, while Miss Eyester dropped into a chair and had her sinking spell and recovered without any one remarking it. In an abandonment that was like the delirium of madness Mr. Cone went in and lifted Miss Gaskett's cat "Cutie" out of the plush rocker, where she was leaving hairs on the cushion, and surreptitiously kicked her.
Altogether it was an unforgettable occasion, and only Pinkey seemed unthrilled by it--he dismounted in a businesslike, matter-of-fact manner that had in it neither malice toward the horse nor elation at having ridden him. He felt admiration, if anything, for he said as he rubbed the horse's forehead: "You shore made me ride, Old Timer! You got all the old curves and some new ones. If I had a hat I'd take it off to you. I ain't had such a churnin' sence I set 'Steamboat' fer fifteen seconds. Oh, hullo----" as Wallie advanced with his hand out.