Once inside the arena, the brute began to exhibit terrible ferocity.

Stella and Bud had followed in his wake, and when the girl saw how the brute was behaving, she whispered to Bud: 

“That demon will kill him yet.”

“If he don’t kill it,” answered Bud.

“Why did you let him ride it?  I got there a moment too late, and he was already in the saddle, or I should have stopped it.”

“What could I do?  He had told the people he would ride it, and that settled it with him.”

Lucifer was exercising all the tricks known to wild and terrified bronchos when they first feel saddle and bridle, and which seem to be inbred in them.  He bucked, but there was never a horse that could buck Ted off.  He reared, he kicked, rolled, and fell backward.  But every time he stopped for a moment to note the result, there the unshakable enemy was on his back again.  Clearly he was puzzled.

Then a new paroxysm of rage would shake him, and he would go through the same performances again, but with no better success.

Suddenly Ted brought his quirt down on the brute’s flanks, and it leaped high into the air in an agony of fear and pain.  It had felt that stinging thing before, and hated it.

Then it started to run away from this terrible thing that bestrode its back.

“By Heaven! it’s running away,” muttered Bud.  “It’ll be an act o’ Providence if Ted isn’t killed.”

Down the arena they dashed, Ted sitting in the saddle as if he and it and the stallion were all of a piece.

When the brute came to the arena’s end, and saw before him the shouting multitude, it suddenly swerved to come back, and Ted realized that something had happened to the saddle.  It was slipping, and yet he was sure he had cinched it tight.  Back they came tearing again, and passed Stella and Bud like a rocket.

“Great guns!” cried Bud, “his saddle’s loose.  He’s a goner now, shore.”

Every one saw Ted’s danger, for Ted was leaning well over, and the saddle was on the horse’s side.  A hollow groan went up.

At Bud’s first words Stella was off after Ted like a shot.

The horse, as every one could now see, was trying its best to kill Ted, and many of the spectators were positive that it would do so.

Now the cinch had parted.

“The cinch has broken,” the shout went up.  “It will kill him, sure!” Ted was now leaning far over on the horse’s side, his left leg well under the horse’s belly and his foot in the stirrup, while the heel of his left, boot was clinging to the edge of the tipped saddle.  It was a most precarious position, for if the saddle slipped farther he would go under and be trampled and kicked to death before any one could reach him.

The powerful brute was bent on Ted’s destruction, and seemed about to accomplish it, when Stella galloped to his side, and, grasping his hand, held him safe.