The voice drifted dimly to Marianne for she was falling into a pleasant haze, comfortably aware of eyes of admiration lifted to her more and more frequently from the crowd.  She envied the blue coolness of the mountains, or breathed gingerly because the sting of alkali-dust was in the air, or noted with impersonal attention the flash of sun on a horse struggling in the far off corrals.  The growing excitement of the crowd, as though a crisis were approaching, merely lulled her more.  So the voice of Corson was half heard; the words were unconnotative sounds.

“Let the winner pick the worst outlaw in the lot.  Then Perris will ride that hoss first.  If he gets throwed he loses.  If he sticks, then the other gent has just got to sit the same hoss—­one that’s already had the edge took off his bucking.  Well, ain’t that a fool bet?”

“It sounds fair enough,” said Marianne.  “Perris, I suppose, hasn’t ridden yet.  And Arizona Charley is tired from his work.”

“Arizona tired?  He ain’t warmed up.  Besides, he’s got a hoss here that Perris will break his heart trying to ride.  You know what hoss they got here today?  They got Rickety!  Yep, they sure enough got old Rickety!”

He pointed.

“There he comes out!”

Marianne looked lazily in the indicated direction and then sat up, wide awake.  She had never seen such cunning savagery as was in the head of this horse, its ears going back and forth as it tested the strength of the restraining ropes.  Now and then it crouched and shuddered under the detested burden of the saddle.  It was a stout-legged piebald with the tell-tale Roman nose obviously designed for hard and enduring battle.  He was a fighting horse as plainly as a terrier is a fighting dog.

Arizona Charley, a tall man off a horse and walking with a limp, moved slowly about the captive, grinning at his companions.  It was plain that he did not expect the stranger to survive the test.

A brief, deep-throated shout from the crowd.

“There’s Perris!” cried Corson.  “There’s Red Perris, I guess!”

Marianne gasped.

It was the devil-may-care cavalier who had laughed and fought and whistled under the window of her room.  He stepped from the thick of the circle near Rickety and responded to the voice of the crowd by waving his hat.  It would have been a trifle too grandiloquent had he not been laughing.

“He’s going through with it,” said Corson, shivering and chuckling at the same time.  “He’s going to try Rickety.  They look like one and the same kind to me—­two reckless devils, that hoss and Red Jim Perris!”

“Is there real danger?” asked Marianne.

Corson regarded her with pity.

“Rickety can be rode, they say,” he answered, “but I disremember anybody that’s done it.  Look!  He’s a man-killer that hoss!”

Perris had stepped a little too close and the piebald thrust out at him with reaching teeth and striking forefoot.  The man leaped back, still laughing.