Page:Caroline Lockhart--The full of the Moon.djvu/211

 head of a rooster buried to the neck in the sand.

The spectators hooted and howled their derision. The leader's face, dark with chagrin at his failure, grew still darker at their ridicule. He lifted his eyes to see Nan.

Inflamed with much wine, the sight of her at this moment of his failure maddened him and, with a frenzied yell, he swung his horse and rode straight at her, lashing and spurring furiously.

In the second that it took him to cover the distance between them, Nan recognized the malevolent face of Ignacio Bojarques. She read his purpose in his eyes before the horses crashed together. The impact of the oncoming horse against the shoulder of her own knocked its legs from under it, and horse and rider fell. Bojarques's horse staggered and went on.

Then the fallen horse, still dazed, struggled to its feet, but Nan did not rise. Of all the throng, only Bob, who had witnessed it from Riley's doorway, and little Rosario Richards, reckless in her fright for Nan, ran to the limp heap in the sand.