asked.

"Oh, certainly!" She swept her skirts aside carelessly and made room for
him. "I thought you were going to ride soon."

"No, I ride last except for Sanford, the champion. My cousin rides just
before me. He's entered under the name of Jack Holloway."

She was thinking that he had no business to be riding, that his wounds
were still too fresh, but she did not intend again to show interest
enough in his affairs to interfere even by suggestion. Her heart had
been in her mouth every moment of the time this morning while he had
been tossed hither and thither on the back of his mount. In his delirium
he had said he loved her. If he did, why should he torture her so? It
was well enough for sound men to risk their lives, but--

A cheer swelled in the grand stand and died breathlessly away.
McWilliams was setting a pace it would take a rare expert to equal. He
was a trick rider, and all the spectacular feats that appealed to the
onlooker were his. While his horse was wildly pitching, he drank a
bottle of pop and tossed the bottle away. With the reins in his teeth
he slipped off his coat and vest, and concluded a splendid exhibition of
skill by riding with his feet out of the stirrups. He had been smoking a
cigar when he mounted. Except while he had been drinking the pop it had
been in his mouth from beginning to end, and, after he had vaulted from
the pony's back, he deliberately puffed a long smoke-spiral into the
air, to show that his cigar was still alight. No previous rider had
earned so spontaneous a burst of applause. "He's ce'tainly a pure when
it comes to riding," acknowledged Bannister. "I look to see him get
either first or second."

"Whom do you think is his most dangerous rival?" Helen asked.

"My cousin is a straight-up rider, too. He's more graceful than Mac, I
think, but not quite so good on tricks. It will be nip and tuck."

"How about your cousin's cousin?" she asked, with bold irony.

"He hopes he won't have to take the dust," was his laughing answer.

The next rider suffered defeat irrevocably before he had been thirty
seconds in the saddle. His mount was one of the most cunning of the
outlaw ponies of the Northwest, and it brought him to grief by jamming
his leg hard against the fence. He tried in vain to spur the bronco into
the middle of the arena, but after it drove at a post for the third time
and ground his limb against it, he gave up to the pain and slipped off.

"That isn't fair, is i