A shot, and he was off again with his little loop. Jose, like a great, black bird, flew towards him with the big loop. As they neared he saw Jose's teeth show in the smile of hate. He waited, his little loop ready for the fling should his chance come.

Jose was over-eager. The great, rawhide hoop whistled and shot down aslant like the swoop of a nighthawk. Surry's eye was upon it unwinkingly. He saw where the next leap would bring him within its terrible grip, and he made that leap to one side instead, so that the rawhide thudded into the dust alongside his nose. He swerved again lest Jose in jerking it up should catch his feet, and went on with an exultant toss of his white head. It was the game he knew--the game Diego had played with him many times, to the discomfiture of the peon.

"He is a devil--that white caballo!" cried a chagrined voice from among the vaqueros crowding the ropes so that they bulged inward.

"Hah! devil or no, they will go down, those two white ones! Saw you the look of Jose as he pa.s.sed? He has been playing with them for the sport of the people. Look you! I have gold on that third throw. The next time--it is as Jose chooses--"

The bark of the pistol cut short the boastings of that vaquero. This was the third pa.s.s, and much Spanish gold would be lost upon that throw if Jose missed.

"Three to one, m' son," bawled Bill Wilson remindingly, as Jack loped past with his little loop hanging beside him, ready but scarcely seeming so. Jose was coming swiftly, the big horse lunging against the Spanish bit, his knees flung high with every jump he made, like a deer leaping through brush. And there was the great, rawhide loop singing its battle-song over his head, with the soft _who-oo-oo_ before he released it for the flight.

He aimed true--but Surry had also a nice eye for distance. He did not swerve; he simply stiffened every muscle and stopped short. Even as he did so the black horse plunged past; and Jack, lifting his hand, whirled his loop swiftly once to open it, and gave it a backward fling.

Straight past his shoulder it shot, whimpering, following, reaching--the force of the fling carrying it far, far ... Jose heard it whining behind him, glanced quickly, thought to beat it to the end of its leash. He leaned far over--farther, so that his cheek touched the flying black mane of his horse. He dug deep with his spurs--but he dug too late.

The little loop narrowed--it had reached as far as sixty feet of rawhide could reach and have any loop at all. It sank, and caught the outflung head of the black horse; slid back swiftly and caught Jose as the horse lunged and swung short around; tightened and pressed Jose's cheek hard against the black mane as the rawhide drew tight across the back of his neck.

The black horse plunged and tried to back away; the white one stiffened against the pull of the rope. Between the two of them, they came near finishing Jose once for all. And from the side where stood the white men came the vicious sound of a pistol shot.

"Slack, Surry!" Jack, on the ground, glimpsed the purpling face of his foe. "Slack, you devil!"

Near sixty feet he had to run--and Jose was strangling before his eyes; strangling, because Surry's instant obedience was offset by Jose's horse, who, facing the other at the first jerk of the riata, backed involuntarily with the pull of the pinioned reins. The Spanish bit was cutting his mouth cruelly, and Jose's frenzied clawing could not ease the cruel strain upon either of them.

A few terrible seconds, and then Jack overtook them, eaught the horse by the bridle, and stopped him; and the blood which the cruel bit had brought when the spade cut deep, stained Jack's white clothes red where it fell.

"Slack, Surry! Come on!" he cried, his voice harsh with the stress of that moment. And when the rawhide hung loose between the two horses he freed Jose of the deadly noose, and saw where it had burnt raw the skin of his neck on the side where it touched. A snaky, six-strand riata can be a rather terrible weapon, he decided, while he loosed it and flung it from him.

Jose, for the first time getting breath enough to gasp, tried to straighten himself in the saddle; lurched, and would have gone off on his head if Jack had not put up a hand to steady him. So he led him, a shaken, gasping, disarmed antagonist, across the little s.p.a.ce that separated them from where Don Andres and four other Spanish gentlemen sat before the middle gate of the corral.

"Bravo!" cried a sweet, girl voice; and a rose, blood-red and heavy with perfume, fell at Jack's feet. He gave it one cold glance and let it lie.

In another moment the black horse crushed it heedlessly beneath his hoof, as Jack turned to the judges.

"Senors, I bring you Don Jose Pacheco."

So suddenly had the contest ended that those riders who helped to form the riata fence stood still in their places, as if another round had yet to be fought. Beyond the pistol shot and the girl voice crying well done, the audience was quiet, waiting.

Then Jose, sitting spent upon his horse, lifted a hand that shook weakly. His fingers fumbled at his breast, and he held out the shining medal of gold--the medal with diamonds prisoning the sunlight so that the trinket flashed in his hand.

"Senor," he said huskily, "the medalla--it is yours."

Jack looked at him; looked at the bent faces of the frowning judges; looked up at Teresita, watching the two with red lips parted and breath coming quickly; looked again queerly at Jose, gasping still, and holding out to him the medalla oro. Jack did a good deal of thinking in a very short s.p.a.ce of time.

"I don't want your medal," he said. "Let some Californian fight you for it, if he likes. That is not for a gringo."

Perhaps there was a shade of the theatrical element in his speech and his manner, but he was perfectly innocent of any such intention; and the people before him were nothing if not dramatic. He got his response in the bravos and the applause that followed the silence of sheer amazement. "Gracias!" they cried, in their impulsive appreciation of his generosity.

"The horse which you offered for a prize, Don Andres, I will claim,"

Jack went on, when he could be heard--and he did not wait long, for short-lived indeed is the applause given to an alien. "And I will ride him as soon as you desire."

"Yes! Let us see him ride that caballo!" cried the fickle ma.s.s of humanity. "By a trick of chance he won the duelo, and the medalla he refused because he knows it was not won fairly. Where is that yellow caballo which no man has ridden? Let him show us what he can do with that yellow one!"

Dade, pushing his way exultantly toward him, saw the blaze of anger at their fickleness leap into Jack's eyes.

"Si, I will show you!" he called out. "It is well that you should see some horsemanship! Bring the yellow caballo, then. Truly, I will show you what I can do."

"Come, Surry," called Dade, and the white horse walked up to him and nibbled playfully his bearskin chaparejos. "Solano's in the little corral, off this big one. I'll bring your saddle--"

"I don't want any saddle. I'm going to ride him bareback, with a rope over his nose. Let me have your spurs, will you? Did you hear them say I won the duel with luck? I'll show these greasers what a gringo can do!"

He spoke in Spanish, to show his contempt of their opinion of him, and he curled his lip at the jibes they began to fling down at him; the jibes and the taunts--and vague threats as well, when those who had wagered much upon the duelo began to reckon mentally their losings.

In the adobe corral he stood with his riata coiled in his hand and Dade's spurs upon his heels, and waited until Solano, with a fling of heels into the air, rushed in from the pen where the big bull had waited until he was let out to fight the grizzly.

"Bareback he says he will ride that son of Satanas!" jeered a wine-roughened voice. "Boaster that he is, look you how he stands! He is afraid even to la.s.so that yellow one!"

Jack was indeed deliberate in his movements. He stood still while the horse circled him twice with head and tail held high. When Solano brought up with a flourish on the far side of the corral, Jack turned to Dade and Valencia standing guard at the main gate, their horses barring the opening.

"See that it's kept clear out in front," he told them. "I'll come out a-flying when I do come, most likely."

Whereat those who heard him laughed derisively. "Never to the gate will you ride him, gringo--even so you touch his back! Not twice will the devil give you luck," they yelled, while they scrambled for the choicest positions.

Jack, standing in the center quietly, smiled at them, and gave the flip downward and forward that formed the little loop to which he seemed so partial. He tossed that loop upward, straight over his head; a careless little toss, it looked to those who watched. His hand began to rotate upon his supple wrist joint--and like a live corkscrew the rawhide loop went up, and up, and up, and grew larger while it climbed.

Solano snorted; and the noise was like a gun in the dead silence while those thousands watched this miracle of a rawhide riata that apparently climbed of its own accord into the air.

The loop, a good ten feet in diameter, swirled horizontally over his head. The coil in his hand was paid out until there was barely enough to give him power over the rest. His hand gave a quick motion sidewise, and the loop dropped true, and settled over the head of Solano.

Jack flung a foot backward and braced himself for the pull, the riata drawn across one thigh in the "hip-hold" which cowboys use to-day when they rope from the ground. Solano gave one frightened lunge and brought up trembling with surprise.

That he knew nothing of the feel of a rope worked now to Jack's advantage, for sheer astonishment held the horse quiet. A flip, and the riata curled in a half-hitch over Solano's nose; and Jack was edging slowly towards him, his hands moving along the taut riata like a sailor climbing a rope.

Solano backed, shook his head futilely, snorted, and rolled his eyes--mere frills of resentment that formed no real opposition to Jack's purpose. Five minutes of maneuvering to get close, and Jack had twisted his fingers in the taffy-colored mane; he went up, and landed fairly in the middle of Solano's rounded back and began swiftly coiling the trailing riata.

"Get outa the way, there!" he yelled, and raked the big spurs backward when Solano's forefeet struck the ground after going high in air. Like a bullet they went out of that corral and across the open s.p.a.ce where the duel had been fought, with Dade and Valencia spurring desperately after.

It took a long ten minutes to bring Solano back, chafing, but owning Jack's mastery--for the time being, at least. He returned to a sullen audience, save where the Americans cheered him from their side of the corral.

"He is a devil--that blue-eyed one!" the natives were saying grudgingly to one another; but they were stubborn and would not cheer. "Saw you ever a riata thrown as he threw it? Not Jose Pacheco himself ever did so impossible a thing; truly the devil is in that gringo." So they muttered amongst themselves when he came back to the corral and slipped, laughing, from Solano's sweat-roughened back.

"You can have your Surry!" he cried boastfully to Dade, who was the first to reach him. "Give me a month to school him, and this yellow horse will be mighty near as good as your white one. I'd rather have him than forty gold medals!"

"Senor,"--it was Jose, his neck wrapped in a white handkerchief, coming forward from where he had sat with Don Andres--"Senor, I am sorry that I did not kill you; but yet I admire your skill, and I wish to thank you for your generosity; the medalla is not mine, even though you refuse it.

Since I have found one better than I, Don Andres shall keep the medalla until I or some other caballero has won it fairly. For my life, which you also refused to take, I--cannot thank you."

Jack looked at him intently. "You will thank me," he said grimly, "later on."

Jose's face went white. "Senor, you do not mean--"

"I do mean--just that."