“Not exactly,” Pink interrupted.  “I seem to remember Andy lighting on his feet; and he was smoking when he started, and smoking when he quit.  It didn’t strike me at the time, but that’s kinda funny, don’t yuh think?”

So Pink went back to his first faith, and the Happy Family straightway became loud and excited over the question of whether Andy did really light upon his feet, or jumped up immediately, and whether he kept his cigarette or made a new one.  The discussion carried them to the fair grounds and remained just where it started, so far as any amicable decision was concerned.

Now this is a fair and true report of that last day’s riding:  There being but the three riders, and the excitement growing apace, the rough-riding was put first on the program and men struggled for the best places and the best view of the infield.

In the beginning, Andy drew the HS sorrel and Billy Roberts the blue roan.  Gopher, the Yellowstone man, got a sulky little buckskin that refused to add one whit to the excitement, so that he was put back and another one brought.  This other proved to be the wicked-eyed brown which Andy had ridden the first day.  Only this day the brown was in different mood and pitched so viciously that Gopher lost control in the rapid-fire changes, and rode wild, being all over the horse and everywhere but on the ground.  He did not pull leather, however though he was accused by some of riding on his spurs at the last.  At any rate, Andy and Billy Roberts felt that the belt lay between themselves, and admitted as much privately.

“You’ve sure got to ride like a wild man if yuh beat me to it,” grinned Billy.

“By gracious, I’m after it like a wolf myself,” Andy retorted.  “Yuh know how I’m fixed—­I’ve just got to have it, Bill.”

Billy, going out to ride, made no reply except a meaning head-shake.  And Billy certainly rode, that day; for the blue roan did his worst and his best.  To describe the performance, however, would be to invent many words to supply a dearth in the language.  Billy rode the blue roan back to the corral, and he had broken none of the stringent rules of the contest—­which is saying much for Billy.

When Andy went out—­shot out, one might say—­on the sorrel, the Happy Family considered him already beaten because of the remarkable riding of Billy.  When the sorrel began pitching the gaping populace, grown wise overnight in these things, said that he was e-a-s-y—­which he was not.  He fought as some men fight; with brain as well as muscle, cunningly, malignantly.  He would stop and stand perfectly still for a few seconds, and then spring viciously whichever way would seem to him most unexpected; for he was not bucking from fright as most horses do but because he hated men and would do them injury if he could.

When the crowd thought him worn out, so that he stood with head drooping all that Andy would permit, then it was that Andy grew most wary.  It was as he had said.  Of a sudden, straight into the air leaped the sorrel, reared and went backward in a flash of red.  But as he went, his rider slipped to one side, and when he struck the ground Andy struck also—­on his feet.  “Get up, darn yuh,” he muttered, and when the sorrel gathered himself together and jumped up, he was much surprised to find Andy in the saddle again.