ust to show
his spirits.

The feeling of a man on his back--a feeling he hates, the wild
whooping, the jab of the spurs and the flapping hat around his head
serves further to madden the bucker and it is a wonder any human being
can stay on his back a second. Yet cowboys do, and ride until they are
tired of the sport.

"Are you ready?" called the cowboys who had saddled the "mankiller," as
Sam dubbed the small horse.

"Let him out!" yelled Snake.

The fastenings of the gate were loosed and out rushed the animal with
the cowboy bobbing about on his back. Red Pepper seemed a whirlwind of
fury. He rushed forward, his nose almost touching the ground, and then
he began to go up in the air. Up he would leap, coming down with all
four legs held stiff and his back arched, to shake, if it were
possible, Snake from the saddle. The cowboy rose in his stirrups to
take the shock as much as possible from his frame, and with a yell,
began "fanning" Red Pepper.

This added to the fury of the beast, and it fairly screamed in rage
and, reaching back, tried to bite Snake's legs. But they were
protected by heavy leather "chaps," and the animal soon realized this.

He now began leaping sideways, a form of bucking that often unseats a
rider, but Snake was proof against this. And all the while the animal
was dashing around the larger corral, on the fence of which sat the boy
ranchers and their friends, watching this cowboy fun. As they watched
they laughed and called such remarks as:

"Fan him, Snake! Fan him!"

"Whoopee! That's stickin' to him!"

"Tickle him in the ear, Snake!"

"Want any court plaster t' hold you down?"

Snake paid little attention to this "advice" of his friends. In fact
he had little time, for he discovered that his "work was all cut out
for him," before he had been many seconds on the back of Red Pepper.
The steed in very truth was an outlaw of the worst type.

Finding that the methods usually successful--those of bucking and
kicking out with his hind feet--were of no avail, the animal adopted
new tactics. He reared high in the air, with a scream of rage--reared
so high that there was a gasp of dismay from the spectators. For
surely it seemed that the horse would topple over backward and, falling
on Snake, would crush and kill him.

But the cowboy had ridden horses like this before, and with a smart
blow between the animal's ears Snake gave notice that it would be
considered more polite if h