Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 162: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

788 tucked the gunnysack blindfold over her eyes. .“ Bueno, senor, and—adios!”’ The smoke was coming from the kitchen chimney. From the window that faced on the corral a feminine face looked out. This time it was not the old ranch woman look- ing from her deathbed at this scene of dyna- mic life. It was a young girl bubbling with optimism, youth, high spirits. She watched the fight between Cactus Anne and the foreman with the excitement of a maid who is receiving an extraordinary, a thrilling, proposal of marriage. For that was exactly what was happening. In fact, Phil Wyndham himself had intimated that not until he had busted that mare could he consider himself worthy of the heiress of the Crockett ranch. A dense cloud of alkali dust, a pounding of hoofs—enough to make the ground quake—and a silhouette of twisting, lurch- ing, sun-fishing horseflesh, a man bouncing on top, fanning her with his sombrero, his head rocking back and forth as if about to snap from his neck—that was what Hallie Crockett saw. She could not have guessed how long she watched that battle. It was a contest be- tween a vicious old beast trying her ugliest repertoire of tricks—-a sidewise lurch, a dive, a downright shock of alternate feet, a side throw to swing the rider from his balance, then a ‘“ throwback” to unseat him—all this pitted against the stubborn dogged courage of the man in the saddle. If his will was strong enough to with- stand those shocks, that terrific wrenching of his neck, the taste of blood in his mouth, he would win. Hallie watched; the whole farmyard watched. Even the mozo appeared for the first time in his life slightly interested in the performance. The saddle ponies scampered to the side of the corral to find out what the rumpus was about. The ewes and their lambs, the sow and her faithful retinue, stood flabber- gasted. The whole barnyard, in fact, stood at attention, facing the same direction, wondering what was to come out of all this hullabaloo—this earthquake and sand- storm. A rooster with two hens set up a wild ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. squawking and flapping of wings and a fu- tile attempt at complete flight every time the bucking hell-diver came in their direc- tion. It seemed to them that Cactus Anne persisted in following the hapless fowls from one end of the corral to the other. A dog barked. The mozo took off his sombrero, appar- ently with the intention of waving it joy- fully in the air. But he never completed the act. Hallie was crying out in acclamation. Lucy Montana, the hired woman, waddled out of the kitchen door, clapped her hands and screamed with joy. The whole farm seemed about to raise its voice in one joy- ful song of victory, when suddenly, mirac- ulously, the air cleared. There was silence. The citizenry held its breath. The whole little world there in that corral was si- lenced before that hovering presence— Tragedy. The mare had actually stopped bucking and was standing, or rather crouching, the very incarnation of trembling virulence and hate. She had stopped bucking, yes, but the mozo shook his head ominously, re- placed his sombrero, and shuffled off for some more straw. He had been fooled once before, he re- called, by thinking Cactus Anne had given in when the real fact of the matter was she had stopped her frantic performance pre- paratory to playing her most heathenish trick. Wyndham was still there, his knees clamped into her ribs, his rowels raking the hair from her flanks. Blood came from his nose and trickled through the com- pressed lips; his face was black with dust; the cigarette was still clenched viciously in the corner of his red mouth. The mozo spread out his pitchfork of straw in the usual place. He was deter- mined not to be inveigled this time into showing any premature exultation. © Then the old she-devil did her stunt. She dove skyward with a threatening growl, landed on her forefeet and stumbled, or pretended to stumble, and rolled over on her flank. Phil had the momentary illusion that he was Bellerophon riding Pegasus in the Gomichbooks:.co