“I’m ashamed of you, Suvy!” he began to cry.  “Suvy!  Suvy, where’s your pride?  Why don’t you do him, boy?  Why don’t you show them?  Where’s your pride?  My boy! my boy!—­don’t you love me any more?  You’re a baby, Suvy!  You’re a baby!” He paused for a moment, following still and watching narrowly.  “Suvy!  Suvy!  You’re gone if you let him ride you, lad!  If you love me, boy, don’t break my heart with shame!”

Suvy and a hundred men heard his wild, impassioned appeal.  The men responded as if in some pain of the heart they could not escape, thus to see Van Buren so completely wrapped up in his horse.  Then some all but groaned to behold the bucking cease.

It seemed as if Suvy had quit.  The man in the saddle eased.

“Boy!” yelled Van, in a shrill, startling cry that made the pony shiver.  He had seen some sign that no one but himself could understand.  “Boy! not that! not that!”

Already Suvy had started to rise, to drop himself backwards on his rider.

He heard and obeyed.  He went up no more than to half his height, then seemed to be struck by a cyclone.  Had all the frightful dynamic of an earthquake abruptly focused in his being, the fearful convulsion of his muscles could scarcely have been greater.  It was all so sudden, so swift and terrible, that no man beheld how it was done.  It was simply a mad delirium of violence, begun and ended while one tumultuous shudder shook the crowd.

Everyone saw something loose and twisting detached from the pony’s back.  Everyone witnessed a blur upon the air and knew it was the man.  He was flung with catapultic force against a frightened cow.  He struck with arms and legs extended.  He clung like a bur to the bovine’s side, for a moment before he dropped—­and everyone roared unfeelingly, in relief of the tension on the nerves.

The next they knew Van was there with his horse, shaking the animal’s muzzle.

“My boy!” he said.  “My boy!  My luck has changed!”

Apparently it had.  The man who had thought he could ride the horse limped weakly to a blanket-roll, and sat himself down to gather up the pieces of his breath and consciousness.  He wanted no more.  He felt it was cheap at the price he had paid to escape with a hint of his life.

Van waited for nothing, not even the money that Charlie of the hay-yard was holding.  He mounted to the saddle that had been the seat of hell, and in joy unspeakable Suvy walked away, in response to the pressure of his knees.

CHAPTER XLII

THE FURNACE OF GOLD

All the following day, which was Thursday, two small companies were out in the hills.  One was Beth’s, where she, Glen, and Pratt toiled slowly over miles and miles of baking mountains and desert slopes and rocks, tracing out the reservation boundary with a long slender ribbon of steel.