ng wickedly.

"Which shows," she said slowly, every word stinging like the bite of a
whip-lash, "that you are running, true to form and there is one fool, at
least, still unslaughtered! That"--she continued with a proud toss of
her head--"'lonesome-looking little runt' is the Ramblin' Kid! Not
another man in Texas can ride the horse he is on--and there is not a
horse in Texas that he can't ride!"

She turned again toward the Quarter Circle KT group and a shamed silence
settled over the swell "out-of-town" car.

Old Heck chuckled with delight at Carolyn June's show of temper.

A whirlwind program of racing, roping, bull-dogging--this event is that
in which a rider springs from a running horse, grasps by the horns a
wild steer running at his side, twists the animal's head up and backward
and so throws it down and then holds the creature on the
ground--rough-riding and other Rodeo sports followed immediately after
the parade.

Pedro and Charley Saunders were the only Quarter Circle KT cowboys
participating in the events of the first day of the Rodeo. The Mexican
did a fancy roping stunt in front of the grandstand and finished his
exhibition directly before the Clagstone "Six" in which Carolyn June,
Ophelia, Old Heck and Skinny were sitting. At the conclusion of his
performance Pedro bowed to the little audience in the car and swept his
sombrero before him with all the courtly grace of a great matador.
Carolyn June generously applauded the dark-skinned rider from the
Cimarron and waved a daintily gloved hand in acknowledgment of his skill
with the rope. Skinny gritted his teeth while a pang of jealousy shot
through his heart.

Charley took part in the bull-dogging event. He drew a black steer,
rangey built, heavy and wicked. When he lunged from his horse on to the
horns of the brute it dragged him for a hundred feet before he could
check its mad flight. At last he slowly forced its nose in the air and
with a quick wrench of the head to one side threw its feet from under
it. Man and beast went down in a heap--the neck of the steer across the
cowboy's body. A groan went up from the crowd in the grandstand and
Carolyn June's cheeks paled with horror--it looked as if one horn of the
creature had pierced Charley's breast. But it had missed by the fraction
of an inch. Straightening himself up to a sitting posture the cowboy
bent forward and sunk his teeth in the upper lip of the prostrate animal
and threw up both hands as