But before the man settled to the saddle, the outlaw was off on its furious resistance.  It went forward and up into the air with a plunging leap.  The rider swung his hat and gave a joyous whoop.  Next instant there was a scatter of laughing men as the horse came toward them in a series of short, stiff-legged bucks which would have jarred its rider like a pile driver falling on his head had he not let himself grow limp to meet the shock.

All the tricks of its kind this unbroken five-year-old knew.  Weaving, pitching, sunfishing, it fought superbly, the while Steve rode with the consummate ease of a master.  His sinuous form swayed instinctively to every changing motion of his mount.  Even when it flung itself back in blind fury, he dropped lightly from the saddle and into it again as the animal struggled to its feet.

The cook waved a frying pan in frantic glee.  “Hurra-ay!  You’re the goods, all right, all right.”

“You bet.  Watch Steve fan him.  And he ain’t pulled leather yet.  Not once.”

An unseen spectator was taking it in from the brow of a little hill crowned with a group of firs.  She had reached this point just as the Texan had swung to the saddle, and she watched the battle between horse and man intently.  If any had been there to see, he might have observed a strange fire smouldering in her eyes.  For the first time there was filtering through her a vague suspicion of this man who claimed to have heart trouble, and had deliberately subjected himself to the terrific strain of such a test.  She had seen broncho busters get off bleeding at mouth and nose and ears after a hard fight, and she had never seen a contest more superbly fought than this one.  But full of courage as the horse was, it had met its master and began to know it.

The ranger’s quirt was going up and down, stinging Dead Easy to more violent exertions, if possible.  But the outlaw had shot its bolt.  The plunges grew less vicious, the bucks more feeble.  It still pitched, because of the unbroken gameness that defied defeat, but so mechanically that the motions could be forecasted.

Then Steve began to soothe the brute.  Somehow the wild creatu ecame aware that this man who was his master was also disposed to be friendly.  Presently it gave up the battle, quivering in every limb.  Fraser slipped from the saddle, and putting his arm across its neck began to gentle the outlaw.  The animal had always looked the incarnation of wickedness.  The red eyes in its ill-shaped head were enough to give one bad dreams.  A quarter of an hour before, it had bit savagely at him.  Now it stood breathing deep, and trembling while its master let his hand pass gently over the nose and neck with soft words that slowly won the pony back from the terror into which it had worked itself.

“You did well, Mr. Fraser from Texas,” Jed complimented him, with a smile that thinly hid his malice.  “But it won’t do to have you going back to Texas with the word that Wyoming is shy of riders.  I ain’t any great shakes, but I reckon I’ll have to take a whirl at Rocking Horse.”  He had decided to ride for two reasons.  One was that he had glimpsed the girl among the firs; the other was to dissipate the admiration his rival had created among the men.