“There you are,” said Van, and swinging the bridle reins towards the waiting man, he walked to a feed-trough and leaned against it carelessly.

“Thanks,” said the stranger.  He threw away a cigarette, caught up the reins, adjusted them over Suvy’s neck, rocked the saddle to test its firmness, and mounted with a certain dexterity that lessened Van’s confidence again.  After all, Suvy was thoroughly broken.  He had quietly submitted to be ridden by Beth.  His war-like spirit might be gone—­and all would be lost.

Indeed, it appeared that Suvy was indifferent—­that a cow would have shown a manner no less docile or resigned.  He did look at Van with a certain expression of surprise and hurt, or so, at least, the horseman hoped.  Then the man on his back shook up the reins, gave a prick with the spurs, and Suvy moved perhaps a yard.

The rider pricked again, impatiently.  Instantly Suvy’s old-time fulminate was jarred into violent response.  He went up in the air prodigiously, a rigid, distorted thing of hardened muscles and engine-like activities.  He came down like a new device for breaking rocks—­and the bucking he had always loved was on, in a fury of resentment.

“Good boy!” said Van, who stood up stiffly, craning and bending to watch the broncho’s fight.

But the man in the saddle was a rider.  He sat in the loose security of men who knew the game.  He gave himself over to becoming part of the broncho’s very self.  He accepted Suvy’s momentum, spine-disturbing jolts, and sudden gyrations with the calmness and art of a master.

All this Van beheld, as the pony bucked with warming enthusiasm, and again his heart descended to the depths.  It was not the bucking he had hoped to see.  It was not the best that lay in Suvy’s thongs.  The beating he himself had given the animal, on the day when their friendship was cemented, had doubtless reduced the pony’s confidence of winning such a struggle, while increasing his awe of man.  Some miners passing saw the dust as the conflict waged in the yard.  They hastened in to witness the show.  Then from everywhere in town they appeared to pour upon the scene.  The word went around that the thing was a bet—­and more came running to the scene.

Meantime, Suvy was rocketing madly all over the place.  Chasing a couple of cows that roamed at large, charging at a monster pile of household furnishings, barely avoiding the feed-trough, set in the center of the place, scattering men in all directions, and raising a dust like a concentrated storm, the broncho waxed more and more hot in the blood, more desperately wild to fling his rider headlong through the air.  But still that rider clung.

Van had lost all sense save that of worry, love for his horse, and desire to see him win this vital struggle.  A wild passion for Suvy’s response to himself—­for a proving love in the broncho’s being—­possessed his nature.  He leaned far forward, awkwardly, following Suvy about.