Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/53

Rh liberately ignored him or whether her whole interest was centred on a group of horsemen at which she seemed to be gazing.

"Now you will see the California sports as they were in the old days," the Colonel was saying. "See, there they go now!"

The horsemen had come to life and were swooping gracefully back and forth like swallows. It was an exhibition only. Men "turned on a ten cent piece"; charged at full speed only to pull to a stand in a plunge and a slide; reined their horses to the perpendicular and half-turned in mid air; described figure eights at full speed. It was a gay scene of animation. Then little by little the movement died, leaving the horsemen grouped at one end of the course. Manuelo now rode to a middle point directing the activities of two men with shovels. They dug a small hole and buried something mysterious in the loosened light earth.

"Why it's a chicken!" cried Kenneth.

The fowl had been buried all but its head, which was extended anxiously in a most comical manner. But now one of the riders detached himself from the others and came flying down the course at full speed. When within ten feet of the buried chicken he seized his saddle horn with his left hand and leaned from the saddle in a long graceful dipping swoop. The long spur slid up to the cantle and clung there. With his right hand he reached for the neck of the half buried fowl. But at the last instant, as he left the saddle, his horse shied ever so slightly away from that suspicious object on the ground. Jose's clutching fingers missed by inches, and he swept grandly by and lightly up into his saddle again empty handed.

"That looks to be quite a trick, anyhow," observed Kenneth with respect.

"It's a knack," agreed the Colonel, "a beginner is likely to go off on his head. Isn't he, Puss?"

"Can you do that?" Kenneth asked.

"Of course," replied Daphne blandly. "Can't you?"

Kenneth was spared the necessity of reply. Another contestant had managed to illustrate the Colonel's remark, and had gone off on his head; a little too long a reach, a trifle too much weight on the bent knee, the least possible hesitation in the