At the risk of danger from the black's hoofs she urged Blackleg forward
to a more advantageous position. As she brought him to a halt, she
heard Kelton beside her.
"Some sunfisher, that black," he remarked.
She turned on him fiercely. "Keep still, can't you!" she said.
Kelton reddened; she did not see his face though, for she was watching
Calumet and the black.
The outlaw had not ceased his efforts. On the contrary, it appeared
that he was just beginning to warm to his work. Screaming with rage
and hate he sprang forward at a dead run, propelling himself with the
speed of a bullet for a hundred yards, only to come to a dizzying,
terrifying stop; standing on his hind legs; pawing furiously at the air
with his forehoofs; tearing impotently at the bit with his teeth,
slashing with terrific force in the fury of his endeavor.
Calumet's hat had come off during the first series of bucks. The grin
that had been on his face when he had got into the saddle back near the
corral fence was gone, had been superseded by a grimness that Betty
could see even from the distance from which she watched. He was a
rider though, she saw that--had seen it from the first. She had seen
many cowboy breakers of wild horses; she knew the confident bearing of
them; the quickness with which they adjusted their muscles to the
eccentric movements of the horse under them, anticipating their every
action, so far as anyone was able to anticipate the actions of a
rage-maddened demon who has only one desire, to kill or maim its rider,
and she knew that Calumet was an expert.
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