wn in. That the doctor stuck on the saddle was a miracle
beyond belief. Of course he pulled leather shamelessly throughout the
contest, but riding straight up is a good deal of a myth. Fancy riding
is reserved for circus men. The mountain-desert is a place where men
stick close to utility and let style go hang.

And the doctor stuck in the saddle. He had set his teeth, and he was a
sea-sick greenish-white. His hat was a-jog over one ear--his shirt tails
flew out behind. And still he remained to battle. Aye, for he ceased the
passive clinging to the saddle. He gathered up the long quirt which had
hitherto dangled idly from his wrist, and at the very moment when the
piebald had let out another notch in his feats, the doctor, holding on
desperately with one hand, with the other brandished the quirt around
his head and brought it down with a crack along the flanks of the
piebald.

The effect was a little short of a miracle. The mustang snorted and
leaped once into the air, but he forgot to come down stiff-legged, and
then, instantly, he broke into a little, soft dog trot, and followed
humbly in the trail of the black stallion. The laughter and cheers from
the house were the sweetest of music in the ears of Doctor Randall
Byrne; the most sounding sentences of praise from the lips of the most
learned of professors, after this, would be the most shabby of
anticlimaxes. He waved his arm back to a group standing in front of the
house--Buck Daniels, Kate, the lantern-jawed cowboy, and Wung Lu waving
his kitchen apron. In another moment he was beside the rider of the
stallion, and the man was whistling one of those melodies which defied
repetition. It simply ran on and on, smoothly, sweeping through
transition after transition, soaring and falling in the most effortless
manner. Now it paused, now it began again. It was never loud, but it
carried like the music of a bird on wing, blown by the wind. There was
about it, also, something which escaped from the personal. He began to
forget that it was a man who whistled, and such a man! He began to look
about to the hills and the sky and the rocks--for these, it might be
said, were set to music--they, too, had the sweep of line, and the
broken rhythms, the sense of spaciousness, the far horizons.

That day was a climax of the unusual weather. For a long time the sky
had been periodically blanketed with thick mists, but to-day the wind
had freshened and it tore the mists into a thousan