m, he suddenly feared
he might be on the point of losing Suvy now for a price he would have
scorned.

"Boy," he said in a murmur to the broncho, "if I thought you'd let any
bleached-out anthropoid like that remain on deck, I wouldn't want you
anyway--savvy that?"

Suvy's ears were playing back and forth in excessive nervousness and
questioning. He had turned his head to look at Van with evident joy at
the thought of bearing him away to the hills--they two afar off
together. Then came a disappointment.

"There you are," said Van, and swinging the bridle reins towards the
waiting man, he walked to a feed-trough and leaned against it
carelessly.

"Thanks," said the stranger. He threw away a cigarette, caught up the
reins, adjusted them over Suvy's neck, rocked the saddle to test its
firmness, and mounted with a certain dexterity that lessened Van's
confidence again. After all, Suvy was thoroughly broken. He had
quietly submitted to be ridden by Beth. His war-like spirit might be
gone--and all would be lost.

Indeed, it appeared that Suvy was indifferent--that a cow would have
shown a manner no less docile or resigned. He did look at Van with a
certain expression of surprise and hurt, or so, at least, the horseman
hoped. Then the man on his back shook up the reins, gave a prick with
the spurs, and Suvy moved perhaps a yard.

The rider pricked again, impatiently. Instantly Suvy's old-time
fulminate was jarred into violent response. He went up in the air
prodigiously, a rigid, distorted thing of hardened muscles and
engine-like activities. He came down like a new device for breaking
rocks--and the bucking he had always loved was on, in a fury of
resentment.

"Good boy!" said Van, who stood up stiffly, craning and bending to
watch the broncho's fight.

But the man in the saddle was a rider. He sat in the loose security of
men who knew the game. He gave himself over to becoming part of the
broncho's very self. He accepted Suvy's momentum, spine-disturbing
jolts, and sudden gyrations with the calmness and art of a master.

All this Van beheld, as the pony bucked with warming enthusiasm, and
again his heart descended to the depths. It was not the bucking he had
hoped to see. It was not the best that lay in Suvy's thongs. The
beating he himself had given the animal, on the day when their
friendship was cemented, had doubtless reduced the pony's confidence of
winning such a struggle, while increasing h