The dog seized the long line in his teeth and pulled with all his might.  At the same moment Dick let go the short line and threw all his weight upon the long one.  The noose tightened suddenly under this strain, and the mustang, with a gasp, fell choking to the ground.

Dick had often heard of the manner in which the Mexicans “break” their horses, so he determined to abandon the method which had already almost worn him out, and adopt the other, as far as the means in his power rendered it possible.  Instead, therefore, of loosening the lasso and re-commencing the struggle, he tore a branch from a neighbouring bush, cut the hobbles, strode with his legs across the fallen steed, seized the end of the short line or bridle, and then, ordering Crusoe to quit his hold, he loosened the noose which compressed the horse’s neck and had already well-nigh terminated its existence.

One or two deep sobs restored it, and in a moment it leaped to its feet with Dick firmly on its back.  To say that the animal leaped and kicked in its frantic efforts to throw this intolerable burden would be a tame manner of expressing what took place.  Words cannot adequately describe the scene.  It reared, plunged, shrieked, vaulted into the air, stood straight up on its hind legs, and then almost as straight upon its fore ones; but its rider held on like a burr.  Then the mustang raced wildly forwards a few paces, then as wildly back, and then stood still and trembled violently.  But this was only a brief lull in the storm, so Dick saw that the time was now come to assert the superiority of his race.

“Stay back, Crusoe, and watch my rifle, pup,” he cried, and raising his heavy switch he brought it down with a sharp cut across the horse’s flank, at the same time loosening the rein which hitherto he had held tight.

The wild horse uttered a passionate cry, and sprang forward like the bolt from a cross-bow.

And now commenced a race which, if not so prolonged, was at least as furious as that of the far-famed Mazeppa.  Dick was a splendid rider, however—­at least as far as “sticking on” goes.  He might not have come up to the precise pitch desiderated by a riding-master in regard to carriage, etc., but he rode that wild horse of the prairie with as much ease as he had formerly ridden his own good steed, whose bones had been picked by the wolves not long ago.

The pace was tremendous, for the youth’s weight was nothing to that muscular frame, which bounded with cat-like agility from wave to wave of the undulating plain in ungovernable terror.  In a few minutes the clump of willows where Crusoe and his rifle lay were out of sight behind; but it mattered not, for Dick had looked up at the sky and noted the position of the sun at the moment of starting.  Away they went on the wings of the wind, mile after mile over the ocean-like waste—­curving slightly aside now and then to avoid the bluffs that occasionally