“How you expect to be a ranger, if you can’t ride?” shouted some one at the lumberjack.

“If horses don’t plumb detest me, I reckon I can learn!” retorted the shanty boy, stoutly.  “This ain’t my game!”

But when young Pollock, whom Bob recognized as Jim’s oldest, was called out, the situation was altered.  He appeared leading a beautiful, half-broken bay, that snorted and planted its feet and danced away from the unaccustomed crowd.  Nevertheless the lad, as impassive as an image, held him well in hand, awaiting Thorne’s signal.

“Go!” called the Supervisor, his eyes on his watch.

The boy, still grasping the hackamore in his left hand, with his right threw the saddle blanket over the animal’s back.  Stooping again, he seized the heavy stock saddle by the horn, flipped it high in the air, and brought it across the horse with so skilful a jerk that not only did the skirts, the heavy stirrup and the horsehair cinch fall properly, but the cinch itself swung so far under the horse’s belly that young Pollock was able to catch it deftly before it swung back.  To thrust the broad latigo through the rings, jerk it tight, and fasten it securely was the work of an instant.  With a yell to his horse the boy sprang into the saddle.  The animal bounded forward, snorting and buck-plunging, his eye wild, his nostril wide.  Flung with apparent carelessness in the saddle, the rider, his body swaying and bending and giving gracefully to every bound, waved his broad hat, uttering shrill yips of encouragement and admonition to his mount.  The horse straightened out and thundered swift as an arrow toward the tree that marked the turning point.  With unslackened gait, with loosened rein, he swept fairly to the tree.  It seemed to Bob that surely the lad must overshoot the mark by many yards.  But at the last instant the rider swayed backward and sidewise; the horse set his feet, plunged mightily thrice, threw up a great cloud of dust, and was racing back almost before the spectators could adjust their eyes to the change of movement.  Straight to the group horse and rider raced at top speed, until the more inexperienced instinctively ducked aside.  But in time the horse sat back, slid and plunged ten feet in a spray of dust and pine needles, to come to a quivering halt.  Even before that young Pollock had thrown himself from the saddle.  Three jerks ripped that article of furniture from its place to the earth.  The boy, with an engaging gleam of teeth, threw up both hands.

It was flash-riding, of course; but flash-riding at its best.  And how the boys enjoyed it!  Now the little group of “buckeroos,” heretofore rather shyly in the background, shone forth in full glory.

“Now let’s see how good you are at packing,” said Thorne, when the last man had done his best or worst.  “Jack,” he told young Pollock, “you go up in the pasture and catch me up that old white pack mare.  She’s warranted to stand like a rock.”