Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/392

 animal's head up and prevented his falling to the ground. Practised riders sometimes show their skill by putting a silver coin the size of a half-dollar between each thigh and the saddle, and retaining it there in spite of all the plunging and bucking of the animal. One of the men gravely told us he had seen a man thrown twenty feet into the air by a bucking horse, and then come down astride the saddle in exactly the right position. Another said he had seen a horse swell himself suddenly, so as to burst the girths of the saddle; the saddle and the man on it then went fully ten feet into the air, and came down on the horse all right and in order. We had intended to tell them about the remarkable riding of Buffalo Bill and his cow-boys, but after these two stories we had nothing to say.