Jack, loosening his riata as he dismounted, caught the loop over the high horn and let the rope drop to the ground.  He wore no spurs; and as for Surry, he had no bridle and bit, but a hackamore instead.

Jack threw the reins over the neck of the horse.  “Come, old fellow,” he said, quite as if he were speaking to a person, and started off.  And Surry, his neck arched, his ears perked knowingly, stepped out after him with that peculiar, springy gait that speaks eloquently of perfect muscles and a body fairly vibrating with energy; the riata trailed after him, every little tendency towards a kink taken out of it.

“Dios!  What a caballo is that white one!” Dade heard a Salinas man exclaim, and flushed at the praise.

Back they came, Jack and Surry, with Jack ten feet in advance of the horse; for Jose had chosen to remain at the southern end, with the sun at his left shoulder.  Jack, for all his eagerness to begin, found time to shake hands with Bill and say a word to some others as he passed—­and those eyes up there that watched did not miss one single movement.

“Look, you!  The gringo is telling his friends adios while he may!” some one shouted loudly from across the arena; and a great laugh roared from the throats that were dark, and handclapping at the witticism made the speaker a self-conscious caballero indeed.

At the corral, which was his starting-point, Jack took up the dragging riata, and with his handkerchief wiped off the dust while he coiled it again; hung it over the saddle horn and waited for the signal.

He was scowling now at certain remarks that came to his ears from the seats, with titters and chuckles to point their wit.  But he sent a cheering eye-signal to Dade, whose face was strained and noticeably white under the tan.

Half-way down the line, among the Americans, there was a little stir, and then a pistol barked with that loud crash which black powder makes.  Jack, on the instant when the smoke curled up in a little, balloon-like puff, turned and leaped into the saddle.  The duel of riatas was begun.

CHAPTER XXIV

FOR LOVE AND A MEDAL

Down the roped lane thundered Jose, whirling his riata over his head till the loop had taken full twenty of the sixty feet of rawhide.

Galloping to meet him, Jack gave his rope a forward, downward fling and formed a little loop—­a loop not one-third the size of Jose’s—­and held it dangling beside Surry’s shoulder.  So, at the very start, they showed themselves different in method, even though they might be the same in skill.

They met, with fifteen feet between them as they flashed past.  Jose flung out his lifted hand.  The loop hissed and shot straight for Jack’s head.

Jack flung out his little loop, struck the big one fairly, and threw it aside.  Even so, the end might have caught him, but for the lengthening lunge which Surry made in mid-air.  The loop flecked Surry’s crinkled tail and he fled on to the far end and stopped in two short, stiff-legged jumps.