Chapter XVIII. Beaten, but not Whipped

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      Once before in his life Andy misjudged a horse and paid for the mistake in some bitterness. Now he saw how he had erred in his judgment of both Tex and the horse. For Tex had not palmed off any half-hearted bucker on Luis Mendoza and his director, and the Walloper did not require uncovered steel to induce him to perform. The one thing he did do nicely was to run straight out into the field.

      He seemed to be an intermittent performer. Three good, high jumps he made straight into the foreground. Then he stopped and stood like a statue until he felt the prick of the spurs, when he hurled himself straight into the air, came down stiff-legged and started running. Now and then he interrupted himself long enough to buck petulantly, and it was those interruptions which kept up Andy's hopes of a good scene. He did not send any one after his leading man as quickly as he would otherwise have done, so the horse may be blamed for what followed.

      The Kid, seeing a bunch of people up around the chutes, was keeping himself and his pupil as far down toward the lower end of the field as possible. He did not want to encounter any newspaper reporters and their cameras, chiefly because he did not want to do murder if he could avoid it. Incidentally, and so as not to attract their attention, he had changed his blue shirt for one of neutral hue—a gray broadcloth which he had worn on the trail. By special request his Laramie boys had also put away the famous blue satin, though it pained them to do so. They were therefore inconspicuous and attending very strictly to their own affairs; which on the part of the Laramie boys consisted of sitting in a row alongside the fence, watching Joella Germain do the revised crawl under the neck of her horse.

      Midway across the arena the Kid had stopped her and, on Blazes, since he was saving Stardust for the race that afternoon, proceeded to crawl slowly and deliberately around his horse's neck, explaining the why and wherefore of every move he made. Joella watched him, careful to miss no move.

      "Now, you try it with your horse standing still," he commanded. "Once you get the hang of it, you'll find it easier than the way you do it."

      The Kid had his back to the arena. He did not see the Walloper coming until the thud of hoofbeats made him turn to look. He was none to soon, for the bay horse was bearing down upon Joella with the staring, white-rimmed eyeballs a horse usually shows when he is in a frenzy of fear or anger—it doesn't matter much which.

      Luckily the Kid had been fooling with his rope while he talked with Joella a few minutes before, and had hung the coil over the saddle horn. He snatched it up, shook out his loops as he whirled to meet the runaway, saw that the horse did not mean to swing away from him, and flung the noose straight for his head. He was just in time. As he took his turns and Blazes settled back, the Walloper was within ten feet of Joella's phlegmatic little gray pony.

      "What do you think you're doing?" cried the Kid, with all the injustice of angry youth. "I told you you needed a double, Mig!"

      "Go to the devil!" snapped the Native Son, yanking at the halter rope which was his only means of controlling the bay; and that little better than nothing, as every bronk rider knows. "Take off your rope! Nobody asked you to butt in on this."

      "Better get off, before you fall off!" jeered the Kid.

      "Take off that rope, or I'll hand you a punch in the jaw," warned the Native Son with a jerky harshness of manner, because the Walloper was at last doing the "walking beam" kind of bucking which Tex had guaranteed.

      "Better wait and see how you feel when you pick yourself up," the Kid advised, for the first time in years thoroughly enjoying himself with the Native Son. Joella, it may here be explained, had made haste to gallop back to the fence out of the way, and incidentally out of hearing.

      Seeing her gone, the Native Son called the Kid a name he could not have spoken in Joella's presence.

      The Kid replied in the same spirit and vocabulary.

      "You sure have got a licking coming to you!" declared the Native Son rather breathlessly, wondering if the darned horse was going to buck till noon.

      "The way I'll knock the paint off you will be just too bad!" retorted the Kid, as Weary and Pink came galloping swiftly down upon them.

      Afterwards the Kid remembered how dexterously the two pocketed the bucking horse between them and how lightly the Native Son swung over the rump of Weary's horse and to the ground.

      "Get on behind, Mig, and I'll take you back," Weary said, looking around surprisedly. "No use walking."

      The Native Son shook his head, advancing upon the Kid who was coiling his rope, his hatbrim hiding his face.

      "Well, get down and take your licking," he said with ominous calm. "You're so full of brag, now back it up."

      "Seems a shame to strike an old man," taunted the Kid remorselessly, looking down at him. "Be your age, Grandpa!"

      Now, the Native Son had just passed forty, and though he neither looked, felt nor acted middle-aged, the thrust went home. His heavily made-up eyelids closed to slits through which his eyes gleamed like flames. It was the look which made small boys squirm in the front rows of movie theaters, along about the third reel of a Luis Mendoza super-special; the look that thrilled young women of high-school age and beyond and impelled them to buy Luis Mendoza photographs to stand on their dressing tables. It gave the Kid an inexplicable thrill as he stared down into that narrowed gaze; not fear, but rather that thrill of pleasurable excitement which comes when an adventurous youth comes face to face with danger. For one moment the Kid felt as he did when he eased into the saddle and felt a bronk's muscles quiver for the first lunge of the battle to come; then the Native Son reached up and gripped him. The Kid struck fiercely, ineffectively, and came down fighting, still held in that inexorable grasp.

      Walt, Beck and Billy came running, but dared not interfere. Those two, evenly matched in all save experience, somehow revealed an inner struggle which concerned no man save themselves. It showed in their eyes, in the set of their tight-lipped mouths. The Laramie boys looked on helplessly and with a feeling of bewilderment. The Kid had never mentioned Luis Mendoza, never intimated that he knew him. What, then, were they fighting about? Why were they staring eye to eye like that, trying to look each other down? But Pink and Weary knew, though they could not have put the mental conflict into words. Youth and maturity striving for supremacy—they couldn't express it, though they recognized the thing that lay behind the quarrel.

      It was not a bloody fight, nor a long one. The Kid had never gone in for fighting, though he had boxed a little in the gym. Luis Mendoza, however, was rather famous for his whirlwind battles as portrayed on the screen. Never a super-special without its fight scene wherein the hero threw men and furniture helter-skelter about the set, emerging from the mêlée minus half his shirt and with his heavy mop of brown hair, which he wore long for the purpose, dangling to his eyebrows; battered but victorious and smiling his slow smile as he gazed upon the havoc he had wrought.

      The Kid's scornful "Be your age, Grandpa," had turned loose the whirlwind upon himself and he was wholly unprepared to meet it. Yet the Native Son did not want to hurt him overmuch, except in his self-esteem. He did not close the Kid's blazing eyes—how could he strike his fist against eyes so like Chip's in all save the color? Nor did he puff the Kid's lips with a blow he might easily have delivered—those lips which had a Little-Doctor curve when they smiled!

      He did worse, in a way. He held the Kid off at arm's length and slapped him soundly, first on one cheek, then on the other, dispassionately and with a look on his face which his movie fans would have adored. He