The circle was too thick to be penetrated, it seemed, but as she drew closer an opening appeared and she easily sifted through to the front line of the circle.  It was not the first time she had found that the way of women is made easy in the West.  Just as she reached her place a horse scudded away from the far end of the field with a rider yelling; the swaying head and shoulders back.  He seemed to be shrinking from such speed, but as a matter of fact he was poised and balanced nicely for any chance whirl.  When it had gained full speed the broncho pitched high in the air, snapped its head and heels close together, and came down stiff-legged.  Marianne sympathetically felt that impact jar home in her brain but the rider kept his seat.  Worse was coming.  For sixty seconds the horse was in an ecstasy of furious and educated bucking, flinging itself into odd positions and hitting the earth.  Each whip-snap of that stinging struggling body jarred the rider shrewdly.  Yet he clung in his place until the fight ended with startling suddenness.  The grey dropped out of the air in a last effort and then stood head-down, quivering, beaten.

The victor jogged placidly back to the high-fenced corrals, with shouts of applause going up about him.

“Hey, lady,” called a voice behind and above Marianne.  “Might be you would like to sit up here with us?”

It was a high-bodied buckboard with two improvised seats behind the driver’s place and Marianne thanked him with a smile.  A fourteen-year-old stripling sprang down to help her but she managed the step-up without his hand.  She was taken at once, and almost literally, into the bosom of the family, three boys, a withered father, a work-faded mother, all with curious, kindly eyes.  They felt she was not their order, perhaps.  The sun had darkened her skin but would never spoil it; into their sweating noonday she carried a morning-freshness, so they propped her in the angle of the driver’s seat beside the mother and made her at home.  Their name was Corson; their family had been in the West “pretty nigh onto always”; they had a place down the Taliaferro River; and they had heard about the Jordan ranch.  All of this was huddled into the first two minutes.  They brushed through the necessaries and got at the excitement of the moment.

“I guess they ain’t any doubt,” said Corson.  “Arizona Charley wins.  He won two years back, too.  Minds me of Pete Langley, the way he rests in a saddle.  Now where’s this Perris gent?  D’you see him?  My, ain’t they shouting for Arizona!  Well, he’s pretty bad busted up, but I guess he’s still good enough to hold this Perris they talk about.  Where’s Perris?”

The same name was being shouted here and there in the crowd.  Corson stood up and peered about him.

“Who is Perris?” asked Marianne.

“A gent that come out of the north, up Montana way, I hear.  He’s been betting on himself to win this bucking contest, covering everybody’s money.  A crazy man, he sure is!”