She smiled at this vehemence, but it reinforced a growing respect for
Perris.

Then, rather absurdly, it irritated her to find that she was taking him so seriously.  She remembered the ridiculous song: 

  “Oh, father, father William, I’ve seen your daughter dear. 
  Will you trade her for the brindled cow and the yellow steer?”

Marianne frowned.

The shout of the crowd called her away from herself.  Far from broken by the last ride, the outlaw horse now seemed all the stronger for the exercise.  Discarding fanciful tricks, he at once set about sun-fishing, that most terrible of all forms of bucking.

The name in itself is a description.  Literally Rickety hurled himself at the sun and landed alternately on one stiffened foreleg and then the other.  At each shock the chin of Arizona Charley was flung down against his chest and at the same time his head snapped sideways with the uneven lurch of the horse.  An ordinary pony would have broken his leg at the first or second of these jumps; but Rickety was untiring.  He jarred to the earth; he vaulted up again as from springs—­over and over the same thing.

It would eventually have become tiresome to watch had not both horse and rider soon showed effects of the work.  Every leap of Rickety’s was shorter.  Sweat shone on his thick body.  He was killing Arizona but he was also breaking his own heart.  Arizona weakened fast under that continual battering at the base of his brain.  His eyes rolled.  He no longer pretended to ride straight up, but clung to pommel and cantle.  A trickle of blood ran from his mouth.  Marianne turned away only to find that mild old Corson was crying:  “Watch his head!  When it begins to roll then you know that he’s stunned and the next jump or so will knock him out of the saddle as limp as a half filled sack.”

“It’s too horrible!” breathed the girl.  “I can’t watch!”

“Why not?  You liked it when a man beat a hoss.  Now the tables are turned and the hoss is beating the man.  Ah, I thought so.  There goes his head!  Rolls as if his neck was broken.  Now!  Now!”

Arizona Charley toppled loose-limbed from the saddle and lay twisted where he fell, but it had taken the last of Rickety’s power.  His legs were now braced, his head untriumphantly low, and the sweat dripped steadily from him.  He had not enough energy to flee from those who approached to lift Arizona from the ground.  Corson was pounding his knee with a fat fist.

“Ever see a fight like that in your life?  Nope, you never did!  Me neither!  But Lord, Lord, won’t Red Jim Perris take a mule-load of coin out of Glosterville!  They been giving five to one agin him.  I was touched a bit myself.”

For the moment, Marianne was more keenly interested in the welfare of Arizona Charley.  Perris, with others following, reached him first and strong hands carried the unconscious champion towards that corner of the field where the Corson buckboard stood; for there were the water-buckets.  They were close to the goal when Arizona recovered sufficiently to kick himself loose feebly from his supporters.