so clearly what would
happen: the range-bred pony would take her straight in front of the
furious bull, not knowing that her rider was not a cowboy and would be
unequal to the task of turning the great brute aside. She would do her
part and expected Jack to do the rest. Jack did not have so much as a
small riding whip in her hand, having lost it in her pony's first plunge
ahead. But she now realized her peril; one glimpse of her face would
have revealed this. It was white as marble save for the flying, bronze
gold of her hair. Her eyes were wide open and almost black and her lips
were parted. But there was no give-up in her expression; determination
marked every fine cut line.

Jack had considered but two alternatives. Either she must stop her wild
pony or drive back the maddened bull. Now she knew she could do neither.
She was only a few yards from the bull and understood that an animal in
a wild rush for liberty, never turns aside unless he is driven.

Half unconsciously Frank Kent closed his eyes. Jacqueline Ralston had
seemed to him so splendid, typifying to him the free, outdoor life of
the great West. He realized that Jack had lots of faults, but that she
was the kind of girl who would make a wonderful woman. She was a true
American girl, brave, generous and gay. The thought of her being
injured, or killed, was horrible. She was the very spirit of youth and
energy.

Frank looked again. Jack was going to face death squarely, or else to
drive her pony across the bull's course, before it reached her. Yet the
last method seemed hopeless, because the pony was master of the race,
not Jack. The girl had stooped low in her saddle. Her feet were out of
the stirrups and she lay almost flat across the pony's back. She seemed
to slip to one side. Frank watched for another horrified second. Jack
and her horse were not a hundred feet from the bull.

Then something slid along the ground on the right side of the pony, ran
a few feet, let go of the bridle and sat down limply in the brown grass.

Frank shouted as he had never thought it in him to shout. The trick of
dropping from her horse that Jack had just effected, he had seen
accomplished once in a Buffalo Bill show in London. The vision of a girl
doing it for her own safety was the most thrilling sight he had ever
seen in his life.

Tricks, deserted by her rider, and uncertain what she should do alone,
sprang to one side as the bull lunged at her, and the danger was all