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They were leaning elbows on the fence below the grand stand, watching desultorily the endless preparatory manoeuvres of three men astride the hind legs of three pacers in sulkies. “This side-wheeling business gives me a pain,” Billy remarked, as the pacers ambled by for the fourth or fifth time. “I like caballos that don’t take all day to wind ’em up before they go. I been looking over our bunch. They’s horses in that corral that are sure going to do things to us twenty peelers!”

“By gracious, yes!” Andy was beginning to feel himself again. “That blue hoss–uh course yuh heard how he got me, and heard it with trimmings–yuh may think he’s a man-eater; but while he’s a bad hoss, all right, he ain’t the one that’ll get yuh. Yuh want t’ watch out, Billy, for that HS sorrel. He’s plumb wicked. He’s got a habit uh throwing himself backwards. They’re keeping it quiet, maybe–but I’ve seen him do it three times in one summer.”

“All right–thanks. I didn’t know that. But the blue roan–“

“The blue roan’ll pitch and bawl and swap ends on yuh and raise hell all around, but he can be rode. That festive bunch up in the reserve seats’ll think it’s awful, and that the HS sorrel is a lady’s hoss alongside him, but a real rider can wear him out. But that sorrel–when yuh think yuh got him beat, Billy, is when yuh want to watch out!”

Billy turned his face away from a rolling dustcloud that came down the home stretch with the pacers, and looked curiously at Andy. Twice he started to speak and did not finish. Then: “A man can be a sure-enough rider, and get careless and let a horse pile him off him when he ain’t looking, just because he knows he can ride that horse,” he said with a certain diffidence.

“By gracious, yes!” Andy assented emphatically. And that was the nearest they came to discussing a delicate matter which was in the minds of both.

Andy was growing more at ease and feeling more optimistic every minute. Three men still believed in him, which was much. Also, the crowd could not flurry him as it did some of the others who were not accustomed to so great an audience; rather, it acted as a tonic and brought back the poise, the easy self-confidence which had belonged to one Andre de Greno, champion bareback rider. So that, when the rough-riding began, Andy’s nerves were placidly asleep.

At the corral in the infield, where the horses and men were foregathered, Andy met Slim and Happy Jack; but beyond his curt “Hello” and an amazed “Well, by golly!” from Slim, no words passed. Across the corral he glimpsed some of the others–Pink and Weary, and farther along, Cal Emmett and Jack Bates; but they made no sign if they saw him, and he did not go near them. He did not know when his turn would come to ride, and he had a horse to saddle at the command of the powers that were. Coleman, the man who had collected the horses, almost ran over him. He said “Hello, Green,” and passed on, for his haste was great.

Horse after horse was saddled and led perforce out into the open of the infield; man after man mounted, with more or less trouble, and rode to triumph or defeat. Billy Roberts was given a white-eyed little bay, and did some great riding. The shouts and applause from the grand stand rolled out to them in a great wave of sound. Billy mastered the brute and rode him back to the corral white-faced and with beads of sweat standing thick on his forehead.

“It ain’t going to be such damn’ easy money–that two hundred,” he confided pantingly to Andy, who stood near. “The fellow that gets it will sure have to earn it.”

Andy nodded and moved out where he could get a better view. Then Coleman came and informed him hurriedly that he came next, and Andy went back to his place. The horse he was to ride he had never seen before that day. He was a long-legged brown, with scanty mane and a wicked, rolling eye. He looked capable of almost any deviltry, but Andy did not give much time to speculating upon what he would try to do. He was still all eyes to the infield where his predecessor was gyrating. Then a sudden jump loosened him so that he grabbed the horn–and it was all over with that particular applicant, so far as the purse and the championship belt were concerned. He was out of the contest, and presently he was also back at the corral, explaining volubly–and uselessly–just how it came about. He appeared to have a very good reason for “pulling leather,” but Andy was not listening and only thought absently that the fellow was a fool to make a talk for himself.