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The next morning there was trouble in the corral. Kid had been directed to mount an old and gentle pony whose meek and humble appearance did not at all agree with his ideas of the sort of steed Broncho Bob should bestride. There was in the corral a black horse called Dynamite, a mettlesome young thing whose one specialty was bucking. And of this it never failed to give a continuous performance from the time a rider mounted its back until he was dislodged. Kid was determined to ride Dynamite. Texas Bill and Red Jack were trying to persuade him out of his notion by telling him how dangerous the horse was, and how he once landed Mr. Williams, the best rider on the whole ranch, on top of the house.

“Suppose he did,” blustered the Kid. “He won’t land me on top of the house, nor on top of the ground, neither. I tell you, I ain’t afraid to fork any horse that ever bucked! I can ride anything that wears hair! You hear me shout? Anything that wears hair!”

“See here, youngster,” said Texas Bill, in his longest and most indifferent drawl, “I ‘ve been ridin’ horses more years than you ‘ve been born, an’ I ‘ve tamed more pitchin’ horses than you ever saw any other kind, an’ I ain’t a little bit afraid of a pitchin’ horse. I ‘m a whole, big, blazin’ lot afraid!”

“What if you are?” retorted Kid. “I don’t have to be a coward ’cause you ‘re one!”

Texas Bill’s eye glared, and his hand jerked toward his hip pocket. Then he grunted and walked over to where I was feeding the two Angora goats out of my hands.

“If he was a man–” he began in an angry voice, and then broke off. “But I ‘m not fightin’ babies. I thought I ‘d keep him from breakin’ his durn fool neck, but he can go it now as fast as he wants to.”

The superintendent came out and told Kid he would have to obey orders or go back to Deming at once. So he sullenly mounted the meek and humble pony and cantered off.

About mid-forenoon, when there was no one at home but little Madge, the ten-year-old daughter of the house, the cook, and myself, Kid galloped back alone. Madge came dancing from the corral to where I sat in the front yard, her eyes blazing and her hands quivering with excitement.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, “He’s going to ride Dynamite! He ‘s run off from them and come back to ride Dynamite!”

“He must not do it! I must not let him!” And I started for the corral. Madge grasped my skirt with both hands.

“Dynamite won’t hurt him! I know he won’t!”

“What do you know about it?”

“I know he won’t because–don’t you tell mamma–I was on him myself one day, and he never bucked a bit!”

“You! How did you dare?”

“I wanted to see if I could, and there was nobody in the corral, and I climbed on his back, and he was just lovely!”

And just then, with Kid astride him, Dynamite pranced and curveted down the road. With a beaming face Kid waved his hat at us and galloped off. Dynamite making not even the sign of a desire to buck. After that the boy could not be persuaded to ride any other horse. And as long as Kid bestrode him, or Madge, with Kid’s connivance and help, surreptitiously mounted him, Dynamite’s behavior was perfect. But he worked woe upon any grown person that made the attempt.

The black horse’s life was not an easy one under Kid’s mastership. The boy never rode at a less pace than a gallop, and even in that dry, hot air Dynamite was always reeking with sweat when they came home.